9.03.2005


I like this look on W so much more than that idiot smirk he does. Get ready to see this face a lot - he's in line for an extensive battery of bitch-slaps in the next six weeks.
click pic

Polo: the new NOLA

I just clicked on a NYTimes heading story about getting aid, any aid, into New Orleans.

What pops up first? A full page ad for Polo. Can't read the story. Big ad. Ralph Lauren. Sultry 20-something model in too much eyeliner. Very expensive some kind of clothes. Skin. All money. White person. Purrrr.

Then it finally times out and goes to the story about rats eating black people and them eating nothing. Eating their nothing with a side of no water.

Nice. You'd think the NYT - well, anyone, really - might think about where they run their jillion dollar Polo ads.

Honestly.

9.01.2005

New York Times Calls Bush to Task. Finally.

(headline is a clickable link.)

Many casual or non-readers of the New York Times believe it to be a 'liberal' paper. To the contrary, it has gone along with Bush in most of his follies - sometimes with a little attitude, but rarely actually poking him in the chest and asking, "what the hell are you doing?!" (Yes, there is the fingernails-on-chalkboard vitriol of people like Maureen Dowd, but editorially the paper is rarely on the front lines calling Bush and his monkey handlers on their crap.)

This editorial is a step in the right direction. (His news conference yesterday was abysmal. And that little smirk he generates - at the weirdest times - is creepy awful.)

8.31.2005


...
click pic

Bush: "Well, God didn't tell me about the hurricane when I was planning Iraq..."

So here is a classic example of why we have a National Guard. They are reserve soldiers to be called up in times of national emergency. Hurricane Katrina wipes out Louisiana and Mississippi. Millions displaced. Flooding, looting, lawlessness, imminent disease. Massive manpower needed instantly to help those displaced. This is when you call the National Guard.

The National Guard would be flown in from around the country. They go to work helping the living, securing property, and then they work to deal with the most immediate disasterous situations. Fixing levees for example.

Ours, unfortunately, is now the National Guard of Iraq. They're there doing all the things they're supposed to be doing here - along with dodging IEDs and snipers and shooting back.

Then there's the thing of the billions of dollars going to Iraq every single month rather then being used here for our own people. Not just emergencies like Katrina ($30 billion and counting) but schools and roads.

Then there's the thing of oil prices going over $70 a barrel - Bush was going to use Iraq's oil production to pay for reconstruction there. But that's so far off plan now, no one even mentions it. Oil was under $30 a barrel when he took office.

Anyone who tells you the war on terror hasn't been effective just isn't a Saudi oil sheikh.

(BTW: from Globalsecurity.org - "Since 1973 every upward spike in real oil prices has been followed by a jump in unemployment..." I'll bet Greenspan's sweating that little stat.)

Bush says he actually talks to God. If it's true, I reckon what he really ought to do is shut up and listen.