screw the poor in the gulf states some more...

Post-Katrina easing of labor laws stirs debate

Foreign workers may form a big part of Gulf Coast reconstruction.

read it here

Bush directly involved in leak scandal?

Source to Stephanopoulos: President Bush Directly Involved In Leak Scandal
Near the end of a round table discussion on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos dropped this bomb:

Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it’s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don’t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions.

This would explain why Bush spent more than an hour answering questions from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. It would also fundamentally change the dynamics of the scandal. President Bush could no longer claim he was merely a bystander who wants to “get to the bottom of it.” As Stephanopoulos notes, if Bush played a direct role it could make this scandal completely unmanageable.

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video.

Congress and Katrina...one more blow to the victims

What perfect timing: the bankruptcy law set to go into effect Oct. 17 is arriving just in time to inflict more pain on Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas residents who have been hit by the gulf hurricanes. They lost their homes, businesses and even loved ones and now may face financial ruin without the protection of bankruptcy. for more

It amazes me how little play the screwing of Katrina victims makes the news. Since you can't show this in pictures, I guess it's not newsworthy. What a sick society, and a namby pamby media!

Right wingers jumping off the cliff over Miers nomination

Conservatives jumping off the cliff over Miers nomination

A round up from crooksandliars

It seems like another crony nomination to me. Keeping it in the family. A little "Clemenza" action. Ezra Klein has some of the reactions from the right wingers. Here's an example:

"ConfirmThem.com: Harriet Miers? Are you freakin’ kidding me?! Oh, and if any of you RNC staffers are reading, you can take my name off the mailing list. I am not giving the national Republican Party another dime."

Atrios:J-Pod Said All That Needs to be Said/Armando: Leap of Faith/ AmericaBlog: Conserv. Bloggers not happy/Think Progress-Right-Wing Peanut Gallery Hits Miers Hard/Michelle Malkin: UTTERLY UNDERWHELMED/ Ben Winkler: David Frum just deleted his post/ John Cole: I Don't Get it/ Hugh Hewitt wants them to trust the President/Booman Tribune: A "Pitbull in Size 6 Shoes"

No word from God's Own Circus yet...(send me anything from the Circus Clowns)

Rise of Hitler compare to Bush and Co.

The rise and fall of Hitler, includes these details, gleaned from a teacher's guide and other historical sources. Substitute Muslim for the word Jew.

"Once he became head of state by legal means, Hitler consolidated his power by neutralizing all political opponents and democratic institutions. As dictator, he began a campaign of terror to rid Germany of Jewish influence. The Nuremberg Laws negated civil liberties for Germany's Jews, many of whom fled to safer lands.

INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
Students will learn:
1. How the Nazis consolidated their power and control of the German government.

2. That dictatorial power can evolve from forces other than through a military or civilian coup d'État.

3. That Hitler rose to power in a democracy which had a structure similar to that of modern democracies.

4. That historical events often trigger political responses and mold public opinion, and that extremist political movements do not suddenly rise to power in a vacuum but do so as a result of latent instability of the society in which they exist."

And here is the discussion question from the teacher's guide (think about it)...

"Discuss what motivated the Reichstag to pass the Enabling Act. How jealously does our own Congress guard its rights to pass legislation? Is there an appropriate balance of power between the President and the Congress today? Has this balance changed in the last 40 years? The last 20 years? 5 years? 1 year?"

Another point of interest, by Ben S. Austin: "Please take special note of the similarity between these laws and the Jim Crow Laws which were passed in the United States following the Compromise of 1877, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy vs Ferguson (1896) and remained in effect until the court reversed the "separate but equal doctrine in Brown vs the Board of Education of Topeka (1954). It is clear that Hitler used the Jim Crow segregation statutes as his model for defining Jews in the Third Reich."

And still more information, which sounds a lot like what is going on here and now.

"On March 23, 1933, the newly elected members of the German Parliament (the Reichstag) met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to consider passing Hitler's Enabling Act. It was officially called the 'Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich.' If passed, it would effectively mean the end of democracy in Germany and establish the legal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.

The 'distress' had been secretly caused by the Nazis themselves in order to create a crisis atmosphere that would make the law seem necessary to restore order. On February 27, 1933, they had burned the Reichstag building, seat of the German government, causing panic and outrage. The Nazis successfully blamed the fire on the Communists and claimed it marked the beginning of a widespread uprising.

On the day of the vote, Nazi storm troopers gathered in a show of force around the opera house chanting, "Full powers - or else! We want the bill - or fire and murder!!" They also stood inside in the hallways, and even lined the aisles where the vote would take place, glaring menacingly at anyone who might oppose Hitler's will.

Just before the vote, Hitler made a speech to the Reichstag in which he pledged to use restraint."

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one." - Hitler told the Reichstag.

He also promised an end to unemployment and pledged to promote peace with France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. But in order to do all this, Hitler said, he first needed the Enabling Act.

A two thirds majority was needed, since the law would actually alter the German constitution. Hitler needed 31 non-Nazi votes to pass it. He got those votes from the Center Party after making a false promise to restore some basic rights already taken away by decree."

I am telling you, the worst may yet happen, particularly if the Bush administration changes the Posse Comitatus Act.

Change the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878?

If this doesn't scare you, then you need to re-read some history. Excerpt of report:

"President Bush yesterday said he wants Congress to consider putting the Pentagon, not state and local agencies, in charge of responding to large natural disasters in the future….

That would require a change of law, since the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids the military from performing civilian law enforcement duties. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is investigating possible reforms to the act, which Pentagon officials consider archaic.

[C]ritics are already warning against repeal of Posse Comitatus. "Washington seems poised to embrace further centralization and militarization at home," cautioned Gene Healy, senior editor at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "That has the makings of a policy disaster that would dwarf Hurricane Katrina."

Peace March, more photos and stuff

I know that this photo of Sept. 24, 2005 peace marchers must be an early photo because we marched only 1 hrs less than we did at the March for Women's Lives last April, where 1.5 million women marched. photo courtesy of Jerry

The women's march of April 2004 compared to the Million Man March

There were more people present in Washington DC on Sept. 24, 2005, than the media will tell you. However, Stars and Stripes estimated 250,000 people, which is close, but I think it still is an underestimation. Why do I say that? The photo below shows a large contingent of police at 1600 hrs, however, at 0900 hrs there were 3 police officers deployed in this location. I think they were not expecting so many people. Worse yet, they were rude, and not a professional as the police officers in Crawford. The DC police should get lessons from the Crawford police.



The police, I think, did not expect such a crowd. That must be why the train from NY to DC had a "power outage" and those folks had to find another way to get to DC. I am sorry I missed the civil actions on Sunday when folks got arrested, including Cindy Sheehan. Go Cindy!

All in all, it was an amazing and historic experience as we mixed a historic peace march with historic tours....


and just plain fun


and a run in with Oscar the Grouch:

Sept. 24th Peace March

The peace march takes place on Sat. For more information on events, and to read the Code Pink blog link

We're marching because we are distressed over the continued war in Iraq, an unprovoked, unnecessary war that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 2,000 US soldiers. We grieve for those families who have already lost loved ones in this war, and we want to stop other families from suffering such painful losses.

We're marching because we want to hold George Bush accountable for dragging us into this war on false pretenses. For more reasons

Bush administration appoints a Veterinarian in charge of women's health

Washington, DC — In a curious move today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) named two acting directors to the office of women's health. This morning FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford appointed a man who has spent the majority of his career in the office of veterinary medicine to the position of acting director of the Office of Women's Health. By this afternoon, Dr. Norris Alderson had been replaced with a Ms. Teresa Toigo. Ms. Toigo will replace Dr. Susan Wood, a key women's health expert, who resigned on August 31 in protest of the FDA's handling of the application to make Plan B emergency contraception (EC) available over the counter.

This according to Planned Parenthood

Open letter to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison

I noted that you asked President Bush to do the following:
“Relax certain McKinney Act restrictions as they relate to the evacuee-students in order to give school districts more flexibility to place them in schools.”
What are those certain restrictions? I have heard that the restrictions you want lifted would allow Katrina refugee children to be placed in separate classrooms from local children; sort of a "separate but equal" throwback to the days of segregation. I think that is totally wrong. These children need to be able to feel normal, and should be mainstreamed.
I lived through a large natural disaster, 40 years ago, when I was 14, and although only one person I know died as a result of that incident, and I was not homeless, it was an emotionally charged experience. I can only imagine how scarred these children will be from this experience. Making them feel different and separating them from their peers will only harm them more.
As a women, and a parent, surely you know these things, and know in your heart that this is really wrong.

Crawford to silence further protests...they think..

NO PARKING' SIGNS TO SILENCE FREEDOM OF SPEECH

WACO, Texas -- Two weeks after Cindy Sheehan left her anti-war
campsite by the road leading to President Bush's ranch, county
commissioners have banned parking along 23 miles of roads in the area.

Before the 4-1 vote Tuesday, McLennan County Commissioner Ray Meadows
said about 80 residents had complained of blocked roads, loud music
and public health and safety concerns during the 26-day protest near
Bush's ranch outside Crawford, about 20 miles west of Waco.

"It's not a First Amendment issue. It's a safety issue," Meadows said,
adding that "no parking" signs could be put up this week."

In progressive grannie's humble opinion, no parking signs won't stop anything. We are much more creative than that!

FEMA's body recovery underlying scam

FEMA brought in SCI (Service Corporation International) for removal of bodies. SCI President is a crony of Bush's, and Bush bailed him out of an investigation into their embalming practices in 1999.
This same firm "is known for its "experience" at hiding and dumping bodies" according to Raw Story

Why FEMA chose to outsource mortuary services to a paid contractor is also mystery to Dan Buckner, co-owner of the Gowen-Smith Chapel in the Gulf area. Buckner had planned to serve with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Responses Team, which reportedly told Buckner's partner, Gary Hicks of Paducah, KY, to expect up to 40,000 deaths from Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Upon learning of Kenyon’s contract, Buckner expressed puzzlement. He told the Shelbyville Times-Gazette, "Volunteers would have gone at no charge."

Katrina viewed by the world

Oh yeah, democracy really looks more attractive now. Show us your tired, your poor, your hungry...and Katrina showed the world that we don't have streets paved with gold, but US citizens mired in poverty and stranded with no way out, and a government that didn't care. Slate outlines the impact in depth:

"The initial federal and local reactions to Hurricane Katrina, however, have sent the opposite message. The images seen around the world communicated a lack of competence and considerable chaos and suffering. The dominant overseas reaction has been sympathy mixed with shock and horror at what was seen by many as evidence of racism and a reminder of the extreme poverty in which many Americans live.

The global impact[of Katrina on foreign policy]goes beyond impressions. A priority of this administration's foreign policy is to promote democracy around the world. But the attractiveness of the American model, and the ability of the United States to be an effective advocate for more democratic, capitalist societies, which had already been weakened by the disarray in Iraq, is now weaker still as a result of the disarray at home. It will be more difficult to make the case for free markets and more open societies if the results of such reforms come to be associated with the disorder seen in New Orleans." more

Al Gore's speech A Moral Moment
"...This is a moral moment. This is not ultimately about any scientific debate or political dialogue. Ultimately it is about who we are as human beings. It is about our capacity to transcend our own limitations; to rise to this new occasion; to see with our hearts, as well as our heads, the unprecedented response that is now called for; to disenthrall ourselves; to shed the illusions that have been our accomplices in ignoring the warnings that were clearly given; and hearing the ones that are clearly given now.

Where there is no vision, the people perish. And Lincoln said at another moment of supreme challenge that the question facing the people of the United States of America ultimately was whether or not this government, conceived in liberty, dedicated to freedom, of the people, by the people, and for the people -- or any government so conceived -- would perish from this earth.

There is another side to this moral challenge. Where there is vision, the people prosper and flourish, and the natural world recovers, and our communities recover. The good news is we know what to do. The good news is, we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need, more are being developed, and as they become available and become more affordable when produced in scale, they will make it easier to respond. But we should not wait, we cannot wait, we must not wait, we have every thing we need -- save perhaps political will. And in our democracy, political will is a renewable resource. [sustained applause]....

We brought down Communism, we brought down apartheid, we have even solved a global environmental crisis before -- the hole in the stratospheric ozone layer -- because we had leadership and because we had vision and because people who exercise moral authority in their local communities empowered our nation's government "of the people by the people and for the people" to take ethical actions even thought they were difficult.

This is another such time. This is your moment. This is the time for those who see and understand and care and are willing to work to say this time the warnings will not be ignored. This time we will prepare. This time we will rise to the occasion. And we will prevail. Thank you. Good luck to you, God bless you. [sustained applause]"

Just relaxing

Just relaxing, originally uploaded by skystone461.

Ok, I chased Mr. S (the kitty) and he got away to the top of the dryer, does this mean I should relax now?

Poverty in America, the truth....

The Economic Policy Institute September 1, 2005,Briefing Paper #165

Working families' incomes often fail to meet living expenses around the U.S.

by Sylvia A. Allegretto

The ability of families to meet their most basic needs is an important measure of economic stability and well-being. While poverty thresholds are used to evaluate the extent of serious economic deprivation in our society, family budgets, that is, the income a family needs to secure safe and decent-yet-modest living standards in the community in which it resides offer a broader measure of economic welfare.1

The family budgets presented in this report take into account differences in both geographic location and family type. In total, this report presents basic budgets for over 400 U.S. communities and six family types (either one or two parents with one, two, or three children). That the budgets differ by location is important, since certain costs, such as housing, vary significantly depending on where one resides. This geographic dimension of family budget measurements offers a comparative advantage over using poverty thresholds, which only use a national baseline in its measurements.

Basic family budget measurements are adjustable by family type because expenses vary considerably depending on the number of children in a family and whether or not a family is headed by a single parent or a married couple.

The second part of this analysis compares data on actual working family incomes and the associated basic family budgets. Such a comparison can show, for example, what percentage of two-parent families with two children in Pittsburgh, Pa., are actually earning enough income to meet basic family budget thresholds.2 These comparisons can also show not only the share of families falling below family budget thresholds, but the number of total people—parents and children—that are affected. Given recent policies that emphasize work as the solution to poverty and economic hardship, this analysis is important because it shows that sometimes work simply isn't enough.

The following are major findings from this analysis:

The range of basic family budgets for a two-parent, two-child family is $31,080 (rural Nebraska) to $64,656 (Boston, Massachusetts). The median family budget of $39,984 is well above the $19,157 poverty threshold for this size family.

Over three times more working families fall below the basic family budget levels as fall below the official poverty line.

Of the six family types examined, over 14 million people (28%) live in families with incomes below the basic family budget thresholds.

The incorporation of cost-of-living differences into basic family budgets makes them advantageous in many ways. For example, when using poverty thresholds, approximately 37% of families fall below "twice poverty" (i.e., double the poverty line), whether they reside in cities or rural areas. But when using family budget measures, which embody the higher cost of living in cities, one finds that 42% of families living in cities and 30% of families residing in rural areas fall short of basic family budget thresholds.

Think of it as being in steerage

The Titanic Of Our Era by Bill Fletcher, Jr.,September 09, 2005.

"The complete failure of the Bush administration—and to a lesser extent state and local authorities on the Gulf Coast— to respond to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina has raised questions about the motives at play. The fact that the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor and black people were thrown up for grabs and that the Bush administration could not mobilize any significant response for five days has led many people to assume that this was an act of planned genocide. How else, one may wonder, could such a thing have been allowed to happen?

There is another way to think about the disaster: the steerage on the Titanic. To refresh your memory, that was the section of the ship that provided the cheapest accommodations and where the poorest were housed. It was also the lowest part of the ship, the least safe and the site of overwhelming death. One may remember, as portrayed in the film Titanic , that the passengers in steerage were literally locked in, trapped like rats such that they could not escape the rising water.

Does this somehow sound familiar?

Did the builders of the Titanic design it in such a way that they aimed to kill the occupants of steerage? Not at all. They did, however, design it so that if anyone was going to die, it would be those in steerage. Their deaths were acceptable for the builders of the Titanic. After all, those in steerage were considered a less-relevant population than the rich on the upper decks.

The capitalism of the contemporary era shares many of the same values informing the builders of the Titanic; the poor are not the responsibility of society at large. The construction of the Titanic was not simply a technological matter. There was a decision that the poor could be sacrificed in order that the rich survive. That is the essence of capitalism in general, but particularly neo-liberal capitalism—the capitalism of this era. There need not have been an intent to wipe out thousands of poor and black people in the Gulf. The assumptions about how money would be spent, what was necessary, etc., meant that in the face of disaster, the poor and the black would be sacrificed, and the rich would have their SUVs [read: life boats]"

Obviously, the middle and poor classes of this country are expendable to the neocons and the Bushites. They now continue to plot to decrease medicaid and medicare benefits, but may concede that they can't remove those benefits from the gulf state residents because it might look bad or unsavory.

DeLay--Katrina kind of fun

"While on the tour of a shelter with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, ``Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?''

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed."

What in God's green earth is wrong with this man? Does this look like summer camp? How condescending, rude and outrageous! Of course, we already know that DeLay has no ethics, and here is more proof.

To read the entire article Houston Chronicle

Come to Washington DC

Federal restrictions on reporters covering Katrina

"September 7 Reuters article reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) "asked the media not to take pictures of those killed by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath" and "refused to take reporters and photographers along on boats seeking victims in flooded areas." FEMA's actions, along with further reports that the government is obstructing journalists in New Orleans, have drawn little attention -- and even less outrage -- from the very media institutions that the agency, part of the Bush administration, seeks to repress. Media Matters for America wonders: What will it take for the media to protest (or at least report) the Bush administration's efforts to control them?...
In a September 8 Philadelphia Inquirer column, television columnist Gail Shister quoted Alex Jones, director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy: " 'I think they want to minimize the perception that the government didn't do its job,' says Jones, a former New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winner. 'I'm very suspicious of their motives.' " Editor & Publisher also noted FEMA's actions and the reactions of journalist groups in a September 8 article." For more go to media matters

"NBC anchor and managing editor Brian Williams noted in his weblog that journalists are being forcibly prevented from covering certain aspects of the Katrina disaster: The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media ... obvious members of the media ... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. ... Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history."