Such as… United outsourcing all of their 777 repairs to China. Not only do they control our cash, they’re now getting our airplane maintenance contracts.
So, just so I’m getting this straight, it is cheaper for United to fly their 777s to Beijing and have Chinese laborers repair their fleet than it is to take care of it domestically? That seems… incredible. Particularly with the cost of fuel and the coming devaluation of the dollar.
Weird, crazy, times. Bad times for blue collar Americans, for sure.
As Atrios notes, we’ve got a refugee crisis on our hands. Tens of thousands of people have been told to stay away from their homes for a month. 20,000 or so are in the Superdome. Many can’t afford not to work, or are old, or young, or don’t have family.
They are in desperate straits and need your help. For all practical purposes, a major American city has been wiped off the map.
That said, Kevin Drum can go sit on a stick and spin with yet another of his middlebrow muddled “don’t make this a partisan issue” pleas for mercy. That’s bullshit. Bush slashed funding to repair and strengthen the levee. Bush sent much of the LANG to Iraq. He bears some responsibility for the consequences. And note: I’m not blaming Bush, but I am pointing out that he bears some responsibility. This also isn’t meant to detract from the enormity of the disaster nor our response to that disaster.
But like a typical appeaser to the right, Drum conflates facts – Bush slashed funding for the US Army Corps of Engineers – with pedagogic vitriol from bloated drug whore – “Hurricane Katrina vanden Huevel” – as if some form of equivalency exists there.
This is exactly the same kind of false equivalency (AKA “ontheonehandism”) that our media practices that gives ID proponents, swift boaters, and other intellectually indefensible positions a false patina of respectability or popularity.
Maybe Drum should go sign up for the DLC. They’re good at these sorts of false, self-defeating equivalencies.
Need some law & order down there, folks.
With much of the city emptied by Hurricane Katrina, some opportunists took advantage of the situation by looting stores.
American exceptionalism? Nah, we’re all the same.
Looters filled industrial-sized garbage cans with clothing and jewelry and floated them down the street on bits of plywood and insulation as National Guard lumbered by.
Mike Franklin stood on the trolley tracks and watched the spectacle unfold.
“To be honest with you, people who are oppressed all their lives, man, it’s an opportunity to get back at society,” he said.
You know what kind of society doesn’t have looters? One where people have their basic necessities met. One with representation.
Theoretically, anyway. If cheap iBooks can cause a riot, imagine what lawlessness + free iBooks would do.
Update: martial law declared in N’awlins. By “law and order” above, I didn’t mean “shoot the looters” or “impose curfew,” by the way.
WWL-TV reports that martial law is now in effect in Plaquemines Parish southwest of New Orleans, where 60% of homes are said to be flooded; persons found on the streets there will be arrested. WWL-TV is broadcasting live video via KHOU in Houston. Some looting has begun in New Orleans, according to AP.
No word on what the rule is in New Orleans.
and they are trying to have Congress grant them the power to regulate cable.
A 2003 episode of the short-lived Fox comedy “Keen Eddie” features a woman described as a “filthy slut” who is hired to “extract” semen from a prize thoroughbred. “That’s not natural,” the prostitute protests. “Think of it as science,” says the man offering to pay. Though the episode featured no actual extraction — off-camera the woman lifts her shirt and the horse suddenly drops dead — some Americans complained, finding the scene inappropriate for prime-time television.
The Federal Communications Commission disagreed. In the majority opinion, the commission decided the sequence was not intended to “pander, shock, or titillate.” The decision, however, was not unanimous. Commissioner Kevin J. Martin, whom President Bush has since appointed FCC chairman, thought Fox stations should be fined. “Despite my colleagues’ assurance that there appeared to be a safe distance between the prostitute and the horse, I remain uncomfortable,” Martin wrote at the time.
Though Martin lost the battle over horse extraction, he is now poised to win the broader indecency war. During the long hot summer in Washington, he has been quietly meeting with religious activists and industry leaders to organize a push for new standards for broadcast, cable and satellite television. At the same time, Martin’s allies in the Senate have been considering new laws that could increase broadcast indecency fines, break up cable TV offerings to allow parents to cut off racy channels, and — most controversially — give the FCC the power to fine basic cable programs, like MTV’s “Real World” and Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” for crude and lewd content.
Please note: this is prima facie unconstitutional (First Amendment). The entire authority for the FCC to regulate the airwaves rests on a specious “scarcity” model that has no relevance – none! – to a non-broadcast spectrum. Where this cocksucker Martin thinks Congress can grant him the authority is anyone’s guess.
Then again, in this day of the American Taliban and our move toward a fundamentalist theocracy, who needs a Constitution?
Rich get richer… poor get poorer. Welcome to the Reagan-Bush society, bitches!
The nation’s poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year, the fourth consecutive annual increase, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
…
The number of people without health insurance grew from 45 million to 45.8 million. At the same time, the number of people with health insurance coverage grew by 2 million last year.
Note: that last paragraph should read: of the 2.8 million new people eligible for insurance, we only covered 2 million, or a bit over 1/3.
The median household income, meanwhile, stood at $44,389, unchanged from 2003.
Read: while the nation was sliding into poverty, wages were stagnant (going backwards, actually, accounting for inflation), and the top 1% did very, very well for themselves. Bush boom? Not for we, the People.
Sign it now! Either the Bush kids put their lives on the line for George’s “noble war” or the troops come home.
I demand that George W. Bush’s daughters, and his eligible nieces and nephews, serve in Iraq to prove their support of Bush’s ‘noble war for a noble cause.’ If the Bush family does not believe in ‘sacrificing’ for the war and is not willing to put their lives on the line, then Bush must bring the troops of middle class and poor Americans home now.
It’s totally sweet! Unless you’re a woman, of course.
This year’s state legislative season draws to a close having produced a near-record number of laws imposing new restrictions on a woman’s access to abortion or contraception.
Since January, governors have signed several dozen antiabortion measures ranging from parental consent requirements to an outright ban looming in South Dakota. Not since 1999, when a wave of laws banning late-term abortions swept the legislatures, have states imposed so many and so varied a menu of regulations on reproductive health care.
Three states have passed bills requiring that women seeking an abortion be warned that the fetus will feel pain, despite inconclusive scientific data on the question. West Virginia and Florida approved legislation recognizing a pre-viable fetus, or embryo, as an independent victim of homicide. And in Missouri, Gov. Matt Blunt (R) has summoned lawmakers into special session Sept. 6 to consider three antiabortion proposals.
and a special session, too!
Arianna performs the thankless task of commenting on today’s execrable and pathetic editorial in “defense” of Judy “proved fucking right”/traitor/partisan hack Miller.
Reading the latest New York Times Judy Miller editorial is the journalistic equivalent of watching a bombing comic pull out all the stops in a frantic attempt to wring a reaction out of his audience. You can feel the flop sweat dripping off the page
as Gov. Fletcher issues blanket pardons to all involved in the Merit System scandal.
Just minutes ago, Governor Ernie Fletcher, in one of the more audacious displays of political grandstanding, in a setting full of cheering and clapping political supporters, announced that he was thumbing his nose at the Kentucky criminal justice system, announced he was issuing “blanket” pardons (calling it amnesty, but Section 77 of the state constitution does not contain the term ‘amnesty’, only ‘pardon’) to anyone who “might have violated” state’s Merit System laws.
…
Sadly, Fletcher referred to the acts which have resulted in more than a dozen indictments as nothing more than “noodling” which is the term for catching fish without bait, which according to him calls for a punishment equal to what these crimes would result in if convicted.
A nation of men, not laws indeed. Corrupt, spineless, and dirty. That’s the GOP, through and through.
ACLU reveals FBI labeled peace, affirmative action group ‘terrorist’
The American Civil Liberties Union today released an FBI document that designates a Michigan-based peace group and an affirmative action advocacy group as potentially “involved in terrorist activities.” The file was obtained through an ongoing nationwide ACLU effort seeking information on the FBI’s use of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to engage in political surveillance.
“This document confirms our fears that federal and state counterterrorism officers have turned their attention to groups and individuals engaged in peaceful protest activities,” said Ben Wizner, an ACLU staff attorney and counsel in a lawsuit seeking the release of additional FBI records. “When the FBI and local law enforcement identify affirmative action advocates as potential terrorists, every American has cause for concern.”
I just can’t believe this. I’m gobsmacked. Next, you’ll be telling me that our government and particularly the Hoover-led FBI designed a counterintelligence operation against we, the People, that would make it possible to “pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them.“
Bush’s Secret Dinner — With the Press
About 50 members of the White House press corps accepted President Bush’s invitation last night to come over to his house in Crawford, eat his food, drink his booze, hang around the pool and schmooze with him — while promising not to tell anyone what he said afterward.
…
Nevertheless, I’m told that several reporters expressed squeamishness about last night’s event, particularly as the press-pool vans drove by antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan’s “Camp Casey” site. And later, a small handful watched askance as the rest fawned over Bush, following him around in packs every time he moved.
Sure, they were squeamish… but they still went.
Anyone want to guess whether or not Helen Thomas got an invite? I’m sure Jeff Guckert Gannon did. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Bush slashed funding for the New Orleans district Army Corps of Engineers.
In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding.
It would be the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans district, Corps officials said.
I’ve been here over 30 years and I’ve never seen this level of reduction, said Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district. I think part of the problem is it’s not so much the reduction, it’s the drastic reduction in one fiscal year. It’s the immediacy of the reduction that I think is the hardest thing to adapt to.
There is an economic ripple effect, too. The cuts mean major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.
My irony meter just blew up.
Oh, and if you’re wondering why the LA national guard wasn’t there to help shepherd the poor out of New Orleans (thus saving thousands from possible death), it’s because the Louisiana National Guard is in Iraq.
More than 3,000 members of the Louisiana National Guard’s 256th Brigade serving in Iraq can only watch from Baghdad as Hurricane Katrina bears down on their families and homes in New Orleans and the other south Louisiana communities from which they hail. The deployed soldiers and their equipment, which includes high water vehicles, Humvees and generators, will be sorely missed as Louisiana attempts to prepare for and recover from the historic Category Five storm.
Highly variant weather, including temperature fluctuations. Even the Farmer’s Almanac is on this one… unlike our gubment assministration.
Get your sweaters, mittens and hats ready. The Farmers’ Almanac warns that the coming winter will bring unusually sharp fluctuations in temperature, and says readers “may be reminded of riding a roller, or in this case, ‘polar’ coaster.”
Official, scientific paper on the link between the two.
The strongest hurricanes in the present climate may be upstaged by even more intense hurricanes over the next century as the earth’s climate is warmed by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Although we cannot say at present whether more or fewer hurricane will occur in the future with global warming, the hurricanes that do occur near the end of the 21st century are expected to be stronger and have significantly more intense rainfall than under present day climate conditions. This expectation (Figure 1) is based on an anticipated enhancement of energy available to the storms due to higher tropical sea surface temperatures.
Oh, and the Red Cross could still use your help.