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PLEASE NOTE:   Some of the RSS sites are not coming up properly.  I will track down WHY but since I have changed nothing it may take some time.

 

Ginny's Reading List
Thursday and Friday,
Sept. 15-16, 2005
 
Has everyone noticed that Bush, in his mea culpa speech, said that he needs more POWER in order to put us all under greater control by military law?  We are already under military law.  When an American citizen can be held without trial for more than three years, this country has abandoned the Bill of Rights.  You know, that outmoded piece of paper over 200 years old now?  Yes, the piece of paper that gives us our "first amendment rights," mandates the separation of church and state, allows us to own guns, protects us from illegal search and seizure, etc. 
 
Don't give up your freedom.  Fight against military law and arbitrary imprisonment, and protect our freedom of speech. 
 
Rumors Swirl around Vice President Cheney
Posted September 13th, 2005 at 9:18 am by Jon
 
Man of mystery: What is going on with our Vice President? Rumors have been swirling around our international man of mystery for weeks now. Speculation ramped up in the wake of Katrina when he failed to arrive on the scene until four days after the disaster.
Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), who is a reliable source, told an interviewer that the Veep was so ill he could barely talk, and that Donald Rumsfeld was really running the country. (Which would certainly explain why the response to Katrina was such a disaster.)

Nora Ephron posits that Cheney and President Bush may have had a falling out. Her premise is spot on. She says Gop honchos knew from the getgo that Bush was dumb as a post but that his good ol’ boy act could get him elected, so they brought Cheney in to run the show. Now perhaps Bush is mad that Cheney led him into invading Iraq but is currently unforthcoming with brilliant ideas for leading them out.

[...]  Read the rest at Pensito Review, http://tinyurl.com/exvdc 
The article references the TalkLeft web site:  http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012290.html  The article is also posted at rense.com  http://rense.com/general67/rumorsswirlaround.htm 
BREAKING:: A DIEBOLD INSIDER SPEAKS!
05:19:28 pm, 09/15/05
Radio News America
 
DIEB-THROAT : 'Diebold System One of Greatest Threats Democracy Has Ever Known'
Identifies U.S. Homeland Security 'Cyber Alert' Prior to '04 Election Warning Votes Can be 'Modified Remotely' via 'Undocumented Backdoor' in Central Tabulator Software!

In exclusive stunning admissions to The BRAD BLOG some 11 months after the 2004 Presidential Election, a "Diebold Insider" is now finally speaking out for the first time about the alarming security flaws within Diebold, Inc's electronic voting systems, software and machinery. The source is acknowledging that the company's "upper management" -- as well as "top government officials" -- were keenly aware of the "undocumented backdoor" in Diebold's main "GEM Central Tabulator" software well prior to the 2004 election. A branch of the Federal Government even posted a security warning on the Internet.
 
Pointing to a little-noticed "Cyber Security Alert" issued by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the source inside Diebold -- who "for the time being" is requesting anonymity due to a continuing sensitive relationship with the company -- is charging that Diebold's technicians, including at least one of its lead programmers, knew about the security flaw and that the company instructed them to keep quiet about it.
 
[...]  Read the whole article at RadioNewsAmerica.com:   http://tinyurl.com/c44bn   The BradBlog article is on http://www.bradblog.com/  -- scroll down a bit to find it.
Action Alert from Campaign for America's Future
 
Stop Bush's Assault on Katrina Victims' Wages
 
Instead of embracing good jobs for the recently displaced, President Bush’s first major act in the Gulf Coast recovery effort was to suspend a law that requires federal contractors to pay workers a decent wage.
Please take a moment to demand that this recovery effort put people first – and reject efforts to exploit this tragedy to line the pockets of corporate elites. Please, write your member of Congress and insist that decent family wages and employing the victims of Katrina be the bedrock of the Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts.
Poker party
 
In politics as in poker, the only way to win is to seize the initiative. The Democrats need to make bold wagers or risk being rolled over again.
By David Mamet
September 16, 2005
latimes.com
 
ONE NEEDS TO know but three words to play poker: call, raise or fold.
 
Fold means keep the money, I'm out of the hand; call means to match your opponents' bet. That leaves raise, which is the only way to win at poker. The raiser puts his opponent on the defensive, seizing the initiative. Initiative is only important if one wants to win.

The military axiom is "he who imposes the terms of the battle imposes the terms of the peace." The gambling equivalent is: "Don't call unless you could raise"; that is, to merely match one's opponent's bet is effective only if it makes the opponent question the caller's motives. And that can only occur if the caller has acted aggressively enough in the past to cause his opponents to wonder if the mere call is a ruse de guerre.
 
[...]  Read the rest at the latimes web site:  http://tinyurl.com/7mfpy 
Katrina Relief: It's Iraq Deja vu All Over Again
Arianna Huffington
Posted September 16, 2005 at 7:17 p.m. EDT
The Huffington Post
 
Reacting to all the pricey promises the president made in his big Katrina speech, a senior House Republican official told the New York Times , "We are not sure he knows what he is getting into."
If that's true, Bush must have the worst memory since Guy Pearce in "Memento" because he's definitely been down this road before.

The coming attractions for the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast play like a shot-by-shot remake of the mother of all disaster features, the reconstruction of Iraq.

Let's start with the rhetoric. "We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes," the president pledged on Thursday. "We will do whatever it takes... we will stay there until the job is done," the president said of Iraq in November 2003. It wouldn't be a "Terminator" movie without "I'll be back," and it wouldn't be a massive mega-billion dollar Bush initiative without a vow to stay the course.
[...]  Read the rest at The Huffington Post,  http://tinyurl.com/8p92a  See also Karl Rove's Big Easy at  http://tinyurl.com/7gd7r
 
We're Making A Difference And The Police State Knows It  
Or...Getting Off The Picket Fence
By Ted Twietmeyer
9-16-5
rense.com
 
[...]
It wasn't a question of FEMA competency, but reaches far beyond that to using disasters for social engineering. The social engineering effort was notched up another level in the past, on that terrible day in 2001. Martial law was declared four days later when the nine month old dictator signed a "State of Emergency" executive order. He kept the martial law section secret to prevent crashing the economy. How many other presidents do we know of that have asked for, and received, every single thing they demanded without concessions? That's a clear sign of martial law and fear by Congress. The treasonous patriot acts and it's associated expansion are just one of many other signs of martial law. New Orleans is a martial law microcosm, nestled inside a bigger martial law country. The government is painfully forced to tolerate pro-American articles such as this one, since active censoring would let the proverbial cat out of the bag.
[...]  Read the rest at  http://rense.com/general67/picket.htm 
The Perfect Storm
New Orleans and the Death of the Common Good
By CHRIS FLOYD
[...]
The destruction of New Orleans represents a confluence of many of the most pernicious trends in American politics and culture: poverty, racism, militarism, elitist greed, environmental abuse, public corruption and the decay of democracy at every level.
Much of this is embodied in the odd phrasing that even the most circumspect mainstream media sources have been using to describe the hardest-hit victims of the storm and its devastating aftermath: "those who chose to stay behind." Instantly, the situation has been framed with language to flatter the prejudices of the comfortable and deny the reality of the most vulnerable.

It is obvious that the vast majority of those who failed to evacuate are poor: they had nowhere else to go, no way to get there, no means to sustain themselves and their families on strange ground. While there were certainly people who stayed behind by choice, most stayed behind because they had no choice. They were trapped by their poverty ­ and many have paid the price with their lives.

Yet across the media spectrum, the faint hint of disapproval drips from the affluent observers, the clear implication that the victims were just too lazy and shiftless to get out of harm's way. There is simply no understanding ­ not even an attempt at understanding ­ the destitution, the isolation, the immobility of the poor and the sick and the broken among us.
[...]  Read the rest at Counterpunch:   http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd09012005.html  or http://tinyurl.com/7uwsp  
Brave Republicans Raise Possibility of Supporting Repeal of Bush Tax Cuts
 David Sirota
Working for Change blog
9-16-05
 
Hours after President Bush today explicitly said he would not repeal the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax cuts for the wealthy that are slated to come in the next few years, the Associated Press reported that two Michigan Republican Congressman are raising the possibility that they will break ranks with the White House and support repealing the Bush tax cuts in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-MI) said, "We have to look at the wherewithal to get the job done, and you can't do it with smoke and mirrors. It may require some adjustment of the tax structure -- that's just being honest, and if that means suspending or rescinding some of the tax cuts that have already been made, so be it."

Similarly, Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) "suggested some Americans might be willing to make sacrifices." He said, "Tax increases are a dirty word, but the question is if the public would be willing to accept a small surcharge on their taxes to cover the cost of Katrina. The public might well respond to something that would ensure that we pay for it in our generation and don't just pass it on to our kids and grandkids."
 
[...]  Read the whole article on the Working for Change blog:  http://tinyurl.com/7dvdm 
Gov. Bush's son arrested
Friday, September 16, 2005; Posted: 8:08 p.m. EDT (00:08 GMT)
 
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- The youngest son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was arrested early Friday and charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest, law enforcement officials said.
John Ellis Bush, 21, was arrested by agents of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 2:30 a.m. on a corner of Austin's Sixth Street bar district, said commission spokesman Roger Wade.

The nephew of President Bush was released on $2,500 bond for the resisting arrest charge, and on a personal recognizance bond for the public intoxication charge, officials said.

[...]  Read the rest at CNN web site:  http://tinyurl.com/bk5r7 
The Carpetbagger Report
Posted 12:52 pm
September 16, 2005
 
The president's speech last night from Jackson Square had a beautiful backdrop, with the St. Louis Cathedral — well-lit to match Bush's shirt — on one side, and an Andrew Jackson statue on the other.
At first blush, the White House's attempts at stagecraft seemed to acknowledge the political realities.

Sensitive to fueling further criticism, the White House said it paid for the electricity and lights used for the speech, limiting the local inconvenience. But Bush emerged onto the square without an audience, speaking directly into the camera from a lectern placed so the [Andrew] Jackson statue would be in the picture.

I was just glad to see New Orleans had the power back on. As it turns out, according to NBC's Brian Williams, there's a funny story behind that…

Operation Enduring Boredom
Far from celebrating free expression, the Pentagon’s September 11 Freedom Walk was expression free
By Christopher Hayes
September 13, 2005
IN THESE TIMES
 
When the Pentagon announced it would be staging a march on September 11, 2005, to commemorate the victims of 9/11 and show support for the troops, it was hard not to expect the worst: Triumph of the Will on the Potomac.
But after three of the dullest hours of my life, I’m happy to report those fears proved unfounded. Maybe it was the fact that the nation’s attention remains focused on the disaster in the Gulf, or that the President’s approval ratings have themselves sunk below sea level, or maybe it was just that Sunday also happened to be the first day of the NFL season, but of the 15,000 people who’d registered online for the 1.7 mile walk from the Pentagon to the Mall, only about a third showed up. Stacks of t-shirts and plastic dog tags, which were distributed to every marcher, sat unused on the registration tables. At the post-march concert, organizers had set up a Jumbotron 50 yards from the stage to broadcast the image of country music star Clint Black (author of the pro-war hit song, “Iraq and Roll”) to the throngs who couldn’t get close enough to the action. But there were no throngs-just a few thousand folks in identical white t-shirts sitting on the grass and clapping politely.

[...]  Read the rest at   http://tinyurl.com/dyb2r 

Nancy Pelosi -- House Democratic Leader
House Call email
House Democrats Work to Meet Immediate Needs of Katrina Survivors
Sept. 16, 2005
 
Hurricane Katrina has left tens of thousands of Americans who less than three weeks ago had homes, jobs and communities, with their only remaining belongings in a brown paper bag today. Democrats recognize that many Katrina survivors may not be able to return to their homes and jobs for months. Many evacuees now reside in states and communities outside of the disaster area. Those affected by the hurricane will need help on an ongoing basis beyond what FEMA can provide. Now is the time to meet the needs of all of the Katrina survivors. 

[...]  See http://democraticleader.house.gov/  I didn't see the exact words as in the House Call email, but there is a lot of stuff about the hurricane and other problems in that web page.

 

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