First, a disclaimer. I write this not as a partisan Democrat with a lefty agenda, though I certainly can be accused of that at other times. I write this as an American, a citizen of the United States, as an observation of the first presidency of my adult life.
There are three days that define the Bush presidency. The first one is the one that the administration itself has provided as its defining moment: September 11, 2001. Let's put aside the obvious: the August 6th PDB that declared that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike in the US, the subsequent and inexcusable failure to defend this country, or to capture or kill bin Laden in the aftermath, the fact that these attacks were used to justify two wars, the erosion of civil liberties, the Patriot Act, torture which has been confirmed as torture by figures within this very administration in the past week, and a constant culture of fear and paranoia and faux patriotism stoked by the periodical hair-on-fire terror alert. Take all that and put it aside for the moment. The thing that actually defines the Bush presidency is the fact that he sat on his rear end and read "My Pet Goat" as the World Trade Center burned, as the nation's chief military facility was struck, as a plane went down in a Pennsylvania field. But surely, after he actually bothered to leave the classroom, he got around to dealing with the nation's problems, right? Well, no. He apparently thought it was more important to play Air Force One hopscotch, to jump from state to state in a plan to I'll let you know when I've figured it out. It took him nine days to develop a coherent response plan, and a severely flawed one at that.
The next day is August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts. Think Progress summarizes the timeline better than I ever could, but let's run through the details. The administration was notified of the breached levees early that morning. That very same morning, the President - the leader, the commander-guy - visited Senator John McCain on the far more important occasion of his birthday, including a photo-op in which a seemingly carefree President Bush held a cake as water flowed through New Orleans's ninth ward. Later that day, Bush took to the campaign trail to discuss another thing apparently more important than drowning people: his disastrous prescription drug plan. You know, the one that obliterated the government's ability to negotiate the prices of prescription drugs, allowing pharmaceutical companies to quite literally name their own price when it deals with Medicare. The next day, he talked about Iraq at a naval base, and plays guitar with a country music star, and news emerges of the U.S.S. Bataan, capable of making up to 100,000 gallons of fresh drinkable water, sits virtually unused in the Gulf of Mexico. It took another day, August 31, 2005 - two days after the storm hits, five days after an official state of emergency was declared by then-Governor of Louisiana Kathleen Blanco - before the President does the ultimate in delaying, buck-passing tactics that still look like action: organize a task force to coordinate a federal response. Again, delayed, severely flawed, and unacceptable.
As a sidenote, here's what the HHS website has to say about the tragedy:
On August 28th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the southern coast of the United States with devastating effect. It was reported that more then 1,800 people lost there lives, and more then $81 billion dollars in damages occurred.
Nice symbolism, idiots. Why should we expect a competent federal response, when the official government website doesn't care enough to properly proofread the page dedicated to the disaster?
The third was Sepember 15, 2008, when Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America and Lehman Brothers collapsed, a victim of its own greed, and actively enabled by this administration's policy of corporate deregulation. This, along with already-spreading epidemic of collapsing subprime mortgages, triggered a financial collapse, which froze the credit markets and aggravated the already-existing recession. Consider that the Federal Reserve first started cutting interest rates as a result of the credit crisis in September of 2007, and that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over nine days previous. Any competent leader would have realized that a financial emergency was in the offing, and would have taken more significant steps to help solve the crisis. Unfortunately, George W. Bush is not a competent leader. Four days after the collapse, as the stock markets hemorrhaged, as the economy burned, the best they could come up with was a half-brained plot to give money to the banks, with Herr Paulson as Handout-Guy-In-Chief, with the vague hope that maybe the money might somehow find their way into the credit markets. Instead, the banks used that money to buy other banks, furthering the consolidation and anticompetitive behavior that triggered the crisis in the first place. In case you haven't noticed the trend: Delayed, flawed, and unacceptable.
The thread that combines the three is a systematic culture of failure under fire. For all his bluster as the Commander Guy, and the Commander-in-Chief, and The Decider, when crisis struck and required an answer, it was left to the people that fundamentally believe that government doesn't work to make government work. The response, time and time again, was delayed, flawed, and unacceptable, and no amount of legacy polishing is going to change what really happened.
Very diplomatic, like a hole in the head is very painless. Here are the first four questions:
Nate Silver : Were only Obama supporters interviewed for the survey, or was everyone interviewed? John Ziegler : The reason why I interviewed Obama supporters only is because I’m doing a documentary on the media coverage of the campaign and how the media coverage of the campaign impacted what Obama supporters knew or thought they knew about the campaign. I had planned from day one because I knew that no one would take seriously any random sampling of interviewees that I was going to commission a scientific poll of these questions. I also knew that it would be a lot cheaper for me to do a nationwide survey of Obama voters than the nation as a whole because basically I’d only have to do half the number of people to get a representative sample. When I went on FOX last night, I made a deal that if anyone on the left -- you're more than willing to take me up on this -- wants to ask the exact same deal of the McCain supporters and you get examples that are equal to or worse than the Obama supporters, then I’ll pay for your expense. The point here was not to show that Obama supporters were idiots -- there are plenty of idiots on both sides of the aisle -- but what information they got from the media that they were able to consume.
NS: Do you stand by all the statements in the survey as being unambiguously true? JZ: I stand one hundred percent by the notion that there is absolutely zero ambiguity as to what the right answer is to any of the questions. With the one exception of the Palin-Russia-Alaska question which we asked the way we did for a very specific purpose which was to try and gauge the Tina Fey Effect which I think we did in a very effective manner which was what was actually said by Tina Fey, everyone attributed to Sarah Plain. But for purposes of scoring Obama supporters’ answers we counted Palin as a correct response.
NS: What was the right answer to that question? JZ: The technically accurate question is that none of the four people said that, but we counted it as correct if they said Sarah Palin.
NS: Why would you commission a survey question with no correct response? JZ: The purpose of the question, you pinhead, was we wanted to determine the Tina Fey Effect.
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Wow. That's the tame part - Ziegler actually pulls a Cheney at the end of the interview.
Finally, something the Bush presidency has been "good" for.
With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.
Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”
Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”
Mr Saakashvili, who was in Paris to meet Mr Sarkozy yesterday, laughed nervously when a French radio station read him the exchange. “I knew about this scene, but not all the details. It’s funny, all the same,” he said.
If you're not one of the 5% of Americans making more than $250,000 a year, your taxes will go down.
For the small business owners, you'll be able to help your employees get health insurance. Not just that, but lowered taxes for the middle class means that people will have more money to spend at your business. Oh, and you won't have to worry about capital gains taxes, either.
For the evangelical, religious right: relax. Nobody is doing anything to your church. Obama is a Christian, just like you.
For the fiscal conservatives: some significant fraction of you probably voted for him anyway. Government will be smaller, and more effective.
For the national security crowd: Obama will not ignore obvious, repeated threats, like Bush did.
For the energy independence crowd: The Green economy is coming, and with it comes more independence, faster, than drilling ever would. And it'll help take care of that global warming thing, to boot.
And, sure, we'll need your help, too. This is our country, and that means all of us. "Red" states, "blue" states - no more. But you'll be fine.
It's a good thing The Onion posted this - because at the rate he's going, he was about a week away from proposing this himself. Then, we'd have every dumbass Republican from here to Alaska talking about what a great plan this is, and what a great leader McSame is for proposing it.
Found this by way of the campaign's Google News shared feed - a sober, level-headed analysis of Obama's health plan vs. McSame's dangerous and foolish "tax health benefits" plan. Obama's wins, and it isn't even anywhere near close.
Given the current inefficiencies in our system, the impact of the Obama plan will be profound. Besides the $2,500 savings in medical costs for the typical family, according to our research annual business-sector costs will fall by about $140 billion. Our figures suggest that decreasing employer costs by this amount will result in the expansion of employer-provided health insurance to 10 million previously uninsured people.
We know these savings are attainable: other countries have them today. We spend 40% more than other countries such as Canada and Switzeraland on health care -- nearly $1 trillion -- but our health outcomes are no better.
The lower cost of benefits will allow employers to hire some 90,000 low-wage workers currently without jobs because they are currently priced out of the market. It also would pull one and a half million more workers out of low-wage low-benefit and into high-wage high-benefit jobs. Workers currently locked into jobs because they fear losing their health benefits would be able to move to entrepreneurial jobs, or simply work part time.
In contrast, Sen. McCain, who constantly repeats his no-new-taxes promise on the campaign trail, proposes a big tax hike as the solution to our health-care crisis. His plan would raise taxes on workers who receive health benefits, with the idea of encouraging their employers to drop coverage. A study conducted by University of Michigan economist Tom Buchmueller and colleagues published in the journal Health Affairs suggests that the McCain tax hike will lead employers to drop coverage for over 20 million Americans.
This is a remarkable summary of the arguments against Palin, making the case that she's the most inexperienced candidate in recent memory.
THE most audacious move of the race so far is also, potentially, the most self-destructive. John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate has set the political atmosphere alight with both enthusiasm and dismay.
(snip)
The political calculations behind Mr McCain’s choice hardly look robust. Mrs Palin is not quite the pork-busting reformer that her supporters claim. She may have become famous as the governor who finally killed the infamous “bridge to nowhere”—the $220m bridge to the sparsely inhabited island of Gravina, Alaska. But she was in favour of the bridge before she was against it (and told local residents that they weren’t “nowhere to her”). As mayor of Wasilla, a metropolis of 9,000 people, she initiated annual trips to Washington, DC, to ask for more earmarks from the state’s congressional delegation, and employed Washington lobbyists to press for more funds for her town.
(snip)
The moose in the room, of course, is her lack of experience. When Geraldine Ferraro was picked as Walter Mondale’s running-mate, she had served in the House for three terms. Even the hapless Dan Quayle, George Bush senior’s sidekick, had served in the House and Senate for 12 years. Mrs Palin, who has been the governor of a state with a population of 670,000 for less than two years, is the most inexperienced candidate for a mainstream party in modern history.
Inexperienced and Bush-level incurious. She has no record of interest in foreign policy, let alone expertise. She once told an Alaskan magazine: “I’ve been so focused on state government; I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.” She obtained an American passport only last summer to visit Alaskan troops in Germany and Kuwait. This not only blunts Mr McCain’s most powerful criticism of Mr Obama. It also raises serious questions about the way he makes decisions.
Just to make sure we're on the same page: A clueless governor, with no foreign policy experience, a far right-wing, fundamentalist Christian social agenda, and a creepy old man dictating her every move.
Look, we're all pissed off about the FISA thing. There's a good reason to be: it's utterly un-American, in the sense that it violates our basic human rights as detailed in the Declaration of Independence. You know, "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", especially that "Liberty" part.
But dammit, the only way we're going to see any change in these political wimps, these 14 so-called Democrats that buckled under the "pressure" and signed off on the law, is if we flood their offices with calls, emails, letters, everything we can think of telling them - not just doing it, but telling them in no uncertain terms that we're going to do it - that if they keep falling in line with this administration, we'll see to it that they're removed from office. Then, if they keep doing it, find a primary opponent you can support, and (here's the important part) do it!
It's an easy thing right now to talk about how some Democrats need to be "thrown out of the party", but the fact that these Senators still, technically, are Democrats has at least given us the ability to force *'s hand on at least the minimum wage, and gives us the majority. What we need to remember is that these people work for us. They were elected by the people, and their job is to to do the people's business. If they don't, they get thrown out on their asses, just like you and I would if we don't do our jobs.
My Democratic Senator, Nelson, voted for this. I would presume Martinez did too. I plan to let them both know exactly what I think. You should do the same.
Gunmen stopped the car in which the athletes were riding and asked them to step out before shooting them Wednesday, Manham Kubba, secretary general of the Iraqi Tennis Union, said Saturday. The coach, Hussein Ahmed Rashid, was Sunni, and the two players were Shiite, Kubba said.
Six months ago, if you had asked a journalist whether a murder victim was Sunni or Shiite, you'd get the same blank-faced expression that you'd expect to get from your dog had you asked it the same question. It seems of late, to me at least, that the racial(? ethnic? religious? Not quite sure what to call it) aspect of this is being paid more attention to, perhaps as an understanding of the plausibility of a civil war in Iraq.
The purpose of this thread is not to discuss the vile actions of the murderers, or to decry the horrors of religious extremism - it's to ask the following question: is the media becoming more conscious of the Sunni/Shiite/Kurd divisions in Iraq, or is the mention in this article a one-off incidence?
While I was checking up on my sports news this evening, I was blindsided by a great New Orleans rant from Sports Illustrated's Peter King.
I sense that we in this country have Katrina fatigue. The New York Times reported as much recently, saying that people in some of the areas that welcomed Katrina evacuees last September are sick of hearing about the hurricane, the flooding and the aftermath.
Well, my wife and I were in a car last Wednesday that toured the hardest-hit area of New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward. We worked a day at a nearby Habitat for Humanity site on Thursday, and we toured the Biloxi/Gulfport/Long Beach/Pass Christian gulf shore area last Friday. And let me just say this: I can absolutely guarantee you that if you'd been in the car with us, no matter how much you'd been hit over the head with the effects of this disaster, you would not have Katrina fatigue.
What I saw was a national disgrace. An inexcusable, irresponsible, borderline criminal national disgrace. I am ashamed of this country for the inaction I saw everywhere.
I mentioned my outrage to the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, on Thursday. He shook his head and said, "Tell me about it.'' Disgust dripped from his voice.
On my way home today, I'm stuck in traffic, looking out the passenger-side window - I see a Wal-Mart, one of those big-ass suburban Wal-Mart Borg Cubes that's part grocery store, part clothes store, part tire shop... you get the idea. In the parking lot of this Wal-Mart is a McDonalds.
Disgusted, I look out my driver's-side window. On that side, there's a Publix strip mall. You know, Publix, dentist, lawyer, shoe store, and so on. In the parking lot of this strip mall... yeah, another fucking McDonalds.
Now, I'm sitting still in traffic, trying to figure out why anybody would need a McDonalds across from a McDonalds, and I'm reminded of the Lewis Black bit where he finds a Starbucks across from a Starbucks and proclaims that place the end of the universe. I had to laugh.
