Category: Issues of the Day

Michael Bérubé has some strong, yet heartfelt words about abortion and politics. Well worth your time.

Click image to visit Jesus’ General (and see larger version of image).

Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.

Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.

Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.

His worried wife yelled at him: “Stop, George.”

— National Enquirer

Well, with the news that Julie Meyers, the Bush administration’s nominee for head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (a part of the Department of Homeland Security), is also the niece of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the wife of the DHS’s chief of staff, we finally understand the White House’s promise that their contribution to architecture of federal government would be a bureaucracy-free model of efficiency. They got rid of a lot of paperwork by dispensing with resumes.

— Wonkette

During the Federal fiscal year which ends in ten days, we taxpayers will have paid about $350 billion dollars in interest. That is, nearly twice as much as the estimated cost to repair the damage from Katrina.

About 75% of the principal (that is, the national debt on which we paid the $350 billion) resulted during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. The other 25% came about during the other 212 years of our Republic.

Burden the country with debt; fill agencies with hacks. A perfect way to convince voters that government is the problem.

Government is an institution, not a moral issue. It can be made to do whatever we have the will to make it do.

Or not.

Nobel laureate James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA, on “Why Darwin’s still a scientific hotshot.” Watson concludes:

Today, there is a concerted effort by some religion-dominated scientists to treat evolution as a theory, as though that in some way diminishes its authority and power as an explanation of how the world works. Fortunately, the courts are exercising their wisdom and rejecting arguments of equal time for creationist beliefs in schools. We can only hope that a time will soon come when rational, skeptical thought renders the creationists’ stories as what they are — myths.

One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural, and it was a lesson that my father passed on to me, that knowledge liberates mankind from superstition. We can live our lives without the constant fear that we have offended this or that deity who must be placated by incantation or sacrifice, or that we are at the mercy of devils or the Fates. With increasing knowledge, the intellectual darkness that surrounds us is illuminated and we learn more of the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

Let us not beat about the bush — the common assumption that evolution through natural selection is a “theory” in the same way as string theory is a theory is wrong. Evolution is a law (with several components) that is as well substantiated as any other natural law, whether the law of gravity, the laws of motion or Avogadro’s law. Evolution is a fact, disputed only by those who choose to ignore the evidence, put their common sense on hold and believe instead that unchanging knowledge and wisdom can be reached only by revelation.

“The Red Cross has been my biggest disappointment,” said Tim Kellar, the administrator of Hancock County, Miss. “I held it in such high esteem until we were in the time of need. It was nonexistent.”

Even some volunteers are disgusted. “I will never, ever wear the Red Cross vest again,” said Betty Brunner, who started volunteering in 1969 when Hurricane Camille destroyed her house but quit last week over the organization’s response in Hancock County.

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck, the Red Cross had only one shelter in the county, and it was far from some of the most populated coastal towns. It had no shelter in New Orleans.

The New York Times

Key quote:

But time and again in past disasters, the Red Cross has raised more money than it has needed for relief. It has also been less than clear in the past about where its money goes, and it has rarely shared its money with other organizations that tackle long-term needs of victims.

Posted without comment.

From an article in the Los Angeles Times:

As debates over Social Security and Medicare heat up, Americans might feel like doing what the old urban myth says the Inuit do: Ship the old folks out on the ice floes. It’s cheap, simple and good for the polar bears.

It is also, arguably, a bit coldhearted. So here’s a warm and loving alternative that the U.S. government should endorse: Send the old people to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

By one estimate, almost 20% of gross domestic product will go to seniors by 2030. Baby boomers are the first generation of grasshoppers in U.S. history. Their parents and grandparents, scarred by the Depression, scrimped and saved. The boomers put it on plastic. With private household savings rates near all-time lows, bills are coming due and the facts are increasingly clear: Some boomers not only won’t be able to afford the retirement they dream of, many won’t even be able to afford the retirement they fear.

Key quote: “For the price of a condo in Phoenix, you can often have a villa in Mexico.”

Two excerpts from Paul Krugman’s column in today’s New York Times:

… By all accounts Ronald Reagan, who declared in his Inaugural Address that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” wasn’t personally racist. But he repeatedly used a bogus tale about a Cadillac-driving Chicago “welfare queen” to bash big government. And he launched his 1980 campaign with a pro-states’-rights speech in Philadelphia, Miss., a small town whose only claim to fame was the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers.

Under George W. Bush – who, like Mr. Reagan, isn’t personally racist but relies on the support of racists – the anti-government right has reached a new pinnacle of power. And the incompetent response to Katrina was the direct result of his political philosophy. When an administration doesn’t believe in an agency’s mission, the agency quickly loses its ability to perform that mission.
…

Consider this: in the United States, unlike any other advanced country, many people fail to receive basic health care because they can’t afford it. Lack of health insurance kills many more Americans each year than Katrina and 9/11 combined.

The federal government can cut unnecessary spending to rebuild the storm-devastated Gulf Coast, President Bush said today, adding that he would oppose any tax increase.

— Los Angeles Times

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an “ongoing victory,” and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

— The Washington Times

U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14.

Reuters via Yahoo! News.

Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go. And Bush really needs to go!

NewMexiKen wouldn’t want you to miss this news story:

American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could “seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark,” according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.

— The New York Times

My question is this: Why was it seemingly so important to the White House to keep this part of the report secret? “Too sensitive for public release,” as the White House claimed? Or too sensitive for poltical purposes, as seems more likely?

Read the commission report here.

Bill Maher:

And finally, New Rule: America must recall the president. That’s what this country needs. A good, old-fashioned, California-style recall election! Complete with Gary Coleman, porno actresses and action film stars. And just like Schwarzenegger’s predecessor here in California, George Bush is now so unpopular, he must defend his job against…Russell Crowe. Because at this point, I want a leader who will throw a phone at somebody. In fact, let’s have only phone throwers. Naomi Campbell can be the vice-president!

Now, I kid, but seriously, Mr. President, this job can’t be fun for you anymore. There’s no more money to spend. You used up all of that. You can’t start another war because you also used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people.

Yeah, listen to your mom. The cupboard’s bare, the credit card’s maxed out, and no one is speaking to you: mission accomplished! Now it’s time to do what you’ve always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service. And the oil company. And the baseball team. It’s time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or spaceman?!

Now, I know what you’re saying. You’re saying that there’s so many other things that you, as president, could involve yourself in…Please don’t. I know, I know, there’s a lot left to do. There’s a war with Venezuela, and eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote. But, sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You’ve performed so poorly I’m surprised you haven’t given yourself a medal. You’re a catastrophe that walks like a man.

Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we’ve lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans…Maybe you’re just not lucky!

I’m not saying you don’t love this country. I’m just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you, and what he’s saying is, “Take a hint.”