incabable of dealing with realities

politics

this Government always had trouble dealing with realities.
Now that the grim realities are not on the other side of the globe
it is starting to hurt.


New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.

from here

Trent Lott says here: “It is hard to put a positive spin on this”.
Poor guy. He certainly has problems.

last october

history politics

National Geographics writes about New Orleans eleven months ago.

The only thing they did not predict is the apparent incompetence of this administration. I am glad Condy has a good time.

a presidency between two disasters

politics

We remember: In a tight selection Mr B. became President.
His first months were so/so. At best. No big approval, compassionate conservatism was not really anywhere in sight.

Then came that day in September. A national disaster. Caused by some fucked up/crazy Saudis. But there were human culprits:
Bush vowed to “smoke them out”, and everybody started loving him.
Flags where everywhere. And the country was behind his leader.

So much, that during the ’04 election all he needed to get back in the oval office is to repeat his mantra of “September the eleventh”. OK, running against Hermann Munster made things easier as well.

Wiith the “War on Terror” you could get basically everything done.

OK, getting your bodies hands on Social Security funds didn’t work. But almost everything else you can justify with that.

With Katrina disaster did strike again. This time there are no arabic culprits. Some people claim that this storm is part of the
global warming thing. Unproofable. Let’s forget about that.

But what is there is the fact that much of the National Guard is in Iraq, and not in the US.
Levee’s broke. And money that should have used on them was not there. Again going to that conflict in Iraq.

And, the solution is more complex: You could declare a “War on Nature” now. But I think nature will be unimpressed.

This is how Mr B. and reality lined up yesterday.

where your burger comes from

politics

120,000 cows on one image

via BlogsNow via sprol

follow the money

politics

might be tricky in this case

burn that oil, burn it!

economy politics technology


The boom was driven by record truck sales, which increased 69 percent. Chevrolet's Silverado full-size pickup led the industry as its sales more than doubled, GM said.

"We see this as an indication that America's desire for trucks and SUVs is still a strong force in the marketplace," GM vice president of marketing Mark LaNeve said.

from

sure, that’s we need right now: More SUVs and big trucks.

Great consumers, not the smartest workers though.

since Gore invented it,

history internet politics

Bush likes to keep it

OK, it’s a myth that Mr G. claimed that. But a nice myth.
Next stop for Al: reinventing TV, by prooving that viewers are not needed.
Next stop for George: Breaking the net, by brute forcing the control of the DNS root servers and then messing it all up. Finally we will have those internets that he has been talking about. Some
that work and others that don’t.

but Alice Cooper says

politics

Alice Cooper knows better.

Is the mindset of Mr. Cooper a majority in the USA?

interactive map

history politics

of iraq

simple and true

politics

this NY Times editorial
is short and very much on the point.

If you believe in this administration and its war you kind of are a person believing that the earth is flat. Let’s stay in the picture for a second:

Before the Iraq war you could have argued that Christopher just returned, but maybe it was not India he came from.

But now you are sitting in a 747 circling the globe. Sure somehow you could still argue that the world is flat. But it gets harder.