"The war criminal is in the living room, and no official notice is taken of the fact," Roberts writes. "Lacking US troops with which to invade Iran, the Bush administration has decided to bomb Iran 'back into the stone age.'"
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Officer in Bush's motorcade dies in crash
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Eventually, the volunteers' altruism turns to bewilderment and finally to outrage. They've been hoodwinked. The stalled recovery can't be blamed on bureaucratic inertia or red tape alone. Many volunteers come to understand what I've concluded is the heartless reality: The Bush administration actually wants these neighborhoods below sea level to die on the vine.
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Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has been layin' low since he admitted last month that he'd been a client of "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey. But now the randy Republican has turned up someplace where he's a lot less likely to find hookers: Iraq. The News' James Gordon Meek reports that he was in the city of Taji this week "eating what looks like mystery meat in the chow hall of a U.S. camp for 1st Cavalry Division troopers." Meanwhile, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, the man who pressured Vitter to admit to paying for sex, tells us his investigative journo Dan Moldea has "nailed down evidence that Vitter had sex [with prostitutes] on more than one occasion." Vitter has denied Flynt's claims that some of his New Orleans constituents serviced him.
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American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.
Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.
"The United States has more neonatologists and neonatal intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, but its newborn rate is higher than any of those countries," said the annual State of the World's Mothers report.
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As the days pile up, along with the bodies and the refuse and the ineptitudes of the various governmental agencies, Rose's rambles coax the background to the foreground: all the race and class issues the storm throws into relief; the institutionalization of corruption; the profound neglect for the city's health care and educational systems and its infrastructure, including the levees; the willful ignorance of the mayor's office. His dire humor - "We dance even if there's no radio. We drink at funerals. We talk too much and laugh too loud and live too large, and, frankly, we're suspicious of others who don't" - gives way to anger: "[K]ids are pretty much the last consideration in just about every public policy decision around here." Then the anger gives way to the twilight of despair. He paints a sense of bleakness worthy of William Styron and turns to the psychopharmacopeia to find his own dry ground.
"So here we are, sinking into the water around us, drowning in our own waste, poverty, incompetence, and the greed of those who came before us ...," Sothern quotes writer-commentator Andrei Codrescu, who lives in New Orleans by way of Romania, as saying. "We already know who is going to pay for all this. The poor. They always do. The whole country's garbage flows down the Mississippi to them."
"[T]he dominant narrative focused on the lawlessness of the victims," he writes. "[B]laming people and mocking them for their own vulnerability is vastly more discouraging than naked and, sadly, expected racism."
Later, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, a federal recovery official named by Bush, and Nagin have a public tiff about when New Orleanians should be allowed back into town. Nagin tells Forman that Blanco and Allen "are in this together."
Elsewhere in the book, the mayor indulges conspiracy theories. He becomes convinced, for instance, that Jefferson Parish officials closed a drainage canal in Hoey's Basin "to protect Jefferson Parish at the expense of New Orleans."
Nagin sends pictures to Ed Bradley of "60 Minutes," who never responded, according to Forman.
A month after the storm, the Rev. Louis Farrakhan claimed Nagin told him the levees had been blown up, citing "a 25-foot crater" under the breach the mayor had supposedly seen.
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And what do we do if just the opposite happens — a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."
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That fundamentalist Catholic publication is doing everything they can to protect Jindal by removing copies of it from the web (almost nobody will pay for those articles). So Jindal can deny he wrote those things, while making it hard for people to verify for themselves.Update:
"Christ founded the Church and vested her with unique authority. The apostles, the very men who wrote much of the New Testament, were the Church's first bishops, and they appointed successors. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church traces its lineage directly to the apostles, and, thus, the Church claims to be the one Jesus founded.""Summary: Jesus was a Catholic, not a protestant."
President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.
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“Political freedom is not – and cannot be – based upon the relativistic idea that all conceptions of the human person’s good have the same value and truth,” the Doctrinal Note warned.
The Doctrinal Note rejected moral relativism and related the essential basis of democracy in the clearest terms: “If Christians must ‘recognize the legitimacy of differing points of view about the organization of worldly affairs,’ they are also called to reject, as injurious to democratic life, a conception of pluralism that reflects moral relativism. Democracy must be based on the true and solid foundation of non-negotiable ethical principles, which are the underpinning of life in society.”
Rudy's "private life" disqualifies him as a nominee of the pro-life, pro-family values party (and perhaps Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana finally will realize it).
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The Louisiana Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides free or low-cost health care for more than 6 million children, will expire Sept. 30 unless Congress acts.
But its future is clouded by disagreements between the House of Representatives and Senate about how best to reauthorize the program. And the White House has objected to the cost of the bills.
The program, known as LaCHIP, covers about 110,000 children in Louisiana.
Every Republican member of the Louisiana House delegation voted against reauthorizing the program. Only Reps. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, voted for it.
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". . . a lonely fort in a journalistic boneyard of lost ideals where David Broder and Tom Friedman walk by night, looking for golf balls gone astray."
Sixty-six percent of voters either strongly or somewhat approved of Vitter's job performance in a survey conducted Aug. 3-9 by Southern Media & Opinion Research Inc., a Baton Rouge firm. Twenty-two percent said they disapproved and 11 percent did not have an opinion.
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Faith may be personal, but it is intellectually dishonest for anyone to suggest that the voters of Louisiana do not have the right to read and question a published essay written by Mr. Jindal, a candidate for governor. The Jindal campaign’s hard-line approach against those who question this essay is also troubling. They have attempted to suggest that Mr. Jindal’s published essay about an exorcism is inherently off-limits because it concerns his “personal faith.” Yet, on the campaign trail, Mr. Jindal frequently speaks about his personal faith, and he would certainly admit that his faith guides his legislative decisions. One must assume, therefore, that Mr. Jindal believes his faith can only be discussed when it is politically expedient. Otherwise, questions about his faith are off-limits, even if they concern his own published work.
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In one of the hardest hitting – Republicans will undoubtedly say “dirtiest” – television ads aired in history, the Louisiana Democratic Party is accusing Rep. Bobby Jindal of being anti-Protestant.
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NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- Federal bureaucracy is a significant reason for New Orleans lagging behind many similar-sized cities in building new houses, it was reported.
Since Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29, 2005, New Orleans has bulldozed an estimated 9,000 homes and approved construction for fewer than 1,400 new houses, USA Today reported Monday.
In the last two months, New Orleans approved permits for 269 new homes, trailing similar-sized cities such as Wichita, Kan., Sacramento and Lincoln, Neb., USA Today reported.
“We continue to take steps forward in the midst of incredible (federal) bureaucracy," said Ceeon Quiett, a spokeswoman for Mayor Ray Nagin, who has said the city is committed to rebuilding every home Katrina destroyed.
The state’s Road Home program, funded mostly by the federal government, is set to run out of rebuilding money by mid-December unless Congress approves a $3 billion bailout. At last count, 183,000 New Orleans area residents had applied for rebuilding aid.
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The ACLU report is sharply critical of the Orleans Parish sheriff's office, accusing it of failing to seek expert guidance in developing a proper emergency preparedness plan for the jail, which wasn't evacuated until it flooded in the aftermath of Katrina in 2005.
The jail, the ACLU asserts, "appears doomed to repeat the mistakes made during Katrina. In the meantime, thousands of prisoners remain in the jail, where they are housed in unsanitary, unsafe and inhumane conditions."
The ACLU calls on the U.S. Department of Justice's National Institute of Corrections to investigate the jail system's "inadequate medical and mental health care." It also recommends that the department's civil rights division look into the jail's "unsanitary conditions" and violence caused by poor staffing.
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The homeless advocacy group UNITY of New Orleans says from January 2005 to January 2007 the number grew from about 6,300 to around 12,000. During this period only 60% of the general population returned.
Shelters say they are turning away hundreds each night, their beds reduced citywide from 832 to 232.
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Original plans called for the pump to move 7,600 cfs, or cubic feet per second, of water. However, officials said the 43 pumps can move close to 9,000 cfs.
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More Gulf Coast residents are thinking seriously about suicide or showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder as the recovery from Hurricane Katrina inches on, a new survey finds.
The survey is a follow-up to one done six months after the hurricane, which found that few people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama — about 3 percent — were thinking about suicide.
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That figure has now doubled in the three-state area and is up to 8 percent in the New Orleans area, according to Ronald Kessler of Harvard Medical School, lead researcher for the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group.
It may be six months before results are in publishable form, said Kessler, whose team interviewed 1,000 people last year and was able to track down 800 of them for this year’s interviews.
But he said some preliminary results are striking. One is that about 21 percent of the 800 people interviewed showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, up from 16 percent a year earlier.
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The new twin spans — when completed in 2009 and 2011 — will be higher, wider, stronger and more expensive, but the Federal Highway Administration is picking up the entire $803 million price tag. That bill includes more than $30 million in storm repairs to the current spans, which will be demolished when they are no longer needed.
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"This is a war, let’s be clear,” Jindal said.
It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born. There is, however, no heir so spendthrift or indifferent that he does not sometimes scan the account books of his father in order to see if he is enjoying all the privileges of his legacy or whether, perchance, his rights and those of his predecessor have not been encroached upon. Nevertheless it is clear enough that the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection.
. . . whenever a ruler makes himself a dictator, all the wicked dregs of the nation---I do not mean the pack of petty thieves and earless ruffians19 who, in a republic, are unimportant in evil or good---but all those who are corrupted by burning ambition or extraordinary avarice, these gather around him and support him in order to have a share in the booty and to constitute themselves petty chiefs under the big tyrant.
But the favorites of a tyrant can never feel entirely secure, and the less so because he has learned from them that he is all powerful and unlimited by any law or obligation. Thus it becomes his wont to consider his own will as reason enough, and to be master of all with never a compeer. Therefore it seems a pity that with so many examples at hand, with the danger always present, no one is anxious to act the wise man at the expense of the others, and that among so many persons fawning upon their ruler there is not a single one who has the wisdom and the boldness to say to him what, according to the fable, the fox said to the lion who feigned illness: "I should be glad to enter your lair to pay my respects; but I see many tracks of beasts that have gone toward you, yet not a single trace of any who have come back."
Good God, what suffering, what martyrdom all this involves! To be occupied night and day in planning to please one person, and yet to fear him more than anyone else in the world; to be always on the watch, ears open, wondering whence the blow will come; to search out conspiracy, to be on guard against snares, to scan the faces of companions for signs of treachery, to smile at everybody and be mortally afraid of all, to be sure of nobody, either as an open enemy or as a reliable friend; showing always a gay countenance despite an apprehensive heart, unable to be joyous yet not daring to be sad!
. . . you bring up your children in order that he may confer upon them the greatest privilege he knows---to be led into his battles, to be delivered to butchery, to be made the servants of his greed and the instruments of his vengeance. . .
From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces?
Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good!
The LSU survey of more than 300 displaced Louisiana residents living in 10 FEMA trailer parks, including three in Baton Rouge and four in Lafayette, found that nearly three-quarters of the residents were employed before the storms but only a third have jobs today. The survey also revealed a “significant level of depressive symptoms’’ among the trailer park residents,
LSU sociologist Joachim Singelmann said.
“That is something you don’t find in the general population,’’ he said.
The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (fema) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe.
"WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI violated the Constitution when agents raided U.S. Rep. William Jefferson's office last year and viewed legislative documents, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
The court ordered the Justice Department to return any privileged documents it seized from the Louisiana Democrat's office on Capitol Hill. The court did not order the return of all the documents seized in the raid.
Jefferson argued that the raid trampled on congressional independence. The Justice Department said that declaring the search unconstitutional would essentially prohibit the FBI from ever looking at a lawmaker's documents.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, nonetheless, sided with Jefferson on the constitutional issue.
'The review of the U.S. Rep.'s paper files when the search was executed exposed legislative material to the Executive,' and violated the Constitution, the court wrote. 'The U.S. Rep. is entitled to the return of documents that the court determines to be privileged.'"
"Overall, about 7.4 percent of Katrina contracts so far have gone to small businesses in Louisiana, down from 12.5 percent in April, according to the committee.
'At this point, I would expect less lip service and more action,' Velazquez said. 'The testimony does not focus on specific and measurable ways to include these local small businesses in the rebuilding effort.'"
Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and
the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to
those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall
find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most desp otic and military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.
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