Harry Shearer: conservative v liberal, LSU as cause of health care crisis in NO

The Huffington Post:

"Like the shuttered public housing units, the delay in reviving or replacing Charity is, at bottom, the playing out of an ideological struggle between old-style liberalism and the Bush administration's flavor of conservatism. Charity was born in the Huey Long era, when the point was to build a full-spectrum facility to care for the poor and educate the state's doctors. The feds instead want to pay poor people to buy insurance with which to patronize private doctors and hospitals. The economics are debatable, but what's clear is that the recovery of New Orleans is being sacrificed to this ideological struggle. A complicating factor is the desire of LSU, the university that ran Charity, for a showplace new medical center."

Bush claims dictatorial powers,

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq

This order permits the seizure of all property belonging to anyone suspected of "threat[ening] stabilization efforts in Iraq.
Anyone, including citizens of the US, can be deprived of property without benefit of any legal process or appeal. Only the word of the President is enough to put it into effect.

Together with the declaration today that the Executive Branch cannot be brought to court by the D.C. prosecutor, constitutes complete dictatorial power, now claimed by Bush.


One former Reagan official says "something is in the works."

He notes that the Dems are going to wait Bush out till the election:

However, Roberts emphasized, "the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling." Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. "Something's in the works," he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.

"Something is in the works." If not an attack on Iran, what else? Another 9/11?

UPDATE: It occurs to me that now Hillary Clinton might be subject to this order, since the Pentagon yesterday accused her of "reinforc[ing] enemy propaganda" for asking questions about our plans for withdrawal from Iraq.