it wasnt of much interest to me. it was because it was set up differently with four people and maher all yelling at each other.

the format is slightly different now, and it still could be improved (i’d like to see more right-wingers, but apparently they’d rather get stroked on fox news than get torn apart by maher – in fact the best scenario i could imagine would be two repubs and only one dem which would make it an even two-on-two counting the host).

but the opening monologue is usually short and sweet, the guests are usually pretty decent (this week he had, among others, george carlin and kurt vonnegut – who both looked and sounded tired – aka old – but they had some good insights)

and maher is a master of the knockout punch, which is generally in his closing minutes during the new rules/summary.

last night this was his summary, which you can download here.

[Maher, Speaking to President Bush]
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 for you 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 baeball 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 are so many other things that you as the president could involve yourself in. PLEASE DON’T.

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 perform so poorly I am 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 is saying is “Take a hint”.

transcription via Red Goatee + dont blink: instapundit (slightly)critical of a Bush decision – yay! + but no love for the Daily Show – wtf?!

cause they know they will lose.

they know that its not game, it’s a way of acknowledging responsibility and accountability.

this is an administration who dragged their feet to rescue americans in america because, some say, they didn’t want to overstep their bounds

they didn’t want to appear tyrannical

they didn’t want to show up where they weren’t invited.

or was it because they didn’t want to cut their vacation short?

because when they’re not on vacation this is an administration who has no problem sticking their noses

into women’s wombs

into gay couple’s wedding plans

into sick people’s medicine cabinets

into working people’s social security plans

into the television and radio airwaves of programs listened to by adults

even into the library records of the books that americans check out.

and yet they refused to allow helicopters and boats and food and water or even sanitation workers into new orleans because they didn’t want to deal with the red tape.

they swear that they wanted to allow the state to handle its own business, but here in california we voted to let the terminally sick smoke marijuana

and somehow what the state wanted for itself didn’t matter to this administration and they fought against us, and got that vote overturned.

this administration fought to stop the votes from being counted in florida in 2000

this administration fought to stop the 9/11 commission from being bi-partisan

this administration even fought to keep a feeding tube in a brain-dead woman’s mouth

but they didn’t fight to get supplies and professionals into new orleans.

infact they cockblocked the help.

pick your battles, they tell you, and for some reason this administration chose not to use their might and influence to get aid to those people in the south and their reasoning is as dark and murky as those toxic waters.

and their excuses are as flimsy as the roof of the superdome.

the good book warns that the bad people might not get punished on earth, but their judgment day will come.

and that wont be a blame game either.

it will be a day of acknowledging responsibility and accountability.

and the most ironic thing about these people who run around who call themselves Christians, is the good book is chock full of incompetent “leaders” who ascend to the throne through nefarious means

and the misery that these fools imposed through their bungling and evil.

when the old man said repent he meant you old man

and even the mule raised up his ears.

happy belated bday amylangfield.com + gaping void + tomdog has arrived + brett lamb

scott: And we’d have a super-raging, red-hot volcanic debate over posse comitatus. Ten times worse than this petty BS finger-pointing right now. THAT would be an impeachable offense, even if BushCo manned a human chain and held the levees and saved every lost life in NOLA. Congress would be FORCED to impeach him.

+ + +

let me tell you a few things about being a leader.

a leader saves peoples lives and worries about his job later.

a leader cuts his vacation short when he sees that people of his nation are drowning and help is not in the way.

a leader is that help on the way.

the busblog definition of a leader is someone who brings the group to where they need to be.

george bush has never cared about being impeached, and the democrats dont have enough chutzpah to even try to impeach him.

he and his bros stole the election in 2000 and the dems didnt go after him. he and his bros lied about not knowing that terrorists would fly planes into buildings and the dems didnt go after him. he and his bros lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in iraq and iraqs threat to america and the dems didnt go after him.

bush and his bros challenged the ideas of torture in relation to the geneva conventions and the bro who questioned it the most might be our next supreme court justice. and yes, death and torture did happen in the prisons of iraq and gitmo and the president isnt in danger of being impeached.

so this limp defense of the president’s inactions in new orleans last week that omg if he brought help or overstepped his bounds by saving lives might get him impeached is laughable to the point of being sad.

where BushCo is ruthless and selfish and hopeless and inept, the dems are pussy and silent and weak and timid and worthless.

and the losers of this slamdance of fucktards are americans and iraqis.

a real leader, a real president of the united states, whose number one concern was not his ass or his politics but his people would have flown to new orleans the day that he saw people floating in the water and brought the calvary.

period.

everyone knows that where the president goes, the heat comes with.

new orleans needed that heat.

yes sometimes shit stops when the president is around but thats because the president is a idiot and a pussy and inept. and those who vote for him repeatedly and support him are part of the problem, if not THE problem, but this isnt about them. today is about him.

a leader doesnt eat cake while people are screaming for help. a leader doesnt play guitar as people are drowning.

especially after 9/11. especially after what’s happened to the economy and the deficit and the gas prices and the war and the budget cuts to the levees and the flood plain.

a leader says, just like he said at gitmo, what law, im going to fucking save the world, i dare you to impeach me for saving 10,000 people you fucking fucks, impeach me for saving lives and watch your party disappear.

a leader does what the group is either too afraid to do or too stuck in excuses to do. its why they say leaders rise to the top. its why they say leaders are born not made. its why they say follow the leader. its why i say mr bush is not a leader.

paris hilton is more of a leader than george bush.

i talk about the Daily Nexus a lot, my college paper. i ran for Editor-in-Chief my senior year and lost, but during the final portion we had to have an interview with the Press Council which were 5 members of various student organizations and the administration.

at one point they asked “what would you do if your staff wanted to do one thing, but you wanted to do the opposite?”

i said, “i would ask them to explain to me why they wanted to do it, and i would tell them that i would consider their idea, but if i felt that mine was better, i would lead us that way.”

they said, “but dont you respect your team, what if they wanted to quit, what if they were offended?”

and i said, “there is a reason why we only have one Editor-in-Chief. it’s not to go along with consensus, it’s not to sit at the head of the figurehead table, it’s to make the tough decisions, and sometimes the tough decisions means going against the group.”

i lost by one vote, 2-3, but i would say exactly the same thing again, because i still believe it.

the president’s job security is not more important than the lives and well being of those sufferring and dying in new orleans.

the lack of preparedness, the absense of government funding, the slow-as-molasses “resuce” effort, and the bungling of FEMA and the department of homeland security, and the horrendous lies by the president that brownie did a heck of a job and that the newspapers on tuesday said that new orleans dodged a bullet caused as many deaths as five 9/11s.

it caused as many deaths as five iraq wars.

this president has sat at the grownup table and ignored the august 2001 cia briefing that said that bin ladin was determined to strike inside the US and we had one 9/11

he attacked iraq and we lost as many US soldiers as another 9/11 and over 100,000 iraqis died.

in order to get re-elected he continued to cut taxes during wartime and part of the monies that werent collected were supposed to go to the levees and the flood plains and the result was five 9/11s.

at some point the leader takes responsibility for what happened on his watch, be it something he did directly like lead us into a false war, cut taxes for programs that would have saved lives, or played it safe and not immediately aid the devistation of one of his cities.

at some point the followers call bullshit on the leader.

this is that point.

im sick of 9/11s.

im sick of not having a leader.

im sick of this figurehead never taking responsibility for anything.

im sick of this administration only being punk rock when it has to do with denying things to gays and women and our military and political prisoners and those in disaster areas screaming out for help.

the democratic party isnt the one that impeaches presidents over bullshit. thats the other party. the democratic party doesnt impeach anyone but themselves.

the american people are the ones who need to stop acting like the democratic party and sit on thier hands and watch this government splooge on themselves as they fuck up time after time.

new orleans was a fuck up from the ground up. and at some point the president needed to say ok im taking over for a minute because i am seeing that this red tape is strangling people. impeach my ass later but now im gonna show you how its done.

but we dont have a leader in america

although we have plenty of sheep

and now we have 10,000 more dead people.

people are dead and others worry about finger pointing?

this country doesnt have enough leaders or sense and i dont have enough middle fingers.

pdf of the dallas morning news on 8/30/05 + mark + alecia + sploid redesign + impeach bush

“oh tony it’s soooo big, i dont think it will fit!”

“no tony your house isnt that messy, ive seen way worse”

“no really, i’m 19.”

in fact one could say that the older you get the more you get used to lies and the lying liars.

“lease this car for just $199 a month.”

“i’ll call you right back.”

“i’m a libertarian.”

but the other day, in the midst of the worst national disaster in the history of our country a bunch of high ranking officials lied right through their teeth and the president didnt call bullshit, the press didnt call bullshit, not even the worlds most popular blogger the instapundit called bullshit

and their lack of bullshit calling sorta makes you think that maybe they were all in on it or dont want to talk about it, but since i dont believe in conspiracy theories i’ll pretend that they were all too busy donating to the red cross or something.

anyway here was the lie: on Sunday morning when everyone was at church the chief of Homeland Security told Tim Russert on Meet The Press that the reason that the feds were so slow to rush to New Orleans was because of what he had read in the papers “I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, ‘New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.'”

First of all, does Homeland Security decide how it’s going to handle its affairs not by what it sees on CNN, the Weather Channel, or a variety of newschannels – but waits for the paper to come out? And doesnt it have, oh I dont know, PEOPLE that it could talk to who are, you know, in the effected areas?

But more importantly, what fucking paper did Chertoff read? as Wonkette pointed out the other day, here are the headlines that morning from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Washington Times, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

no headlines saying new orleans dodged a bullet.

in fact thanks to the wonders of the interweb theres even a website that archives a huge number of newspaper covers every day.

for example, here is page of todays headlines

here is the page of the headlines on 9/12/01

and here is the one from the morning that Homeland Security chief Chertoff was talking about

no headline that screams New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.

in fact there are 477 newspapers archived on that day. none that say what he says they said.

ok that wouldnt be such a big deal if General Richard Myers hadn’t said almost exactly the same thing two days ago, Tuesday, in a press conference with Donald Rumsfield

The headline, of course, in most of the country’s papers on Tuesday were ‘New Orleans dodged a bullet,’ or words to that effect. At that time, when those words were in our minds, we started working issues before we were asked.

wait, what? so you read these mysterious papers that said all was well and with those words in your feeble little minds you started working on issues?

what fucking issues? either you read a paper that said everything was chill and you chilled or you really read the papers and knew that shit was fucked. but dont lie to us and say that most of the nation’s papers said things were chilled, General, because any dipwad with even basic cable knew it wasnt and anyone who was reading anything other than the Weekly World News knew that the Gulf Coast was toast.

my buddy Dan called me up last night and we were talking about this storm and he said that the interesting thing about it is that with it’s 150+ MPH winds it lifted the rock that the Republicans hide under

and when that rock was pulled up we have seen all the slime and much and dreck that wiggles in there.

we have seen the President mosey his way to the affected area, we have seen his mother say that since the evacuees are poor theyre better off homeless in the astrodome, we have seen the bush cronies at FEMA bungle and turn away help, we have seen the Navy reprimand heroic pilots who actually fucking saved 100+ people,

and now he says, we are seeing the right wing bloggers and red state supporters defend this adminstration as they drop the ball and lie and lie and lie.

the rock has indeed been lifted my friends, and not even the investigation that the president yesterday proposed that he will launch on himself (which now, thankfully will be bi-partisan) will help him dodge this bullet.

new orleans was devistated with a one-two punch indeed. first nature nailed it, and then this administration sat on its hands for five days and watched people drown and starve and suffer and kill each other.

ive lived through many miserable times in my life, but the more this tragedy sinks in and the more rock gets pulled away the sicker i get inside, and i dont even care that people think this is a political blog, which we all know it isnt.

this is a pissed off blog thats only getting pissier and if youre not mad as hell youre not paying attention.

zulieka + political mania + buzzmachine + aint no bad dude

as you know, later this month i will be releasing my third self-published book.

the first one, Blook sold about 100 copies and people were sorta bummed out that it looked more like a college reader than a book

so How To Blog was released almost a year ago and about 250 copies were sold, partially because it looked like a real book, but probably because it was pretty damn good.

in a few weeks i will be offerring Stiff, which are mostly posts from 2002-2003 of entirely fictional material where i die, meet Kurt Kobain and go to Hell.

i can easilly say that those stories are my finest collection of fiction ive ever written. it has a real beginning, a real center, and a real end. they arent just posts thrown together with some sort of faint storyline, theyre all meant to be read as a whole. theyre creative, weird, and unlike anything that ive written lately.

in addition to that tale, i have included about 20 of my best poems. yes, i know poetry isnt what the kids are into much nowadays, but a thousand years ago when i was running around they were all the rage. i majored in poetry in college, and most of these poems are from those days. several have been published in fancy publications, and i must say that they have held up over the years and arent like the shit that passes for poetry today.

straight up.

id have this book out right now but i have one problem, i dont have a cover that im happy with.

i tried to do something with karisa on the cover but it didnt work out. i tried working with an artist today, but that fell through, and i thought about going to you but for some reason i didnt because i wanted it out Fast, but now my better judgement is telling me that i can wait a week, and i should hold a contest: this contest

the Design the Cover for Stiff Contest!

heres what you do: create an image for my new book.

attatch it as a file and email it to this weirdo email address: tony.stiff.contest@buzznet.com, no entries sent to my real email address will be accepted. if you have questions put them in the comments of this post. that email address is only for submissions.

the book will be 5″ x 8″ so the image needs to be 1650 x 2550 at 250 dpi

the winner will get their name in the book, a month of primo linkage to their blog (or to their favorite blog) on the busblog, two copies of Stiff, and a cash prize of $66.66!!!

the contest will end on Tuesday Sept 13, so get to work!

heres my only bit of advice: CafePress will not allow me to sell a book whose image has a picture of a famous person or famous artwork, so no pics of Kurt.

good luck! and to those of you who are just watching, you can see the entries as they appear in my Buzznet gallery here

enter early and often!

let me make one thing perfectly clear, i dont hate our president.

allow me to explain.

i love pot.

marijuana, mary jane, cheeba, weed, chronic

green sticky purple haired wacky tobbacky.

love it.

i love the smell, i love the taste, i love its looks,

i love the culture, i love the sharing, i love people who smoke it, i love its resin, i love its paraphenalia, i love its high.

i love smelling pot in the bag, i love packing it into a bowl, i love lighting it, i love the sound that the water makes as it gurgles as i take a rip, i love inhaling, i love exhaling

i love exhaling it into the mouth of a pretty girl and i love to watch her close her eyes as she holds it

i love the sound of one holding and failing slightly – gnk – cough – gnk.

i love laughing and laughing and laughing at laughing.

i love hotboxing, i love rolling joints, i love finding weed, i love being passed joints, i love songs about weed, i love references about weed, i love the variety of uses for weed/hemp, i love the many ways to call weed weed. i love looking at the clock and noticing when it says 4:20.

got it?

k.

but at some point i had to really look at pot and what it was doing to me and i had to make the adult decision that it was hurting me more than it was helping me, it was costing me money without giving me much of a high any more, and it was slowly and surely killing me and putting me in danger.

so i acted like a grown up and quit.

i saw it was bad for me, i stoped, and in no way does that make me a hater.

similarily i ask you to look at your relationship, bush supporters, to this president, and ask yourself the same thing

is this president the leader that you expect from the most powerful man in america. is he causing you more headaches than joy. is he as effective as he should be considering the fact that he has a republican congress and a republican supreme court and support from most of the media for the exception of the nyt, the wapo, and for a few hours a day cbs?

are you truly in support of this president’s actions or have you just gotten into a habit of supporting republicans no matter what theyre doing to your well-being?

you can love bush like i love weed but ask yourself what it will take for you to kick the habit.

it took me 5 years of smoking and not getting high for me to realize that i was just going through the motions of smoking without receiving that euphoria, that benefit, that kick.

has george bush given you what you expect from the president’s office since 9/11 or have you just let him off the hook year after year after year?

i was not in the biggest defict of my life because of weed, i was not vilified by the world because of my habit, i am in good health and i was in good health, but at some point i took a long look at what i was doing and i made the conscious decision to stop it.

i kicked the habit.

i invite you to kick this habit of voting republican and supporting whoever does whatever regardless of what they do, because it is simply a habit which perhaps once was useful, but the thrill is gone.

america its time to get off the pipe.

katrina timeline + em + rabbit blog + mathieu

that I had just written the post of the week, but I’m happy to say that he was wrong.

That acclaim should go to Keith Olbermann who has successfully transitioned from being one of the best and funniest sports commentators to being one of the best and biting political commentators.

video here, transcript below.

The “city” of Louisiana, by Keith Olbermann, MSNBC

SECAUCUS — Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: “Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater…”

Well there’s your problem right there.

If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government’s response to a crisis, this was it.

The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.

But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”

Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the “I-Me” switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.

And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet’s meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural… and government-made.

But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.

No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.

But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the “chatter” from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn’t quite discern… a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, “we are not satisfied,” with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which “we” he thinks he’s speaking for on this point. Perhaps it’s the administration, although we still don’t know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, ‘I’ll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die’?

I don’t know which ‘we’ Mr. Bush meant.

For many of this country’s citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to ’08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — “New Orleans.”

For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick “I’m not satisfied with my government’s response.” Instead of hiding behind phrases like “no one could have foreseen,” had he only remembered Winston Churchill’s quote from the 1930’s. “The responsibility,” of government, Churchill told the British Parliament “for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence.”

In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.

As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government’s credibility.

Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.

police and thieves + crooks and liars + that colored fella + ktimes

From the How Could It Get Any Worse files – The help that FEMA has actually accepted, namely the 1,000 firefighters who have left their communities to volunteer with the relief effort in New Orleans,

are now being asked NOT to save people trapped, or administer aid to the sick and dying, but to act as reps for FEMA by passing out the phone number to FEMA

and to stand behind the President for his photo ops!

Salt Lake Tribune, 9/6:

ATLANTA – Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: “What are we doing here?”

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters – his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week – a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

…

Also of concern to some of the firefighters is the cost borne by their municipalities in the wake of their absence. Cities are picking up the tab to fill the firefighters’ vacancies while they work 30 days for the federal government.

“There are all of these guys with all of this training and we’re sending them out to hand out a phone number,” an Oregon firefighter said. “They [the hurricane victims] are screaming for help and this day [of FEMA training] was a waste.”

Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew’s first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

Heck of a job, Bushie.

h/t Metafilter + raymi + LA you can donate at the Dream Center

regarding this disaster and others are nervous about it, and i think i know why some arent sure about getting into it.

because at some point the blame is going to be directed at those who really deserve it.

ourselves.

its not really Bush’s fault, entirely, that he didnt feel it necessary to go to new orleans earlier, or stay longer, or get more done while he was there. sure hes a dipshit, but he’s been supported by a majority of the american public for the last five years with nary a bullshit yelled from the crowd.

abu ghraib happened, you let it slide. no wmds were found, you let it go. obl is flipping through his tivo – youre all, no big deal. theres a reporter Still in jail over RoveGate and you’ve totally forgotten it.

gas is over $3, youre like, thats not bush’s fault. theres a civil war happening in iraq right now, but you’ll swear thats not george’s fault. reporters are paid off by the white house, and a gay hooker is discovered getting a day pass into the west wing for a year and youre all whatev.

so yes, many of you have enabled this bush behavoir of incompentence.

which means, i hate to say it, America, that destruction, that death, that misery, that bullshit that went down in New Orleans, thats not

just

Brownie’s fault, FEMAs fault, the dipshits at the Department of Homeland Securty’s fault

its youre fault.

you voted for Bush.

twice!

Bush was the one who sent our troops AND our national guardsmen to Iraq for a war based on lies and phantom wmds.

Bush was the one who slashed the budgets of the levee funding and the flood control funding so the rich could retain their tax cuts and so the war in iraq could continue.

Bush was the one who undid Clinton’s plan of having FEMA be a cabinet level department. Bush demoted it so it could fit underneath the DHS.

Bush invented the DHS and sold it to us under the terms that in times of crisis there would be Less red tape so that if there was a terror attack or a disaster the DHS could oversee and manage all the aspects of saving lives and protecting the citizens.

in fact we gave up huge chunks of personal liberties so that the DHS could better serve us. ask those getting searched in subways. ask those taking off their shoes at airports.

sadly this storm has shown us that we are not safer or being any better served.

yes its Bush’s fault, in part, but Bush wouldnt have ever had a chance to hire Brownie, or demote FEMA, or create the DHS, or invade Iraq, or still be in Iraq if the majority of US voters hadnt voted for this genius.

if you have a Bush/Cheeney sticker on your SUV, the blood of New Orleans is on your hands.

straight up.

go ahead and try to blame the mayor of new orleans. go ahead and keep showing us those school busses in that flooded parking lot and you try and pretend that that one lot could have solved all the problems of the broken levee.

go ahead and try to pretend that those school busses were the reason for the panic and chaos and dumbfuckery and mahem and rape and murder and cops quitting on the job and help not arriving for nearly a week.

i’ll meet you half way right now and say, fine, fire the mayor. will you say fire the president?

the first term of the Bush administration was one of the biggest jokes of all time. the economy tanked in that he took the biggest surplus ever and dumbfucked it into the biggest deficit ever. he took the biggest outpouring of international support after 9/11 and turned it into worldwide hatred after we invaded iraq. and he refused to persue the real terrorist center, saudi arabia, home of 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in 9/11 and osama bin ladin, who was still on the loose. and to cap off that spectacular run, he took part in a video where he jokingly looked for wmds under a couch in the white house.

he ran against a 20yr senator who was a decorated war hero who swore to be fiscially responsible, enviornmentally concious, and true to the ideal of the seperation of church and state.

but you, america, voted to give your dumbass a second shot at cowboy quartback.

mostly because he promised to keep gay people from being married.

as a matter of fact, you came out in droves to make sure that gay people wouldnt be allowed to be married.

do you have the courage to admit that we dont have a leader, and youre to blame?

or will you continue to pass the buck and point elsewhere.

just like the mayor of new orleans, you didnt prepare properly for disaster, you didnt make the right call, and your representative has continued to drop the ball just like he fumbled for the last five years.

this president has often been criticized as not being able to admit when he’s wrong. even during the debates he was asked to talk about any mistake that he had made during his first term and he couldnt do it.

are you, america, ready to admit you made a mistake, or will you continue to mimic your boy and pretend that youre blameless – that its not your fault or his fault, its the fault of the person he hired.

you hired the president and he hired everyone on his team pre 9/11. nobody was fired post 9/11. and then you didnt fire him.

you rehired the president and he hired everyone on his team pre katrina

just like post 9/11 there should have been wholesale terminations, starting at the top, begining with those who got the PDB titled “bin laden determined to strike in the us” who then ignored it.

therefore post katrina there should be wholesale terminations, starting at the top, begining with those who knew of the likihood of this devistation in the wake of the hurricane, including those who refused to take charge of the multi-state national disaster, including those who let school busses get parked in unusable lots

and including those who played his lyre and ate cake as a goodly portion of his nation drowned.

katrina is simply just one more notch on the bush bedpost of failure

how many more will you allow until you

yes, you,

stop it.

you are not powerless on a roof unable to make change

you are the people of the united states of america

the greatest country in the world

you deserve better.

but before you will get it, you need to do what your president refuses to do

you need to start firing people.

and you know where you need to start.

jack bog + sean bonner + fil + krista

i have said a lot over the last few days.
some of which i even regret: when i lashed out at Robert, below.
(since then we have patched things up.)
but one thing i havent done is allow you, the readers,
to just say whatever it is you want.
so i’ll just give you a chance to link to
or say whatever you want.
all i ask is you be respectful of each other.