Is Our Leader a closeted Democrat?

Or is he just pretending to be something he's not (again)?

I didn't watch the speech (I had something much better to do with my Thursday evening), but Kevin Drum, MaxSpeak, Media Girl, and others seem to think so.

(If so, then that would have to be a DLC Democrat, n'est ce pas?)

Which generates a tangent ...

Coming on the heels of a liberal quantity of conservative apoplexy at Tom DeLay's recent comments about himself -- err, the federal government -- I'm really bemused at what's happening over there in far right field.

This summer, a number of the most virulent starboard-tackers I can still call friends have been getting off the GOP bus (you've noticed this among your own circle, haven't you?). First it was the matter of Terri Schiavo, then Cindy Sheehan, and then it was the soaring cost of gasoline, and this month it's been Katrina. Mix in the sham of the Roberts hearings, pictures of Bush eating cake and playing guitar and asking Condi if he can go potty and you've got a seriously bad fall kickoff.

Not everyone on the Right is wavering; the bloc in the Senate remains steadfast. Next week they'll vote in harmony for a new Chief Justice, just as they did last week to kill an independent Katrina commission.

But the support in the outlands is falling away like the leaves. Well, not so much here in Deep-In-the-Hearta; it's still too freaking hot.

But it's only a matter of time before that first cool snap ...

If you're viewing this blog in IE...

... then it probably looks pretty screwy right now.

I use Mozilla Firefox almost exclusively, but every now and then someone tells me something doesn't look quite right, and when I look at it through Bill Gates' glasses, sure enough ...

I've given up trying to fix it, too. Just put down the Kool-Aid, people.

I am going to try to beat

Fred and northstar to the punch with this:

Texas Democratic candidates

The next Governor of Texas, Chris Bell.


David Van Os, candidate for Texas Attorney General








(L.) Jay Aiyer, Houston City Council candidate















(R.) DeLay-slayer Nick Lampson



Two-hundred and fifty Democrats gathered in Houston's Bay Area last night to "fun-raise" for BAND, but what they really raised was a coming hell (for the GOP).

Moneyshot Quote Eligible

...from Will Durst:

Bush says he doesn’t want to play the “Blame Game.” Makes sense. Never heard of a chicken who wanted to play the “Extra Crispy” game.

The good news is, closed circuit videos in and around New Orleans have allowed us to identify the looters: Chevron, Shell, and ExxonMobil.

Senator Rick Santorum thinks there should be tougher penalties on people who decide to ride hurricanes out. I guess he means worse than drowning.

As soon as New Orleans gets back to normal, I plan on volunteering to go down there and help drink their economy back on its feet.

Count me in on that.

The President Falls

and I'm not talking about his poll numbers.

Use your mouse to help him when he gets, ah, "stuck."

A transgender evacuee's story

Arpollo Vicks was born male, but in January, the 20-year-old became, she says, "who I really am." She started living as a woman.

In New Orleans, this was no big deal.

Friends and family began calling her Sharli'e. She says that at L.B. Landry Middle School, where she worked as a substitute teacher, kids who had known her as Mr. Vicks simply began calling her Ms. Vicks.

Sharli'e's gender didn't play a part in the beginning of her Katrina miseries, either. After the levees broke, she and two cousins left their downtown neighborhood, looking for help and higher ground. Eighteen-year-old Rolanda Grisham was a plain-vanilla, born-that-way girl. Things were more complicated for Rolanda's 16-year-old sibling. Like Sharli'e, Leo had been born male but lived as a woman.

The three waded and swam a mile and half to the terrifying New Orleans Convention Center, where they spent two uncomfortable nights, one punctuated by gunfire. They then spent two hot, hungry days on an Interstate 10 overpass. At the Superdome, they finally found someone to rescue them.

A bus carried the three to Houston, but it was turned away at the Astrodome. Around 1 a.m. that Sunday, the three learned that they had arrived, instead, in College Station. They were shepherded into a shelter at Texas A&M University's Reed Arena.

Pansexual, live-and-let-live New Orleans had arrived in the heart of Aggieland, and there was bound to be trouble.

There's lots more trouble, but the story ends happily.

The first photo is real

The President wrote a note to the Secretary of State, asking to go potty, during his field trip to the U.N. today.

I am not joking.

... and if you haven't seen the pictures from the Bush Famly New Orleans Vacation, then go here.

(caption: The President may have to take a "drop" because his ball has become lodged under a corpse.)

Twenty Moneyshot Quotes

1) "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

-- President Bush, on "Good Morning America," Sept. 1, 2005, six days after repeated warnings from experts about the scope of damage expected from Hurricane Katrina

2) "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckles) -- this is working very well for them."

--Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the flood evacuees in the Astrodome, Sept. 5, 2005

3) "It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level....It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed."

--House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Aug. 31, 2005

4) "We've got a lot of rebuilding to do ... The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

-- President Bush, touring hurricane damage in Mobile, Alabama, Sept. 2, 2005

5) "Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well."

-- ex-FEMA Director Michael Brown, Sept. 1, 2005

6) "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

-- President Bush, to Brown, while touring hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005

7) "I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water."

-- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on NPR's "All Things Considered," Sept. 1, 2005

8) "Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.' Because if you recall, the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse."

-- Chertoff, blaming media coverage for his failings, "Meet the Press," Sept. 4, 2005. There were no newspaper headlines that could be found which said what he said he saw.

9) "You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals ... many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold."

-- CNN's Wolf Blitzer, on New Orleans' hurricane evacuees, Sept. 1, 2005

10) "Louisiana is a city that is largely under water."

-- Chertoff, news conference, Sept. 3, 2005

11) "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground."

-- President Bush, turning to his aides while surveying Hurricane Katrina flood damage from Air Force One , Aug. 31, 2005

12) "I believe the town where I used to come -- from Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself, occasionally too much (laughter) -- will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to."

-- Bush, on the tarmac at the New Orleans airport, Sept. 2, 2005

13) "Last night, we showed you the full force of a superpower government going to the rescue."

-- MSNBC's Chris Matthews, earning his government paycheck, Sept. 1, 2005

14) "You know I talked to Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi yesterday because some people were saying, 'Well, if you hadn't sent your National Guard to Iraq, we here in Mississippi would be better off.' He told me 'I've been out in the field every single day, hour, for four days and no one, not one single mention of the word 'Iraq.' Now where does that come from? Where does that story come from if the governor is not picking up one word about it? I don't know. I can use my imagination."

-- Former President George H. W. Bush, whose imagination has earned a six-week vacation, in an interview with CNN's Larry King, Sept. 5, 2005

15) "...those who are stranded, who chose not to evacuate, who chose not to leave the city..."

-- ex-FEMA Director Brown, on New Orleans residents who could not evacuate because they were too poor and lacked the means to leave, CNN interview, Sept. 1, 2005

16) "We just learned of the convention center -- we being the federal government -- today."

-- Brown, to ABC's Ted Koppel, Sept. 1, 2005, to which Koppel responded: "Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today."

17) "I actually think the security is pretty darn good. There's some really bad people out there that are causing some problems, and it seems to me that every time a bad person wants to scream or cause a problem, there's somebody there with a camera to stick it in their face."

-- Brown, CNN interview, Sept. 2, 2005

18) "I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans."

-- Brown, arguing that the victims bear some responsibility, CNN interview, Sept. 1, 2005

19) "As of Saturday (Sept. 3), Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said."

-- Washington Post staff writers Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer Hsu, who didn't bother to fact-check the blatant lie peddled by the Bush administration as part of its attempts to pin blame on state and local officials, when in fact the emergency declaration had been made on Friday, Aug. 26

20) "Thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi and Alabama to our help and rescue. We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reid for their extraordinary efforts. Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard -- maybe you all have announced it -- but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating."

-- Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, to CNN's Anderson Cooper, Aug. 31, 2005, to which Cooper responded:

"I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry,and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians slap -- you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been lying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to pick her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?"

Bush didn't even know

that Mike Brown had resigned, when asked about it by CNN.

"Maybe you know something I don't know."

And that happened to be the second instance today verifying that the President is out of the loop on the decision-making regarding the Katrina disaster.

I'm appalled. How about you?

Update (9/13) : Or maybe he just plain ol' lied about it.

What is Tom DeLay doing NOW?

I'm not sure, but you can select a multiple choice option at one of these two locations.

21st Century American Fascism

I saw it with my own eyes this past week.

Along with Texas Attorney General candidate David Van Os and civil rights activist Rev. Peter Johnson, I attended a public hearing on the modification of a hazardous waste permit held by the ExxonMobil refinery in Beaumont. Hearings of this type are mandated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality; this one was held at the Jefferson County courthouse Friday afternoon, September 9.

There about twenty or so in attendance; four of us out-of-town citizen activists, a handful of residents of the Charlton-Pollard neighborhood which abuts the refinery, and six representatives of ExxonMobil -- the community relations director and her assistant, three refinery executives, including at least one with the word 'environment' in his job title, and an ExxonMobil corporate attorney. None of whom made their names obvious enough for me to catch.

There were no members of the TCEQ present at the hearing, and no members of the media either (unless I count as one).

For over two hours, the oil company employees tapdanced around every single question posed to them with the most bewildering array of corporate doublespeak and rehearsed spin I have ever personally witnessed.

A couple of examples:

Q: We wrote a letter containing thirteen questions for ExxonMobil to answer at this hearing, and we sent them by certified mail. Did you receive them?

A: And we're here to answer your questions. And the questions of all the residents here.

Q: The first question is, has ExxonMobil conducted any environmental impact surveys in the neighborhood regarding the impact of the refinery's discharge on the residents' health?

A: Exxon Mobil has conducted numerous studies about the environmental quality of the neighborhood. We built the Family Resource Center and the park. We live and work here too, and have a great deal of concern about the neighborhood's environment.

Q: But have you done any studies of the health of the neighborhood's residents?

A: Those aren't environmental studies, sir.

And:

David Van Os : Has ExxonMobil done any epidemiological studies of the neighborhood?

ExxonMobil Community Relations Director : What's that?

DVO: You mean to say you don't know what an epidemiological study is?

EM CRD: No, I know what it means... you might define the word for those in the audience who don't know what it means...

DVO : But they didn't ask. Could you answer the question please?

EM CRD : Would you define 'epidemiological'?

DVO : Could you please answer the question? Yes or no?

And so on and so on, just like that, for two hours.

When a resident described the black dust he has to power-wash off his house every few months, the oil company employees just looked blankly at him. When Rev. Johnson read the results of an autopsy of a female neighborhood resident, which revealed that her lungs were 'as black as those of a sixty-year-old coal miner' (according to her doctor), the ExxonMobil representatives tried hard not to look him in the eye. When another resident described how her three-year-old son had to have a liver transplant, and that benzene poisoning was a suspected cause, the corporate lickspittles studied their manicures.

As I've previously posted, I grew up in this area. I worked in that refinery one summer. I used to come home every evening from working in that refinery and blow black snot out of my nose.

I heard the stories of Lamar University coeds whose nylons dissolved on their legs as they walked across campus (which is a half-mile from the ExxonMobil chemical facility). I smelled the rotten egg scent of sulphur dioxode myself, as a college student, on several occasions. I knew people who lived near the campus who smelled odors inside their homes that would cause them to become sleepy, and when they woke up they would have a splitting headache.

And those stories are twenty-five years old.

There was one thirty-year neighborhood resident in attendance at the hearing, who had his own self-declared respiratory concerns, and he defended ExxonMobil in a sort of resigned way:

"Well, they ain't goin' nowhere, so we gotta try to get along with 'em..."

Let me call attention to the title of this post, and quote no less an authority than Benito Mussolini:

" Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."

And also Franklin Roosevelt:

" The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power. "