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. "

On the road with the next AG of TX

As I mentioned back here, I was fortunate to spend a couple of days at the end of last week with the next Attorney General of Texas, David Van Os. I had previously made plans earlier to bring my mother, who lives near Beaumont, to hear David speak at a meeting of the Progressive Democrats of Southeast Texas, but when David's wife Rachel called me and said that David would have to rent a car at Hobby, I delightedly offered my services as chauffeur.

We both had appointments at Lamar University Thursday afternoon; David's was to speak to the Latinos Unidos student group; mine was to meet with some of the alumni officials. We reconvened that evening at the PDSE meetup at Acapulco Mexican Grill.

Before I tell you about our visits, which included a public hearing at the courthouse on a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) matter, let me provide some history about the area called the Golden Triangle, nestled into the corner of Texas next to the Gulf and the Sabine.

Beaumont-Port Arthur, the mid-county cities of Nederland, Port Neches, and Groves, and Orange -- the easternmost point of the Triangle; as far as you can go without being in Louisiana -- are home to the highest concentration of refineries and chemical plants in the state of Texas. And not just a lot of them but some of the largest petrochemical operations in the world; when I lived there, their names were Gulf and Texaco and DuPont and Allied, but the names have all changed. I was raised in a union household; Mom was a professor in the college of business at Lamar, Dad was OCAW, employed by the Mobil (now ExxonMobil, of course) refinery in Beaumont. I worked at the coking unit of that plant during the summer of 1980, graduated from Lamar that winter, and started my first career at the Beaumont Enterprise-Journal as an advertising salesman that spring.

Politically speaking, the Golden Triangle has been Yellow Dog Democrat country for almost all of the time I've been around, and for a long time before. They elected and re-elected liberal stalwarts like Jack Brooks, Carl Parker, and Charlie Wilson, but they've also had temporary lapses of sanity with right-wing fools like Steve Stockman. And like most of the rest of Texas, they fell in love with Ronald Reagan in the Eighties and haven't yet managed to fall completely out of love with the current iteration of radical religious Republicanism.

History lesson over.

About sixty SE Texas Progressive Dems assembled for David's stump speech, and the crowd included Jefferson County party chair Gilbert Adams, state representative Joe Deshotel, and a handful of local candidates, but mostly citizen activists and kindred spirits. Here's a summary of what he said:

“News commentators, industry representatives, politicians, and other voices of the corporate-political-media establishment are somberly telling the rest of us to expect more increases in gasoline prices as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

However, I have some questions for the political-corporate elites and their friends in the media punditry. Who gave the big oil companies an unalienable right to profit off tragedy? Do the oil companies have a God-given right to forever maximize their profits? Why shouldn’t the oil companies and their silk-stocking executives be expected to do their part to assist in relief efforts? Why shouldn’t the oil companies be expected to show some public spirit and reduce their profit expectations at this time of national distress? Where are our public servants who should be calling on the oil companies to do their part? Are our public officials too beholden to corporate industry to exert moral leadership on this matter?”

About the amendment on the ballot to outlaw gay marriage in Texas:

“I take it as a personal offense and an affront to my citizenship that forces of bigotry are seeking to enshrine hate into the Texas Constitution. You know, the Declaration of Independence of 1776 grants every United States citizen the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; it is inconceivable that Texans would put something in our state constitution that would be a giant step backward from the achievement of that vision. The very idea of what the 'unreligious wrong' is trying to do is a disgrace, it is inhumane and it sure isn’t moral ... Morality means everyone is equal under the law. All of us as Texans are entitled to public servants who will serve the people and do everything in their power to defend the constitutional rights liberties of all the people equally."

And specifically addressing members of the GLBT community throughout Texas, as quoted in the Dallas Voice:

“Just keep on fighting for liberty, keep on fighting for equal justice under the law and keep on fighting for the kind of society and world you want to live in,” Van Os said. “Fight 'em 'til hell freezes over, and then fight 'em on the ice.”

There's more, but you get the picture. David was pretty well received, as you might imagine.

Friday morning, Van Os appeared on News Radio FOX 1340 (check out the 'fair and balanced' syndicated program lineup) for an interview with local drive-time personality Dominick Brascia, who was obviously and genuinely impressed with David's credentials and stands on the issues.

We had lunch with the attorneys from the Adams law firm, then went to the Jefferson County courthouse to attend the aforementioned TCEQ hearing on a modification to the hazardous waste permit held by the ExxonMobil refinery.

Since this post is getting long, I'll continue in the next.

My experience volunteering (at the Astrodome and the GRB)

Last Friday, September 2, I finally couldn't stand watching the televised tragedy any longer, and having caught up with all my clients and prospecting, decided to go down to the Astrodome and do something.

I packed the car with some clothes that belonged to us and to my mother-in-law -- she has end-stage Alzheimer's and we've already begun the rather painful process of disposing of some of her personal effects -- as well as a variety of toilet articles, and dropped them off at Rice Temple Baptist Church (the Dome wasn't accepting donations that morning).

Before my four-hour shift was to begin, I had time for an early lunch, so I went to my neighborhood Vietnamese place and sat behind two green-scrub wearing, twenty-something guys who were discussing their 401-Ks. The television had Fox News on, and the scenes from a helicopter flying over Charity Hospital in downtown New Orleans were being shown. The two young men took note of the horror inside the hospital being described by the reporter on TV, but not in a manner that indicated much alarm.

The promo for the upcoming local noon newscast mentioned the shortage of medical personnel and the need for volunteers skilled in that expertise at the Astrodome.

The two men sitting in front of me, wearing green surgical scrubs, having an early lunch like me, about a mile from both the Texas Medical Center and the Astrodome, ordered extra egg rolls.

I finished my pho and headed over to the Dome. I parked, leaving my wallet and cellphone in the car, followed the signs guiding me to the volunteers registration area, and was cautioned again about my wallet, cellphone and jewelry (none of these was allowed to be carried into the Dome by volunteers, for reasons of obvious personal safety). After signing in I endured a short orientation session which consisted of being asked a few questions about my physical health -- could I use a handtruck, lift a heavy box, do some twisting and turning; and my mental health -- did the sight of very ill people bother me, would it upset me to be dealing with upset or grief-stricken folks, etc. -- and finally got an assignment: I'd be unloading some of the donation boxes of clothes, diapers, food, and more.

That's what I did for about three of the four hours; in between shifts with the dolly and the boxes, I and others cleaned the kitchen after lunch had been served. I washed some of the cooking utensils, swept and mopped the floor.

The entire effort itself was haphazard and sometimes frustrating. The volunteers I served with were hard-working, the volunteer coordinators were haggard and occasionally short-tempered but also devoted to the task, and the people we were helping were grateful and shell-shocked and occasionally smelled bad and were overcome with emotion. They frequently quarreled with, and sometimes screamed at, their children, others' children, and each other. They asked questions I didn't know the answer to -- but in subsequent days were answered for everyone: how they could find out about a missing loved one, where to make a long-distance phone call.

I left with a sense of some accomplishment but also a nearly overwhelming sense of despair -- for the state of the New Orleans evacuees, as well as that of our nation.

The next day, Saturday the 3rd of September, the news was that the Dome had too many volunteers, so I went to the George R. Brown Convention Center downtown, which had been opened to accomodate the overflow of evacuees. You may recall that the Astrodome was believed capable of housing 25,00o people, but the Harris County fire marshall had ceased the intake of refugees at about 11,500 on Friday, and there were rumors reported in the media that some buses from Louisiana had been turned away.

The first group who were being housed there, maybe a thousand people, were not the evacuees you are used to seeing on television. They were almost all Caucasian, and were part of the wave of folks who evacuated New Orleans before Katrina made landfall and had been staying in Houston-area hotels and motels, but who had run out of money or had been asked to vacate because of pre-booked registrations. Some were expressing concern about the influx of "those people" coming from the Astrodome.

The GRB was cleaner, the people had more room, the volunteers were everywhere and many of them, like my friend Lyn did the following day, were doing one-on-one assistance. That wasn't the job for me; I would much rather do the physical labor than the psychological.

I'm glad I helped; my conscience feels much the better for having done so, but I hope I never have to do anything like that again. Or have to be on the receiving end of the assistance, either.

==================================

Sunday September 4th, my 79-year old mother and her friend from Lamar University (Mom's retired from there now over a decade) drove over from Beaumont to join us for brunch and baseball. Since we had the outing planned for well before Katrina, we stuck with our plan to have jazz brunch at Brennan's, followed by the 1:05 Astros-Cardinals game at Minute Maid Park.

The dichotomy of what I witnessed in the Dome and the GRB, juxtaposed against the experience of the beautiful restaurant with the French Quarter styled courtyard, the jazz music, the crabmeat omelet on the plate in front of me -- the extremes of class and caste I experienced were simply so significant that words don't do it justice.

When I thought about the people who hadn't been able to eat a decent meal in several days as I slurped up my delicious chicken and andouille gumbo, I felt the remorse of the fortunate. "There but for the grace of God" and so on. As I licked my spoon clean of the pecan pie a la mode, I considered -- all too briefly -- the plight of those just a few miles away who had lost their homes, their jobs, their city, even members of their family.

And as we took our seats in a brand new stadium to watch wealthy men play a child's game, I thought for a moment about the homeless children playing on the field which formerly hosted the millionaire athletes, and was now host to poor men and women with nearly nothing left.

'Dichotomy' doesn't begin to adequately describe it.

And my Merriam-Webster Thesaurus lists no other entries for the word.