I am beyond the point of believing that there is any limit to the venality of the Current Federal Administration (emphasis added). They purposefully let Americans die rather than fix a problem:

Pressed by an angry House committee, FEMA Administrator David Paulison promised yesterday to warn tens of thousands of displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina that they are living in agency trailers that may be contaminated with dangerously high levels of formaldehyde gas.

The noxious chemical has been linked to at least two deaths of FEMA trailer residents at a time when the agency ignored danger warnings from its own fieldworkers and instead delayed testing to avoid exposure to lawsuits, said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D., Calif.), chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

(snip)

“Do not initiate any testing until we give the OK,” an agency attorney replied in an e-mail dated June 15, 2006. “Once you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them.”

An agency memo dated the following day said the office of general counsel “has advised that we do not do testing, which would imply FEMA’s ownership of this issue.”

But they don’t use chains anymore–just a couple of guards with handguns, one of whom doubles as the van driver.

Two men working on a road crew near Selbyville escaped into Maryland but were captured near an elementary school this afternoon, the Delaware Department of Corrections said.

I remember seeing chain gangs when I was growing up. Sometimes, on the drive to visit my grandmother in northwest South Carolina, we would see them in North Carolina. (I’m not picking on North Carolina–it just happened to be the state we drove across.)

Yes, they were chained together. Yes, the guards carried shotguns. Yes, I remember seeing balls and chains.

There are plenty of reasons to wish Rudolph Guiliani a happy retirement.

So many that it’s not necessary to make stuff up. From Factcheck dot org:

The union representing New York City firefighters is running a misleading video blaming former Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the deaths of more than 100 firefighters at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

We agree that Giuliani bears some responsibility for the widely documented failings of the fire department’s radio communications on 9/11. It is true that the effective functioning of the fire department is a major responsibility of any mayor, and Giuliani had been in office since 1994. However, the video goes too far when it implies that bad radio communication was the only reason that 121 firefighters failed to clear the North Tower of the Trade Center after the first tower collapsed. To the contrary, the 9/11 Commission stated in its final report that the technical failure of fire department radios “was not the primary cause of the many firefighter fatalities in the North Tower.”

. . . as every younger generation, is going to hell.

Max Blumenthal has the evidence.

Curses! Foiled Again!

I was going to blog about this, but Steve beat me to it.

I commend the post to your attention, not only for the post, but also for the back story.

It’s late.

I’m tired.

Second Son just called. He’s in British Columbia, Canada. (Yeah, it’s the only British Columbia I know, but I figured I should be specific.)

And Tim F. dissects the nutcases.

It’s all over the news today–the soon-to-be-released National Intelligence Estimate. The Washington Post starts its story like this:

Worldwide counterterror efforts have restrained Osama bin Laden’s network from again attacking the United States, but al-Qaeda’s capabilities to mount such an attack have been “protected or regenerated” partly by securing a safe haven in northwest Pakistan, according to portions of a National Intelligence Estimate made public today.

“Greatly increased worldwide counterterrorism efforts over the past five years have constrained the ability of al Qaeda to attack the U.S. homeland again and have led terrorist groups to perceive the homeland as a harder target to strike than on 9/11,” the new estimate states.

It warns, however, that bin Laden and his top core leadership continue to plot attacks against the United States and “will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al Qaeda in Iraq,” whose activities in that country have energized “the broader Sunni extremist community” and helped recruit and indoctrinate new operatives.

No lengthy analysis here. No dissecting the spin from the Current Federal Administration.

Clearly and simply, this assessment shows that the Current Federal Administrator’s strategy (like, for example, you know, making up a war out of whole cloth and invading a country that, like, you know, however disgusting its government may have been, had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, while failing to complete the cleansing of Afghanistan) has been a complete and total failure.

Just as has the Current Federal Administration. (Except for making the rich richer and the poor poorer–they did pretty good at that.)

This is what happens when ideology and delusion trump facts.

I mentioned David Vitter once before and figured that was enough. I don’t like to beat topics to death.

Just to insensibility.

Nevertheless (a fancy word that means “I’m going to contradict myself now”), Jon Swift has disclosed some implications of Mr. Vitter’s situation that I overlooked.

I commend Mr. Swift’s analysis to your attention.

As I was driving to the cooling tower place, a driver did what I find one of the most irritating things (outside of what happened to Phillybits).

On a moderately open road, with plenty of room to change lanes, she ran right up to–almost on–my rear end before she realized, “Hey, there is a vehicle in front of me. Perhaps I should consider moving into the passing lane and overtaking that vehicle which has the effrontery to obey the 65 mph speed limit.”

At the last minute, she whipped into the left hand lane and proceeded to tailgate the next driver until she was out of sight.

Perhaps she was distracted by the memo she had propped against the steering wheel.

But there are worse distractions.

Well, someone’s number:

A 34-year-old mum who swapped lines from BT to Virgin Media was somewhat shocked to find her new phone number besieged by chaps demanding to speak to “the young nympho”, the Sun reports.

Youth worker Rachel Collick made the switch on 2 July at her Plymouth home, and is now enjoying around six calls a day from horny punters. She explained: “It started almost immediately. It’s always men and after I say hello they say something about talking to the nymphomaniac. I presume they expect me to talk dirty.

Later on, Ms. Collick points out the irony of her carrier’s being Virgin Mobile. . . .

“Liberal bias,” as far as I can tell, is a code word for “I don’t like it–it makes me uncomfortable.”

TBogg lays it out.

There is really no point to attempting to excerpt or summarize this.

Just read the whole thing. It’s not spin. It’s not interpretation.

It’s just facts. And the facts shall make us free.

We were tired tonight.

So we went with Stouffer’s Lasagna.

(Aside: I’m a big fan of Stouffer’s entrees: Lasagna, stuffed peppers, creamed chip beef. Their TV dinners, in contrast, leave me calling for Banquet.)

The Stouffer’s corporate lawyers have clearly gotten hold of the Packaging Department:

Frankly, anyone who keeps something in an oven at 350 degrees for an hour or so and doesn’t use potholders to remove it deserves third degree burns.

But at least this warning points out a real danger, unlike those about using cell phones while refueling your car.

On the Media takes another look at mercenaries.

I’ve mentioned Swampwater before.

Hiring mercenaries–whatever they may call themselves–is not a good thing. We place our defense and security in the hands of those whose loyalty is to those who grease their palms, not to the Constitution, and who consider themselves accountable to no one. (Sound familiar?)

U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now outnumber military combat troops there. But you’d never know that from listening to officials and watching the news. Political scientist Deborah Avant talks about why the war’s privatization is slipping through the media’s cracks.

Download the MP3 here or listen below:

And one reporter who has pursued the Blackwater story tells of his experiences:

Despite the many obstacles to reporting on military contractors, a few journalists have pursued the story. Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise Of The World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, talks about what it takes to see even a small part of the contracting picture.

Download the MP3 here or listen below:

And their government sent them on a fool’s errand.

Click here to see the documentary.

Via Brendan.

Upyernoz dissects them here.

Addendum, Later That Same Evening:

Dick Polman on the benchmarks:

Which brings us to all the benchmarks that even the Bush team had to mark as “unsatisfactory.” These are all the big-ticket items: No progress on setting up provincial elections; no progress on establishing a a serious program to disarm the sectarian militias, no progress on permitting Iraqi army and security police to crack down on militias without interference from sectarian factions; no progress on the key legislation to fairly distribute oil revenue to all sects and ethnicities; no progress on ratcheting up the number of Iraqi military and security forces that can protect citizens without U.S. help (on the contrary, the Pentagon yesterday said there has been a “slight reduction” in those all-important numbers).

Nor did Bush happen to mention, in his press conference yesterday, that the government’s National Intelligence Council signaled this week that the political situation in Iraq is actually far worse than Bush’s report card suggests. In House testimony the other day, deputy director for analysis Thomas Fingar said there have been “few appreciable gains,” primarily because the sectarian strife is so intractable: “(C)ommunal violence and scant common ground between Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds continues to polarize politics.”

Pass it over to me.

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Peace Patroller, also known as an anti-war liberal or hippie. You believe in putting an end to American imperial conquest, stopping wars that have already been lost, and supporting our troops by bringing them home.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

Via Susie.

Yeah, I know, those of you who have met me may think that it’s difficult for me to feel embarassed.

It is. When you get a certain age, you realize that, ultimately, it doesn’t matter what other people think, as long as you have tried to comport yourself with integrity.

But, dammit, I didn’t vote for him. I didn’t vote for him twice. But he’s still my president, for good or ill.

And he still embarasses me. Dan Froomkin reports:

After a 12-minute introductory statement, Bush did what he normally does at press conferences: He ducked the tough questions, and instead launched into long rambling rehashes of familiar talking points.

Asked why Americans should trust his vision for Iraq, given all the mistakes he has made thus far, Bush essentially blamed his commanders — but then said that Americans should trust him because he relies on his commanders.

Asked if he was sufficiently realistic in his appraisal of Iraq, he said “Yeah,” then talked at length about the threat posed by al Qaeda.

He repeated his inaccurate and misleading assertion that “the same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.”

And he generally argued that disagreeing with his policy is tantamount to undermining the troops and emboldening Al Qaeda.

I wonder whether he actually believes his lies?