Jack & The Singing Soprannos
Fort Lauderdale police have arrested three men on murder and conspiracy charges in the 2001 gangland-style killing of a South Florida businessman who sold a casino cruise line to Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, authorities said today.
Police picked up Anthony Moscatiello, 67, Anthony Ferrari, 48, and James Fiorillo, 28, last night and this morning in connection with the ambush slaying of Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, who was killed in Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 6, 2001.
Boulis had sold SunCruz Casinos to Abramoff and a partner, Adam Kidan, in 2000 at a time when Abramoff was one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists. Abramoff and Kidan were indicted last month on charges of wire fraud in connection with the purchase of the company. Moscatiello, known to police as a bookkeeper to New York's Gambino crime family, was brought in as consultant by Kidan when he and Abramoff took control of SunCruz. Ferrari is a business associate of Moscatiello.
Abramoff is at the center of a federal investigation into lobbying for Indian tribes and influence-peddling in Washington. Abramoff used contacts with Republican Reps. Tom DeLay (Tex.) and Robert W. Ney (Ohio) and members of their staffs as he worked to land the SunCruz deal, interviews and court records show.
The Washington Post
Arrests Made in Case Connected to Abramoff
Tuesday, September 27, 2005________________________________________________
The news couldn't have come at a better time opines cellmate #29918245, known affectionately as "Bubba", whom has been battling anxiety and depression brought on by the lack of fresh wards.
"Things have been a little dry here lately in this cellblock. I've already tore the hell out of his poopshute," Bubba remarks dryly, pointing to a huddled and whimpering clump of blankets sporting bloodshot eyes and tussled hair in a corner of his cell that The Crowbar Hilton Press can now confirm is none other than former MCI Worldcom CEO Bennard Ebbers.
"That's all he fuckin' does anymore and I need some release, dammit. Especially, after all those bastards over in J-block got their cells redecorated and ate fine cuisine when they brought in Martha," he says reffering to Martha Stewart.
During our exclusive interview, guards outside were escorting Tony "Balls" Moscatiello, Anthony "Small Block" Ferrari, Jimmy "The Greek" Fiorillo, and Jack "The Yes Man" Abramoff -- known to the residents of Leavenworth Gated Community as "Jack & The Soprannos" -- past Bubba's cell towards the mess hall. "Oh, I can hardly wait to tap into their fruity asses", Bubba remarks, wiping drool from his bushy red goatee on a thick, tattooed forearm. "I'm going to hit Balls and Small Block first after grub. Sorta break them in. I'm going to save the other two for late tonight. They're special since word on the outs is that Jimmy and Jack live up their handles in more ways than one."
We asked Paris Hilton, owner and CEO of Hilton Enterprises (and parent company of this newspaper) on when to expect the arrival of other convicted felons connected to Jack & The Soprannos such as Billy "The Cat Butcher" Frist, Tommy "The Ticking Termite" DeLay, and Karl "Lovesponge" Rove (to name but a few) and got rebuffed for bothering her during an important shoot for a new Larry Flynt publication.
Last year, The Crowbar Hilton Times won journalistic integrity awards for covering the Paris Hilton Scandal where she was sentanced to a lifetime residency herself for the brutal assault on pop star Britney Spears that has since left the diva bald and blind. President Bush pardoned Hilton so she could assume her duties as CEO of Hilton Enterprises when her parents were killed after their private jet was mistakenly shot down by the NSA for violating Washington D.C airspace months after her setencing. Hilton Enterprises was also awarded a $459 Billion no-bid contract on September 31, 2005 to spruce up the company's multi-national prison farms per the terms of the agreement with The Bush Administration to privatize the nations penal system that came into law via Executive Order on midnight last September 28th -- just hours after The Washington Post reported upon the arrest of Moscatiello, Ferrari, and Fiorillo. The order as well as the no-bid contract sent Democrats seething although the Republican majority within the House & Senate claimed to have no conflict of interest.
Despite the lack of solid information regarding the arrival of the other convicts, Bubba seems non-plussed. "They all comin' here soon. You know, that one shithead Sean Hannity keeps saying that the left is the fault of all their problems, but from own persective, it looks like time itself is the problem of the Republican party. Time catches up to them and before you know it, the crooked sonsabitches arrive here with me . . . and boy am I happy to have them."
The Jeff Gannon Report
c/o The Crowbar Hilton Times
February 18th, 2006
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Under The Weather
Lack of updates here isn't because of lack of things that piss me off. No, I've found plenty and I've made note of them in a "Jots & Jolts" textfile on my desktop. I've been feeling really rotten the last few days because of pinched nerves in my spine and neck which cause frequent pain along with headaches, nausea, and a host of other things. If I had the quid, I'd pay a visit to Dr. Greenier's torture rack. A couple snaps, crackles, and pops and I'd be good as new within 48 hours. I'm loooong overdue (haven't seen the ol' chiropractor since late Spring).
Ugh.
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Judgement of The Dog
Rita Could Equal $5 A Gallon GasWeather and energy experts say that as bad as Hurricane Katrina hit the nation's supply of gasoline, Hurricane Rita could be worse.
Katrina damage was focused on offshore oil platforms and ports. Now the greater risk is to oil-refinery capacity, especially if Rita slams into Houston, Galveston and Port Arthur, Texas.
"We could be looking at gasoline lines and $4 gas, maybe even $5 gas, if this thing does the worst it could do," said energy analyst Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover. "This storm is in the wrong place. And it's absolutely at the wrong time," said Beutel.
Just like they said Katrina detroyed New Orleans because God hated Mardi Gras and their gay pride rallies, I wonder if we can rely on the Tali-Born Again to claim Galveston was detroyed because God hated the Bush Administration's favoritism of rich Republican Exxon-Mobil CEOs over the poor and "underpriveleged" ...
Naaaaah! That would take a fuckin' miracle ...
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The "Pretender" Class Speaks
Sick American Shit:
Fifty percent of those polled said they feared the federal government would spend too much on reconstruction.
Gotta let my heart rule my head here. Hey, assholes -- perhaps you should try putting American lives ahead of your fuckin' wallet for a change. That way, this whole thing about "80% of Americans considering themselves Christian" can actually mean something worth a damn instead of a convenient conversation peice.
Forty-five percent said Americans should make "major sacrifices" to pay for the effort, but only 20 percent said they would be willing to make those sacrifices themselves.
I'll let
Billmon speak for me here.
Seventeen percent said they would be willing to pay higher taxes to support reconstruction efforts, and 15 percent favored financing the cost with more deficit spending. Six percent said they would pay for reconstruction efforts with cuts in domestic spending.
The 17% and the 6% bother the fuck out of me. The former is because it implies that 82% of Americans aren't willing to pay higher taxes to support the efforts. With the deficit this bad, taxes are going to have to be raised anyway so the sooner, the better. Raise them now and tell these people to get the fuck over it. As for the latter, again that's too low as it implies 94% of the people would rather have
$460 Million dollars going to Alaska for two worthless-as-all-hell bridges that only benefit tens of people in a country of almost 300 Million people. If that shit is indeed true, then I'm not going to bother waisting my time, breath, and contribution money running for public office myself in this country despite all the pressure I've been put through over past 10 years because I just simply can't abide but such ridiculous self-indulgent bullshit. There's just no way in either Heaven or Hell that I can compromise my values for that.
You might be thinking, "No big loss, you fartknocker! Considering how you attack and insult the American people on this blog, you wouldn't get elected no how! Christ, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?!?"
My defense is simple: my mother's mouth is worse than mine and I can't remember the last time I let
her kiss
me. Besides, I rather risk insulting the people with the truth and
lose ... than bullshit them with lies and end up winning. I feel the latter is a bigger insult because it mocks their intelligence and allows sanctimonious self-serving politicans to take them for granted and if they're willing to take the people for granted, then they'll take
anything for granted: the U.S. Treasury, our military, everything and anything. Nothing is taboo.
So, it boils down to a values argument -- exactly what in the hell do the people want in terms of leadership in this country? Do they want the truth or a good story. If they want the latter, then they are simply convenient marks for the current crop of carreer politician ear ticklers and, in the end, they'll get what they pay for as they always do. But if they want changes, then they'll have to come to grips with mouthy-assed unapologetic mavericks and, like Harry Truman or the Apostle Paul before me, I'm one mouthy maverick that doesn't require a permission slip from a single soul to call 'em as I see 'em.
This is the way I see them.
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Up In Smoke
What's the tons of
British food aid to Katrina victims about to have in common with the city Atlanta, Georgia?
Incineration.
HUNDREDS of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned.
US red tape is stopping it from reaching hungry evacuees.
Instead tons of the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption.
And unless the bureaucratic mess is cleared up soon it could be sent for incineration.
One British aid worker last night called the move "sickening senselessness" and said furious colleagues were "spitting blood".
It should have them spitting blood. Has me foaming at the mouth as it is and, if the poor folks of New Orleans could get enough to eat down there in first place, they'd be shitting a Scottish Castle in total outrage. What the fuck?!?
The food, which cost British taxpayers millions, is sitting idle in a huge warehouse after the Food and Drug Agency recalled it when it had already left to be distributed.
Scores of lorries headed back to a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dump it at an FDA incineration plant.
The Ministry of Defence in London said last night that 400,000 operational ration packs had been shipped to the US.
But officials blamed the US Department of Agriculture, which impounded the shipment under regulations relating to the import and export of meat.
The aid worker, who would not be named, said: "This is the most appalling act of sickening senselessness while people starve.
It sure is and the reason is because the GOP gets nothing out of it. These poor homeless black people in New Orleans don't have anything to give to the rich, white, Republican "ownership society". There's got to be an independent investigation on everything the Government did post Katrina because this is looking more along the lines of racially and financially motivated genocide. I can just hear Karl Rove muttering in a Col. Klink voice, "Yez, Operation: Starve 'Em Until Zay Zubmit To Zah Might of Herr Leige Lord Bushitler zhould show zem goot, yah?!?". Someone needs to ask Ken Mehlman if this was part of his "minority outreach plan" for the GOP all along ...
"The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are Nato approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq.
"Under Nato, American soldiers are also entitled to eat such rations, yet the starving of the American South will see them go up in smoke because of FDA red tape madness."
Indeed and it's red tape brought to you by a Republican-helmed White House, Republican-helmed Congress, and a Republican-helmed Senate. That's a trifecta. They wanted their fuckin' "ownership society" and Red State America provided it so they should own this and own it with actions; not with lipservice and photo-ops that the Republican-helmed MSM seem to enjoy delivering so much. The entire lot of them are the largest useless shower of corrupt and rotten rat bastards this country has ever seen.
(Hat tip to
DailyKos)
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Operation: "Find Me A Wealthy & White Dead Ol' Boy!!"
Oh, if I was only making
this horseshit up ...
Federal troops aren't the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions' legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky's voice mail: "[Arizona Sen.] Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."
This is just a riot -- Sessions and Kyl have got Apolinsky down there combing New Orleans looking for at least one dead rich white man so they can turn around and make him a victim of that bad ol' estate tax. I never thought the GOP would sink so low to engage in "legislative ambulance chasing" but, of course, when you've got a lameduck
President Potemkin in the White House and expect that large swath of homeless black people to re-implant the left's abandoned spinal collumn in full force (or raise a lot of hell trying), then desperate times call for desperate measures.
For now, getting repeal back on the agenda may depend on Apolinsky and his team of estate-sniffing sleuths, who are searching Internet obituaries among other places. Has he found any victims of both the hurricane and the estate tax? "Not yet," Apolinsky says. "But I'm still looking."
He sure is. Looking for that ever elusive dead rich white Republican to "add perspective" to post-Katrina America. And he has to a white man. Can't be a dead rich Republican black man because they're even more of a scarcity than those whom benefit from repealing the estate tax. Rich dead white men would be easier to find. Also, a dead rich Republican black man would be met with derisive cat calls from the black community who'll accuse the cadaver of selling out in exchange to getting to live in the big house with the slave-masters. So, Apolinsky is definately looking for a dead rich Republican white man in order for the GOP to convince us to feel sorry for him. Sorry enough to repeal the estate tax.
Oh, the burdens of a white man in America.
They're more oppressed than gays and non-fundamentalist Christians.
Boo. Fucking. Hoo.
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Those Who Live In The Dog House ...
In the previous post, I included a quote from Pat Toomey, the head of the Republican Club For Growth (known in my household under the more accurate moniker "Club For Growing The Rich Man's Wallet") and it comes from the
NY Times. It also includes even more sanctimonious hilarity:
One fiscal conservative, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, said Thursday, "I don't believe that everything that should happen in Louisiana should be paid for by the rest of the country. I believe there are certain responsibilities that are due the people of Louisiana."
Ahh, yes, Mr. Coburn, and I assume you'd say the same thing if a such a devestating hurricane left a shitload of
white Republican Red-state voters our of their homes, eh? Or am I the one living in an alternate reality?
"We know this is a huge bill," said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. "We don't want to lay it on future generations." Given the fierce political backlash to the stumbling relief effort in the days after the hurricane struck, House Republican leaders have been reluctant to stand in the way of any emergency legislation. After the speech, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert acknowledged that the price tag means that "for every dollar we spend on this, it is going to take a little bit longer to balance the budget." He said he was willing to listen to ideas to pay for the aid, but, "Quite frankly, we have to get this job done."
Oh, how fucking lovely! Despite the hundreds of billions of tax-payer dollars these asswipes poured into an Iraqi shithole that have made Bechtel, Halliburton, and Exxon-Mobil post windfall profits for the last few quarters, the "ownership society" didn't think balancing the budget was a critical matter until they saw the sea of poor homeless black people in New Orleans that just refused to do the proper American thing and drown. Quietly.
"Katrina breaks my heart," said Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana and chairman of a caucus of more than 100 House Republicans who advocate conservative spending policy. "Congress must do everything the American people expect us to do to meet the needs of families and communities affected by Katrina. But we must not let Katrina break the bank for our children and grandchildren."
Yeah, Katrina breaks his heart because instead of that $62 Billion going to rich white Republican cronies at Shaw Group and Blackwater or a
certain white Floridian Republican journalist, it's going to a swath of homeless, poor, black people that don't vote Republican and have no money to contribute to Republican causes.
They have no right to complain. The Republican "ownership society" has been living in the spending dog house writing blank checks that our children and grandchildren will be paying every since September 12th, 2001 and now suddenly want to bitch about the fleas. Fuck these cantankerous Republican bastards and the rebuilt Trent Lott porch they're dreaming of having photo-ops on.
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Got Some New Duds
As you can see, the better part of the morning was spent detailing TBT's interior. All duct taped together and ready to roll. Fuckin' with blog templates are a pain in the ass because you've got to get all the shit working properly between HTML, Java, and Blogger's own tags along with Haloscan and, in the entire process, I ended up busting some things that I am at a loss as to how I busted them in the first place and they'll probably stay busted. Drunk? I wish! No, I was sober. Hey, maybe that's why things are busted around here. As least with the makeover out of the way, the jump to the new Blogspot addy should happen later this evening (see previous post).
Also, around Midnight local time, I've got something in the can that's sure to piss you off as much as does me. Here's a taste:
"There has never been a time where there is more total spending and more wasteful spending in Washington than we have today," said Pat Toomey, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania and the head of the conservative Club for Growth. "There is ample opportunity to find the offsets we need so that this does not have to be a fiscal disaster as well as a natural disaster."
What a complete and total fuckwad he is. Can you believe this shit? The Republican chair for the Club for Growth is just now crawling out of the goddamned woodwork to complain about the spending his own "ownership society" has done over the past 5 years. Gee, you don't think a bunch of displaced and homeless black people in New Orleans had anything to do with the change in his "compassionate conservative" heart, eh? Fuck, if this asshole keels over before the Veep does, Dick Cheney has the perfect donor for open heart surgery so he himself can live another 40 years.
The source to that quote and more after midnight tonight.
UPDATE: The jump is post-poned. TBT is staying at the current URL.
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Something Got Lost In The Translation
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and reading reports that Bush has handed "Operation: Damage Control" over to Karl Rove and his connections within the MSM, I've come to the conclusion The United States is run by and propped up by a large swath of fuckin' pretenders. Just a bunch of useless bastards who hee-haw around pretending they're something they really aren't while taking the rest of humanity for a ride. This is followed by the net-slueths of left blogostan of which TBT is a part of ... but no longer.
Why?
Because I realized that I no longer know what the truth is anymore. I can no longer make heads or tails of what the fuck is going on in this world and Katrina has made me realize that since I started this blog, I'm probably one of the biggest pretenders out there. Let's face it, between the blogs I've got on my blogroll that do an awesome job in exposing the pretenders, the liars, the crooks, and the thieves in their own right, there's no reason for TBT in its current form. None. The mere prescense of this rag of mine has been nothing more than a "me too" blog and there's a sea of them out there. Much like most of this country didn't know just how subliminally racist they were being pre-Katrina, I myself didn't know just how pathetically unoriginal and "more par for the left wing Blogistan course" that TBT is in the leftwing blogosphere ... and there's only one bastard responsible for that.
Me.
I can't be John Amato. I can't be Kos. I can't be Atrios. I can't be Aravosis. So why the fuck have I been pretending to be like them since January? I didn't know and didn't realize it until Post-Katrina despite that pretending to be like them was never the goddamned intention when I moved TBT to blog format in the first place. In fact, I never even knew who the hell they were as my blog intake was limited to just Billmon -- a guy who is just as cynical as I am (they say misery loves company). Nevertheless, I can't be them because they've got something that is foreign to me and my style -- some sense of restraint. I spent some quality time staring at the old TBT and reading my last update there just before the War on Terror. As I'm reading, the nostalgia comes over me. That little corner on Fyremoon has some long and pleasant memories for me. In fact, I don't recall ever having a dull moment there. I connected deeply with what I wrote. That piece along with the 8 years worth of previous rants and tangents I uploaded on a weekly basis either at Fyremoon or GeoCities back in the day was raw. Just simply 110% my heart, my blood, and my soul. Not Kos, No Aravosis. Totally my unrestrained self unlike the bullshit that's here ...
But I now beleive that even if it weren't for the Post-Katrina news orgy, I'd be doing nothing more than continuing the self-deception; the "pretending", and the material will just be more shit heaped upon shit. If I'm not connecting with it even though I'm the author of the sonofabitch, then that speaks volumes. That's perspective ... perspective that I've lotst with this blog since around April/May. But most important of all is when I read DailyKOS, AmericaBlog, Crooks&Liars, and the others, I myself am confronted with the truth, and as Aldous Huxley said "Ye shall know the truth and it shall make you mad" and that's exactly what happens. I sit here and fucking stew, broil, rant, and bitch in my computer chair about what those guys tell me about the world and the country I'm living in instead of giving it to you, the readers, and by the time I'm done reading my "Recommended Daily Blog Allowance", I'm way beyond pissed -- I'm goddamned livid and I try to relieve stress by doing something other than blowing off some steam on here. I want to take my mind off it. I want to turn away. As a result, TBT gets maybe one post a week and the posts are nothing more than my analysis of another blogger's analysis instead of that raw, heartfelt, passionate bitching and snarkery that I myself loved about the old TBT. And by the time I calm down and post an update here, the anger has waned, the mind is much calmer, and the muse is gone. In the past, anger was motivation enough but for some reason since making the jump to blog format, it wasn't motivation for me to unload and maybe it's because somewhere in my conscience I feared rejection among peers and other bloggers for doing so if they so happen to come by. That is what really got lost in the translation from old-school TBT to this.
Not anymore.
You want me to prove it?
In my last update, I said:
America, your President and his "ownership society" hates poor non-Republican minorities.
I held back when I wrote that. I said that instead of saying what I really wanted to say and I'm going to say it now:
THE "OWNERSHIP SOCIETY" HATES NIGGERS!
They've hated niggers ever since Lincoln removed their chains and set them free, which lead to the Civil War in the first goddamned place. They've hated niggers since an certain uppity one named Rosa Parks stood up and said, "I'm not movin'!" They've hated niggers ever since some of them got uppity enough to try and excercise their right to vote in 2000, spuring James "Fuck The Jews" Baker into action for the Bush team. They hated niggers again last November for the very same reason but the difference is it only spurred that sorry wife of Tom Noe to enlist a Motley Crue of Freepers in Ohio and go about harrassing voting precincts in the parts of Ohio that were predominately black.
Now, at the risk of getting tarred and feathered by others who may say that I'm playing the race card, I say BULLSHIT because I've said it once back in the day at the old TBT and it's needs to be repeated again: As long as a white, rich, Republican draws oxygen in this country, then the race card is always in play. Ignoring it doesn't the change the fact that it's sitting right there face up on the euchre kitty looking up at you saying, "Wazzap, you whitebread, cracker-ass, graymeat, honky mahfuckah!?!?" That's one thing that didn't get lost in the translation of Post-Katrina America.
As for me, Monday begins a true return to form. That's right, kiddies. The Professional Asshole is back with the old-style TBT in tow. No shark, but plenty of snark. I intend to change the URL address here from "psychosy.blogspot.com" to "tbt" or "sizemore" if it's available on Blogger as well as spiff up the look. Daily updates, too, will be the norm because everyday I'm guaranteed to read something that pisses me off. Also, I hope to get some official TBT merch on deck -- t-shirts, mugs, CDs of unblogged material, and all the fixuns soon after. That all begins Monday so make notes now or your may find this place blank after I've made the jump.
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America Needs A Plunger ...
After the last few days of combing other blogs and clicking various media websites they link to, I think I know what's going on here with the Bush Administration and it hails from the very bowels of Straussian philosophy: there is both a "public" version of their position and a more "private" version of their position and the "private" version is something The Bush Administation can't afford for the public to realize because it'll blow all of their asses out of the water. The "private" version has been alluded to in the Press and the 24/7 news, but in a carefull way as to not offend the viewer. By doing this, the Bush Administration is banking on the fact that those media ventures that are alluding adroitly to the "private" version can be easily dismissed as being "typically liberal".
That shit isn't going to fly here because I'm going to call the "private" version of their position by using simple, honest, direct words -- words that the Press wouldn't dare use. Before that happens, let's try to wrap our heads around the "Public" version, which is the Bush Administration, FEMA, and the DHS is trying to their damndest to pin all the incompetence and blame on the local figures, predominately Gov. Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Nagin. The problem is they're lying like hell -- you've watched the lies unfold on national TV, and read it from the same exact blogs (and then some) on my Blogroll to the left as well as from any print media. You've also seen, heard, and read all the contradictions that are being unearthed on the hour by the very same media and blog sources. Lastly, you've been reading, watching, and listening to report after report of general incompetence. Let's take a look at some of most recent lies, contradictions, and reports of incompetence.
First one comes from The Chicago Tribune under the "General Incompetence" banner where a NAVY ship in the Gulf of Mexico rode out Katrina and then awaited orders to help with the aide and rescue efforts:
The USS Bataan, a 844-foot ship designed to dispatch Marines in amphibious assaults, has helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and water. It also can make its own water, up to 100,000 gallons a day. And it just happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina came roaring ashore.
The Bataan rode out the storm and then followed it toward shore, awaiting relief orders. Helicopter pilots flying from its deck were some of the first to begin plucking stranded New Orleans residents.
But now the Bataan's hospital facilities, including six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients, are empty. A good share of its 1,200 sailors could also go ashore to help with the relief effort, but they haven't been asked. The Bataan has been in the stricken region the longest of any military unit, but federal authorities have yet to fully utilize the ship.
Captain ready, waiting
"Could we do more?" said Capt. Nora Tyson, commander of the Bataan. "Sure. I've got sailors who could be on the beach plucking through garbage or distributing water and food and stuff. But I can't force myself on people.
"We're doing everything we can to contribute right now, and we're ready. If someone says you need to take on people, we're ready. If they say hospitals on the beach can't handle it ... if they need to send the overflow out here, we're ready. We've got lots of room."
FEMA's orders? "Fuck New Orleans!"Then the Bataan was ordered to move to the waters off Biloxi, Miss., and LCU-1656 was ordered to return. The landing craft was 40 miles from New Orleans, but it wouldn't be able to deliver its cargo.
"It was a disappointment," Fish said. "I figured we would be a big help in New Orleans. We've got electricity, and the police could have charged up their radios. We've got water, toilets. We've got food."
Also under the "Incompetence" banner comes this report where there's only one single paragraph worth giving a damn about:A convoy of food and supplies provided by Hyatt hotels in Atlanta and Houston arrived at Hyatt Regency New Orleans on Wednesday of this week.
This is worth giving a damn about because it busts The Bush Administration, FEMA, and the DHS in another incident of incompetence for why is it that they were not to able to get food, supplies, and other Federal relief efforts down there to save New Orleans as early as Wednesday -- TWO DAYS AFTER KATRINA HIT -- when the Hyatt Corporation had no problems at all redistributing resources from Atlanta and Houston to their hotel in New Orleans? The Hyatt Corporation was ready to save lives on WEDNESDAY while Bush was still on vacation and FEMA was doing nothing but tossing empty promises -- empty promises that directly resulted in a drowning death as told to us by a very upset Aaron Broussard, President of the Jefferson Parish of LA in a video of NBC's "Meet The Press" (a very tough video to watch). The answer, of course, is Bush Administration cronyism -- both Chertoff and Brown were appointed to their positions not because of skill or experience; but because they were friends of George W. Bush and, as friends, they're going to protect Bush every step of the way, including passing the buck and lying. Of course, we knew cronyism was the Bush Administration's forte long before Katrina, especially with defense contracts awarded to their favorite companies such as this courtesy of the Houston Chronicle:The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.
KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. The company is not involved in the Army Corps of Engineers' effort to repair New Orleans' levees.
Apparently, Dick Cheney's former company hasn't made enough money bilking the tax-payers in the guise of the "War on Terror" and will bilk them further thanks to the NAVY. But it isn't cronyism that has Chicago mayor Daley fuming mad. Once again, it is incompetence on the part of FEMA/DHS who rejected Chicago's generosity:A visibly angry Mayor Daley said the city had offered emergency, medical and technical help to the federal government as early as Sunday to assist people in the areas stricken by Hurricane Katrina, but as of Friday, the only things the feds said they wanted was a single tank truck.
That truck, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency requested to support an Illinois-based medical team, was en route Friday.
"We are ready to provide more help than they have requested. We are just waiting for their call," said Daley, adding that he was "shocked" that no one seemed to want the help.
...
Daley said the city offered 36 members of the firefighters' technical rescue teams, eight emergency medical technicians, search-and-rescue equipment, more than 100 police officers as well as police vehicles and two boats, 29 clinical and 117 non-clinical health workers, a mobile clinic and eight trained personnel, 140 Streets and Sanitation workers and 29 trucks, plus other supplies. City personnel are willing to operate self-sufficiently and would not depend on local authorities for food, water, shelter and other supplies, he said.
Mayor Daley is just one person among a long, long line of concerned people both rich and poor, foreign and domestic, that have had their help and generosity turned away by Bush and the incompetent bureacracies of FEMA and the DHS over the past few days but, then again, that's to be expected when Bush is so full of pride and vain arrogance that can't risk being shown up by anyone and FEMA Director Robert Brown was shitcanned from his previous job for being as much of an "unmitigated, total disaster" to the International Arabian Horse Association as hurricane Katrina was to the cities of New Orleans and Biloxi.
As a result, all three groups -- FEMA, the DHS, and the Bush Administration -- are working overtime to spin the incompetence onto the local figures instead of themselves. Another article by the WaPo does a great job of busting them in the lies and spin as well as peeling more of the incompetence onion, especially the one most of the Freepers and Bush loyalists keep ranting about: that the DHS didn't absolve local agencies from their responsibility ...From the day [the DHS] came into existence on March 1, 2003, the department of 180,000 employees and a nearly $40 billion annual budget was tasked by a presidential directive with developing a comprehensive new plan for disasters. The National Response Plan was supposed to supersede the confusing overlay of federal, state and local disaster plans, and to designate a "principal officer in the event of an incident of national significance." An accompanying new National Incident Management System would integrate all the cascades of information.
In that quote is that damnable word "supersede", which means to preempt, override, and/or replace something antiquated and obsolete. In other words, Bush created the DHS and brought FEMA under its umbrella to develope and depoly THE measuring stick of responding to a national crisis -- whether it's another terrorist attack or a natural disaster like a hurricane -- and to be the primary agency responsible for those actions. Therefore, as Larry C. Johnson points on in detail, all the spin from the Bush Administration, Chertoff, Brown, and the diehard loyalists regarding the brunt of the responsibility falling at the Local instead of Federal is blatant scapegoating. Bush created this "Big Daddy" beauracracy for the American people to rely on from day one... and it failed miserably. Now their trying to save face by lying and shirking that responsibility as Chertoff goes on the Press Conference circuit repeating the lie that he nor anyone else anticpated the levees breaking as well as the lie about him not knowing about the hundreds of thousands of survivors in the Superdome without food and water as we see here from Dr. Max Mayfield, Director of the National Hurricane Center:Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told the Times-Picayune Sunday afternoon that officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, including FEMA Director Mike Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, listened in on electronic briefings given by his staff in advance of Hurricane Katrina slamming Louisiana and Mississippi--and were advised of the storm’s potential deadly effects.
So much for that "we never anticipated/knew" excuse ...
I don't know if any other blog is catching this or not but I believe what's going on here through the sea of lies and instance upon instance of incompetence and arrogance on the parts of Bush, Chertoff, and Brown is the same old Rovian media game where the Bush Adminstation's players deliberately say one thing, do the other, spin like pinwheels when their hypocritical lies and inconsistancy is given sunshine and shoved in their faces by what little courage remains in the MSM, and this sets off the domino effect of outrage between political party lines where ultimately -- ultimately -- the usually free-thinking moderates that really make-up the majority in this country are hit with such a blitzkrieg of information and contradictions that they get frustrated trying to sort through it all and their minds give up. They furiously turn off the news, the bloggers, etc. and instead pop in a DVD, play a little Tiger Woods on their PC, or pluck a couple of spines in Mortal Kombat: Deception just to get away from the din. As a result, the for-profit corporate media loses their Neilsen spikes and migrate back to the tried-and-true formula of shark attacks and runaway brides to win 'em back. As always been the case the last 5 years that this game has been played, the players in the Bush Administration dodge the bullet that would otherwise tear an IED-sized hole into more competent administrations in history's memory hole -- including Reagan.
They're acting like as if the entire state of Louisianna seceded from the Union the moment Katrina made landfall. Bush knows he's lying. Chertoff knows he lying. Brown knows he's lying. And they're all banking on the media frenzy to desensitize the people into a bubble of apathy. VIOLA! Accountability takes another vacation.
It's deplorable since we're witnessing two distinct clashes of mentality here among the local and federal figures. On one side, we've got the September 10th mentality and on the other the September 12th mentality and, the way I see it, the September 10th mentality is being displayed the most by the Bush Administration, Brown, Chertoff, and their loyal spindoctors for it was Bush and the Republican "ownership society" that created these very bureacracies and then marketed them to the American people as THE responsible agencies we can rely on and take charge in a post-9/11 America. But now that the incompetence and lies have been exposed, they want to backpedal on that whole idea of Americans relying on their creations by deflecting blame & responsibility in a furious attempt to avoid accountability (I would've said "vain attempt" there but, with our media, that remains to be seen whether or not that's accurate).
That's the "public" version of the Bush Administration's standpoint and the kicker is the Rovian game I outlined isn't the "private" version at all. Far from it -- the Rovian media game is out there in the forefront dancing along with the "public" version, functioning as the shadow to it all like a caricature of Fred Astaire and, when we watch Fred Astaire in those classic movies, our attention is on him and his elegance and grace instead of the shadow on the fuckin' ballroom floor where it should be with this sorry-assed administration and its corrupt-as-all-hell GOP "ownership society".
And yet off to the side of that ballroom is the "private" version of the Bush Adminstration's standpoint that only Jack Cafferty could merely allude to it because calling it by name would have been as too much for CNN as Kayne West was too much for NBC. Time and time again, it has brayed for attention and the nation gave it none. It brayed during Election 2000 with the mess in Florida, brayed yet again almost year ago in Ohio during the 2004 Election, and is braying much louder now because a crying Geraldo Rivera held it front the cameras the other night on FNC in front of millions of viewers the world over while yelling, "LOOK AT THIS!!" over and over. America, your President and his "ownership society" hates poor non-Republican minorities. That's the "private" standpoint and it can no longer be denied. The "Culture of Life" has transmogrified into the "Culture of Fuck 'Em Because They Don't Vote For Us Anyway!" Afterall, they made it near impossible for them to vote in 2000. They made it near impossible for them to vote in 2004. Now, they're making it near impossible for them in New Orleans to even live. And it's no cliche to say that last week will live in infamy in our history books. It's the week where every single toilet in Washington DC backed up, giving us all a strong whiff of what we're paying for.
NOTE: This post could've not have been possible without the fine job of just about every single blog on my blogroll as well as the two new comers -- Daily Dissent and No Quarter. I've watched these two blogs over the past few months and have come to love their work as much as the usual suspects (e.g. AmericaBlog, Daily Kos, C&L, Billmon, etc.) and in no way can this wrag of mine can ever reach the sheer levels of determination and dedication to the American people they show every hour on the hour. Their coverage is just undisputable and it is their excellent work that was the inspiration for dragging me away from the last week of carnage long enough to put something on this blog that's hopefully worth a damn (I lost all sense of perspective myself around the 3rd paragraph).
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Going From Worse To FUCK ME RUNNIN'!
Chief Justice Rehnquist is dead.Tommorow, God willing, CNN will announce the death of Pat Robertson and a few million Fundy Fristians who are no doubt dragging out the moonshine jugs full of snake venom as I type this.
(Note: I'll comment on New Orleans as soon as I can wrap my head around it all. It'll be long. It'll be controversial. And I will not apologize for the content of it. People who don't like what I've got to say can feel free to leave TBT and never come back).
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