This is looking worse and worse. We might lose a complete city tomorrow. I will have all the disaster relief info I can find up tomorrow. For now, cross your fingers.
Katrina
by John Cole| 22 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
by John Cole| 22 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
This is looking worse and worse. We might lose a complete city tomorrow. I will have all the disaster relief info I can find up tomorrow. For now, cross your fingers.
by John Cole| 25 Comments
This post is in: Popular Culture
What did you all think of HBO’s new series Rome?
by John Cole| 59 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I just heard on the news that some people are refusing to evacuate New Orleans. This can’t be true, can it?
I understand some people can’t be evacuated. But refusing to leave?
BTW- In the aftermath of the hurricane, when Bush goes to Louisiana, who do you think will be the first to say ‘Bush will take time from his vacation to see these victims, but he won’t take time from his vacation to meet Cindy Sheehan, a victim of his policies?’
Your choices:
1.) Someone at the DU.
2.) Someone at dKos.
3.) A front pager at dKos.
4.) Some random blogger.
5.) Someone at the Camp Crawford circus.
6.) Cynthia McKinney.
After further thought, my guess is someone at the HuffPo.
*** Update ***
The natives are restless and cussing out Fox News.
*** Update ***
Who will be the first to blame this on the nation’s moral slide?
by John Cole| 3 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
There is now a Mrs. Belgravia Dispatch.
by John Cole| 93 Comments
This post is in: Politics, General Stupidity
I know this puts me firmly at odds with the vast majority of those of you reading this, and with probably the vast majority of the American public, but I hate protests/rallies, regardless the topic. And that means election rallies, anti-abortion/pro-abortion, etc. All of them.
I just don’t like them. I don’t trust groups of people gathered together all inflamed about an issue, I don’t think anyone ever has their minds changed by protests/tallies, I don’t like how they are stage-managed, I don’t like how they reduce complicated positions to stupid slogans, I don’t like how the hotheads are the most prevalent (they should be at home banging out stuff on silly websites like Balloon Juice), I don’t like the way people treat each other at rallies, I don’t like all the hysterical and breathless news coverage, I don’t like the way the police always seem to get involved, I d0n’t like the way they ruin the lives of the people who are unfortunate enough to live where the masses end up, I don;t like any of it.
And yes, this is where some knucklehead tells me I am wrong because without civil rights marches, yadda, yadda, yadaa. Fine, I will make one exception. But other than that, I don’t like ’em.
At any rate, exhibit A in why I don’t like rallies/protests is the current spectacle in Crawford. As an example of everything I don’t like, we have this clown running around with a sign that says “How to wreck your fmaily in 30 Days by the Bitch in the Ditch.” At least the Freeperati confronted him.
For my money, that may be the most offensive thing I have seen yet (even topping the cynical ‘memorial’ of all the crosses at Camp Crawford, including even the jackass who ran his truck through them).
So there you have it. I hate America. But what do you expect when you have a faction of anti-war protesters galvanized with neo-Nazi’s and parents of dead soldiers against the war fighting against a group of ‘pro-war’ supporters with freepers and parents of dead soldiers who support the war? This is exactly the type of ugliness I expected and predicted.
*** Update ***
Apparently, Bill Ardolino hates America too:
don’t think that the most vitriolic scenes that I witnessed that Sunday were in any way representative of mainstream opinion on either side of the debate. Upon reflection, it was typical mob behavior, as the most ignorant and nasty elements of the crowd fed off of the general mass of chattering, negative energy and lashed out at their opponents. Whether it’s a gathering of 50 or 500,000, the trend is clear: nuts always come out to protest.
I guess it’s just a little depressing when you witness how many nuts there really are …
*** Update ***
I better update this before I make Armando blow a gasket or make the baby Jesus cry. I don’t think Mother Sheehan and her anti-war crowd are aligned with neo-Nazi’s, I think they are spouting some of the same anti-Israel claptrap and the neo-Nazi’s and David Duke have seized upon the protest to push their sick agenda, and they are all against Bush and this war (or, as I stated before, galvanized: To arouse to awareness or action). Just so we are clear, and I don’t have some idiot running around claiming I think Cndy Sheehan is a neo-Nazi. At any rate, I still hate protests and rallies because neo-Nazi’s and all sorts of folks like them are always drawn to them.
by John Cole| 17 Comments
A pretty decent story (albeit depressing) about the troubles faced in training Iraqi troops:
American Sgt. LaDaunte Strickland, sweat pouring down his face, stared at the four Iraqi soldiers sitting in the shade of a truck.
They were supposed to be helping Strickland and a group of U.S. Marines man a vehicle-control point, a basic operation in which troops hope to catch insurgents at traffic stops they set up quickly on the roadsides.
“Come on. Come on! Get up,” said Strickland, 30, of Cleveland, stabbing a cigar in the air to make his point. “Damn, will you PLEASE get up!”
The Iraqis didn’t stir. Without an interpreter – a common occurrence – the Iraqis didn’t understand Strickland, no matter how loud he got…
The Iraqi National Guard, heralded last year as the answer to security in the area, has been disbanded because morale was low and insurgents had infiltrated it. The old national guard trucks, with their blue emblems, now sit rusting. As with the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, the predecessor to the national guard, American officials say the new Iraqi army and police will establish security in places such as Anbar.
However, the police force has collapsed in Ramadi, the provincial capital. Two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – a total of 12,000 men – are to establish security, but so far only 2,000 are available, and half of them lack basic training.
Hit, a city of 130,000, has no police force. North of Hit, in Haditha – near the site of attacks that killed 20 Marines this month – the police chief handed over all the patrol cars to the Marines in January.
“He said, “We can’t protect these anymore,'” said Maj. Plauche St. Romain, the head intelligence officer for the Marine battalion that oversees Haditha, Haqlaniya and Hit. “He turned in the uniforms and (armor) vests, too.”
That police chief was assassinated in April.
Read it all.
by John Cole| 7 Comments
This post is in: Politics
Jeffrey Rosen has the the premium space at the NYT Magazine this week, and he has some advice for Democrats and Republicans who will question Judge Roberts:
But in the case of Supreme Court nominees, looking backward may not be the most reliable way to predict the future. During William Rehnquist’s confirmation hearings, first as a nominee for associate justice in 1971 and then for chief justice in 1986, the discussion focused heavily on a memo he wrote as a law clerk that seemed to question the soundness of Brown v. Board of Education. By expending so much of their energy on the issue of segregation, the senators asked little, in the end, about the issue that would come to define the Rehnquist court — the relationship between the federal and state governments.
To judge from comments in the press from Senate Judiciary Committee members, the same sort of myopia may characterize the Roberts hearings. That would represent a missed opportunity: in the next 10 or 15 years, as technology and science continue to advance and America’s demographic profile continues to change, the Supreme Court will, in all likelihood, be asked to decide a fascinating array of divisive issues that are now only dimly on the horizon…
As Congress and the states pass legislation to address a host of futuristic issues, from the genetic enhancement of children to the use of brain scanning to identify criminal suspects, the laws will inevitably be challenged in court, raising novel and surprising questions about how to interpret our constitutional rights to privacy, equality and free expression. Rather than focusing on Roberts’s past, the senators questioning him might get a better sense of his future on the Supreme Court by imagining the issues of the next generation.
He has a point, and the entire article is well worth a read.