The Joker and the Penguin

Dependable Renegade

The Joker and the Penguin

share a lighthearted moment before the swearing in of Gollum as Chief Justice.


AP/Charles Dhaparak

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

The Last Passion of the Democratic Party

In June of 1964, three civil rights workers -- one black and two Jewish white young men -- didn't have any naive notions that Philadelphia, Mississippi, practiced brotherly love as allegedly did its Pennsylvania counterpart. On the 21st of that month, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman -- all in their early 20s -- traveled to the "Mississippi Philadelphia" to investigate the burning of a black church by the revived Ku Klux Klan.

In a conspiracy between the local sheriff and the Klan, the three were arrested on a trumped up charge, and released after local law enforcement notified a mob of white males as to which road the three would be riding out of town on. As Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman approached an intersection, they were dragged from their car and brutally murdered. Ironically, this past June, "Forty-one years to the day after three civil rights workers were ambushed and killed by a Ku Klux Klan mob, a jury found former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen guilty on three counts of manslaughter."

The murders of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman in a summer that was a racial tinderbox for America, along with the bombing of a church that killed young black girls, set the civil rights movement aflame. As a result of the segregationist, anti-democracy actions of self-styled saviors of the white Christian southern lifestyle, America was about to finally fully emancipate itself. The vision of a democracy that belonged to every citizen of the United states -- regardless of race, creed or color -- was to belatedly become law as Lyndon Johnson, a gnarly, old school Texan Southern Democrat -- who somehow had truly been touched by the injustice of racism -- embraced a new guarantee of equality for every American.

It was, perhaps, the last time that the Democratic Party leadership stood passionately behind an issue that was integral to the preservation of the goals and grandeur of our revolutionary heritage -- and to the promise of our Constitution and democracy. Some southern Democrats dragged their feet, as did some northern lunch bucket mayors, but the party as a whole put its soul and its conviction behind the notion that all Americans are created equal and each one is entitled to one vote, to a quality education, and to equal opportunity.

For Democrats, it was a tense, but proud period. They had the law, the Constitution, and righteousness on their side. The hymn, "We Shall Overcome," became the rallying song for a generation that was motivated by the notion that America's greatness resided in the legal and equal rights it bestowed on all its citizens, not just the self-appointed few.

To those who say that the movement against the Vietnam War equally evidenced the last great passionate success of the Democrats, remember that the War was escalated by a Democratic President (the same Lyndon Johnson) -- and that many Democrats jumped to Nixon because Hubert Humphrey started talking about peace in the closing days of the 1968 campaign. The Vietnam War caused a split among the Democrats in a way that the Iraq War has now (at least among Democratic elected officials; the mainstream Democrats stand pretty solidly opposed to the Baghdad fiasco). It's worth remembering that Nixon trounced an eminently wise World War II hero, George McGovern, largely because McGovern was a peace candidate.

And so that brings us back to the historical significance of Philadelphia, Mississippi, in representing the last great passion of the Democrats. It seems that since the civil rights movement, the Democrats have been playing a defensive game of politics, letting the Republicans define the terms of the debate. Yet, ironically, it is the success of the civil rights movement that proves passion, commitment, and hard work can achieve goals and preserve democracy. The Democrats won the civil rights battle because they fought -- and died -- for what they believed in. They didn't wait to read the latest polls.

Conviction can move mountains; it can make the dreams of a Martin Luther King Jr. come true; it can change the attitudes of millions of Americans and appeal to their higher sense of fairness and decency. But if you don't have conviction, you can't have passion -- and if you don't have passion, you're just sitting in the shadow of those who do. Unfortunately, this means that the right wing's passion marginalizes most of the Democrats in Congress into insignificant timid back benchers.

Through a sadly ironic series of circumstances, the editor of BuzzFlash.com found himself in the middle of the dusty town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, in August of this summer. The small city apparently hadn't changed much since the early '60s. Three young white women in a coffee shop all appeared perplexed when we asked them where Railroad Avenue was. (In fact, one claimed not to even notice it as she held a map with the town's few streets just inches from her face.) None of them said that they knew, even though you could drive through the entire town while blinking.

Why didn't they "know"? Well, we can only speculate. But the answer may be in the response an auto repair shop owner told the BuzzFlash editor's wife when she subsequently asked where Railroad Avenue was. "Why would you want to go there?" he asked her. "That just leads to the black section of town. There is a feed lot up there though. Are you looking for the feed lot?"

Actually, we were looking for the Mt. Nebo Missionary Baptist Church. According to a pamphlet put together by Neshoba County (in which Philadelphia, MS, is located), "When the civil rights workers first came to Philadelphia, Mt. Nebo was the only church that would allow C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality) to hold mass meetings to register people to vote. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a memorial service at Mt. Nebo two years after the slayings [of the three civil rights workers]." In front of the modest church is a tombstone memorial to Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. The church was within walking distance of Railroad Avenue.

We had stopped in Philadelphia, after dropping our son off at college in New Orleans, a week before Katrina hit. He left within five days with his roommates. The poor, mostly black, weren't so lucky. The Busheviks and FEMA were merely carrying on the spirit of Philadelphia, MS (circa 1964) -- -- swirled together with a giant dose of incompetence -- when they abandoned the Crescent City for four days.

And local bigots, like the Gretna police who wouldn't let blacks walk across the Mississippi River bridge to safety, reminded us that the Southern Strategy that has been the underpinning of the Republican Party since Nixon was elected is, ironically, largely a reaction to the implementation of the voting and civil rights acts in the '60s. The white Christian males never forgave or forgot the outrage of patriotic Americans over vile acts like the murders that took place on Highway 19 South, as Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner sought safety. Remember the code word of "States Rights"? After all, it was in Philadelphia, Mississippi, that Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 presidential campaign -- and he wasn't there to memorialize the civil rights workers.

Maybe it began with Rosa Parks. Maybe it began when the Daughters of the American Revolution wouldn't let Marian Anderson sing in their Washington, D.C., Hall in the first part of the last century. Maybe it began when Lincoln ended the hideous practice of one person owning the life of another. Maybe it became a thunderstorm of righteousness when Martin Luther King Jr. preached Biblical, stirring words of emancipation, freedom, and equality.

The Democratic Party knew that the time had come to choose the fork in the road that led to justice -- and they embraced it, fought for it, died for it, and didn't let up until they had achieved their goal.

It was the last great passion of the Democratic Party. America is a better nation for it.

Maybe the Democrats are like the Jews who wandered for 40 years in the desert with Moses before arriving at the Promised Land. Maybe, someday, the Democratic leadership will re-find their passion and their conviction.

In the meantime, we wait -- and it's terribly, terribly painful.

Democracy is the greatest experiment in government, a gift to all who are privileged to be Americans, and it faces a dire threat.

If this does not provoke passion, what will?

An eye studies a self-contained ecosystem in which every organism feeds on another, or its waste products. All this sealed globe needs to sustain it is light, so that the plant can produce oxygen. It is like a mini-Earth. (©Maximillian Schneider)

NYTimes(subscription)

---

September 29, 2005

Blood on Their Hands

By BOB HERBERT

The special House committee investigating the government's response to the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe (sometimes known as the Committee to Keep the Heat Off Bush) gave a good thrashing on Tuesday to Michael Brown, the terminally hapless former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

At the moment, nothing's safer politically in the U.S. than pounding the heck out of Brownie. But pummeling a scapegoat, even one as mouthwateringly tempting as the spectacularly clueless Mr. Brown, will not get us closer to understanding the monumental breakdown of government that contributed mightily to one of the greatest tragedies in American history.

For that we need a highly respected and truly independent commission that is willing to root out all the facts, no matter how embarrassing to the people in power, and lay out a reasonable plan for the future. The Bush administration wants no part of that.

On this issue, the American people should take a stand. Government at all levels failed the city of New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast, and many died as a result. This was a widely predicted tragedy, and still it was allowed to happen. The mayor of New Orleans, a Democrat by the name of Ray Nagin, should have known better than anyone else in the country that a large portion of his city's population would be unable to evacuate on their own because they didn't have money, or they didn't have cars, or they didn't have a place to go, or they were just too ill to move. He failed in his obligation to them.

Make no mistake: government officials have blood on their hands. Men, women and children - some of them handicapped, some of them elderly or already desperately ill - were condemned to horrible suffering and, in many cases, agonizing deaths. Human beings were left to drown in their flooded homes, in hospitals, in nursing homes and in the street. The American people deserve to know why.

Even as the tragedy was unfolding, carried live on television screens across the U.S. and around the world, President Bush declined to intervene in a timely and effective way. Had he acted promptly, he no doubt could have saved some lives. But he didn't. His inaction seemed both inexplicable and unforgivable, and would certainly be a main focus of an independent investigation.

The Times reported yesterday that even the Louisiana National Guard was unprepared to carry out its Hurricane Katrina mission. Hampered from the start by a shortage of troops and crucial equipment because of the deployment of Guard members in Iraq, commanders saw the situation go from bad to much, much worse when floodwaters overwhelmed their Jackson Barracks headquarters, which is in a low-lying section of New Orleans, downriver from the French Quarter.

Despite clear warnings that the hurricane might be disastrous, the Guard's commanders had not considered moving their vulnerable headquarters. When the flooding hit, chaos ensued. Commanders became preoccupied with salvaging what they could and rescuing soldiers who could not swim. Operations were then moved by boat and helicopter to the Superdome.

Televised hearings on matters of great national interest can bring out the worst in Congressional committee members. They tend to behave like actors at a casting call. It's all about them. This is a matter too grave and too complex to be investigated by the perpetually partisan, hey-look-at-me crowd on Capitol Hill. (The special House committee is primarily a Republican show. The Democrats, with a couple of exceptions, are boycotting it.)

President Bush, whose poor judgment gave us Mr. Brown as the head of FEMA, wants nothing more than a whitewash of his administration's role in the debacle. Back on Sept. 6, with criticism coming at him from all directions, he said, "What I intend to do is lead a - to lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong."

We already know what went right. Very little. What is needed now are the findings and the learned counsel of a bipartisan group of distinguished, sincere and dedicated individuals who are capable of keeping the best interests of the people of the United States in mind.

Terrorism remains an enormous threat - the No. 1 threat - to the U.S. The tragically inept response to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath (and the enormous difficulties encountered in the evacuation ahead of Hurricane Rita) tells us the nation is far from prepared to successfully meet that threat.

"I'm George W. Bush."

According to reports, President Bush may be drinking again. And I thought, "Well, why not? He's got everybody else drinking."
--David Letterman

"I went to Egypt and all I got was

"I went to Egypt and all I got was

some lousy flat bread and a little lantern."


AP/Amr Nabil

Even Sasquatch needs to keep up its energy.

September 28, 2005

Dancing in the Dark

By MAUREEN DOWD(subscription)

WASHINGTON

I can't wait to see what's next.

Dick Cheney carpooling downtown with Brownie? Rummy Rollerblading down the bike path to the Pentagon? Condi huddling by a Watergate fireplace in a gray cardigan?

Maybe now that our hydrocarbon president is the conservation president, he'll downgrade from Air Force One to a solar-powered Piper Cub as he continues to stalk the Gulf Coast towns and oil rigs like Banquo's ghost.

The once disciplined and swaggering Bush administration has descended into slapstick, more comical even than having Clarence Thomas et al. sit in judgment as Anna Nicole Smith attempts to get more of the moolah of her late oil tycoon husband.

We've got the clownish Brownie still on FEMA's payroll, giving advice on cleaning up the mess he made. ( Let's hope the White House is paying him only long enough to buy his good will, not to take any of his bad advice.)

We've got two oilmen in the White House whose administration was built on urging us to consume and buy as much oil and energy as possible. Now they're suddenly urging us to conserve. (Since Mr. Cheney considers conservation a "personal virtue," at least he'll get some virtue.)

The president called on Americans to drive less, and told his staff members to turn off their computers at night, turn down the air-conditioning, form carpools and take the bus.

At the same time, he set a fine example by wasting gazillions of gallons of fuel with all the planes and Secret Service vans and press motorcades and police escorts that follow him around every time he goes on one of his inane photo-ops from the Colorado bunker to what's left of the Mississippi Delta and the Bayou. He did his part by knocking off a few cars from his motorcade on his seventh trip to the gulf yesterday - but if residents had hoped he'd bring them some water, they went thirsty.

"Even so," as The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller wrote, "security dictated that Mr. Bush's still-impressive caravan pick him up at the base of Air Force One in Lake Charles, La. - and drop him off just yards away for a meeting with local officials at an airport terminal."

Noting that the Bush administration has proposed new fuel economy standards that critics say could make huge S.U.V.'s and pickups even more popular, Reuters published some arithmetic about the president's notorious fuel inefficiency.

Air Force One costs $83,200 to fill up and more than $6,000 per hour to fly. Then there's the cost of helicopters and a 2006 Cadillac DTS limo that gets less than 22 miles per gallon.

Karen Hughes, the Bush nanny who knows nothing about the Muslim world and yet is charged with selling the U.S. to it, wasted even more fuel this week flying to Saudi Arabia to tell women covered from head to toe in black how much she likes driving even though they can't.

She knows so little about the Middle East that she looked taken aback when some Saudi women told her that just because they could not vote or drive did not mean that they felt they were treated unfairly.

One thing Saudi women like even less than not having certain rights is to have hypocritical Americans patronize them.

The moment when America should have used its influence to help Saudi women came on Nov. 6, 1990, as U.S. forces gathered in the kingdom to go to war in Iraq the first time. Inspired by the U.S. troops, including female soldiers, 47 women from the Saudi intelligentsia took the wheels from their brothers and husbands and drove until the police stopped them.

They were branded "whores" and "harlots" by Saudi clerics, had their passports revoked, and were ostracized from society for a dozen years. Even their husbands suffered.

The experience made them more angry at the U.S. than at their own rulers. They feel that the Bushes play up the repression of women in the Middle East when it suits their desire to bang the war drums, but do not care what happens to women once the ideological agenda has been achieved.

They feel the administration and the American media have emphasized the repression of Saudi women post-9/11 as a way to demonize Saudi Arabia and paint Saudi men as bullies and terrorists.

When Ms. Hughes goes to Saudi Arabia to introduce herself as "a mom" and to talk about Americans as people of faith, guzzling fuel all the way in a country getting flush selling us oil, I think we can consider it taxpayer money well spent.

W. doesn't really need to worry about turning down the lights in the White House. The place is already totally in the dark.

Swami Uptown Tim Russert Picks on the Wrong Guy: 'That Wasn't a Box of Cheerios They Buried' September 26, 2005 | 5:20 p.m. There are millions of people who watch 'Meet the Press' without thinking much about why. Perhaps their parents watched it, and so they've always watched it. Perhaps they're interested in current events. Perhaps they savor the lively exchange of views that can occur when a seasoned journalist interviews a newsmaker. I avoid this show. For me--and, increasingly, for many others--Tim Russert is no journalist. He's a government apologist who wouldn't dream of more than a perfunctory grilling of a Cheney or Rumsfeld. Oh, he throws one fast ball. But after that, he can't find the zone--he's determined not to strike the big guys out. Little guys? Different story. You will recall the emotional moment a few weeks ago, when Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard talked about a woman who died in the New Orleans flood. On that appearance, this is what he said: Mr. Broussard: Sir, they were told, like me, every single day, "The cavalry is coming." On the federal level, "The cavalry is coming. The cavalry's coming. The cavalry's coming." The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard Nursing Home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama. Somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday." "Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday." "Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday." "Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night. On Sunday, Tim Russert had Aaron Broussard on again. There was lots to say. But Russert wanted to replay that tape. Afterward, he had some bones to pick with Broussard: Mr. Russert: Mr. Broussard, obviously that was a very painful, emotional moment, but let me show you some of the... Mr. Broussard: Sir, I've never looked at that. I've never heard that. I'm sorry. You take me to a sad place when you let me hear that. Mr. Russert: Well, it was important, I think...that our viewers see that again because MSNBC and other blog organizations have looked into the facts behind your comments and these are the conclusions, and I'll read it for you and our viewers. It says: "An emotional moment and a misunderstanding. Since the broadcast of [Meet the Press] interview...a number of bloggers have questioned the validity of Broussard's story. Subsequent reporting identified the man whom Broussard was referring to...as Thomas Rodrigue, the Jefferson Parish emergency services director. ...Rodrigue acknowledged that his 92-year-old mother and more than 30 other people died in the St. Rita nursing home. They had not been evacuated and the flood waters overtook the residence. ... When told of the sequence of phone calls that Broussard described, Rodrigue said 'No, no, that's not true. ...I contacted the nursing home two days before the storm [on Saturday, Aug. 27th] and again on [Sunday] the 28th. ...At the same time I talked to the nursing home I had also talked to the emergency manager...to encourage that nursing home to evacuate...' Rodrigue says he never made any calls after Monday, the day he figures his mother died... Officials believe the residents of St. Rita's died on Monday, the 29th, not on Friday, Sept. 2, as Broussard has suggested." Mr. Broussard: Sir, this gentleman's mother died on that Friday before I came on the show. My own staff came up to me and said what had happened. I had no idea his mother was in the nursing home. It was related to me by my own staff, who had tears in their eyes, what had happened. That's what they told me. I went to that man, who I love very much and respect very much, and he had collapsed like a deck of cards. And I took him and put him in my hospital room with my prayer books and told him to sit there and cry out and pray away and give honor to his mother with his tears and his prayers. Now, everything that was told to me about the preface of that was told to me by my own employees. Do you think I would interrogate a man whose mother just died and said, "Tommy, I want to know everything about why your mother just died"? The staff, his own staff, told me those words. Sir, that woman is the epitome of abandonment. She was left in that nursing home. She died in that nursing home. Tommy will tell you that he tried to rescue her and could not get her rescued. Tommy could tell you that he sent messages there through the EOC and through, I think, the sheriff's department, "Tell Mama everything's going to be OK. Tell Mama we're coming to get her." Listen, sir, somebody wants to nitpick a man's tragic loss of a mother because she was abandoned in a nursing home? Are you kidding? What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death? They just buried Eva last week. I was there at the wake. Are you kidding me? That wasn't a box of Cheerios they buried last week. That was a man's mother whose story, if it is entirely broadcast, will be the epitome of abandonment. It will be the saddest tale you ever heard, a man who was responsible for safekeeping of a half a million people, mother's died in the next parish because she was abandoned there and he can't get to her and he tried to get to her through EOC. He tried to get through the sheriff's office. He tries every way he can to get there. Somebody wants to debate those things? My God, what sick-minded person wants to do that? What kind of agenda is going on here? Mother Nature doesn't have a political party. Mother Nature can vote a person dead and Mother Nature can vote a community out of existence. But Mother Nature is not playing any political games here. Somebody better wake up. You want to come and live in this community and see the tragedy we're living in? Are you sitting there having your coffee, you're in a place where toilets flush and lights go on and everything's a dream and you pick up your paper and you want to battle ideology and political chess games? Man, get out of my face. Whoever wants to do that, get out of my face. Mr. Russert: Mr. Broussard, the people who are questioning your comments are saying that you accused the federal government and the bureaucracy of murder, specifically calling on the secretary of Homeland Security and using this as an example to denounce the federal government. And what they're saying is, in fact, it was the local government that did not evacuate Eva Rodrigue on Friday or on Saturday....And, in fact, the owners of the nursing home, Salvador and Mable Mangano, have been indicted with 34 counts of negligent homicide by the Louisiana state attorney general. So it was the owners of the nursing home and the local government that are responsible for the lack of evacuation and not the federal government. Is that fair? Mr. Broussard: Sir, with everything I said on Meet the Press, the last punctuation of my statements were the story that I was going to tell in about maybe two sentences. It just got emotional for me, sir. Talk about the context of everything I said. Were we abandoned by the federal government? Absolutely we were. Were there more people that abandoned us? Make the list. The list can go on for miles. That's for history to document. That's what Congress does best, burn witches. Let Congress do their hearings. Let them find the witches. Let them burn them. The media burns witches better than anybody. Let the media go find the witches and burn them. But as I stood on the ground, sir, for day after day after day after day, nobody came here, sir. Nobody came. The federal government didn't come. The Red Cross didn't come. I'll give you a list of people that didn't come here, sir, and I was here. [...] When somebody wants to nit-pick these details, I don't know what sick minds creates this black-hearted agenda, but it's sick. I mean, let us recover. Let us rebuild. If somebody wants me to debate them on national TV, hey, buddy, be my guest. Make my day. Put me at a podium when I got a full night's sleep and you will not like matching me against anybody that you want. That person is going to be in trouble. If this station or anybody else or any other station wants to do that, you just give me a full night's sleep, sir. I haven't had one in about 30 days. But you wind me up with a full night's sleep, I'll debate every detail of everything you want, sir. Mr. Russert: Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, we thank you for coming on and correcting the record and putting it in context. And we wish you well and to all your people in the recovery. And we hope to talk to you again. Nonsense. Russert will never talk to Broussard again--you can bet on that. He tried to bully a real man, to nitpack and carp. And the real man stayed real. The only thing that would have been more satisfying? If they had been in the same room. And Broussard had come over the desk like a comic book hero and stomped Russert. Put him out cold. But given the low state of Russert's consciousness, that might not have made much of a difference. And the mainstream media wonders where the customers are going!

Jeremy Hunter BBC Photo

"In private life, an adult who keeps beating down on a five year old – even such a one as originally attacked him with a knife – will be perceived as committing a crime; therefore he will lose the support of bystanders and end up by being arrested, tried and convicted. In international life, an armed force that keeps beating down on a weaker opponent will be seen as committing a series of crimes; therefore it will end up by losing the support of its allies, its own people, and its own troops. Depending on the quality of the forces – whether they are draftees or professionals, the effectiveness of the propaganda machine, the nature of the political process, and so on – things may happen quickly or take a long time to mature. However, the outcome is always the same. He (or she) who does not understand this does not understand anything about war; or, indeed, human nature.

In other words, he who fights against the weak – and the rag-tag Iraqi militias are very weak indeed – and loses, loses. He who fights against the weak and wins also loses. To kill an opponent who is much weaker than yourself is unnecessary and therefore cruel; to let that opponent kill you is unnecessary and therefore foolish. As Vietnam and countless other cases prove, no armed force however rich, however powerful, however, advanced, and however well motivated is immune to this dilemma. The end result is always disintegration and defeat; if U.S troops in Iraq have not yet started fragging their officers, the suicide rate among them is already exceptionally high. That is why the present adventure will almost certainly end as the previous one did. Namely, with the last US troops fleeing the country while hanging on to their helicopters’ skids.

November 18, 2004

Martin Van Creveld is professor of history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has written a number of books that have influenced modern military theory, including Fighting Power, Command in War, and most significantly, The Transformation of War. He is also the author of The Rise and Decline of the State.

From Steve Gilliard (The News Blog)

You know, they weren't broke savages

You know, they didn't riot. Or shoot at helicopters.

Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated
(reported in the Times-Picayune)
Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated

6 bodies found at Dome; 4 at Convention Center


By Brian Thevenot
and Gordon Russell
Staff writers

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.

That the nation's front-line emergency management believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent. As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.

"I think 99 percent of it is bulls---," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong, bad things happened, but I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything. ... Ninety-nine percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved."

Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state Health and Human Services Department administrator overseeing the body recovery operation, said his teams were inundated with false reports about the Dome and Convention Center.

"We swept both buildings several times, because we kept getting reports of more bodies there," Cataldie said. "But it just wasn't the case."

Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages.

"I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two sites," he said. "It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they (national media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases, they just accepted what people (on the street) told them. ... It's not consistent with the highest standards of journalism."

It's far easier to believe the worst of black people than not for many people. Even blacks.

posted by Steve
***********************************
This story needs to be repeated, amplified, and repeated again. These stories were circulated purposefully, and with great relish. They should be retracted as a smear on the honor of the people of New Orleans. This is simply unconscionable. Would New Yorkers have stood for being smeared and slandered after 9-11? They would have been justified to have rioted. Had I been locked into the hellhole of the Superdome, day after day, no rescue, no help , no food, water, sanitation, I would assume that I was being murdered, and would have devoted my efforts towards escape. The press needs to reform its lazy ways , get out, and "just the facts, man." Like that's going to happen. But it will happen, if people call them on it. People have to be forced to change. There are very few avatars out there , seeking self-determined change. We all need our feet put to the fire, from time to time.

Picture from dependable renegade
Check out NTodd's site for HEAPS more pix.

September 26, 2005

Find the Brownie

By PAUL KRUGMAN

For the politically curious seeking entertainment, I'd like to propose two new trivia games: "Find the Brownie" and "Two Degrees of Jack Abramoff."

The objective in Find the Brownie is to find an obscure but important government job held by someone whose only apparent qualifications for that job are political loyalty and personal connections. It's inspired by President Bush's praise, four days after Katrina hit, for the hapless Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." I guess it depends on the meaning of the word heck.

There are a lot of Brownies. As Time magazine puts it in its latest issue, "Bush has gone further than most presidents to put political stalwarts in some of the most important government jobs you've never heard of." Time offers a couple of fresh examples, such as the former editor of a Wall Street medical-industry newsletter who now holds a crucial position at the Food and Drug Administration.

A tipster urged me to look for Brownies among regional administrators for the General Services Administration, which oversees federal property and leases. There are several potential ways a position at G.S.A. could be abused. For example, an official might give a particular businessman an inside track in the purchase of government property - the charge against David Safavian, who was recently arrested - or give a particular landlord an inside track in renting space to federal agencies.

Some of the regional administrators at G.S.A. are longtime professionals. But the regional administrator for the Northeast and Caribbean region, which includes New York, has no obvious qualifications other than being the daughter of the chairman of the Conservative Party of New York State. The regional administrator for the Southwest, appointed in 2002 after a failed bid for his father's Congressional seat, is Scott Armey, the son of Dick Armey, the former House majority leader.

You get the idea. Go ahead, see what - or rather who - you can come up with.

Jack Abramoff is a lobbyist who was paid huge sums by clients such as casino-owning Indian tribes and sweatshop operators on Saipan. Two Degrees of Jack Abramoff is inspired by the remarkable centrality of Mr. Abramoff, who was indicted last month on charges of fraud, in Washington's power structure.

The goal isn't to find important political players who were chummy with Mr. Abramoff - that's too easy. Instead, you have to find people linked by employment. One degree of Jack Abramoff is someone who actually worked for the lobbyist. Two degrees is a powerful Washington figure who hired someone who formerly worked for Mr. Abramoff, or who had one of his own former employees go to work for Mr. Abramoff.

Grover Norquist, the powerful antitax lobbyist, is a one-degree man. Mr. Norquist was Mr. Abramoff's campaign manager when he ran for chairman of the College Republican National Committee, then became his executive director. And don't dismiss this as kid stuff: as Franklin Foer explains in The New Republic, the college Republican organization pays serious salaries and has been a steppingstone for the likes of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.

Mr. Rove, by the way, is a two-degree man. He hired Susan Ralston, Mr. Abramoff's personal assistant, as his own personal assistant. For those unfamiliar with what that means, Ms. Ralston became Mr. Rove's gatekeeper - the person who determined who got to see the great man.

Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, is also a two-degree man. Tony Rudy, who worked for Mr. DeLay in several capacities, left to work for Mr. Abramoff.

Finally, somebody should be considered a two-degree man on account of the recently arrested Mr. Safavian, who worked for both Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Norquist, then went first to the G.S.A. and on to the White House Office of Management and Budget, where he oversaw procurement policy. But I'm not sure who gets credit for hiring Mr. Safavian.

O.K., enough joking. The point of my games - which are actually research programs for enterprising journalists - is that all the scandals now surfacing are linked. Something is rotten in the state of the U.S. government. And the lesson of Hurricane Katrina is that a culture of cronyism and corruption can have lethal consequences.

Thousands of demonstrators march through San Francisco to protest the war in Iraq on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2005. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Sept 24, 2005 Washington, DC

Cindy Sheehan and the Rev. Jesse Jackson
(lower left corner) yesterday took part in an
anti-war protest in honor of her son, Casey,
who was killed in Iraq

Big protest against war surrounds White House

CROWD'S MESSAGE COMPETES WITH GULF COAST STORM NEWS

By Jim Puzzanghera

Mercury News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Tens of thousands of demonstrators -- a diverse swarm of veteran peace activists and first-time protesters -- marched around the White House on Saturday and rallied within its earshot in hopes of sending a resounding message to President Bush and the nation: End the Iraq war and bring the troops home.

``I haven't known what to do with my rage and impotence about all the horrors,'' said Mary McCutcheon, 57, a registered nurse from San Francisco who flew to Washington on Friday night to participate in her first protest since the war began in 2003. ``People are just starting to stand up and speak up.''

Organizers estimated the crowd at more than 300,000, but that could not be confirmed. Washington police do not make official crowd estimates, although Chief Charles Ramsey said a figure of at least 150,000 was ``as good a guess as any.''

In San Francisco, thousands of protesters packed Dolores Park for an anti-war rally, one of several California demonstrations. An estimated 15,000 people turned out in Los Angeles.

Although the demonstrators chanted loudly during a day of rallies, marches and musical performances nationwide, it wasn't clear how many people heard them. Hurricane Rita was pounding Texas and Louisiana, dominating television news.

Organizers and protesters in Washington tried to connect the devastation along the Gulf Coast -- particularly the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina that left thousands of poor and elderly stranded in New Orleans -- to the Iraq war. Some wore yellow T-shirts that said, ``Make levees, not war,'' while others carried signs proclaiming, ``From New Orleans to Iraq, stop the war on the poor.''

``The gulf state policy at home and abroad has failed,'' the Rev. Jesse Jackson told the crowd during a morning rally on the Ellipse, a grassy area just south of the White House. ``We must go another way.''

Many protesters came on buses from as far away as New Mexico.

Vivian Waltz, 43, and her oldest son Jonah, 9, rode all night from Buffalo, N.Y.

``The war is mortgaging my child's future. I'm horrified. I feel like I have no control over it,'' said Waltz, who printed a ``Moms for Peace' sign off the Internet, slapped it onto cardboard and taped it to a wooden ruler. ``This is a way to use my body to show my resistance.''

Jonah was one of many children at the protest -- carrying homemade signs or riding in strollers or on parents' shoulders. Vicki Merlo, 40, of Silver Spring, Md., brought her son Peter, 8, who wore a peace-symbol button on his Pokémon T-shirt. Adam Short, 28, of Washington, dressed his 8-month-old daughter in a shirt that read, ``I already know more than the president.''

Organizers tried to draw average Americans, who polls show are growing increasingly opposed to the war, by urging groups with varied agendas to unite around a singular, Iraq war theme.

The protest still contained many of the usual sights -- black-clad globalization opponents, faces masked by bandannas; anti-Israel protesters draped in Palestinian flags; stacks of Socialist Worker newspapers; and plenty of signs, T-shirts and buttons combining Bush's name with assorted expletives.

But the message was largely unified against the war, the tone less confrontational than other events, such as the demonstrations at Bush's inauguration in January. Police reported only three minor arrests.

``We've really worked hard to . . . keep the focus on this particular war and bringing the troops home because that's the thing that we can all get behind,'' said Anne Roesler of Saratoga, an assistant professor of health science at San Jose State University and one of many war opponents who helped plan the rally.

Roesler, whose son is on his third tour of duty in Iraq, arrived Wednesday in Washington as part of a bus tour led by Vacaville's Cindy Sheehan. Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, became the face of the anti-war movement when she set up a camp outside Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch in August demanding he meet with her.

Her group of military families opposed to the war traveled around the country earlier this month, helping build support for Saturday's protest. She was hailed as a hero by the crowd when she took the stage.

``We are here in massive amounts of people to show our government, to show our media, to show America that we mean business, and we're not going home until every last one of our troops is home,'' Sheehan said.

Bush was out of town, monitoring the hurricane, but some of his supporters staged counterdemonstrations Saturday. Among them was G.R. Quinn, 54, of Bethesda, Md., a Vietnam and Persian Gulf War veteran, who carried a sign reading, ``Cindy Sheehan Nazi witch.'' A rally supporting Bush and his Iraq policy is set for today.

Joan Baez, the folk singer from Woodside who was a prominent voice against the Vietnam War, said Sheehan's Texas protest helped fire up the nation -- and inspired her to come to Washington.

``I was lying low with my grandchild and my 92-year-old parents, and I heard about Crawford. I said, `Get me a ticket,' '' Baez told the Mercury News as she waited her turn to perform. ``The feeling of banging your head against the wall ended with this.''

NYTIMES

Chris Maddaloni/European
Pressphoto Agency

Thousands of protesters gathered on the lawns south of the White House to demonstrate against the war in Iraq.

WTF IS IT NOW?

Are we not men