while i don't disagree that this may turn out to be the case... i have to commend the media SO FAR for what i've seen.
journalists are blasting away at chertoff, brownie, and all levels of the government. they are not shying away from the race factor. over the weekend i took a gander at fox news and saw geraldo rivera going fucking ballistic in the the superdome (did anyone else see that?), yelling at absent officials and screaming that there were desperate people trapped there and they needed help. another journalist on fox was doing the same thing outside the superbowl, condemning the govt for not providng survivors wiht means to leave AND for not providing enuf supplies. tim russert on meet the press was more aggressive than i've ever seen him while interviewing chertoff. paula zahn is cracking her whip at ignorant comments there's multiple articles about this catastrophe on the front page of every newspaper every day.
i think the media learned its lesson from being so soft at the beginning of the war. this situation is huge, and SO FAR, they* have pretty much treated it appropriately.
*"they" of course does not include the extremist rightwing blowhards.
I don't believe the "new journalist freedom" with all of them going after bush and stuff like that. I think it's planned and when it's time to vote again or perhaps ealier (when they impeach them or something) everybody will vote for schwarzenegger and the next fucker (preselected by the new world order in a bohemian grove meeting) get to be the president. I don't want to say it's not good to tell the truth about bush but I'm always sceptic. Don't believe the hype!
How about a t-shirt campaign with proceeds going to those in need.
Hackers can do their thing to.
Mass protests around the country are not out of the question...mobilizing will take some work but not impossible.
A nationwide strike calling for the impeachment of bush??
T-shirts are fine but you'll be competing with every cafepress entrepreneur with a cause. Hackers, hack what? The only thing hacking is really good for is slowing down the internet and switching off people's PMs.
Mass protests have happened followed by nothing. At the end of the day, the professional activist class has been co-opted as a "mediator" between us and them, and none of the rest of us will put our asses on the line.
Strike... what are you, some kind of commie? It'll never happen. Unless they invent a driveby revolution, this country will stay on the course of gradually consuming itself.
I would love to see a Soulstrut Foundation headed by a powerful round table of the many ballers on here. Everyone who is part of this board who also has revenue from their music related enterprises, pays a bit into a Cayman Is account and then we work in mysterious ways to make good shit happen anywhere, anytime. It could be like a Knights Templar except for without the homo-erotic shit. Well Grafwritah can do what he wants but it shouldn't be mandatory.
Just some thoughts... maybe getting ahead of things, but I'd like to think I'd be in a position to do good things in the future and multiplied by everyone else plus some equally mysterious corporate benfactor, and we could be the new lizard people.
really dough, i just read this, and i think it's excellent and inspiring news. i suppose people will forget, but it won't be for a long time.
From the NY Times today:
September 8, 2005 Democrats Step Up Criticism of White House By ADAM NAGOURNEY and CARL HULSE WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - After 10 days of often uncertain responses to the Bush administration's management of Hurricane Katrina, Democratic leaders unleashed a burst of attacks on the White House on Wednesday, saying the wreckage in New Orleans raised doubts about the country's readiness to endure a terrorist attack and exposed ominous economic rifts that they said had worsened under five years of Republican rule.
From Democratic leaders on the floor of Congress, to a speech by the Democratic National Committee chairman at a meeting of the National Baptist Convention in Miami, to four morning television interviews by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrats offered what was shaping up as the most concerted attack that they had mounted on the White House in the five years of the Bush presidency.
"Oblivious. In denial. Dangerous," Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and the House minority leader, said of President Bush as she stood in front of a battery of uniformed police officers and firefighters in a Capitol Hill ceremony that had originally been scheduled to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Americans should now harbor no illusions about the government's ability to respond effectively to disasters," she said. "Our vulnerabilities were laid bare."
Former Senator John Edwards, a likely candidate for president in 2008 and the Democratic Party's vice-presidential nominee in 2004, argued that the breakdown in New Orleans illustrated the central theme of his national campaigns: the nation has been severed into two Americas.
"The truth is the people who suffer the most from Katrina are the very people who suffer the most every day," Mr. Edwards said in a speech in North Carolina on Wednesday, according to a transcript provided by his office.
And Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, said in an interview: "It's a summary of all that this administration is not in touch with and has faked and ducked and bobbed over the past four years. What you see here is a harvest of four years of complete avoidance of real problem solving and real governance in favor of spin and ideology."
The display of unity was striking for a party that has been adrift since Mr. Kerry's defeat, struggling to reach consensus on issues like the war in Iraq and the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. The aggressiveness was evidence of what Republicans and Democrats said was the critical difference between the hurricane and the Sept. 11 attacks: Democrats appear able to question the administration's competence without opening themselves to attacks on their patriotism.
Not insignificantly, they have been emboldened by the fact that Republicans have also been critical of the White House over the past week, and by the perception that this normally politically astute and lethal administration has been weakened and seems at a loss as it struggles to manage two crises: the aftermath of the hurricane on the Gulf Coast and the political difficulties that it has created for Mr. Bush in Washington.
Their response may have allowed the Democrats to seize the issue that Republicans had hammered them with in the past two elections: national security. "Our government failed at one of the most basic functions it has - providing for the physical safety of our citizens," Senator Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat who is considering a run for president in 2008, declared in a speech on the Senate floor.
The Democrats' aggressiveness is not without its risks. The White House has been seeking to minimize the criticisms of Mr. Bush by portraying them as partisan, and some prominent Democrats had earlier avoided going after Mr. Bush on this issue, aware of what the Republicans were trying to accomplish.
At a contentious press briefing on Wednesday, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, used the phrase "blame game" eight separate times as he tried to push back on criticism of the White House effort.
Representative J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, struck a similar theme, saying: "Some people are really very anxious to start pointing fingers and playing the blame game. I think we need to get our work done."
Mr. McClellan did not respond to e-mails seeking a response to the Democratic criticisms. But in a sign of the White House effort to move the dispute out of the Oval Office and try to cast the argument in partisan terms, the Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman, issued a statement assailing Democrats like Ms. Pelosi for "pointing fingers in a shameless effort to tear us apart."
Mrs. Clinton, in back-to-back television interviews Wednesday morning, angrily dismissed those kinds of attacks as a diversion from legitimate attempts by critics to point up shortcomings.
"That's what they always do; I've been living with that kind of rhetoric for the last four and a half years," Mrs. Clinton, Democrat of New York, said on the "Today" show. "It's time to end it. It's time to actually show this government can be competent."
The Democratic reaction took many forms, from urging campaign contributors to give money to hurricane victims, to proposing legislation to provide aid to stricken areas, as Mr. Kerry did, to criticizing the Bush administration for cuts it had made to the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as Mrs. Clinton did. In one less-noted gesture, Al Gore, the former vice president, chartered a private jet and flew doctors to storm-stricken areas.
The Democratic National Committee chairman, Howard Dean, said this could be a transitional moment for his party. "The Democratic Party needs a new direction," he said. "And I think it's become clear what the direction is: restore a moral purpose to America. Rebuild America's psyche."
"This is deeply disturbing to a lot of Americans, because it's more than thousands of people who get killed; it's about the destruction of the American community," Mr. Dean said. "The idea that somehow government didn't care until it had to for political reasons. It's appalling."
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said: "The powerful winds of this storm have torn away that mask that has hidden from our debates the many Americans who are left out and left behind."
For all the turmoil, Republican House leaders said Wednesday that they were confident it would not translate into a shift in power - if only, they argued, because there are not enough truly competitive seats next year to provide an opportunity for Democrats.
"Democrats throw stuff at the wall almost every week looking for something to stick," said Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee. "This is something they have now chosen to politicize during a national disaster, versus let's get people taken care of and then move on to what we have learned from it."
Day, The best thing you can do with people is keep it fresh in their minds, individual to individual. This country needs a change and this situation is a microcosm of what is wrong with America today. Don't preach to people about it though, no one ever listens to the preacher anymore. Just talk, speak on it, keep it there.
Nobody remembers Abner Louima so I remind them. Nobody remembers Amadou Diallo so I remind them. Many seem to have forgotten 200,000+ people died in a tsunami last Christmas. Entire tribes, villages, and cultures were wiped off the face of the earth.
About New Orleans:
When I was there, I was skeptical about "the magic." But it had something about it, a certain intangible charming quality to it. It saddens me everyday to know I will never see it the way it was when I visited. I feel blessed to have visited there.
-Bush administration looks bad to people in the South in a clear and definitive fashion.
-New Orleans might be filled in to not be a bowl shaped depression asking for flooding. Imagine if they rebuild NOLA as it was and another hurricane comes this year/next year/year after that and destroys it again?!How much would be wasted?
**I remember to this day, when I was driving out going to Metairie and a big rainstorm came on. I was like ah, kinda wet, but seems ok. I got by the cemetery district, made a right turn and found out different. People were driving like this was a typical day and my rental car was dealing with water up to the bumper. That's when I decided to turn around and go home. That scared the hell outta me driving in those conditions. THOSE TYPE OF CONDITIONS ARE NEVER SAFE, NO MATTER HOW USED TO THEM YOU ARE. New Orleans, with all the amazing construction projects that are planned (such as the Gibraltar Bridge) and that have been constructed (the twin towers in Kuala Lampur, Yamasoukkro) should not have existed in the physical conditions it was kept at. It was a disaster waiting to happen and someone should have done something about it FARRRRRRRRRRRRRR earlier. **
I'm thinking that pioneering new building methods and resurrective building techniques are possible here. This could be like the space program was in the 60s if handled correctly. We could take new strides to save lives and make things safer/more effective for the future generations. Hopefully my vision is correct and not the New World Order vision. More later.
Comments
Hackers can do their thing to.
Mass protests around the country are not out of the question...mobilizing will take some work but not impossible.
A nationwide strike calling for the impeachment of bush??
I don't believe the "new journalist freedom" with all of them going after bush and stuff like that. I think it's planned and when it's time to vote again or perhaps ealier (when they impeach them or something) everybody will vote for schwarzenegger and the next fucker (preselected by the new world order in a bohemian grove meeting) get to be the president.
I don't want to say it's not good to tell the truth about bush but I'm always sceptic. Don't believe the hype!
bill's putting all his effort into cutting prices for aids drugs in africa (or he was before katrina).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3209741.stm
http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/conditions/04/11/clinton.aids/
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072505HA.shtml
(just sayin)
T-shirts are fine but you'll be competing with every cafepress entrepreneur with a cause. Hackers, hack what? The only thing hacking is really good for is slowing down
the internet and switching off people's PMs.
Mass protests have happened followed by nothing. At the end of the day, the professional activist class has been co-opted as a "mediator" between us and them, and none of the rest of us will put our asses on the line.
Strike... what are you, some kind of commie? It'll never happen. Unless they invent a driveby revolution, this country will stay on the course of gradually consuming itself.
I would love to see a Soulstrut Foundation headed by a powerful round table of the many ballers on here. Everyone who is part of this board who also has revenue from their music related enterprises, pays a bit into a Cayman Is account and then we work in mysterious ways to make good shit happen anywhere, anytime. It could be like a Knights Templar except for without the homo-erotic shit. Well Grafwritah can do what he wants but it shouldn't be mandatory.
Just some thoughts... maybe getting ahead of things, but I'd like to think I'd be in a position to do good things in the future and multiplied by everyone else plus some equally mysterious corporate benfactor, and we could be the new lizard people.
maybe
?
i just read this, and i think it's excellent and inspiring news. i suppose people will forget, but it won't be for a long time.
put me down for this one.
The best thing you can do with people is keep it fresh in their minds, individual to individual. This country needs a change and this situation is a microcosm of what is wrong with America today. Don't preach to people about it though, no one ever listens to the preacher anymore. Just talk, speak on it, keep it there.
Nobody remembers Abner Louima so I remind them.
Nobody remembers Amadou Diallo so I remind them.
Many seem to have forgotten 200,000+ people died in a tsunami last Christmas. Entire tribes, villages, and cultures were wiped off the face of the earth.
About New Orleans:
When I was there, I was skeptical about "the magic." But it had something about it, a certain intangible charming quality to it. It saddens me everyday to know I will never see it the way it was when I visited. I feel blessed to have visited there.
More at my lunch
Peace
T.N.
Perhaps some good can come out of this.
-Bush administration looks bad to people in the South in a clear and definitive fashion.
-New Orleans might be filled in to not be a bowl shaped depression asking for flooding. Imagine if they rebuild NOLA as it was and another hurricane comes this year/next year/year after that and destroys it again?!How much would be wasted?
**I remember to this day, when I was driving out going to Metairie and a big rainstorm came on. I was like ah, kinda wet, but seems ok. I got by the cemetery district, made a right turn and found out different. People were driving like this was a typical day and my rental car was dealing with water up to the bumper. That's when I decided to turn around and go home. That scared the hell outta me driving in those conditions. THOSE TYPE OF CONDITIONS ARE NEVER SAFE, NO MATTER HOW USED TO THEM YOU ARE. New Orleans, with all the amazing construction projects that are planned (such as the Gibraltar Bridge) and that have been constructed (the twin towers in Kuala Lampur, Yamasoukkro) should not have existed in the physical conditions it was kept at. It was a disaster waiting to happen and someone should have done something about it FARRRRRRRRRRRRRR earlier. **
I'm thinking that pioneering new building methods and resurrective building techniques are possible here. This could be like the space program was in the 60s if handled correctly. We could take new strides to save lives and make things safer/more effective for the future generations. Hopefully my vision is correct and not the New World Order vision. More later.
Peace
T.N.