Category: Uncategorized

It’s 1993. Your city, and huge areas around it in several states, has been destroyed by [insert geographically appropriate natural disaster here]. Thousands are dead, hundreds of thousands are homeless, and your city is gone.

Bill Clinton is in Vail skiing with Robert Redford, and only returns to Washington after being shamed by members of his own party. He surveys the damage on the way back to D.C. by tipping the wing of Air Force One slightly. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is on vacation in Boston, shopping and going to the theater. Speaker of the House Tom Foley gets on TV to say that maybe your city isn’t worth rebuilding. When Clinton gets back to Washington, he’s interviewed by Jane Pauley, and he says that, well, no one could have anticipated this disaster – even though it’s common for the area, and he recently cut funding that could have helped. Clinton’s FEMA director gets interviewed on the morning shows, and insists that “everything is fine,” despite constant images and reports of the devastation and massive refugee movements.

Your reaction?

BONUS QUESTION: Remember your outrage – OUTRAGE – when Bill Clinton got his $200 haircut on Air Force One? Yeah.

Condi goes shoe shopping.

Wow. Just wow. Funny how it took this story to make my anger explode, where it was just simmering before.

And I’ll echo Gawker, and say: Angry Lady, whoever you are, I love you.

Apparently we need to add something else to the list of things that President George W. Bush cannot be held accountable for*: inadequate federal disaster planning, and not leaving his Crawford ranch during one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

*(9/11, response to 9/11, gas prices, the economy, job losses, corporate scandals, planning for the war in Iraq, selling the war in Iraq, intelligence gathering in his administration, violence in Iraq, war profiteering in Iraq, unprepared military in Iraq, $9 billion lost in Iraq, U.S. treatment of WOT prisoners, world opinion of the U.S., treasonous actions of his staff, the federal deficit, federal spending overall, environmental damage from corporate greed, the health insurance crisis, etc.)

Remind me – exactly what *is* the President responsible for?

UPDATE: August Pollak on the partisanship of the Weather Channel. And from This Modern World, New Orleans as a casualty.

Funny stuff over at Poor Man Institute about Michael Moore’s stay at a fat farm. Great parodies of LGF-level screaming about Moore’s fatness.

“Iraq, it turns out, is the one branch of American government that the Republicans don’t control.”

–Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

Eugene Volokh thinks he’s got it figured out: gay people do try to “convert” straight people to their sinful ways. Not that this “hypothesis” deserves comment, cogent or otherwise. But one commenter gets to the heart of the matter thus:

Let’s face it. The only people actively trying to “convert” people to their brand of sexuality are HETEROSEXUALS. The whole ex-gay movement is a conversion movement. Of course it doesn’t work, but that’s another matter altogether.

Amen. When you start seeing commercials on TV and ads in magazines that promise to “deliver you from the hell of heterosexuality,” that interview proto-gays as they smile creepily and tentatively touch their new same-sex partners while basking in the soft glow of their recently-installed track lighting, then we’ll talk, OK?

“Fire” the White House press corps.

Translation? Expel all press from anywhere near the President. If the President wants to say something to the people, he can issue a non-filtered press release. No questions will be allowed, ever. The President can talk to us (or not) as he pleases. Any so-called “questions” can be asked and answered at the ballot box, thank you very much.

Personally, I don’t think Dean goes far enough. Why do we need “journalists” anyway? They’re just liberal puke “filters,” and we don’t need that. If we need perspective or analysis, or information of any kind, wise bloggers like Dean (and Michelle Malkin and La Shawn Barber) will happily step into the breach and educate us. Hooray! Democracy wins!

“If you defend a President for sitting there for even one second after he’s told America is under attack, you are loyal to a person more than you are to the truth, to a principle, or to your country.”

-Bill Maher, “I’m Swiss”

Here are some choice comments from Little Green Footballs denizens about Cindy Sheehan’s mother’s stroke:

“adios, cindy. and stay the hell and gone…
dear God, its not enough that we have to put up with the illegals coming over the border like crap through a goose, we will let just any freaking body into Texas now”

“I’m glad the Texas Ditch Bitch had to leave.
The question is….Who will the left dredge up next?”

“Idealogy has driven people so mad that I am hoping Sheehan’s mom does not die, not because she is a human being, but because somebody might use her as their ventriloquist dummy for their cause.”

“Not trying to be mean or funny, but – any chance the stress her escapades have put her mother under, caused the stroke? Just saying…..”

“I attacked Bush and all I got was a divorce, a mom with a stroke, and this stupid t-shirt!”

“1. The handlers were looking for an excuse to bail, and found it, or
2. This attention addict won’t be able to resist the limelight, and will soon be back.”

“It’s too bad Rachelle Corey is not available to stand in for her while she’s gone. Of course when her mom actually sees her and realizes that Cindy is that nutcase she’s been seeing on TV, she’ll probably have another stroke.”

These people are sick, sad fucks.

Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I’m delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.

–The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989)

Thanks to The Poor Man Cafe. (While you’re there, don’t miss Keyboard Kommando Komix. Good stuff.)