Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were “mistakes,” U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

The real danger is that we who support the war will reach the point that we say we might as well be taken as wolves then as sheep.

[P]eople assume that there’s no point in behaving morally when they’re going to be called monsters anyway. This seems rather uncontroversially obvious to me.

Could these lurid evocations of wolf packs and armed mobs really have any effect on a prosperous, well-educated, civilized nation?

But here’s where Forbes has caught themselves in their own trap: one of their suggestions is to “threaten to sue his Internet service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” And as some commenters have noted, the DMCA does not require a violation of copyright — it only requires an accusation of a violation in order to force an ISP to shut down a site.

Unfortunately for Forbes, they’ve lifted many of their vengeful dirty tricks from the 1982 book: Getting Even: The Complete Book of Dirty Tricks. Not only is this a clear violation of the DMCA, it is also an insult to the original spirit of the book, since Forbes leave out all the stuff about stink bombs…

Perhaps it would be a good idea to contact the upstream providers of Forbes.com and inform them of their client’s reprehensible violations of our sacred Copyright Protections….

Daniel Lyons himself is also no stranger to dirty tricks in the name of a noble cause — he’s been on a crusade against linux and open source software in general for years… (I wonder when he stopped beating his wife?)

Having filled up the wife’s Suburban with gas days before, and gotten the house ready as can be, we headed off with 2 kids, 2 dogs and 3 fish that the 2 kids would not leave behind. When we left at 4:20 a.m. yesterday morning we knew things would be bad as far as traffic. Rather than joining the parking lot on I-45, which took 8 hours to drive from our location to before the North beltway on 45 (still in Houston!), we decided to use my new Microsoft GPS software and hardware and hit the back roads. Almost exactly 12 hours later, we arrived at my sister’s house in Dallas, where I’m e-mailing you from.

Them:

No Way Out: Tears, Anger As Some Try to Flee and Many Poor Are Stuck in Houston

Judie Anderson of La Porte, Texas, covered just 45 miles in 12 hours. She had been on the road since 10 p.m. Wednesday, headed toward Oklahoma, which by Thursday was still very far away.

“This is the worst planning I’ve ever seen,” she said. “They say, ‘We’ve learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina.’ Well, you couldn’t prove it by me.”

On Bellaire Boulevard in southwest Houston, a weeping woman and her young daughter stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by plastic bags full of clothes and blankets. “I’d like to go, but nobody come get me,” the woman said in broken English. When asked her name, she looked frightened. “No se, no se,” she said: Spanish for “I don’t know.”

Miles of Traffic as Texans Heed Order to Leave

as many as 2.5 million people jammed evacuation routes on Thursday, creating colossal 100-mile-long traffic jams that left many people stranded and out of gas as the huge storm bore down on the Texas coast.

Acknowledging that “being on the highway is a deathtrap,” Mayor Bill White asked for military help in rushing scarce fuel to stranded drivers.

Up to 24 Dead in Texas Bus-Fire Tragedy

A bus carrying nursing home residents fleeing from Hurricane Rita caught fire and was rocked by explosions Friday on a gridlocked highway near Dallas, killing as many as 24 people, authorities said.

Most poor people in America can afford food (that’s why so many poor people are fat). They do have other problems that make preparation less likely, though (if you’re the kind of person who thinks ahead and prepares for emergencies, you’re much less likely to be poor to begin with)

So according to Glenn Reynolds, if you’re poor, you’re probably also a stupid fatty. And stupid fatties are too stupid and fat to waddle their big fat stupid ass out of town . But obviously — because they’re so damn fat — they can afford to buy a few extra fifty cent hamburgers and keep them in storage until disaster strikes. It’s just that they’re too stupid to do that!

Stupid fatty!

(And because Bush is neither poor nor fat, he is clearly not responsible for his own administration? Hmmmm…)

I have to say that the stupid fatty defense is a fairly original entry in the list of disgusting conservative disaster responses…

“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now. God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there — and now we’re going to start over again.”

“Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city. From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Southern Decadence’, New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same. Let us pray for those ravaged by this disaster. However, we must not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long. May this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God.”

In light of this week’s tragic hurricane in Louisiana, some politicians have suggested that tax cuts in general and death tax repeal specifically should not move forward. This is a similar argument which was made following the Iraq War and the 2003 tax cut. That analysis turned out to be very wrong….
By stalling the vote they believe that the issue will not fit in the calendar on a later date. The 2003 tax cut lifted economic growth far beyond what most people expected. We know repeal of the Death Tax will also have a similar effect. And higher levels of economic growth is exactly what the residents of the Gulf Region need at this time to start the rebuilding process for their neighborhoods and more importantly for their lives.

(Upon hearing Norquist’s order to jump, the Senate asked: “how high?”)

Moral of the story: People were warned to get out. Those who stayed paid a price for that decision. If you rely on the government, you’re likely to be disappointed. No government can protect you or provide for you. You have to do it yourself.

“It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed,” the Illinois Republican said in an interview Wednesday with The Daily Herald of Arlington, Ill. Hastert, in a transcript supplied by the newspaper, said there was no question that the people of New Orleans would rebuild their city, but noted that federal insurance and other federal aid was involved. “We ought to take a second look at it. But you know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild too. Stubbornness.”

If you’ve got a week’s supplies, and a gun, you’ll usually do okay after a disaster. If you don’t, you’re in much bigger trouble, because it generally takes that long for some sort of order to be restored.

(Sorry, poor folks. Maybe all y’all can steal some guns…)

I think shooting looters is a compassionate way to protect the safety and well-being of law-abiding citizens. Time after time it has been shown that the way to prevent deadly anarchic riots is to take firm decisive action to prevent matters from getting to a tipping point.

The good news is — and it’s hard for some to see it now — that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)

I think the death toll may go into the thousands. And unfortunately, that’s going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the evacuation warnings. And I don’t make judgments about why people choose not to evacuate.

There is a humanitarian rescue operation going on right now, as we speak. It is difficult to get a real assessment on the amount of damage done, which makes a special session unlikely. In addition, emergency relief services such as FEMA have billions of dollars at hand to help with the initial relief.”

Regarding playing politics with disaster, Dennis Hastert’s spokesman Ron Bonjean — after twenty-four hours of drinking the blood of dead babies — said in response to Nancy Pelosi’s request for a special session:

We’ve approached the Minority Leader [Pelosi] with a proposal to bring the House back into emergency session to pass emergency funding for Hurricane Katrina victims.

There are real issues of federalism and fairness when it comes to asking Americans to spend untold billions on the reconstruction effort. Again, I lean toward doing it because that’s what great nations do. But I’d like to hear the price tag first.

In the words of simpering extremist toady David Frum: Is there not something bizarre about their willingness to fire off accusation after accusation, each contradicting the last?

Yes, Dave. Truly there is something bizzare about it.

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But what if there really IS a correlation between race and a tendency to amoral, selfish, violent behavior? Wouldn’t it be suicidal to ignore it just because it is unpleasant that life might actually be ordered that way?
I just feel sorry for any white people left in that city. I saw video of some white tourists walking aimlessly, dragging their suitcases behind them, looking for help. They said they hadn’t seen any police. What a nightmare…white people abandoned in a lawless city full of black people with no police in sight, and no firearms to protect themselves. You can talk all you want about how awful it is to be a racist, but they are the ones who are finding out firsthand the brutal realities of race in this country.

Continuing to update….

What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is that they want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — heh heh — this is working very well for them.

I understand there are 10,000 people dead. It’s terrible. It’s tragic. But in a democracy of 300 million people, over years and years and years, these things happen.

We’ve attained our goal of equipping FEMA with the resources they need to carry out their responsibilities. I’m also pleased that the White House has released additional funds to help Houston recover from the damage inflicted by Tropical Storm Allison.

Here’s Tom Delay, 2005 regarding FEMA responsibility for helping poor black people in New Orleans:

The emergency response system was set up to work from the bottom up. . . . It’s the local officials trying to handle the problem. When they can’t handle the problem, they go to the state, and the state does what they can to, and if they need assistance from FEMA and the federal government they ask for it and it’s delivered.

That’s just how it is. People need to be encouraged to do this. Whenever I say this [all levels of government will completely abandon you in a crisis], I get responses along the lines of “poor people can’t afford to stockpile food.” But here’s a family survival kit for $50 and it’s pretty good. Most poor people in America can afford food (that’s why so many poor people are fat). They do have other problems that make preparation less likely, though (if you’re the kind of person who thinks ahead and prepares for emergencies, you’re much less likely to be poor to begin with).

So the next time you have $1 hamburgers for dinner, buy an extra one and stick it under your pillow for a rainy day.

The danger here is real. Tens of thousands of black New Orleaneans persevered with dignity and sacrifice in the face of Katrina. But a sizable minority of blacks—including police—behaved reprehensibly in the aftermath, shooting at rescue workers, raping, killing and, yes, looting (though no cannibalism).

We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.

Again, I’ve got a proposition for you, because they [reporters] did not do their homework, because they did not understand the levees were the threat, they ended up killing hundreds of Americans. I’m not going to say thousands, because I don’t know the number. But I know hundreds are dead, that they did not communicate the severity of this storm.

[Santorum introduced a bill which instructs the government to abandon weather prediction and data reporting that duplicate private-sector activity. AccuWeather -- which would benefit -- is one of Santorum's major contributors]

Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?

In less enlightened times there was no catastrophe independent of human agency. When the plague or some other natural disaster struck, witches were burned, Jews were massacred and all felt better (except the witches and Jews).

A few centuries later, our progressive thinkers have progressed not an inch.

Of course, the parallels between 9/11 and Katrina are at best inexact. Hurricanes are more frequent than terrorist attacks. They are more predictable. And they are often more devastating. Katrina is a case in point — the number of deaths may go well beyond those incurred on 9/11. But that will not in itself make the hurricane a more significant event. One cannot gauge the magnitude of events simply from body counts. Aspirin abuse accounted for about twice the number of American deaths in 2001 than the September 11 attacks, but who noticed?

No one anticipated the fucking breach of the fucking levees???

The lake is now level with the city and the heavy lifting helicopters needed to fill the breach have not even arrived? Four days later?

The director of FEMA is an estate planning lawyer?

As of today, in the middle of the worst natural disaster in American history, Condolezza Rice is on vacation in New York, shopping for fucking shoes on fucking 5th Avenue?

What else is there to say…

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Yeah. He actually said it. No one anticipated the breech of the fucking leeves. “No one” apparently doesn’t include FEMA, who named it one of the most critical potential disasters in America, according to the nobodies at the New York Times, in 2001.

We are all at dire risk from the self- proclaimed incompetence of these monsters.

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps’ project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

“The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement,” he said. “The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them.”

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project — $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million — was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

“That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.”

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it’s too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

Grover Norquist:

I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

Enjoy your tax cut.

The seething light inhales
Breath of mourned delight
Awaiting… The storm
Blood, fire, chaos, and war
From the black abyss
Damnation… Of the pure
Fires consume eternity

The quest for higher pain
Endless trail to an extinct plain
Obsessed with the murdering hand
This numbness covers my mind
Blind… Slowly
Breaks my laws
Almighty… Gods of war
Besiege the holy throne
Light… Betrays me

This is my alone
Drifting on the winds
Beneath midnight skies
Coldness covers my latent eyes
Snake skin forms to ignite sin
Smearing the hatred of disgust
Upon the faces of the meek

Their lips burn with the taste of plagued virtues
The hands of destiny are non-immortal
Deaths foretold of past
Condemned to repeat this disease
Loss of divinity
Divine loss of sight
Black as the cold silence

I’ve felt the wars of the empires
Breaking this seal inside for the son of all wars
For the reign of a forgotten faith
Conversion of the flame to fall to sea
Filling the oceans with all, now i will become the seas

I contest this prayer to my hatred
All man’s lies fall into sea to exist
Reburn this seal for a closing of might
The divine bound to writhe into eternity
This is my blame for the loss of the sky
To declare war over these lips of spite