The Information Super-Frog

I complained about Dick Cheney here often enough her back in the day that I suppose his death merits a post.

A friend comments "I’m not gonna lie. There was a time that when Dick Cheney died that I would’ve been dancing in the streets, but Trump messed that up for me."

Cheney lived long enough to see the tactics he mainstreamed used against his own daughter.

This from The Onion 2 years ago explains Cheney better than the news site obits.
https://theonion.com/what-i-got-right-about-the-iraq-war-1850249194/

Unaccountable unitary executive theory of government: Nixon crime'd so Cheney could coup so Trump could shamble dementedly into full fascism.

Observation on what currently passes for political discourse in the U.S.A.

I've been hearing some folks slamming Ted Kennedy for having been part of a family of "aristocracy" and "privilege".

And they call Barack Obama "elitist".

And I notice that these are the same people who had just spent years defending Sieur Dubya of the House of Bush.

So my question is:

Do these people deserve any more nuanced response than to point at them and laugh?

Former BushCo official admits terror alert system was used for partisan political manipulation.

Surprise, surprise.


Tom Ridge admits Bush administration pushed to raise security alert for political reasons on eve of re-election.

Tom Ridge on National Security After 9/11


Commentary from Driftglass

29 August 2005: President George W. Bush takes a break from his vacation to fly out to Phoenix for the birthday of his pal Senator John McCain.


Do you remember where you were, what you were doing, how you felt on August 29th 2005? If you live in a section of the USA about the size of Britain, stretching from the western Florida Panhandle to past Grand Isle Louisiana and a long bit inland, you probably remember it all too well.

If you lived in other parts of the country, you may have noticed something about it on the news. Hurricane Katrina.



( Bush & McCain FAILED to defend America )

Bush Job Approval at 25%, His Lowest Yet

What I want to know is what, exactly, 25% of us are approving of?


"only 55% of members of Bush's own party approve of him in the poll [...] 5% of Democrats approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president."

What percentage of health care professionals approve of the bubonic plague?

I sorta also would like to know what else BushCo could do to get that number lower, but fear that if it was known BushCo would go ahead and do it. Onward to zero!

The words "levee break" and news footage of cities under water certainly has a dread familiarity for those of us greater New Orleans. Our hearts go out to our countrymen in the Mid-West.



Midwest Flood News

Red Cross.org

Just a "natural" disaster?

"Authorities knew the aging levee near Birdland, a working-class, racially diverse neighborhood, was the weakest link among the city's levees. A 2003 Corps report called for nearly $10 million in improvements across Des Moines, but there wasn't enough federal money to do all the work." Des Moines Levee Fails (hat tip to jdquintette)

But of course we can't afford 10 million here and 12 million there to defend America when we have a 2.4 Trillion dollar war to take care of. (And Bush wants another 178 billion, saying "our men and women in uniform and their families deserve better". Indeed, so do we all.)

Besides, it's cheaper (not for the country, of course, but for BushCo) to just let citizens die and start a PR campaign to blame the victims.

I'm not saying defending Americans isn't on BushCo's list of priorities at all. It's probably somewhere down their list as a subset of potential public relations problems. Right around the note to make sure Dear Leader doesn't start massaging female foreign leaders when there are media cameras around.

Edit:
Is 'Mother Nature' Really To Blame for the Midwest Floods? article by Georgianne Nienaber. More on levees, politics, and Army Corps of Engineers follies.

Ms. Hollie went to Algiers RiverFest last weekend, and took some good pix of The Indians

Speaking of New Orleans pix, "W Magazine" apparently has a spread about New Orleans. I havn't seen the magazine, but some pix are on line. (I could do without the fashionista stuff, but enough local stuff to be worth a look.)

Harry Shearer's suggested headline summarizing the Federal involvement with the Katrina disaster from the ACOE levees to FEMA trailers: "Government Floods City, Then Poisons Survivors"

Speaking of Federal incompetence, Dear Leader Bush is the poster boy: Historians agree: Worst President Ever

"Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world's goodwill. In short, no other president's faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large."

Former National Security Director during the Reagan administration, General William Odom, bashes the Democratic congress... for not standing up to BushCo. He advocates withdrawl from Iraq and impeaching Bush if he stands in the way.
'Supporting the troops' means withdrawing them


67% of USA voters realize that the Iraq war is creating more terrorism rather than diminishing it. 56% believe that the Iraq war is a distraction from the fight against terrorism.
poll

45% think Bush should be impeached. Might that number be higher if that wouldn't result in President Cheney? 54% want Cheney impeached.
ABC story
Polls on American Research Group

Ron Paul, the only anti-Iraq war Republican candidate, is now ahead in campaign contributions cash of John McCain, former front-runner and the most vehement support of the BushCo War Stategy.
ABC article

Fred Thompson's role in the Watergate hearings: A mole for Nixon.
Boston Globe article

BushCo War costing US $12 Billion a month, could top 1.4 Trillion

Did our government outsource US Army Corps of Engineers work to some firm that specializes in theatrical backdrops? If not, why do they keep spending money on stuff that looks like something, but doesn't actually work?

First, flood walls that won't hold back floodwater. Now, pumps that don't pump.

After the USACOE admitted responsibility for what's been assessed as "the largest civil engineering disaster in the history of the United States", one might think they'd want to show that they can actually do something right.

Apparently not.

Rather than using a tried, robust, reliable design for pumps they were installing on drainage canals, they used an untried design. And kept installing more of these pumps after they knew the things didn't actually work.

Oh, and one more detail: The defective pumps are made by a company with connections to the Bush family and previous allegations of fraud committed with taxpayer money.

( Read more, if you can stomach it )