Yeah, he's an MBA all right...Mostly Bigoted Asshole. Mighty Boneheaded Administrator. Maybe Been Alcholic...choose your own. But one thing Preznit Idiot Bastard has never been, or behaved like is a Master of Business Adminstration. Now, let's see...other than breaking the bank, invading sovereign countries based on a fit of pique, and being the Racist Messiah for the unwashed masses, he's just a good old boy, right?

Well, not so much. He also wanted to close down FEMA back when he became Preznit, that being the Grover Norquist thing to do. Well, no consequences, right?

According to a 218-page audit by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general that was obtained by The Washington Post in advance of its scheduled release today, FEMA cited a New Orleans hurricane as a top threat in 2001 but never completed plans because of a lack of funds.

Among other things, the report refers to rushed and inefficient decisions in the first weeks after Katrina:

• FEMA spent $900 million to buy 25,000 manufactured homes and 1,300 modular homes, most of which cannot be used because agency rules say they are too big or unsafe in flood zones.

• The agency spent $632 million to subsidize hotel rooms for tens of thousands of families at an average cost of $2,400 a month, three times what it later paid families to rent two-bedroom apartments.

• The agency spent $249 million to secure 8,136 cruise-ship cabins for six months, at a cost that Inspector General Richard L. Skinner estimated at $5,100 a month per passenger. That is six times the cost of renting two-bedroom apartments.

Skinner's report cites a "basic lack of understanding" of FEMA regulations for the $900 million manufactured- housing fiasco and a "fundamental lack of planning" for a makeshift program under which FEMA is reimbursing localities to lease 66,000 apartments for evacuees. It found the cruise ship program "not necessarily efficient."

A top House Democrat released e-mails Tuesday detailing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's role in pushing a $236 million federal contract for Carnival Cruise Lines to house Hurricane Katrina victims.

In a letter, Rep. Henry Waxman of California called on Bush to explain his role in the award of the "lucrative contract," which was given to the Florida-based company without a full competitive bid process. The e-mails Waxman released were provided to Congress by Michael Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
...
A spokesman for Bush's office, Russell Schweiss, called any charges of impropriety baseless.

"The governor's involvement was merely facilitating contact with a corporate citizen of Florida that was seeking to provide immediate housing relief," Schweiss said. "Any assertion the governor had to do with any contracting negotiations or further action by FEMA is unfounded."

Yeah, that eye-for-an-eye thing that the republicans and unfortunately a few lawn-order Dems are to fond of...the immutable punishment. Well, here's a case where it went wrong, all wrong.

Ruben Cantu, 18 years old, was convicted of capital murder in San Antonio in 1985 and executed in 1993. Many people - including Sam Millsap, Bexar Co. district attorney at the time of Cantu's conviction - now believe that Cantu was innocent. A 2005 article in the Houston Chronicle led the current DA, Susan Reed, to open an investigation. However, her tactics - including threatening to charge one of the recanting witnesses with "murder by perjury" - have led all the witnesses to hire attorneys and clam up. And it is now unclear whether any real investigation will take place.

I was looking through my sitemeter stats, and found this link from a site called linguamatrix. It's DemVet translated into what looks like Indonesian...not quite sure though.

Wild.

Catalog Note: offered Fall term 2006 only instr: Staff

An overview of contemporary and unlikely threats to American citizens too afraid of their own shadows to go out at noon. Emphasis will be given to distorting facts, making the media believe everything at the risk of being denounced as "unpatriotic" and methodologies for driving poll numbers via threat levels and Fox News. 1 credit, seminar. Prerequisites: Ohio Political Thuggery 101, Scaremongering 101, Three-card monte 101.

Seems that the Kids of the Fall are at it again. An election coming up, and it's time to ratchet up the sphincters of the clueless sheeple with talk of "sixteen days" to Nukular Armageddon at the hands of those whacky Muslims. Apparently Karl needs Preznit Rexall Wrangler to get his war on again to make sure that the elections get delivered in a timely manner, thus keeping promises of graft, corruption, cronyism and incompetance alive. Keeping hope alive...for CheneyBurton, that's it!

The Wingnut Post, which once had an editor and now has Fred Hiatt featured this piece from a remarkably reliable republican Neocon, Mark Helprin, a fellow at the incredibly unbiased Claremont Institute (yes, I was laughing while I wrote that).

...But with an intermediate-range strategic nuclear capacity, it could deter American intervention, ...

And he still believes in the tooth-fairy and Easter bunny:

The obvious option is an aerial campaign to divest Iran of its nuclear potential: i.e., clear the Persian Gulf of Iranian naval forces, scrub anti-ship missiles from the shore and lay open antiaircraft-free corridors to each target. With the furious capacity of its new weapons, the United States can accomplish this readily.

In that time, we would do well to strengthen -- in numbers and mass as well as quality -- the means with which we fight, to reinforce the fleet train with which to supply the fighting lines, and to plan for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates. And even if we cannot extricate ourselves from nation-building and counterinsurgency in Iraq, we must have a plan for remounting the army there so that it can fight and maneuver as it was born to do.

Then Helprin goes off the reservation;

Our problem in Iraq has been delusion and lack of foresight.

Preznit End Times just can't help himself, there must be a conflation gene somewhere in his makeup. Today at a seminar at Johns Hopkins:

Responding to questions, Mr. Bush said the decision to go to war against Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein was a difficult one, but the correct one.

"After Sept. 11, America decided that we would fight the war on terror on the offense, and that we would confront threats before they fully materialized," the president said. "Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States of America. America is safer today because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. Now, it's time for the Iraqi leaders to do their part and finish the job of forming a unity government."

Where was this guy in the run-up to the 2004 Elections? It would have been a definite plus to know that men like LGEN Newbold were speaking their minds openly. It might have made a difference.

In 1971, the rock group The Who released the antiwar anthem Won't Get Fooled Again. To most in my generation, the song conveyed a sense of betrayal by the nation's leaders, who had led our country into a costly and unnecessary war in Vietnam. To those of us who were truly counterculture--who became career members of the military during those rough times--the song conveyed a very different message. To us, its lyrics evoked a feeling that we must never again stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it. Never again, we thought, would our military's senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the judgment is in: the Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again.

"...those ignorant of and casual about war..."

Time Magazine asks:

When Is a Leak Not a Leak?

Yeah, this is going to happen. Not. I don't know where this is coming from, it's either due to the 1600 Crew'sinking poll numbers, or Unka Karl, who's always thinking, is getting out ahead of the story by winding up Simple Arlen and going for another snow-the-media spin-a-thon.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney need to explain what classified information was authorized to be leaked to reporters in July 2003 and why, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday.

"I think that there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him, and an explanation from the president as to what he said so that it can be evaluated," Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) said. He was referring to last week's revelation in a court document that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, testified that Cheney told him Bush approved leaking parts of a classified document about intelligence estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

For added effect, Lynn can show up and weep, a la Mrs.Weepy Scalito, and then call the Pat Leahy a "bad, bad man". Because if it works once, it works twice...right?

Who knew...?

Eons ago, Venus may have been the gentle, tropical paradise that Earthlings once imagined. It was closer to the sun -- but not too close. It was almost Earth-size -- but not quite. And it had plenty of water, even oceans.

But that was then. Sometime in the distant past, the oceans started to heat up and then boiled away. The water vapor hung over the planet like a glove, trapping the heat below and creating a berserk greenhouse effect.

Today, Venus's atmosphere is 97 percent carbon dioxide, and the planet is wreathed in clouds of sulfuric acid. The planet is apparently condemned to an eternal cycle of global warming, with surface temperatures that hover around 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

Well, the hornet's nest is stirring about the Armadillo Messiah, and his desire to turn Iran into a glass-topped parking lot. I remember that there was a lot of talk like that when the hostages were taken...I spent a lot of time off the coast of Iran during that crisis, that was resolved by President "Never negotiates with Terrorists. Not!" Raygun in his own "October Surprise".

But this shit really worries me...all of it. I know it's not just me either, but the talk of the Armadillo Messiah having to go where no man will ever go again is well, frightening. So check this out...

At a conference in Berlin, Gardiner outlined a five-day operation that would require 400 "aim points," or targets for individual weapons, at nuclear facilities, at least 75 of which would require penetrating weapons. He also presumed the Pentagon would hit two chemical production plants, medium-range ballistic missile launchers and 14 airfields with sheltered aircraft. Special Operations forces would be required, he said.

Gardiner concluded that a military attack would not work, but said he believes the United States seems to be moving inexorably toward it. "The Bush administration is very close to being left with only the military option," he said.

There is no such thing as a "surgical" airstrike. The only way that they could "surgically" strike against Iran is to commit genocide on a scale never before concieved, because any strike like this would foment a scenario far worse than any Soviets-rolling-into-France scenario ever envisioned by planners during the Cold War.

A Tumbleweed Jesus we don't need. Sanity we do need..and it's not coming from the 1600 Crew, yesterday, today or tomorrow.

"Tom Delay was a victim and prisoner of unruly, out-of-control staffers"

The piece that former Delay staffer John Feehry writes is pretty revealing. Much of that info could probably be surmised from stuff published elsewhere. But I think that the biggest little nuke that Feehry tosses is this:

Bill Clinton was impeached for three reasons: DeLay, Rudy and Scanlon.

The other prime mover in the Clinton Impeachment debacle was Henry "Gotta Getta Mistress" Hyde, that paragon of religiosity who has stated that the Clinton Impeachment was, in part, payback for the downing of The Nixon.

In Crazy Base World anyhow.

1. Our MBA Incompetant
   
2. The Death Penalty Follies
   
3. The coolest link ever
   
4. Scaremongering 102
   
5. Can't stop the Lying, can he?
   
6. Digging this.
   
7. How's this for an answer?
   
8. Laugh? I almost cried...
   
9. A glimpse of hell?
   
10. Persian Carpet Bombing, part 1