I’ve remarked before that Republicans use a ledger system to measure their own morality. It’s really simple and works like this: you put all the good things you’ve done in your life on one side of the ledger and all the bad things you’ve done on the other. Make a tally, and if you score higher on the good side, then you’re an upstanding citizen. You can murder people, or steal, it doesn’t matter. As long as you do more ostensible good, than bad, you’re awesome. People like Ken Lay worked this system to great advantage, as was evident from his obituary in the Aspen Daily News:
From the most junior employee to his top executives, Ken treated all with the same dignity and respect they deserved as children of God. Employees often remarked on how he recalled their names, family, and other personal details they shared with him.
"I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.” Jeremiah 12:10.
For those who know and love Ken, we take comfort in the knowledge that he is in the loving presence of the one true Judge.
Great guy. He ripped off his shareholders, stole from municipalities and other jurisdictions, and siphoned endless sums from millions of 401k accounts. But he treated everyone with the same dignity and respect they deserved—as children of God. Needless to say, he couldn’t have accomplished this without the help of his Republican friends in Government.
Like many Floridians, I know how to make coffee on a grill. I hope I don’t have an opportunity to re-use that skill for the first time since 2004 over the next few days. But the hurricane forecast Cone O’ Doom has the Cracker Compound squarely in its cross-hairs at the moment. In the interim, a few random things that piss me off:
“The good news is, obviously, no state is better prepared or organized to deal with whatever comes this way than the state of Florida,” McCain told reporters after his briefing.
McCain has long criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina, which inundated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. He blamed poor leadership in the storm’s aftermath.
I was at the grocery store yesterday to lay in a week’s supply of beer, and it was like the fall of Saigon. I had to use my shopping cart as a battering ram to plow through the crowds of panicky retirees fighting over the few remaining jugs of water. Jesus H. Christ filling celestial sandbags, you’d think they didn’t have perfectly good tubs and swimming pools at home.
US-Cuba relations prevent Hurricane Hunter planes from flying over Cuba to assess the storm.
Prior to the Bush administration’s ramped up hostility toward Cuba (a blatant pander to the elderly exile vote in South Florida), Hurricane Hunter planes were allowed to fly over Cuba to assess hurricanes. They shared all information obtained with the Cuban government. According to the Weather Channel, now they are restricted, so it’s tough for them to get a fix on storm strength and motion.
Yeah, the government of Cuba sucks, but is it really more oppressive and awful than, say Saudi Arabia, where women are barred from driving and voting and are required to scuttle around under drop cloths in public? Nice priorities, Chimpy.
No Country for Old Men.
Okay, I’m a HUGE Coen Brothers fan. I finally got my mitts on the DVD and watched it last night when I couldn’t sleep. I just have two questions: What the fuck? What the figgety fucking FUCK?
More like this, please. They should just keep pounding St. McSame about his McSameness over and over and over. It’s time to knock the Maverick back on his heels and going right at his alleged strength (being a “maverick") by binding him to Bush is the clearly the best line of attack.
One of the many things that piss me off about the Bush administration on a personal level is this: it has forced me to join the tinfoil hat set—a club I never wanted to join. But this latest twist in the anthrax case has me wondering anew about government and media machinations in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Glenn Greenwald has a comprehensive overview of the implications of the latest twist in the anthrax case here. It’s long but well worth reading in its entirety. Here’s a brief summary:
The anthrax attacks, which began a week after 9/11 and were designed to appear as if they were launched by Islamic terrorists, were instrumental in convincing the American public that the 9/11 attacks were part of a larger, ongoing effort to destroy the US.
Government officials – including McCain, Bush and Cheney – falsely linked the anthrax used in the attacks to Iraq. That link appeared to rest on a bogus claim that the anthrax contained a chemical called bentonite, which was used in Iraqi bio weapons programs but not by US labs.
Prominent WaPo columnist Richard Cohen claims that a “high government official” advised him to start taking the anthrax antidote Cipro before the anthrax attacks. And ABC News claimed shortly after the anthrax attacks that 3 to 4 separate “well-placed sources” told them the anthrax used in the attacks contained bentonite, which helped bolster the Iraq link and in turn gave rise to feverish speculation about Iraqi bio and nuclear weapons programs.
The government now says the anthrax attacks were the work of a crazed government scientist using anthrax from the US bio weapons research lab. That scientist committed suicide this week. And we now know the anthrax contained no bentonite. There was no false positive test that gave rise to that rumor, either – it appears to be a wholesale fabrication.
So if the attack was the work of a homegrown nutjob, who was the official who tipped off the WaPo’s Cohen prior to the attack? Who were ABC News’ three or four “well-placed, separate sources” who spread the lie about the bentonite?
