MAX BLUMENTHAL

Bennett's New Image
I've detailed Bill Bennett's makeover attempt at Huffington Post.

Who Are "These People?"
It may not have been apparent to everyone who saw Bill Bennett's over-aggressive self-defense on Hannity and Colmes, but the way he delivered it confirmed his reputation as a racist as much the content of his comments. When a white person refers to "these black kids" or calls blacks, "these people," as Bennett did, he or she is basically suggesting black people are all alike. When that person uses these phrases to describe their own generosity to the black community, he or she is suggesting that black people need a white savior because they can't help themselves.

"These people..." has been the beginning of millions of racist remarks -- always made in privacy -- by whites about the dark-skinned other. Bennett can try all he wants to change the perception of what he said, but he can't change how he speaks.

I also found it odd that Bennett boasted to Hannity of "raising the price and lowering the purity" of cocaine when he was drug czar. All that means is he made life more miserable for drug addicts and turned more poor people towards cheaper alternatives like crack and meth. Meth, of course, is most popular among whites in middle America. If Bennett's allegedly hypothetical scenario of aborting all black babies were fulfilled, this country would still be left with its nascent middle American drug epidemic -- and the lot of lily-white corporate crooks running the show.

Crooks and Liars has video of BlackJack Bennett's remark that his lily-white wife has done more for inner city "black girls" than every black member of congress combined. (If only black people would just step aside and let moral-mongering neocons take charge, all their problems would end, right?)

Heimlich Maneuver
Apparently Ohio Lt. Gov. candidate Phil Heimlich doesn't mind sharing the stage with racists.

Blackjack Bennett really raised the stakes on Hannity and Colmes last night:

BENNETT: Let me just tell you, when it comes to abortion, my wife's program, Best Friends, has kept more young women from having abortions because they don't get pregnant because they take her good counsel...

HANNITY: Let me...

BENNETT: Than the entire black caucus. She has done more for inner city black girls than the entire black caucus. So I will not bow my head to any of these people.

By the way, here's the website for Mrs. Bennett's abstinence organization. It doesn't seem to have been updated since April. Some White Savior.

This is the guy who helped groom Richard Reid as a terrorist. Brilliant spy-work, I must say:

ONE of al-Qaeda’s most dangerous figures has been revealed as a double agent working for MI5, raising criticism from European governments, which repeatedly called for his arrest.

Britain ignored warnings — which began before the September 11 attacks — from half a dozen friendly governments about Abu Qatada’s links with terrorist groups and refused to arrest him. Intelligence chiefs hid from European allies their intention to use the cleric as a key informer against Islamic militants in Britain.

Abu Qatada boasted to MI5 that he could prevent terrorist attacks and offered to expose dangerous extremists, while all along he was setting up a haven for his terror organisation in Britain

Maybe Tom DeLay should make aliyah:

WASHINGTON – The first public appearance of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) after being indicted and forced to leave his leadership position was at Wednesday night's dinner hosted by "Stand for Israel," a group of Israel-supporting evangelical Christians and Jews led by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein.

"It's really good to be here among so many old friends and brothers and sisters in the cause for justice and human freedom," DeLay opened, drawing a standing ovation from the crowed. Some shouted, "We love you, Tom."

The ousted majority leader of the House of Representatives is known to be a staunch supporter of Israel and has close ties with right wing groups and the settlers. "Tom DeLay is a true friend of Israel and has always worked for the security and well-being of the state," Israeli ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon said Thursday. "We will keep up the close ties with him."

And over at Time Magazine's 2004 blog of the year:

The Bush administration should take a lesson from DeLay's aggressive self-defense.

Uh, yeah.

A new group has launched to take on the religious right. I have no idea whether they will be effective, but I have some ideas that might help them. I'll be making one of them public in the coming days.

Now that DeLay's gone, it's time to focus on what a corrupt bastard Richard Pombo is:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Republicans on Wednesday will launch a rapid-fire assault against environmental protections on the pretext of helping the U.S. oil and gas industry recover from hurricane damage, environmental groups charge.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Resources Committee are holding separate meetings to finalize legislation on Wednesday, with the aim of combining them into a single energy bill for the full House to debate next week.

The resources panel, led by Richard Pombo of California, wants to lift a ban on Florida offshore drilling, promote oil shale and sell a dozen national parks for energy development.

Alan Colmes, of all people, confronts Ann Coulter about her false characterization of Pat Tillman. All she can say is, "I don't believe it."

Considering that the mainstream press collectively tip-toeing around the fact that David Dreier is a closet gay who lives with his male chief of staff, ABC News probably did the best it could.

Former congressman Chris Bell, who filed the initial ethics complaint against DeLay, on the indictment:

“At some point Mr DeLay needs to look in the mirror to see who’s responsible for his hardships," he said. "They say that he’s been such a powerful member and a powerful conservative. Mr DeLay conducts his business in a highly questionable fashion and that’s why I think he’s the most corrupt politician in America today....”

"At the end of the day," he continued, "once the dots are connected, it’s not terribly complicated and it’s not terribly pretty. They basically cheated in order to take control."

A full text of the indictment is here.

Abramoff Makes A Killing -- Literally
Washington's most powerful Republican lobbyist may be behind a murder-for-hire carried out by the Gambino crime family:

Fort Lauderdale police have arrested three men on murder and conspiracy charges in the 2001 gangland-style killing of a South Florida businessman who sold a casino cruise line to Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, authorities said today.

Police picked up Anthony Moscatiello, 67, Anthony Ferrari, 48, and James Fiorillo, 28, last night and this morning in connection with the ambush slaying of Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, who was killed in Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 6, 2001.

Boulis had sold SunCruz Casinos to Abramoff and a partner, Adam Kidan, in 2000 at a time when Abramoff was one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists. Abramoff and Kidan were indicted last month on charges of wire fraud in connection with the purchase of the company. Moscatiello, known to police as a bookkeeper to New York's Gambino crime family, was brought in as consultant by Kidan when he and Abramoff took control of SunCruz. Ferrari is a business associate of Moscatiello.

And when it comes to Abramoff and the Mafia, you just know the GOP congressional leadership's going to turn up somewhere:

Abramoff used contacts with GOP Reps. Tom DeLay (Tex.) and Robert W. Ney (Ohio) and their staffs as he worked to land the SunCruz deal, interviews and court records show....

Dealings between Boulis and the Abramoff group were often tense. At key points in the negotiations, Ney placed comments in the Congressional Record -- first sharply criticizing Boulis and later praising the new ownership under Kidan. Ney later said he had been unaware of Kidan's background.

Also during the negotiations, Abramoff brought a lender he was trying to impress to hobnob with DeLay in Abramoff's FedEx Field skybox at a Redskins-Cowboys game. DeLay has said he does not remember meeting the lender.

I raised the possibility of Abramoff's involvement in Boulis' murder over a year ago. Here's what I wrote:

....The bad movie Abramoff made was the anti-communist B-movie "Red Scorpion," which was filmed in apartheid South Africa and subsequently condemned by the UN. And along with Scanlon, he is accused by some of having helped arrange the killing of Gus Boulis, a business partner who accused him of failing to pay for his business.

For the record, Abramoff and Kidan met while they were College Republicans.

Gannon Comes Out...To Support War
Here's a friendly face at the 400-strong pro-war rally last Sunday: Jeff Gannon, who curiously claimed he was bisexual the same week Dick Cheney got both of his knees repaired. (Thanks to
Joe Tresh for the photo and DemsTV pundit-of-the-week Cliff Shechter for the one-liner).

Federally-Funded Pharisees
I am paying churches, whether I like it or not. So are you.

After weeks of prodding by Republican lawmakers and the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday that it will use taxpayer money to reimburse churches and other religious organizations that have opened their doors to provide shelter, food and supplies to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

FEMA officials said it would mark the first time that the government has made large-scale payments to religious groups for helping to cope with a domestic natural disaster.

Which churches are we paying? I don't know. Will the Bush administration account for its payments? Probably not. Will Operation Blessing or other Robertson-linked groups get paid? Probably. Do they need our money? Like I need a sponge bath from Karen Hughes. Do we live in a quasi-theocracy? Yes. Then why haven't I given up? Because despite the fact that most of the people I know think I'm naive, I think it will end soon.

“The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons. This cover-up started within minutes of Pat’s death, and it started at high levels. This is not something that (lower-ranking) people in the field do.”
--Pat Tillman Sr.

Of all the symbols the right used to cultivate domestic support for the Bush administration's military escapades in Iraq and Afghanistan, that of Pat Tillman was one its most effective. If your memory is fuzzy, Tillman was a handsome, muscle-bound NFL star who passed up a multi-million dollar contract to become an Army Ranger battling Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The official Army account of Tillman's death held that he was killed while charging up a rocky incline in pursuit of a band of Qaeda fighters. When word of Tillman's killing hit stateside, the conservative propaganda factory sought to make him theirs. Ann Coulter described Tillman as “an American original -- virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be.” (Can we have that in the original German, bitte?) Though the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were growing increasingly catastrophic, Tillman's reinvigorated public support for the administration's mission, at least momentarily.

Now, almost a year and a half later, the right's version of Tillman's killing has been shattered. The San Francisco Chronicle got its hands on 2000 pages of testimony on Tillman's death and interviewed his family and soldiers who served with him. The Chronicle's report not only strengthens the evidence that the Pentagon deliberately covered up Tillman's death from friendly-fire to better exploit him as a PR tool, it reveals that:

--Tillman joined the Army specifically to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but was sent to participate in the invasion of Iraq against his wishes. He called the invasion, "so fucking illegal."

--He was an avid reader and fan of Noam Chomsky. Tillman was scheduled to meet Chomsky upon his return from Afghanistan.

--Tillman was an independent-minded, outspoken Bush critic who planned to vote for John Kerry.

--On April 23, 2004, a day after he was killed, Tillman's bullet-riddled body armor was burned by a soldier. That same day, all Army Ranger top commanders were informed of the suspected fratricide.

--Two days later, Tillman's uniform was burned.

--On April 30, Tillman was awarded the Silver Star for bravery. "Through the firing Tillman’s voice was heard issuing fire commands to take the fight to the enemy on the dominating high ground,” the Army stated.

--Three days later, acting Army Secretary Lee Brownlee was told of Tillman's death by fratricide.

--On May 29, once Tillman's PR value had been exhausted, the Army admitted to his family that his death was a fratricide.

--On November 14, an officer who interrogated Rangers involved in Tillman's killing stated he thought some could have been charged with "criminal intent" and other with "gross negligence."

--Portions of the Pentagon's report on Tillman's death were deleted.

The question now is, what did Donald Rumsfeld know about Tillman's death and when did he know it? If Army Ranger commanders and the Army Secretary knew Tillman was killed in a fratricide, Rumsfeld must have known too. The fact that when Tillman first joined the Army, Rumsfeld personally commended him with a signed letter seems especially relevant now. If Rumsfeld knew the nature of Tillman's killing in April, 2004, he undoubtedly directed the cover-up. And if Rumsfeld directed the cover-up, Karl Rove was aware of it, if not actively involved in exploiting it.

Supposedly John McCain has taken up the Tillman family's case in the Senate. If he's serious, he will convene hearings on the cover-up and compel Rumsfeld to testify. Until then, the Pentagon is conducting its own probe of Tillman's death, thus ensuring a newer, more sophisticated cover-up than ever before.

The march was enormous -- far larger than "tens of thousands." I estimated it at at least 100,000. The procession of protesters stretched for possibly a mile, which is much shorter than the RNC protest but still overwhelming. Most importantly, the march was full of people who had not yet protested against the war on Iraq. A cop approached me to tell me how sick he was of the war, and so did the bus driver who took me home. In fact, the bus driver let the whole bus know how much he couldn't stand the war. Believe what you want, but everybody is hating on Bush now. I'll write in much greater detail tomorrow. I'm headed to the tail-end of the concert on the Mall now.

Here he is again with a sarcastic malediction against our future leaders. How irresponsible.

Here's an obviously wacko anti-war protester I saw standing in front of the White House today.

In case you've been wondering what happened to Walker, Texas Ranger, he's turned into Walker, Bible-Thumper. Make sure to watch the video.

This is big:

Tancredo said he hopes one of the more establishment candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 will adopt his anti-immigration stance. He recently met with Republican Virginia Senator George Allen, a possible presidential aspirant, to discuss immigration and said he came away mildly encouraged.

If none of the candidates make immigration a prominent part of the presidential debate in 2008, Tancredo said he would enter the race to draw attention to the issue.

``I will enter primaries, and I will try my best to make all the folks out there have to deal with it,'' he said.

Tancredo, one of the most racist, demagogic and ideologically devoted elected officials in the national GOP, will run in the 2008 primaries. How dark a shadow will he cast on the other candidates? I can't wait to find out.

Sorry about the non-blogging this week. I'll be posting Friday and reporting from the march here in DC on Saturday.

An Evening With Hitchens and Gorgeous George
The crowd gathered on Lexington Avenue awaiting the chance to see Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway's debate of the occupation of Iraq wrapped around the block, and kept growing by the minute. As I stood in line, still hundreds of yards from the auditorium's entrance, I spied Hitchens and an armada of young staffers from the neoconservative cultural journal, the New Criterion, seeding the crowd with leaflets exposing Galloway in bold print as "The Toad to Damascus," an apologist for "his new fascist playmate Bashar al-Assad." The crudely composed leaflets, which seemed to have been adapted from notes Hitchens scribbled on a cocktail napkin, set the tone for a sleazy, pointless debate which ultimately had more to do with its two bilious Brit stars than its purported topic.

In fact, Hitchens and Galloway's verbal slime-fest wasn't much of a debate at all. It was more like a competition for who could do the most possible damage to his own cause. Galloway tried his best, declaring, "You may think that those airplanes in this city on 9/11 came out of a clear, blue sky. I believe they emerged out of a swamp of hatred created by us." True or not, Galloway had severely miscalculated. He was in New York City, after all, and even anti-war audience members began to boo.

Galloway bulldozed ahead at full-steam, seemingly determined to personify the terrorist-sympathizing, loony leftist lifted from the neoconservative imagination. "How dare you slander the Iraqi resistance?" he asked Hitchens with his trademark stentorian tenor. The Iraqi "resistance?" Did Galloway mean the assorted Ba'athist and al-Qaeda vampires drowning Iraq in a pool of their own countrymen's blood? Or was he referring to a previously unknown band of oppressed peasants led by a cadre of revolutionary intellectuals in a quixotic struggle against Yankee imperialism? He didn't say.

While "Gorgeous" George displayed all the political acuity of Curious George, he was not to be outdone by Hitchens, who defended not only the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East, but its hapless response to Hurricane Katrina. "For people to start pumping out propaganda saying those were black people who were killed in New Orleans is shameful," Hitchens exclaimed with indignation. "Those bodies haven't even been identified." (If only the press had been more contrarian!) He added, "Only the Governor could have given the orders" to send help. For this, Galloway dubbed Hitchens, "The court jester" of the "Bourbon Bushes."

To my surprise, Hitchens commanded a small but raucous contingent of cheerleaders. Christopher Isham, a senior producer for ABC News, whom I sat beside throughout the debate, was among them. Isham, who worked hand-in-glove with the late Peter Jennings and leads ABC News' investigative unit, applauded vigorously when Hitchens first appeared on stage and throughout his opening statement, which consisted of a spirited -- though mostly unintelligible -- defense of the invasion of Iraq. Isham laughed with glee as Hitchens red-baited the booing crowd, telling them, "Albania's been overthrown, comrades." When Galloway made his opening remarks, however, punctuating them by describing Hitchens as "something unique in natural history: the first natural metamorphosis from a butterfly to a slug," Isham groaned in disgust.

Later, while I scoured the auditorium in search of the liberal media, a reporter who said he was from the Observer in London remarked to me, "I think Hitchens' positions are genuine. I don't think he strikes poses." Another member of the press who didn't identify himself observed, "The people who really hate Hitchens are the ones on the far-right."

Galloway and Hitchens could have slimed each other all night, it seemed. I was eager to get home and decontaminate myself, so I was grateful when Galloway finally announced, "I think we've had enough hate for the evening." He had a bus tour with Jane Fonda to get to, after all, and the hour was getting late. By the time Hitchens got around to his closing statement, more than a few audience members seemed ready to leap onstage and tear him limb-from-limb. "It takes a bit more than that, ladies and gentleman, to shut me up," he declared above sustained booing.

After the debate, Hitchens found himself seated at a table, surrounded by a small crowd of fawning, young white males -- "contrarians" -- while he signed his latest polemic. He had wrestled a nemesis through the sewer, pissed off a few of his former fans, and now he was selling a book or two. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it was Hitchens' happiest hour.

The Opposite of Qualified
And here's the epilogue to my article on Herr Doktor:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) used his time to deliver an antiabortion speech. After this long message, Coburn asked, "Would you agree that the opposite of being dead is being alive?" After another monologue on his abortion views, Coburn said he wasn't even intending to ask a question about it. "That was for your information," he said.

Then Coburn went moved on to assert that he used his "medical skills of observation of body language" to ascertain whether Roberts was telling the truth. "And I will tell you that I am very pleased, both in my observational capabilities as a physician to know that your answers have been honest and forthright as I watch the rest of your body respond to the stress that you're under."

My piece on Tom Coburn and his chief of staff, Michael Schwartz, is out. Here are the first two grafs:

On the first day of hearings on Judge John G. Roberts Jr.'s nomination to Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, before a Russell Senate Office Building Caucus Room overflowing with members of the media and Congressional staffers, with klieg lights shining and flashbulbs popping all around, and with seventeen other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee arrayed beside him, Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn busied himself with a crossword puzzle.

On April 7, five months prior to this hearing, Michael Schwartz, Coburn's chief of staff, told me, "Tom doesn't know anything about this judiciary stuff, so I'm feeding him piles and piles of memos every day." Though Schwartz didn't specify the nature of his memos to Coburn, I assumed they were made up of primers on legal jargon and history, not word games, puzzles or other such brainteasers.

I'm on the Arnie Arnison show as I write this. There's a traffic jam on I-93 south of Manchester. Uh oh, they're asking me a question...

Sorry for the slow blogging.

I've been working on a piece on Tom Coburn which I think will shed considerable light on his role in the John Roberts hearings.

Tomorrow, I'll be at the Hitchens-Galloway debate in New York. I may write it up, or not. I hear every lefty journalist in the city will be there. At the least, I'll do a quick Huffington Post entry.

Bill Maher the other night:

"Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

"Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man? Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

"But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

"On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

"So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: 'Take a hint.'"

Balance Trumps Objectivity
Not surprisingly, Time Inc.'s Joe Klein equated this with RFK Jr.'s claim that global warming -- and by extension, the Bush administration's anti-science position -- compounded the destruction Katrina wrought:

As the floodwaters rose in New Orleans last week, a group called Columbia Christians for Life announced that it had discerned God's purpose in the storm: the destruction of the five abortion clinics in the city. The proof was a radar photograph showing that the hurricane "looks like a fetus facing to the left (west) in the womb, in the early weeks of gestation." A photo of a 6-week fetus was helpfully provided for comparison.

Klein's next sentence reflects the kind of balancing act white collar media hacks mistakenly view as an essential function of journalism:

At the other end of the political spectrum, environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was blaming the hurricane on ... Haley Barbour, the Governor of Mississippi, who played a "central role ... derailing the Kyoto Protocol" on global warming. Kennedy's larger point was defensible—global warming may well cause extreme weather patterns—but the implication that one man and one (flawed) treaty might have prevented this storm seemed a bit much.

RFK Jr's argument was a bit much. Phrasing it as a stretch might have been more concise. But Klein's suggestion that it was morally and intellectually equivalent to the obscurantist claims of some maniacal theocrats is far worse than RFK Jr's loosest logic. Also, how is Kennedy "on the other end of the political spectrum" from Christians for Life, as Klein claimed? Is Klein saying he's as far to the left as they are to the right? Klein's wild reasoning is a case study in what now passes for "balance."

Thanks to the work of the Bozells, the Tomlinsons and Karl Rove's White House, balance has become a conservative watchword as meaningless as "freedom," and it's been just as effective as a cudgel against a once-adversarial White House press corps. By being "balanced," journalists provide conservatives with the comfort of believing that there are people on the other side of the spectrum who are just as extreme as they are -- even if it's not true. As unwitting sock-puppets of the right, the white collar press has cast objectivity to the wayside.

The Christian right's House Hebrew strikes again:

If Katrina prompts the people of New Orleans to ask why their city is a murder capital or why its and Louisiana's politics are particularly corrupt, the notion of a divine hand in natural tragedy can play a constructive role....

The new wrinkle with Katrina is that the anti-religious left is identifying the sins and sinners. Leftism is itself a religion, and its list of sins is at least as long as that of any traditional religion.

What's Di Rita hiding? A trip to Plato's Retreat with Bolton? Come on, stuff like that has never stopped a Republican nominee before.

Lawrence T. Di Rita, the Pentagon's top spokesman whom Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had recommended to the White House to be undersecretary of the Army, has withdrawn his name from consideration.

This is the second time Di Rita has removed himself from the running for a Pentagon job requiring Senate approval. The previous occasion was when he was up for assistant secretary for public affairs. This time, Di Rita is citing "personal reasons" for his withdrawal.

The Lame Game
FEMA's relief efforts were great! If only the comsymp foreign press hadn't tricked the American public into believing otherwise:

The image of the United States has taken a beating over the past 10 days, as foreign television and newspapers show images of death, chaos and disease in New Orleans. Even lowly Bangladesh (per capita income: $400 a year) was moved to send $1 million in foreign aid.

But Karen Hughes has another view. The Bush confidante, now undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, held a meeting with her staff in Foggy Bottom yesterday and was asked about the international ramifications of the response to the New Orleans flooding. The problem, Hughes replied, was not a failed relief effort but a foreign press that did not appreciate the federal government's good work.

I'm sure the former Dallas TV reporter-cum-State Dept. psy-ops czar is doing a whale of a job repatterning what Thomas Friedman has called, "the Arab mind."

The new guy:

Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, head of the Coast Guard, had his own contribution to the finger-pointing debate Thursday. Appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," Allen, who has been tasked to assist in the recovery efforts, said, "I give Mother Nature an F."

Fun With Hot-Tub Tom
Tom DeLay knows what it's like to be displaced and homeless. It's fun:

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to Reliant Park this morning offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter.

While on the tour with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.

Playing the Blame Game?
Will Republicans now turn their ire on the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins for playing what has simulaneously become Scott McClellan and Wolf Blitzer's favorite phrase, "The Blame Game?" Or will they concede that there's something more to criticism of the Bush administration's response than mere partisan posturing? Somehow, I think they'll have to just ignore him and focus on similar remarks by Nancy Pelosi instead.

Here's what Perkins had to say about FEMA in his daily newsletter, Washington Update:

There was a television show in the 1960's called F-Troop about an incompetent band of post-Civil War troops stationed at Fort Courage, somewhere west of the Missouri. Having been forced to deal with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other government bureaus these last few days, I am reminded of this sitcom, except this is no comedy. While the hurricane was an "act of God" the government response and relief effort on the local, state and national levels were failures of man.

I can't wait for Crazy Tom to declare in 2008. People need to see the GOP for what it is, without all the fancy frames and Orwellian jargon. As Council of Conservative Citizens members like to say, Go Tom, Go!

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., asked House Speaker Dennis Hastert not to send federal disaster aid to officials in Louisiana, calling state and local government there incompetent and corrupt.

In a letter to Hastert on Wednesday, Tancredo urged the speaker to create a "bipartisan select committee" of members of Congress to oversee federal disaster spending in Louisiana.

"Given the abysmal failure of state and local officials in Louisiana to plan adequately for or respond to the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the city of New Orleans, and given the long history of public corruption in Louisiana, I hope the House will refrain from directly appropriating any funds . . . to either the state of Louisiana or the city of New Orleans," Tancredo wrote.

My latest is out. Here's a graf:

Every cloud has a silver lining. Hurricane Katrina has devastated New Orleans, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless, and plunging the entire city into chaos. In the hurricane's wake, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its director, Michael Brown, forced out of his former job at the International Arabian Horse Association, with no credentials in disaster relief, have become targets of withering criticism. Yet FEMA's relief efforts have brought considerable assistance to at least one man who stands to benefit from Hurricane Katrina perhaps more than any other individual: Pat Robertson.

Read the whole thing. I will probably be on Democracy Now! tomorrow morning. I hate mornings.

Who knew this little exchange from the presidential debate on October 3, 2000 would mean so much?

MODERATOR: New question. We've been talking about a lot of specific issues. It's often said that in the final analysis about 90% of being the President of the United States is dealing with the unexpected, not with issues that came up in the campaign. Vice President Gore, can you point to a decision, an action you have taken, that illustrates your ability to handle the unexpected, the crisis under fire?

GORE: When the action in Kosovo was dragging on and we were searching for a solution to the problem, our country had defeated the adversary on the battlefield without a single American life being lost in combat. But the dictator Milosevic was hanging on. I invited the former prime minister of Russia to my house and took a risk in asking him to get personally involved, along with the head of Finland, to go to Belgrade and to take a set of proposals from the United States that would constitute basically a surrender by Serbia. But it was a calculated risk that paid off. Now, I could probably give you some other examples of decisions over the last 24 years. I have been in public service for 24 years, Jim. And throughout all that time the people I have fought for have been the middle-class families, and I have been willing to stand up to powerful interests like the big insurance companies, the drug companies, the HMOs, the oil companies. They have good people and they play constructive roles sometimes, but sometimes they get too much power. I cast my lot with the people even when it means that you have to stand up to some powerful interests who are trying to turn the -- the policies and the laws to their advantage. You can see it in this campaign. The big drug companies support Governor Bush's prescription drug proposal. They oppose mine because they don't want to get Medicare involved because they're afraid that Medicare will negotiate lower prices for seniors who currently pay the highest prices of all.

MODERATOR: Governor Bush?

BUSH: I've been standing up to big business, Hollywood, big trial lawyers. Was -- the question about emergencies, wasn't it?

MODERATOR: It was about -- okay.

BUSH: You know, as governor, one of the things you have to deal with is catastrophe. I can remember the fires that swept Parker County, Texas. I remember the floods that swept our state. I remember going down to Del Rio, Texas. I have to pay the administration a compliment. James Lee Witt of FEMA has done a really good job of working with governors during times of crisis. But that's the time when you're tested not only -- it's the time to test your mettle, a time to test your heart when you see people whose lives have been turned upside down. It broke my heart to go to the flood scene in Del Rio where a fellow and his family got completely uprooted. The only thing I knew was to got aid as quickly as possible with state and federal help, and to put my arms around the man and his family and cry with them. That's what governors do. They are often on the front line of catastrophic situations.

Beyond disgusting.

Blaming Katrina on Gays, Israel, and Man-on-Horse Sex
I've been stunned at how long it took a prominent member of the Christian right to blame the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina on America's cultural decadence and immorality. Finally, Rick Scarborough of Vision America has stepped up to the plate, blaming Katrina on gay marriage, man-on-horse sex, and Israel for evacuating a portion of the Messiah's planned landing strip. He did so Volume 1, Number 24 (definitely not to be confused with a Bible verse) of his weekly email newsletter, the Scarborough Report, which you can subscribe to here. (Since you can't view Scarborough's latest newsletter online right now, I'm going to excerpt his statement at length.)

Scarborough declared:

After September 11, 2001, "God bless America" was on everyone's lips. But what, exactly, are we asking God to bless - a nation moving a breakneck speed toward homosexual marriage, a nation awash in pornography, a nation in which our children are indoctrinated in perversion in the public schools, a nation in which most public displays of The Ten Commandments are considered offensive to the Constitution, a nation in which the elite does all in its considerable power to efface our Biblical heritage?

We are sowing the wind. Surely, we shall reap the whirlwind.

One other factor which must be considered: Days before Katrina nearly wiped New Orleans off the map, 9,000 Jewish residents of Gaza were driven from their homes with the full support of the United States government. Could this be a playing out of prophesy ("I will bless that nation that blesses you, and curse the nation that curses you")?

Please read on. I want to give you two examples - from today's headlines - of how we are bringing disaster on ourselves. And then tell you what you can do - right now, today - to begin to reverse the process.

So what were Scarborough's examples of "how we are bringing disaster on ourselves?" First, he cited California's AB 849, a bill changing the definition of marriage in that state from "a man and a woman" to "two persons." Scarborough's second example was even weirder, and more reflective of the Christian right's curious focus on, shall we say, unorthodox sex acts. Check out what he wrote:

In Washington State, a man recently died from internal injuries sustained from committing bestiality with a horse. The incident led police to raid a farm where people were going to have sex with animals.

Though they discovered hundreds of explicit videotapes, apparently, nothing can be done about it. Washington is one of only a handful of states that does not have a law against bestiality....

Is Scarborough suggesting something even more sinister than we know about FEMA head Michael Brown's former job at the International Arabian Horse Association? Could Brown have planned Katrina to distract from future revelations of his habit horse buggering while at the IAHA? And will Katrina now head north and east, towards Russia, where God will exact revenge for the death of Catherine the Great? Or could Scarborough be deadly serious in linking bestiality to Katrina? Sometime a horse is just a horse, of course.

In case you're wondering if this Scarborough guy is just some isolated nut, a Fred Phelps wannabe with no constituency other than his inbred family members, take a look at the list of confirmed speakers for his Countering the War on Faith Conference, which is scheduled for October 17-18 in Washington DC. They include likely 2008 presidential candidate Senator Sam Brownback, Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer and Phyllis Schlafly. Among invited speakers are David Horowitz, Zell Miller and Judge Roy Moore. I slipped into Scarborough's last conference, (read my coverage here) called Confronting the Judicial War on Faith, watched a taped address by Tom DeLay, and rubbed shoulders with a gaggle of Republican operatives currently engaged in ramming John Roberts through the Senate. Scarborough has elevated himself to a key role in the conservative movement, and his remarks should not be dismissed as mere horsing around.

Equus Part Deux
Instead of relying on dangerous, breakdown-prone buses, the equestrian experts at FEMA planned to evacuate flood victims by Arabian stallions:

And there isn't an experienced disaster-response expert at the top of the agency as there was when James Lee Witt ran it during the 1990s. Before Michael Brown, the current head, joined the agency as its legal counsel, he was with the International Arabian Horse Association.

That loss of experienced personnel might explain in part why FEMA was not able to secure buses sooner for the evacuation of New Orleans, a step anticipated by the hurricane disaster simulation last year.

Peter Pantuso, president of the American Bus Association, said, "I have a hard time believing there is any game plan in place when it comes to coordinating or pulling together this volume of business," referring to FEMA's effort to obtain hundreds of buses to move tens of thousands of evacuees from New Orleans. "And what happens in two or three weeks down the road when all of these people are moved again?"

When FEMA became part of the Homeland Security Department, it was stripped of some functions, such as some of its ability to make preparedness grants to states, former officials said. Those functions were placed elsewhere in the larger agency.

Fire the Headless Horseman
Now even Michelle Malkin's calling for Mike Brown's firing. The Democrats should literally refuse to participate in congressional business until he and the imperious DHS Secretary Michael Jerkoff are sacked.

Here's the money quote on the headless horseman, from Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade
emergency management chief: "He's done a hell of a job, because I'm not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm. The world that this man operated in and
the focus of this work does not in any way translate to this. He does not have the experience."

Landieu Rises From The Dead
Mary Landrieu must be reading my blog, because she seems to have gotten the message:

Appearing on ABC's "The Week" TV program this morning, Senator Landrieu still appeared to be smarting from President Bush's comments, during his national radio address, that state and local bore a fair share of blame for the slow response. On a copter tour of the area, Landrieu said that if she heard any more criticism from federal officials, particularly about the evacuation of New Orleans, she might lose control.

"If one person criticizes them or says one more thing - including the president of the United States - he will hear from me," she said on the ABC program. "One more word about it after this show airs and I might likely have to punch him. Literally."

She burst into tears as she looked at a broken levee. "The President could have funded it," she said. "He cut it out of the budget. Is that the most pitiful sight you have ever seen in your life? One little crane."

She also referred angrily to comments Bush had made Friday at the New Orleans airport about the fun he had in her city in his younger days.

"Our infrastructure is devastated, lives have been shattered," Landrieu said. "Would the president please stop taking photo-ops?"

Another thing that might have irked Landieu is that her constituency has been literally bused to other states, and they may never return. It's worth noting that she was one of five Democrats on board with the GOP to cut the estate tax -- exactly what we need in these times. I think they may have lost her vote.

Remembering "Bill:"

Lito Pena is sure of his memory. Thirty-six years ago he, then a Democratic Party poll watcher, got into a shoving match with a Republican who had spent the opening hours of the 1964 election doing his damnedest to keep people from voting in south Phoenix.

"He was holding up minority voters because he knew they were going to vote Democratic," said Pena.

The guy called himself Bill. He knew the law and applied it with the precision of a swordsman. He sat at the table at the Bethune School, a polling place brimming with black citizens, and quizzed voters ad nauseam about where they were from, how long they'd lived there -- every question in the book. A passage of the Constitution was read and people who spoke broken English were ordered to interpret it to prove they had the language skills to vote.

By the time Pena arrived at Bethune, he said, the line to vote was four abreast and a block long. People were giving up and going home.

This is not good news.

Occasionally Too Much Fun
I can't believe this clown is in a leadership position anywhere other than a college frat house:

President Remarks on Hurricane Recovery Efforts
Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport
Kenner, Louisiana

Here's what I believe. I believe that the great city of New Orleans will rise again and be a greater city of New Orleans. (Applause.) I believe the town where I used to come from, Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself -- occasionally too much -- (laughter) -- will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to. That's what I believe.

The Right Plays the Race Card, Randall Robinson Unwittingly Indulges Them
On the Huffington Post, which I write for, veteran civil rights activist Randall Robinson referred to "reports" of poor New Orleans blacks "eating human corpses to survive." I haven't seen these reports. I've looked endlessly. They don't exist. Robinson must either source these "reports" or retract them immediately because they are profoundly destructive to a cause he's fought his whole life for.

By raising the specter of cannibalistic blacks, Robinson indulged the racist right's wildest fantasy. Beneath the din of wall-to-wall cable news coverage, and far to the other end of the ideological spectrum, a faction of the right seems titilated with the prospect of a public backlash against looting inner-city blacks. For this group, it's almost as if the images being beamed from New Orleans -- supplemented by Robinson's "reports" (see here and here for examples of right-wing sites salivating over his post) -- are the realization of Aryan Nations leader William Pierce's tract about a future American race-war, The Turner Diaries.

As Piece wrote in chapter 13, "We also found gruesome evidence of one way in which the Blacks have solved their food shortage: cannibalism. They began by setting up barricades in one main street to stop cars driven by Whites, apparently as early as Tuesday of last week. The unfortunate Whites were dragged from their cars, taken into a nearby Black restaurant, butchered, cooked, and eaten."

The conservative American Spectator's executive editor George Neumayr practically plagiarized the Turner Diaries when he wrote:

More than the physical foundations of New Orleans will need to be rebuilt over the next few years. Its politically correct culture in which pathologies are allowed to fester in the name of "progress" forms much of the debris that must be cleared away if civilization is to return to New Orleans. A city which boasts as one of its businesses memorial "death t-shirts" -- clothing made popular by the frequency of gangland slayings in New Orleans that say things like, "Born a Pimp, Died a Playa" -- was headed for collapse even without a hurricane, and had become, as the exodus of cops illustrates, unlivable.

Pat Buchanan came to a similar, though less vitriolic conclusion in his piece, "Who Lost New Orleans?":

From TV pictures of the 20,000 crammed into the Superdome and the hundreds hauled off rooftops, most of them, it appears, were African-American. Conversely, TV footage of looters happily at work – taking not just food and water, but jewelry, guns, electronics, and booze – reveals them, too, to be disproportionately African-American.

Buchanan went on to blame "race demagogues" for defending New Orleans looters against conservative demands for a more, shall we say, aggressive response: "I hope the looters are shot," declared the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan. That same day, WorldNetDaily's Les Kinsolving -- the right-wing Helen Thomas -- asked Scott McClellan, "What is the president's reaction to the 1968 statement of Philadelphia's Frank Rizzo that all looters would be shot, and then three looters were shot, and the looting in Philadelphia stopped?" The following day, right-wing columnist Mona Charen wrote, "If police officers are authorized to shoot looters, this intelligence will spread quickly among the criminal population. The free-for-all will come to an abrupt end."

Despite Buchanan's surrender to race-baiting, there was one element of his argument which will prove prescient: "Rancorous argument is about to begin, and deep divisions are about to be driven into our society." In other words, when the flood is drained and the chaos begins to fade, those voices which urged violence against the "looters" will grow louder. And they will resonate with a fragment of the conservative base. Stoking fears of restive inner-city blacks has been a hallmark of Republican campaigns since the days of Barry Goldwater. My sense is that the "war on terror" and its bearded, olive-skinned bogeyman, has brought only a momentary respite from the right's traditional racial demagogy -- blacks and Mexicans as "looters." If American fears of radical Islamic terror begins to fade by 2008, look for the GOP to start dealing the race-card again.

The backlashers will be back. To Robinson -- someone whose work I have admired -- I say, let's not give them any ammo they don't already have.

(By the way, I have some good news to report. David Duke's Louisiana headquarters have been destroyed by Katrina.)

Things Are Starting to Look Familiar
At home:

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 1 (Reuters) - Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco warned rioters and looters in New Orleans on Thursday that National Guard troops are under her orders to "shoot and kill" to end the rampant violence in the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Announcing the arrival of 300 Arkansas National Guard troops in New Orleans fresh from service in Iraq, Blanco said, "these troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded."

"These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will," she said.

And abroad:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 13, [2003] — United States military forces in Iraq will have the authority to shoot looters on sight under a tough new security setup that will include hiring more police officers and banning ranking members of the Baath Party from public service, American officials said today.

The far more muscular approach to bringing order to postwar Iraq was described by the new American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, at a meeting of senior staff members today, the officials said. On Wednesday, Mr. Bremer is expected to meet with the leaders of Iraqi political groups that are seeking to form an interim government by the end of the month. "He made it very clear that he is now in charge," said an official who attended the meeting today. "I think you are going to see a change in the rules of engagement within a few days to get the situation under control."

Asked what this meant, the official replied, "They are going to start shooting a few looters so that the word gets around" that assaults on property, the hijacking of automobiles and violent crimes will be dealt with using deadly force.

Bush's Big Easy Quisling
I've been waiting for Louisiana's most prominent member of the loyal opposition, Mary Landrieu, to ask a few pointed questions of the Bush administration. Instead, while people eat each other alive and the President picks his butt, she goes out of her way to defend him. I don't understand. New Orleans elected Landrieu. Her father was the mayor. Did the people -- the Democrats -- of Louisiana realize they elected a heartless robot when they put Mary Landrieu in office?

Anderson Cooper deserves an award for this interview:

COOPER: Joining me from Baton Rouge is Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. Senator, appreciate you joining us tonight. Does the federal government bear responsibility for what is happening now? Should they apologize for what is happening now?

SEN. MARY LANDRIEU (D), LOUISIANA: Anderson, there will be plenty of time to discuss all of those issues, about why, and how, and what, and if. But, Anderson, as you understand, and all of the producers and directors of CNN, and the news networks, this situation is very serious and it's going to demand all of our full attention through the hours, through the nights, through the days.

Let me just say a few things. Thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Alabama to our help and rescue.

We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reid for their extraordinary efforts.

Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard -- maybe you all have announced it -- but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating.

COOPER: Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.

And when they hear politicians slap -- you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up.

Do you get the anger that is out here?

LANDRIEU: Anderson, I have the anger inside of me. Most of the homes in my family have been destroyed. Our homes have been destroyed. I understand what you're saying, and I know all of those details. And the president of the United States knows those details.

COOPER: Well, who are you angry at?

LANDRIEU: I'm not angry at anyone. I'm just expressing that it is so important for everyone in this nation to pull together, for all military assets and all assets to be brought to bare in this situation.

There will be hell to pay for a lot of people when this is all over. If you're wondering where I've been, I'm only getting started. It's been a long week.

If you're not reading John Aravosis' Americablog in the meantime, you don't know what you're missing.

This is New Orleans right now:

Thursday, 3:45 p.m.

Across the city Thursday, the haunting fear of flooding was
replaced by a raw fear for life and public safety.

Navigating the St. Thomas area of the Lower Garden District in an SUV,
Times-Picayune reporter Gordon Russell, accompanied by a photographer from The New York Times, described a landscape of lawlessness where he feared for his life and felt his safety was threatened at nearly every turn.

At the Superdome and Marc N. Morial Convention Center, Russell said
throngs of hungry and desperate people displaced by the flood overwhelmed the few law enforcement or miliatary personnel present.

"There was no crowd control," Russell said. "People were swarming.
It was a near riot situation. The authorities have got to get some
military down here to get control of the situation."

Russell witnessed a shootout between police and citizens near the
Convention Center that left one man dead in a pool of blood. Police, perhaps caught off guard by their sudden arrival on the scene, slammed Russell and the photographer against a wall and threw their gear on the ground as they exited their SUV to record the event.

The journalists retreated to Russell's home Uptown where they hid in
fear. They planned to flee the city later today.

Almost everywhere Russell went Uptown, one of the few relatively dry
areas in Orleans Parish, he said he felt the threat of violence.

"There is a totally different feeling here than there was yesterday
(Wednesday)," said Russell, who has reported on the aftermatch of Hurricane Katrina since the storm devastated the city on Monday. "I'm scared. I'm not afraid to admit it. I'm getting out of here."

I'll write more later.