"Katrina remains very damaging for Republicans unless they can find some way to kick in the racist lizard brain. They are very good at tickling the primitive, tribal side of human nature --- in fact, that's all they are good at. Subtly and not so subtly playing the race card is one of their specialties and I think it's pretty much all they have left in their hand to play this time out."I wonder how that's gonna play versus Spike Lee's new doco about katrina.
* kathleen reardon:
"Neither term has meaning other than the ones we give it. Words, I can confidently say from training people in persuasion, are like empty vessels until meaning is poured into them. "Islamofacist," for example, is a construction juxtaposing a religion President Bush says, on the one hand is peaceful, but on the other hand conjoins with diabolical extremism defined in Webster as "belligerent nationalism, racism, and militarism.""
* emptywheel:
"My take on Kathie Harris is the reverse. With any other candidate, they would have forced the deadbeat candidate out. But in this relationship, Harris is the one with leverage. It's some kind of death match--they can't force her to withdraw, but they somehow don't have to back her. Maybe so long as she remains in politics, she won't blab about how she won them the election, or something like that. That is, she's still criminally liable for that. And that keeps her silent, to a point. But at some point she'll get to teh "nothing left to lose" stage, at which point she'll grow more amusing (if he hadn't been responsible for killing a city) than Michael Heckova Job Brownie."(also check out the other good Kath Harris comments over here)
* mamayaga:
"The resistance to using a VA (health) model for the rest of us would be massive. Not only the entire private health system, but if it were done incrementally, by expanding the VA's patient base, the veterans themselves. The VA has looked into expanding access to say, the families of vets, and there has been fierce resistance. In part this is because some VAs still have access problems with long waits for enrollemnt or appointments and in part because many vets look on their health care as something they have earned and resent the idea of sharing with people who haven't earned it. This attitude apparently is strongest among WWII vets so may dissipate over time.relatedly, the 'no bulk purchase' drug legislation was breathtaking.
That's not to say, however, that the VA model couldn't be adapted for a separate single payor system. Just need to convince those big insurance companies and big health care corps to commit hara kiri. Yeah, right."
* LeeB in an email notes that there have been a few new faces in the comments this past week (including richard who (correctly) called me a pompous ignorant git.) LeeB wants to know if any of the new faces want to join the Global Strike Force. Lemme know. (We've still got ProfMarcus
to be added to the map in the next version.)
9 comments:
Re: Harris
Gotta wonder how many of the "Harris and/or her campaign imploding" stories are coming from the 'loyalty to the party above all' crowd who are/were in her coterie, fuelled by the Rove machine itself.
The Repub playbook promotes destruction of credibility of anyone who could conceivably be a threat. Granting she comes across as a little eccentric to start with, with all the negative publicity coming out on Harris, including stories of a type the GoP usually manages to keeps buried, by the time the former FL SoS gets to the breaking point and starts to talk, no one will be bothered to listen to her 'rantings'.
LeeB asked about the 9/11 assassination attempt on Bush and as I only had a superficial understanding I posted a bunch of relevant links and initial thoughts over at my scratchpad here to get me started. Ideas are welcome.
Perhaps this was a cover, like political street theater, to justify Jebby raising the terror alert level, etc. 4 days before 9/11. How else would that make sense,without foreknowledge? Then his little diappearing act on Air Force One? The Terrorists are coming!!!
Thanks, Damien. I went over to your site and must say, when I said before you had done a ton of work, that was simply a gross understatement. Amazing.
As to ideas? Lordy, everytime I start thinking about this stuff, my head comes close to exploding. These people are just plain dirty. I was telling a friend on the phone yesterday to think James Bond or Batman movies. In them, the super-bad-guys come across as cartoonish, but I think they provide the best framing for the supercriminals operating in the U.S. government, including why they expect to continue to get away with it - being so over-the-top, the mere thought brings up the average person's rejection and denial.
Kathleen, I'm not sure I quite understand what you are saying here. IIRC, there were no terror alerts anywhere in public prior to 9/11.
The document Jebby signed wasn't publicized until after 9/11 when some enterprising soul posted the document. Some tried to dismiss it by saying it was simply a normal, routine, re-upping of the Florida National Guard's authorities to assist in state emergencies Oh, really?! - it's just that Jebbie did it ahead of schedule by some days or weeks. Why?
What raised more eyebrows (including at least one of mine) was the addition of the reference to terrorist attacks as one of the events the Guard would be called upon to address.
The subsequent order declaring Florida under martial law was signed within minutes, IIRC, of the attacks on the WTC. And as Damien pointed out, the assassination attempt occurred early in the morning of 9/11, two days after the video-camera assassination of the official in Afganistan, of which security officials in the U.S. were fully aware.
Now, since I have more than a little understanding of the nuts and bolts of producing documents (especially when people are running around with their hair on fire), I cannot for the life of me figure out any legitimate way that order could have been prepared and signed that early on the morning of 9/11 if the *need* for it hadn't been anticipated at least as early as sometime during the day on Monday, 9/10, unless, of course, Jebbie typed it himself as soon as he heard about the first tower being hit or unless he just happened to keep a stack of blank martial-law orders in his desk drawer.
And even then, from the standpoint of an unsuspecting normal human being shocked by the SECOND plane hitting the second tower, who on earth wouldn't be glued to some news source to try to wrap their head around what was happening, but still had all their mental circuitry fully operational enough to think, "Oh! I guess I'd better hammer out an order declaring martial law in this state far away from the geographical location of these attacks because there might be more airplanes flying off course looking for my brother?!
Now, mebbe I just don't understand the situation, but that scenario doesn't play well in my overtaxed brain.
Just sayin' . . .
Yeah, the Fla martial law thing is intriguing. One of those links I pointed to (here) made the claim that Wally Hilliard, owner of Hufmann Aviation had likely business connections to Neil Bush. So Jeb Bush may have known 9/11 was coming (everybody else certainly did!)
Damien, ah'm jes' sayin' here as i've said before, i ADORE reading your site but there's just so much i can take before i begin contemplating utter revolt and in a violent way (so not me prior to dec 2000).
you, my man, deserve a medal for all your excellent research and the brilliant thinking behind it.
am i gushing here? fuck it, lol.
LeeB;
Something Luke said about Jebby and 4 days prior to 9/11. It felt like foreknowledge.
I'm running around getting ready for out of town carbon based vistors too. After that I can get back to nitty gritty details with ya'll.
Kathleen, I don't know what Luke had in mind, but Jebby's re-upping the Florida National Guard's authorities with the "terrorist" language inserted, occurred four days before 9/11. This was substantially more than four days ahead of it's normal schedule, so hardly routine. That feels like foreknowledge to me, too.
I missed all the praises. That's not like me. Thanks guys (esp Rimone!)
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