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Via Shakesville
Remember when Barack left the Press standing while he went to meet with Hilary? Watch the little puissants whine...
Poor things, Obama left them ALLLL ALLLONNNNEE to go have a PRIVATE meeting....WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
More stuff coming out of the Abrammoff scandal:Did John McCain execute a coverup?
As this investigation grinds on the GOP is in trouble.
And so is John McCain.
Two of Jack’s Native American clients are on the list. Together they took in over $3.6 million in Abramoff placed earmarks in a single section of a single Appropriation Bill. This would seem to suggest that Jack Abramoff was an effective lobbyist for his clients. It would seem to suggest that he did more than just swindle them out of their money. It seems to be evidence that Abramoff used his connections to get Federal funds for his clients in return for the money they gave him.
Jack Abramoff is in jail because he committed many crimes, but he did his job very well. He delivered for his Party. Jack was a bagman for the GOP. It was his job to move the money around and Jack specialized in moving large sums of off-the-books money that could be used late in an election cycle to flood the zone and win the day for the GOP. Since Jack left the field and went to prison, the Republican Party has had trouble replacing him. Jack moved the money and they miss him.
Jack used his clients as ways to get the large sums of cash into our political system. At any given time he was involved in any number of schemes. It was always a balancing act for Jack. He lived a life of contradictions. He exploited some of his clients and he also delivered the goods for his clients. Sure, he charged around $500 an hour for his time, but his clients got a return on their investment. This is a "secret" about Abramoff that has been obscured by the Abramoff "Pure Greed Myth" created by John McCain.
On February 22, 2004 folks in DC opened their Sunday Washington Post to read about Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon and the way they "ripped off" their Native American clients. The surface story was true, but another larger story was hidden in the details. That story, if exposed, woulddecimatedevastate the Republican Party in a massive corruption scandal and doom the effort to re-elect George W. Bush.
John McCain leapt into action. He had a massive scandal to cover up and no time to loose. He took charge of the investigation by the Senate’s Indian Affairs Committee. As I have mentioned before, he gathered 750,000 documents. He had ALL of Abramoff’s billing records and emails from two lobbying firms and documents stretching back a decade.
At this moment, John McCain had a choice:
He could pursue the truth and let the investigation go where it went regardless of who it exposed
or
He could use the investigation to shape a narrative, create a "myth" and a demonize the designated fall guy.
So, what DID our Straight Talking Maverick do?
Again from Shakesville
How Karl Rove played politics while Americans in New Orleans Drowned
From Alabama, it was on to Mississippi for Bush. There, he met with an old friend, Haley Barbour, the Republican governor. Significantly, Bush had nothing but praise for Riley and Barbour, neither of whom he asked to consider federalizing their National Guard troops. Finally, Bush traveled to Louisiana, still in the throes of disaster five days into the crisis -- and still receiving no help from the federal government. In New Orleans, Bush met with Nagin and Blanco, along with other officials, aboard Air Force One at the Louis Armstrong international airport. The events aboard Air Force One began with a meeting of several officials, including Landrieu, Vitter, Nagin, and Blanco, as well as selected congressmen and staff members. Rove was onboard, too, "lurking," as Blanco would put it, "around the halls." In the meeting Nagin, extremely agitated, kept insisting, "Do something! Do something!" It was not clear exactly what he wanted done or who he wanted to do it, nor was it evident whether Nagin had any idea that his clandestine e-mail communications with Rove during the week may have contributed to the Bush administration's lack of response. They certainly had not helped. Finally, Bush asked to meet with Blanco alone in his office on Air Force One.
"Kathleen," Bush said in their meeting, which was attended by Joe Hagen from Bush's staff but no one from Blanco's staff -- a fact that troubled Blanco -- "I'm going to need you to sign a waiver that the Louisiana National Guard needs to be turned over to the federal government. I can't take them from you but I'm going to need you to federalize them."
Blanco had no intention of signing a waiver. She was concerned about a variety of legal ramifications that could result from her signing over her National Guard, but her main fear was that, without the leverage Blanco had as a free agent in what had now turned into a protracted negotiation with the administration, she would have no means to force Bush to provide any assistance at all. Blanco told Bush she would not sign a waiver. "You need to give General Honore some soldiers," Blanco told Bush. "Where has the federal government been for five days? If I sign this, it's going to look like I've been wrong."
Bush appeared to be confused by what Blanco was saying.
"Well, I have no intention of turning over my National Guard to you," Blanco said. "Anyway, the evacuation of the Superdome is now well underway and after that we will begin finishing the evacuation of the Convention Center." This was true. While the administration had bickered over politics, Blanco had expanded the size of her National Guard by accepting deployments of guardsmen from all of the other 49 states.
By federalizing her guardsmen, Blanco would have been admitting that it was the state that was unable to handle the disaster, not the federal government. The Bush administration could have argued that they had had to save the day for Blanco because she was not up to the task. However, if Blanco did not take the bait, the scheme was dead. Blanco wondered about Bush's confusion. Was he really confused or just trying to get her to sign the waiver?
It didn't matter. Not only did Blanco refuse to sign, she gave Bush a two-page letter detailing everything the state needed to cope with the disaster -- troops, buses, supplies, money, and more. It would not be until several days later, when Blanco's aides released the letter to the press and got frantic phone calls from Rove's aide Maggie Grant, that it became clear that Bush had taken the letter Blanco had personally handed to him -- and lost it.
There is more...
"We landed at the 17th Street Canal," Landrieu says. "The story that day Karl Rove was feeding was: 'The president is on the job, the president has taken control, the president is going to rebuild, and despite the fact that the government and all these babbling fools down here can't do anything, the Corps of Engineers is on the job.' So we landed at the canal, five minutes from my house. I was so excited because they were finally doing something. The Corps of Engineers was there, and they had dump trucks and sandbags. All the cameras were there for the president, who was doing one of his famous press conferences about how he was going to do everything. So I thought, 'At least the guy is doing something, so show your manners and be good and smile.'"
...
Of all of the stories and subplots, there would be one that, in many ways, symbolized the whole of Katrina, what it revealed about the Bush administration, and how it would affect the lives of so many people. On Friday, Mary Landrieu had been with Bush and Blanco as they toured the 17th Street Canal, where, at last, major work had commenced to repair the damage that had been caused when the levee broke. "Then, on Saturday," Landrieu says, "George Stephanopoulos called and asked to do an interview with me, and I said, 'George, I'm tired of doing interviews. I have to work. And nothing you are airing is accurately showing what's going on down here.' He wanted to go to the Superdome, and I said, 'We still have people stranded on their roofs. If you want to tell the right story, I will help you tell the right story. You get a helicopter and I'll go up and I will show you what is actually happening. It's awful what's happening at the Superdome, but the reason the people can't understand the story is because the entire region is under 20 feet of water. People can't get into the Superdome to help. They can't get out. People are drowning in their homes.'
"So George and I went up in the helicopter and for three hours his jaw was dropping. Then I said, 'George, before we finish I have to show you one positive thing because I can't send you back to Washington to produce a story that shows nothing but devastation and disaster.' So I told the pilot to tack right so I can show George the 17th Street Canal and the work that was going on there. I swear as my name is Mary Landrieu I thought that what I saw with the president was still there -- people working, trucks, sandbags, everything. Then I looked down and saw one little crane. It was like someone took a knife and stabbed me through my heart. I lost it." There, in the cabin of the helicopter, as they flew above the breached canal below them, Landrieu sat devastated.
"I could not believe that the president of the United States, staged by Karl Rove himself, had come down to the city of New Orleans and basically put up a stage prop. It was like you had gone to a studio in California and filmed a movie. They put the props up and the minute we were gone they took them down. All the dump trucks were gone. All the Coast Guard people were gone. It was an empty spot with one little crane.
ANd if you want to know exactly what our dearly beloved New Orleans-Mayor-at-the-time Ray Nagin was getting on with? Read the whole thing
The Chris Matthews Racism Watch
He also knows exactly what he’s doing when he calls Obama’s “Americanism” into question and paints him as ungrateful:And so it begins to crank up, ladies and gents.MATTHEWS: OK, one thing you don’t do is you don’t do what he does. You don’t thank America for giving you what you got, like, I got all these degrees, I got all these advantages, so I thank America. Love of country is not because you got certain things from it. It’s not a transaction. You don’t thank people for giving you stuff. It’s like loving your parents. You don’t thank them for giving you a nice school and education. You thank them because they’re your parents. They’re your parents. You love your country — it’s called patriotism. It’s love of fatherland, of country.Actually, as someone who is persistently bemused by patriotism, I always distinctly got the impression that publicly declared love of America was entirely about crediting it with all it has “given” you, as though there is no “opportunity,” free speech, right to vote or college education elsewhere, and that if there is, it’s certainly not better. I also find it (angrily) amusing because so many conservatives demand that black people start acting more grateful precisely because of what America has “given” them. It’s dizzying logic: black people should be more grateful about how well they are supposedly treated in America, what with their mostly being able to vote, and so they shouldn’t say anything bad about the U.S.; but if they express their love for America based on the benefits of living there, they’re uppity elitists who don’t know how to be grateful for their country. Obama, lucky him, gets both.
Matthews also knows exactly what he’s doing when he tries to paint Obama as unimaginably wealthy:MATTHEWS: I agree. Well, I think he’s right. I think, being an African-American, it’s all the more important to get in there and show who you are, introduce yourself as a person, not as an identity group –In other words, black people aren’t really “people” until they grovel to be perceived that way to Matthews’ satisfaction, and when they don’t do that, they think they’re better than you. Also, if they don’t grovel properly, they must be chastised for having more than they deserve/white conservative assholes are willing to give them. Starting to see a trend here?
FINEMAN: Right. Right.
MATTHEWS: — but as a human being, and connect with people. I think that’s still going to be his challenge. Playing pool, not a bad start, but it’s not what most people play. People with money play pool these days.
FINEMAN: Oh.
MATTHEWS: Anyway, thank you. The guys who have pool rooms in their house in the basement. You know what those tables cost?
Water News from around the World
Chlorinated water can DOUBLE the risk of heart and brain abnormalities:
A research team led by Professor Jouni Jaakkola of the Institute of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Birmingham, located in the West Midlands of England, published evidence that high levels of a chlorine byproduct in drinking water can double the risk of serious heart and brain abnormalities in unborn babies. Source
In Spain, Water Is a New Battleground:
Spain's Murcia Province, once totally agricultural, has diversified by luring tourists with new golf courses and a more affluent population with luxurious new housing developments. There's only one problem: Murcia is running out of water and desertification is steadily gobbling once-arable land. Poor planning and global warming have left farmers squabbling with developers and one another over water rights. Source
A solution for Central Asian water crisis:The fifth World Water Forum was held on 28-29 May in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, and discussions focused upon water conflicts in Central Asia. Since 40% of the world's nations share their water with at least one other country and global warming is increasing water shortages, conflicts and tensions are growing. Source
As California faces one of its worst droughts in two decades, building projects are being curtailed for the first time under state law by the inability of developers to find long-term water supplies. Source
Water-Starved California Slows Development:
