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Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all. - Maximilien Robespierre A Violently Executed Feed BUY SOME STUFF, MAKE ME HAPPY Contact me. Links and stuff Handshake Bloggers Damn Good Music
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Friday, September 30, 2005
What Are You Doing Tonight? You should be making plans to go see Serenity at your local multiplex or cinema drafthouse. For them that's fans of Firefly and/or Joss Whedon, there's little need for an explanation, but for those poor souls that missed the critically-acclaimed series during its short run on Fox, you should go. Non-fans that have seen it tell me it is easily accessible by those without previous knowledge, and as a fan, it captures the magic of the series and magnifies it. Seriously, it's worth watching. Spend your movie bucks wisely, I sez, and go see this one. It's shiny! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:30:00 AM   | Back In The Game I used to read an excellent blog called No Fear Of Freedom. The guy that ran it, Phaedrus, had some excellent insights on progressive politics. A couple years ago, it went on hiatus and Phaedrus dropped out of sight for a while. He's back now, with a new blog: Racism Ain't Over. Go on over, check it out, and welcome a long-missed voice back into the fold. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:54:00 AM | Thursday, September 29, 2005
| Mel Martinez Chums The Waters Of Reconstruction For The Corporate Sharks Saw this on Facing South. The Katrina Reconstruction Summit The Katrina Reconstruction Summit is hosted by U.S. Senator Mel Martinez and organized by Equity International as a public service.I seem to recall a similar "summit" hosted around the time we invaded Iraq, one that Michael Moore documented in Fahrenheit 9/11. At the same time that the GOP is trying to cut every social service they can to "offset" the cost of the reconstruction (without ever considering repealing tax hikes or the billions of dollars of pork in the recent Transportation and Energy bills), Mel Martinez is pimping out the US Government - OUR government - to the fattest of the fatcats. Katrina made clear our nation's shameful record on confronting issues of race and poverty. In many ways, it could be likened to the doctors in the Emergency Room cutting open an injured man and finding a cancer eating him away from the inside. Not a perfect analogy, to be sure, but one that makes the gravity of the issue clear. Racism and poverty are cancers, ones that could be controlled with the proper will at all levels of our government. For a brief while after the Civil War, we made progress, and once again with FDR and with LBJ. Since then, we've been backsliding again. What the people of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana need is not no-bid contracts for Halliburton. The poor don't need a relaxation of federal affirmative-action and wage laws. They don't need their Social Security turned into private accounts, or their Medicaid cut so they can start "Medical Savings Accounts". They don't need to live in "Bushville" trailer parks. They need good jobs. They need to be involved and invested in the reconstruction of their region. They need hope that when all of this is done, something will change. They need to know they'll have houses to return to, that there will be jobs, that they'll get the help they need to get back on their feet after spending so long after the hurricane desperately waiting for help that never came. The poor in the Gulf Coast are among the poorest in America - the lowest of the low - and they need help, hope and healing. For too long, we've made empty promises to them. This "Reconstruction Summit" isn't going to help them, and it's not going to get the Gulf Coast rebuilt. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:54:00 AM | Wednesday, September 28, 2005
O Happy Day! The Bugfucker's been indicted! No doubt you're already hearing the talking points on the news - Austin's DA, Ronnie Earle, is a Democrat, therefore this is politically motivated. Utter bullshit, but anyone with more intelligence than that required to avoid shitting in their pants knows that's bullshit. Think Progress has been kind enough to round up some facts about Ronnie Earle that fly in the face of DeLay and company's filthy lies. Ronnie Earle has gone after 4 times as many corrupt Democrats as Republicans. He's got a strong reputation for being principled and strongly against corruption of any kind. According to one prosecutor that worked in Earle's office, ‘He’s not a bloodthirsty prosecutor who wanted to get notches on his gun. There are some who have a reputation for walking close to the line in terms of evidence and rights, but there was never a push or inclination from him that we ought to bend the rules. Working for him, I was doing what I wanted to do, and I could go home and sleep at night.’Yep, sounds like a vicious political hack to me. Not. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:34:00 PM | OMFG!!! My Dad Pwnz Teh Internat! My father is one of a triumvirate of aged, cantankerous and clever old men at the eerily-appropriately-named blog 3 Old Men. Until now, his post-retirement schedule has been so busy that he hasn't had time to post anything. That changed yesterday, as he wound up with about 30 minutes between unpacking from the cross-country road trip he and my mother just returned from and packing for their trip to Brazil, upon which they left today. He's posted a sum-up of the last month or so in their lives, along with some ruminations as to the true nature of blogs and blogging. For those of you that know my father, it reads like Vintage Andy. For those that don't know him, well, get used to it. Writing in one’s diary for one’s own self-consumption at a later point is one thing; writing in one’s diary for everybody else to read could (I repeat, could) be likened unto public masturbation. Let me repeat it one more time: it could be likened unto public masturbation. Reading such a diary, then, becomes group masturbation. Reading a diary, on the other hand, of one who does not mean it for public consumption, is another thing — it’s called being sneaky and nosey.Hey-OOOOO! That's my dad! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:54:00 AM | Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Are You Fucking Kidding Me Part... Ah, Hell, Who Cares - They're All Goddamn Idiots! What was that about "the Blame Game"? Ol' "Heck Of A Job" Brownie knows that it doesn't apply to him. Former FEMA director Michael Brown aggressively defended his role in responding to Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday and put much of the blame for coordination failures on Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.HEELLLLOOOOOO, MR. POT? I'VE GOT THE KETTLE ON LINE TWO! I mean, seriously - who the fuck does he think he's fooling? The Rethugs on the 'Scuse me - phone's ringing. Talk among yourselves. Sorry about that. That was the lawyer for the American Federation of Worthless, Inbred Sacks of Shit. Seems' they don't want me insulting them by associating them with the Crawford Coward. My apologies, guys. Give my regards to Tom Cruise, willya? OK, so Brownie, who sat on his ass for days, wants to blame Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco for the delay in getting FEMA in? Are they also to blame for FEMA's turning back trucks full of water and food? Did Mayor Nagin disguise his voice as Brownie's and tell the Red Cross not to come in to New Orleans, lest the starving and thirsty negroes realize how good they had it and refuse to leave the Superdome? Did Governor Blanco leave a USMC transport sitting over 100 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico rather than order it in to deliver medical supplies and help evacuate people? Or perhaps it was BILL CLINTON, that machiavellian monster, slyly using surplus Soviet Orbital Weather Control Lasers to divert the hurricane while also zapping Brownie with a paralysis ray in order to discredit Bush, giving his wife an open shot at the presidency in 2008... One Shudders at the possibilities. Brownie still needs to take a long dance at the end of a short rope. This reminds me that my friend Abby made a bumper sticker based on an idea of her dad Mickey's: Vote Competence, Not Ideology. Click the link to see the sticker and maybe buy one. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:00:00 PM | Monday, September 26, 2005
Some Promising Numbers Anti-War: 100,000+. Pro-War: 400. Those are the numbers at the opposing rallies in Washington, DC on Saturday. While Preznit Bush Bush's poll numbers continue to drop - only 40% of Americans think he's doing a good job. The horror of Katrina's aftermath opened a lot of peoples' eyes to his anti-American policies, his war on the poor, his war on the New Deal, his war on the middle class. The appointment of Karl Rove - a political advisor - to head up reconstruction efforts in the Gulf Coast shows that, as with so many other vital agencies and intiatives, it's all hat and no cattle. Bush only won with 51% of the vote - and that more than likely depended heavily upon voter suppression and other at-best questionable shenanigans in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. Bush is going down, hoist on his own petard of incompetence and cronyism. A broad cross-section of Americans were represented at this march. They walked slowly, and often silently, and carried a blocks-long string of pictures of the 1 900 US soldiers who have died in Iraq.Even a few Republicans made it to the rally. Strangely absent, however, were the "leaders" of the Democratic party. True to their posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:13:00 AM | Sunday, September 25, 2005
Noodly Appendages And Whatnot The Church Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster is tooling along nicely now. More and more, people are being Touched By His Noodly Appendage and realizing the truth. There are brochures, posters and even a flash game to help spread the word. Eat your heathen heart out, Jack Chick! Won't you consider Pastafarianism? Isn't it worth it? Remember: Our Heaven has a Beer Volcano and a Stripper Factory. Beats the hell out of wings, harps and halos! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 4:07:00 PM | Saturday, September 24, 2005
Dodged That Bullet Looks like Rita weakened enough to avoid the damage we feared. That's a Good Thing. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:08:00 PM | Friday, September 23, 2005
Bad Journalism About Bad Science I'm talking about this article. It's written as if the fact of evolution is somehow on an equal footing with the myth of "intelligent design". Wake up, anonymous fuckhead from Reuters! This isn't the soda pop challenge, where folks try to decide if Coke or Pepsi is tastier and more refreshing. This is about science being taught in science class and the vital necessity in this nation that religious dogma be taught in Sunday school. "Intelligent design is ultimately a science stopper," said Dr. Eugenie Scott of the National Council for Science Education, a pro-evolution group backing the Dover parents.Ah, well if the poll numbers say so, then that's what we've got to teach! No, that's not how it works. Look at it this way - even if 99% of people in America thought you picked up salmonella bacteria from Invisible Puke Demons, would you want health classes in high schools to teach our youth some effective chants for scaring away the IPD, or teach them to maybe WASH THEIR GODDAMN HANDS AFTER THEY TOUCH RAW CHICKEN? Poll numbers in this case do nothing but tell us that science education in this country is already pretty fucking lousy. This one made me want to punch the nearest Cardinal smack in the mouth: Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a top Church doctrinal expert and close associate of Pope Benedict, said Darwin's theory did not clash with a belief in God so long as scientists did not assert that pure chance accounted for everything from "the Big Bang to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."What? I don't recall any scientist asserting that pure chance gave us the music of Beethoven. Fucking batshit idiot theocratic misogynist fuckmonkey! I tell you, I look at morons like Pope Ratfuck The Nazi, Pat Robertson, George Goatraper Bush and the rest of them and I begin to have doubts in evolution - fuck, I've seen shit-flinging howler monkeys with a better grasp of reality than those shitlicking puddles of vomit. Goddamn motherfucking asswipe dumbass theofascist lysenkoist morons. Where's the fucking "Smite" button on this computer? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:52:00 PM | What Have We Learned Today? Despite the recent carnage and destruction that sits all too fresh in our memories, depsite the assurances that "This time, we're ready!", despite the rosy interviews given by state, local and national officials on TV, our leaders haven't learned much from Katrina. The people - they know. Look at the lines of cars stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours on end in Houston, the evacuation of Galveston (and the work of local and state police in the area to make sure nursing homes are evacuated) and other local towns. The people know that these hurricanes, they're Bad Shit. Still, a look at the clusterfuck that is the Houston evacuation tells you that the folks in the government that should have looked at the fallout from Katrina and made some fucking plans already didn't do a whole lot. The poor folks in Houston, well, they're just fucked. Just like in New Orleans and Gulfport and Biloxi. Wilma Skinner would like to scream at the officials of this city. If only they would pick up their phones.In Port Arthur, the buses the city had set aside for their evacuation were commandeered by Houston. In Houston itself, traffic inched along at a snail's pace on I45 and I10, yet the state waited for hours, until gridlock was well and truly set in, to open the opposing lanes, which were virtually empty. Gas trucks sent to refuel stranded motorists were turned back when it was revealed that the nozzles were too big to fit in the cars. The way it looks now, people that had money and means to leave town will still be stuck in Houston, miles from home. It's unsure as to whether they'll all be able to get to shelter or not. Some of this chaos creeps in to the best plans, to be sure, but some of it seems to be just plain idiocy and wishful thinking. This isn't going to be pretty, especially if Rita veers back to the West - which is always a possibility when you're talking about hurricanes. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:16:00 AM | Thursday, September 22, 2005
Damn You, France! The French, ever the friends of the Evil forces in the world, have finally gone too far. The French government has helped pay for a Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents, created by Reporters Without Borders. Yes, those slimy French have set aside their excellent wine, rich, tasty food and egalitarian society long enough to encourage folks in China, Iran and other nations that don't enjoy their freedoms to speak out against their governments. The guide gives tips on things like anonymous proxies, encryption and other technologies designed to evade or circumvent the controls Microsoft and other corporations are helping put on the internet at the behest of China, Russia and other totalitarian states. How DARE they? How could they promote freedom without bothering to manufacture evidence, lie to their own people and invade a nation on false pretenses? WHAT DO THEY THINK THEY'RE DOING? Thank God we're so much better off than them here in America, with our 45,000,000+ without health insurance, our rising poverty rates, our massive racial and economic inequalities and our current leaders! Why, did you know the French only get about 4 weeks of vacation every year? Or that they only work about 35 hours a week? SHAMEFUL! If we're not careful, we might wind up like them. And we know how awful that would be. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:55:00 AM | Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Music! Taking a break from gettin' all angry and from worrying about Hurricane Rita (at this posting, projected to slam into the Texas coast like a drunk driver in an SUV hitting a Mini Cooper), I had a short chat with an old friend in Atlanta. Beau Hall, as I've mentioned before on this blog, is a supremely talented musician. I've known him since we were snot-nosed brats (me more snot-nosed than him, but that's a story it'll take more than a few beers to coax out of me), and count him as only one step removed from family. Years ago, we shared a scary apartment in Atlanta and had lots of fun adventures with the crack whores, the Vampire Lesbians and the Guy That Stabbed His Lover With A Butter Knife 37 Times. Good times, especially when his boa constrictor got loose. I still twitch over that. He's got an album out. You can check it out at his website above, or you can go here. Good stuff. Go, listen, BUY. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:25:00 PM | Tuesday, September 20, 2005
More Compassion From The GOP Don Young (R-AK) really gives a shit about the victims of Katrina. There's a lot of talk about the pork-laden Transportation bill that recently passed the GOP-led congress. One of the most outrageous projects is a $233,000,000 bridge going to an island in the middle of nowhere with 50 inhabitants. The chairman of the House Transportation committee is Don Young of Alaska. Many cities and communities are trying to find ways to set their funds aside to direct towards reconstruction efforts on the Gulf Coast. Since George Bush doesn't want to ask the richest Americans to make any sacrifices for this massive effort, sane Congresscritters (there are a few of them) are trying to find fat in the budget to trim. Some even asked Rep. Young to put off his "bridge to nowhere". "They can kiss my ear!" Young boomed when Sam Bishop, Washington correspondent for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, asked him about the many pleas to redirect the bridge money.Man, you just can't beat the astonishing levels of compassion and concern the GOP has lavished on posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:29:00 AM | In Pace Requiescat Simon Wiesenthal, dead at 96. One can only hope that if there's an afterlife, Wiesenthal is able to rest easy knowing he done some good. Still a whole lot of fuckin' Nazis out there to be brought to justice, though. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:20:00 AM | Monday, September 19, 2005
Jeff Sessions: Necrophile Alabama's junior senator has a powerful jones for a dead body. He's busy digging around the corpses in Alabama and Mississippi to find a corpse to fuck on national TV. Federal troops aren't the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions' legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky's voice mail: "[Arizona Sen.] Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."Yep, that sick son of a bitch wants to find the waterlogged, bloated corpse of a rich guy and fuck it hard on TV so he can flog the dead horse of Estate Tax repeal. Because, don't you know, when the Federal Government is lurching even further into insolvency due to the staggering cost of the stupid, pointless war in Iraq and already enourmous tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, what we need the most is more tax cuts. Cuts on taxes that only affect a small fraction of estates. Going to this Estate Tax calculator, I can see how much I'd pay if (through some miracle) a Fatcat died and left me his estate. If Francis Fatcat's estate totaled anything less than $4,000,000, I'd owe NOTHING - and that's assuming I decide to keep all the filthy lucre to myself and donate NOTHING to charity. Hell, only the top 0.5% of estates are more than $1,800,000, so we're talking about a tax that only affects a tiny, tiny fraction of estates. Just think of all the children that will be thrown out on the street thanks to this cruel, cruel tax. Jenna and Barbara Bush. Jeb Bush, Jr. Paris Hilton. Thrown out onto the street, with barely a couple of million to their names - why, they might have to write a check to cover the cost of their taxes! Of course, the GOP is decrying those who use this tragedy to "play politics". Of course they are - because they're fucking liars. The GOP is trying desperately to use this to get their sick, America-hating agenda rammed through, and they're screeching as loud as they can about the Democrats daring to demand accountability for the multitude of Federal failures because they know it'll distract people from their corpse-fucking, grave-robbing, policies of passive-aggressive genocide. It's getting to the point that the folks in the offices of my elected representatives are getting tired of hearing from me. I don't mince words when I call - appalling, sickening, disgusting, un-American, cruel, incompetent - those are just a few of the words I use when talking to them. I'm going to keep calling the motherfuckers, though. I'm gonna raise my voice, I'm gonna make those shitheads hear me. You do the same. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 2:38:00 PM | Avast! Ahoy, mateys! It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day, so I'll be expectin' the scurvy lot o' ye to be puttin' on yer best pirate voices an' lettin' fly with the salty talk. Any man-jack o' ye that can't get wi' the program gets keel-hauled - an' I assure ye, that ain't no metaphor fer anythin' sexually excitin'! Now off wi'ye, I gots some hatches to batten an' mains'l to unfurl, ye lubberly knaves! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:35:00 AM | Sunday, September 18, 2005
George Bush: American Nero Nero, if you recall, let Rome burn to the ground so he could have the glory of rebuilding it. Now, I'm not saying Bush sat on his stupid, inbred ass for 3 days following the devastation of Katrina for the express purpose of rebuilding things there. No, certainly not. He's not that clever. But his advisors, toadies and hangers-on, they know a good opportunity when they see it. So how do we know the right is more interested in dismantling worker protections, aid to the poor and the rest of the New Deal than they are in helping one of the poorest regions of the US recover from a horrific storm, flooding and generations of poverty? First off, look who's in charge of reconstruction: Karl Rove, Claude Allen and Michael Chertoff. What do these three have in common, besides an intimate knowledge of the taste of Bush's rectum? A complete and utter lack of experience in disaster recovery or large-scale economic planning. Why would a reconstruction effort of the scale we're looking at need a trio of political operatives running it? What's been proposed so far is a massive amount of spending, much of it already geared towards previous government contractors like... (and this is a shocker) Kellogg, Brown & Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton, a company that still cuts fat checks to Dick Cheney on a regular basis - "deferred compensation", of course). Bush has suspended Federal rules that state that government contractors must pay at least the prevailing wage in an area, meaning that workers involved in this effort are going to be working for a lot less than they need. The GOP-led Congress is ensuring that there will be further handouts to Big Oil, and that despite the orgy of spending, sacrifices will be made by the poor and middle class and not the weathy or the corporations. No rollback on tax cuts for the rich - this, at a time when all Americans should be making sacrifices to help rebuild this culturally and economically vital part of the country. The GOP wants to ram through more tax cuts and spending cuts in social programs, at a time when millions more Americans have been thrown out of work, lost their homes, lost everything they own. This is nothing less than war - war against those with the least ability to stand up for themselves. War against not just the poor and working-class folks that got hit by the sucker-punch of storm and flooding, not just against the rest of the poor and working-class, but war against the ideals of our great nation. War against the principles of equal justice, equal opportunity, equal treatment. This bunch of modern-day aristos want a return to a semiFeudal state, with people beheld to corporations, to church charities, to service to the wealthy. That's not what we're about here. Keep up the pressure on the goddamn thieves and liars. Don't let up. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:38:00 AM | Saturday, September 17, 2005
| Friday, September 16, 2005
¡Ese toro tomó mis pantalones! Check out this link. Sorta-kinda NSFW. Watch until the end. Seriously. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:38:00 PM | Hard Choices It's easy when the kids are younger - they're not interested in making their own decisions, and they trust your judgement. As they get older and more independent, they question you a lot more, and they don't always place the same importance on things you do. No Barbie and no toy guns - those were easy. Fran's to the point that she mocks Barbie commercials on the TV. Drew occasionally asks for toy guns, but always qualifies it with, "But it doesn't look like a gun!" Melissa and I talked a lot about the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts. I had good experiences, especially in Cub Scouts, but the organization's stand on both homosexuality and atheism (and the ban on membership and leadership positions for gays and atheists) struck deeply against our egalitarian cores. Drew's always had trouble making friends, and we've long thought that if we could find a peer group for him that's a little more intimate and organized than school tends to be, it might help him open up some. We've looked for alternatives to Scouting, to no avail. Soccer didn't work - Drew enjoyed running up and down the field, but sitting on the sidelines was difficult, and the other kids on the team early on formed a tight bond that left Drew on the outside. The YMCA's programs are more geared towards parent-child interaction, which Drew handles rather well. Campfire USA was a good match, except that none of the chapters near us had openings, and between Melissa's health and having our hands full with two other kids, we couldn't organize and run a chapter ourselves. Melissa and I had talked to Drew before about our feelings about Scouting - they they weren't always fair to people, and they didn't let people that didn't believe in God or boys that fall in love with other boys join or help. I'm bisexual, but in a monogamous heterosexual relationship, and while I don't consider myself an atheist, I certainly don't much care about religion, organized or not. Were I to be honest, I could not be actively involved with Drew's Scouting experience. I did not want to set a bad example by lying. Wednesday, Drew came home from school with a sticker on his shirt that read, "I WANT TO BE A CUB SCOUT! Meeting tomorrow night at the school cafeteria!" I saw that and asked, "Drew, Mommy and I will have to talk about that. Do you remember what we told you about the Scouts not being fair?" Tears welled up in Drew's eyes. "Yes. But they have so much fun! And the boys were nice to me, and they get to do archery and camp and everything!" I reassured him that Melissa and I would talk it over, but Drew was down for the rest of the drive home. At home, as Drew and Fran did their homework and Alec played in the sandbox outside, we talked. We turned it and looked at it from every possible angle, and ran smack into a wall. We had our ideals on one side and the very real need of Drew for a peer group on the other. It's easy to make a stand on an issue like this when it's academic. When you don't have a child, you can say, "No child of mine is joining that organization!" It's not so easy when you're looking into that child's eyes and trying to tell them that some issues they don't much comprehend or care about are keeping them from a chance at friends. We decided that I would go to the meeting and see if Drew still wanted to join afterwards. Which, of course, he did. He's now a Cub Scout. When asked about being a Den Leader, I demurred, citing Melissa's recent surgery and my need to help with the kids as keeping me from volunteering. I'm planning to talk to the scoutmaster at the first meeting and lay it on the line. I'll discuss my (lack of) religious beliefs and stress my impartiality, as well as explain that while I understand I'm disqualified from a leadership position, I would like to be involved however I can, and assure him that I'm not interested in changing anyone else's religion. If not, Melissa may have to be more involved than me, but I'm hoping that honesty combined with a straightforward assessment of the importance of Scouting to Drew's social needs will carry me through. I suppose that I could also take the discordian route and acknowledge Eris as my "supreme being" or maybe even convert to Pastafarianism - that would fulfill their "acknowledge a debt to a God" rule without compromising my beliefs. The sexuality is not their business - if they ask me directly, I'll answer honestly, but as I'm not going to be having sex with any of the men there, I don't see how it's their business. I just don't know - Drew was the happiest I've seen him in a while after playing with the Scouts at the meeting last night, and when he left, the Scouts seemed to have enjoyed being with him - they waved and said "Good-bye", saying they hoped to see him at the meetings. That means a lot to me, more than I really knew before. Maybe I can make some changes (small ones, to be sure) from the inside, and maybe I'm deluding myself - maybe I'll just end up compromising myself and not being able to do anything constructive. I just don't know. What I do know is that Drew seems to need this right now, and my discomfort is a small price to pay for his emotional well-being. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:06:00 AM | Thursday, September 15, 2005
Bein' Preznit Is Hard Work! It's hard work, I tell ya! Ya got to sit in all these damn meeting an' listen to people talk an' talk an' talk about how poor people don't get a break, and they need to tax people like Uncle Dick and Mom and Poppy. Why, just yesterday, I was down to the UN and I'd been sitting in a meeting and it was getting really boring, because some guy named Coffee Annan or something was runnin' his mouth, and I had an idea! I wrote a note to Condi about some important Preznit-type business and I got out a little early! 
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:56:00 AM | Wednesday, September 14, 2005
I Want To Laugh Really, I do. The Onion is some damn fine satire. This one, though, I can't laugh at. Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth. It's just too fucking true. So far, every single major contract awarded for Gulf Coast reconstruction has gone to a company with very close ties to the Bush misAdministration. Now, what was that bullshit that got Clinton impeached? Oh, yeah - a land deal on which he lost money morphed into a $40,000,000 inquiry into oral sex in the Oval Office. Yeah, I can see how that's worthy of impeachment. Long dance, short rope. The whole corrupt lot of them. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:23:00 PM | A New Orleans Story Randy Wylde is a poster on an online forum I frequent. On his blog, he posted a wistful piece about his first trip to New Orleans. It's really, really good. Read it. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:56:00 AM | Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Will Someone Please Smack That Bitch With A Clue-By-Four? Michelle Malkin has her knickers all twisted again. This time, she's horribly offended that the memorial for United Flight 93 is - gasp! - in the shape of a crescent. Yes, in her simple mind, that means that the Flight 93 Memorial is really honoring... TERRORISTS! Using her logic, then, let's divine the secret meanings of other monuments around the world. The Washington Monument: Obviously, it's intended to honor the penis of our great first President, George Washington. Not many know this, but George Washington had a wooden penis, and it looked much like this. That's why Martha Washington never smiled. The Jefferson Memorial: OK, so this isn't as easy, until you learn that the dome is proportioned exactly like Sally Hemings' left breast, Jefferson's favorite. Not very fitting, honoring miscegenation like that. The Great Pyramid: This one's really awful - it's a clear attempt to insinuate pagan, masonic ideals into our Christian culture. Yes, the Egyptians built it a few thousand years before Christ and thousands more before the Freemasons came around, but everyone knows how clever those damn Egyptians are. The Grand Canyon: Even worse than the Great Pyramid. I mean, a long, meandering gash in the Earth? Remind you of anything? OK, so make it shorter, and narrower, and put a lot of shrubbery along both edges. Now? No? Do I have to spell it out for you? It's a vagina! Yes! God, when he caused the flood waters to tear along the landscape of what was to become Arizona when White Christians discovered it, had to make the Grand Canyon resemble the naughty bits of a woman. God, HOW COULD YOU? It's terrible enough that we have those naughty bits walking around us day in and day out, covered in many cases by only the flimsiest of garments, making Good White Christian Men break out in a sweat contemplating the filthy nastiness of the Cooter, and God has to make it worse. Wow! Michelle Malkin and her idiotically bigoted nonsense have opened up a whole new field of study! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:22:00 AM | Monday, September 12, 2005
Can-Do Spirit Life looks moderately OK for the moment, so I'm posting mostly good stuff today. Here's a nice piece about a strip club owner in New Orleans showing the spirit that made the city great. "Disaster? Yeah! But we'll be glad to take your money off ya while you work to fix it." In other news, Melissa's latest column is up. To Be Accountable. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 2:13:00 PM | Happy Today Got the word - no cancer on Melissa's thyroid, everything looks OK. She's got a nice scar on her throat, but the doc says that'll be almost all gone in a few months. In the meantime, we're debating either Marie Antionette or Mary Kelley for Hallowe'en. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:34:00 AM | Sunday, September 11, 2005
Compasisonate Conservatism From The GOP "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." - Rep. Richard H. Baker (R - Baton Rouge) "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." - Rep. Dennis Hastert (R - Ill.) "So many of the people here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." - Former First Lady Barbara Bush describing evacuees in Houston "You have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving." - Sen. Rick Santorum (R - PA) - "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" - Rep. Tom DeLay (R - Sugarland, TX) to three young evacuees in Houston "..they didn't have the necessary brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane and then when it hit them- stood on the side of the convention Center expiring while reporters were coming and going.." - Right-wing talk show host Mark Williams "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged." - Gretna, LA Police Chief Arthur Lawson explaining why starving, dehydrated men, women and children trying to get out of New Orleans were turned back at gunpoint by deputies who also confiscated meager supplies of food and water from the evacuees. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:30:00 AM | Saturday, September 10, 2005
Uhhhh, Yeah. No Way THIS Can Go Tragically Wrong I mean, it's already tragic enough down there, so why should we worry that we've got Blackwater Nope, it's all gonna go down niiiiice and smooooooooth there in the Big Easy, with those Listen up - just 'cause "Brownie" got "Promoted Out Of Trouble" doesn't mean Bush's fuckups are wiped away. There's still plenty for him to get his "hcuoT sadiM"* on. Keep yellin' at the goobers in Washington. * - OK, so King Midas could turn anything to gold, right? So since Bush fucks everything up, it's all backwards. Simple as that. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:34:00 PM | Feh I'm tired. Spleened out, exhausted from a week of worry about Melissa. Think I'll take it easy for a few hours at least. Still no biopsy results, and my younger brother is stuck in a hospital in Atlanta recovering from an appendectomy. Dammit, I think the fucking universe can cut us all a little slack and maybe visit some misery and suffering upon the oh-so-more-deserving Bush Crime Family and misAdministration. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:06:00 AM | Top Of The Blog I'm posting this up top - others have done the same on their blogs. I spoke with the Red Cross, Salvation Army and several other charities last night and this morning, and what they need the most of right now is money and bodies - they've got to feed these people, buy them the basic necessities, and they need people to help them. So make some calls, click some links, make some donations. NOW, GODDAMMIT! American Red Cross (800) HELP NOW (435-7669) English (800) 257-7575 Spanish America's Second Harvest (800) 344-8070 Adventist Community Services (800) 381-7171 Catholic Charities, USA (800) 919-9338 Christian Disaster Response (941) 956-5183 (941) 551-9554 Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (800) 848-5818 Church World Service (800) 297-1516 Convoy of Hope (417) 823-8998 Lutheran Disaster Response (800) 638-3522 Mennonite Disaster Service (717) 859-2210 Nazarene Disaster Response (888) 256-5886 Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (800) 872-3283 Salvation Army (800) SAL-ARMY (725-2769) Southern Baptist Convention -- Disaster Relief (800) 462-8657, ext. 6133 United Methodist Committee on Relief (800) 554-8583 "But Adam," you say, most of those charities are, well, religious - what gives?" There's several reasons.
My employer is setting up a matching fund for donations, I know a lot of other businessare are doing the same. If you can get your donation matched, do that - more money is what they need, so let's get it to them. [ADDENDUM] From Spidra: HURRICANE KATRINA RELIEF FUND Maggie is doing her part, too. Look, folks, just find something. Anything. The fuckwits in DC can't get their heads out of their asses and there are people that need help. [ADDENDUM TO THE ADDENDUM] Amadan's got some sensible stuff to say about charitable giving on his blog. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:23:00 AM | Friday, September 09, 2005
Stupid From The Get-Go Bob Harris had this handy graphic up:  Please note: the Parishes highlighted in RED are the ones named in this statement from the White House as receiving emergency aid and targeted for immediate response by FEMA effective August 26th. So I guess good ol' Brownie really was doin' a heck of a job when he denied access to the Coast Guard, Marines, National Guard, Red Cross, citizen volunteers and other offers of assistance across the United States and around the world. Just doin' what the boss told him to do. Incompetence from top to bottom, with the poor and black getting shit on the hardest. And, yeah, I know - George W. Bush doesn't have a prejudiced bone in his body. We can tell because he's got plenty of black friends, like Condi, and Clarence Thomas and Colin Powell. To be honest, I don't give a rat's ass if he's really prejudiced or it just looks that way. The fact is that either through malevolence or incompetence, thousands of poor people, most of whom just happen to be black have been killed and tens of thousands more have lost homes, jobs, friends and loved ones. Impeach that stupid son of a bitch. Impeach him now, then make every one of the goddamn idiots in his administration take a long dance on a short rope. The hurricane isn't their fault, but the blood of the thousands drowned, shot and dead of thirst has splattered them well and truly. Any coprophile deluded or cynical enough to still rise to the defense of that pathetic, pusillanimus purveyor of mass murder deserves to be shamed publicly, marched through the streets in shackles and pelted with human ordure and the well-aged offal of the nearest slaughterhouse. There is no defense for his inaction. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:42:00 PM | Thursday, September 08, 2005
And Another Thing... You bet your sweet little ass I'm going to be pointing fingers. The scope of this devastation is directly because of the decisions made by George W. "Worthless-piece-of-shit" Bush, his appointees and his party over the last 4 1/2 years. From the beginning, when he placed his campaign manager in charge of FEMA and rammed through a tax cut for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, through his gutting of FEMA and slashing of funds for the Army Corps of Engineers that was earmarked for levee reinforcement, through his ignoring of very detailed and specific (shades of 9/11!) warnings before the hurricane hit, through his self-serving decisions to continue his vacation and jaunt over to San Diego immediately after the hurricane hit and his (as usual) carefully-staged photo ops that somehow manage to leave things worse than they were before he went there. George Bush didn't cause the hurricane, but his choices make it clear that he doesn't give a rat's ass about poor people, especially if they're black. He's real concerned about Trent Lott's Pascagoula mansion getting rebuilt and he mourns the loss of the town where he and his fucking frat-boy buddies used to go and get shitfaced, though. Just not, you know, the people. This is all about finger pointing - if we don't do it now, when will people be held accountable. The talking heads at CNN that never left their air-conditioned offices are parroting the GOP Party line, but the reporters on the ground have seen the horror close-up. We have all of us got to make sure our elected representatives get the message clearly - they work for us, all of them, and they have got to fucking be held accountable for their actions and their inaction. Don't let up. Hold the bastards to the fire. Burn 'em good, leave scars so they never forget who's in charge. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:03:00 AM | But Remember, Michael Moore Is Fat Michael Moore is one of the bogeymen of the right. They get twitchy when they think of him, and a Michael Moore movie floods their silk underpants with liquified shit. He's a populist, someone that cares more about the working stiff than the CEO. That's part of what scares them. He's got some tips on getting aid down to the folks along the Gulf Coast that bypasses the incompetent boobs at FEMA. Cindy Sheehan, the brave woman who dared to challenge Mr. Bush at his summer home, has now sent her Camp Casey from in front of Bush's ranch to the outskirts of New Orleans. The Veterans for Peace have taken all the equipment and staff of volunteers and set up camp in Covington, Louisiana, on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. They are accepting materials and personally distributing them to those in need and have been going into New Orleans on a daily basis.Bravo, Michael Moore. Bravo, Cindy Sheehan. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:21:00 AM | Wednesday, September 07, 2005
| Home Again Melissa is up at her parents' house recovering from her surgery, feeling 100% better now that she's out of the hospital. We'll get biopsy results in the next several days. I'm at our house, helping my parents wrangle the kids. In other news, Michelle Malkin has made it plain she needs to fuck herself with a dull, rusty chainsaw. Seriously, she needs to get her face shoved down into the shit and corpse-filled waters of New Orleans, along with Bush and all the rest of the useless fucks responsible. Compassionate conservatives my hairy white ass. I see more compassion from sharks at a feeding frenzy. Some Navy pilots that resuced survivors in New Orleans are getting a reprimand. The next morning, though, the two crews were called to a meeting with Commander Holdener, who said he told them that while helping civilians was laudable, the lengthy rescue effort was an unacceptable diversion from their main mission of delivering supplies. With only two helicopters available at Pensacola to deliver supplies, the base did not have enough to allow pilots to go on prolonged search and rescue operations.Give those crews some goddamn medals and promotions, I say. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:11:00 PM | Tuesday, September 06, 2005
ha-HA! i have been handed the keys to the blog! i feel so incredibly powerful! like i could conquer the world or change the course of human history or well, okay, really, first i'd like to report on the fabulous news that adam just called to report that melissa is out of surgery, and the surgery went well, and she's doing quite well. she's spending tonight @ hospital, and hopefully will be able to go home tomorrow. they'll know more BY tomorrow, but so far, so good. (see, i used my newfound powers for the good! the good, i tell ya!) posted by julie beth at 5:54:00 PM | Out Of Pocket I think I've discharged enough spleen for the moment. Just a heads-up that I'll be out of pocket for the rest of today and most if not all of tomorrow. Melissa has to have some surgery this afternoon and I'll be at the hospital with her. I'll have someone post an update to the blog this afternoon once we're out of surgery. No worries, you guys just make some calls and cuss out your Senators and Congresscritters, OK? Knowing you folks are raising a little hell will make everything better. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:57:00 AM | The Bitch Was Worse Than I Thought I mean, the heartlessness of the Bush Crime Family is just staggering. Yesterday, I mentioned that The Quaker Oats Bitch (AKA Barbara)chuckled as she commented on how much better off the evacuees were in Houston. Here's the whole quote and a link to audio of the Rich Bitch's comments. "What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.Just shut the fuck up, you simpering cow. You and your criminal, death-dealing, greedy, grasping filthy spawn have fucked up enough in this country, and you just need to shut the fuck up. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:44:00 AM | Monday, September 05, 2005
Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Part IV In An Absolutely Crazy-Making Series According to Barbara Bush (also known as "That Rich Bitch That Looks Like The Fucking Quaker Oats Guy"), things are really looking up for the evacuees crammed into the Houston Astrodome. "Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston."Yeah, I can see how well it's working for them, getting separated from their families, without jobs or homes, having spent almost a week watching their friends, relatives and neighbors drop dead from dehydration because your fucking inbred idiot son was too goddamn busy jacking off to actually get some fucking help to them - things are definitely looking up for those folks. Thanks so much, you overpriveleged heartless cunt, for letting us know that your darling little boy, that moron, the wetbrain goat-fucking, shit-eating son of a bitch (and I'm talking about you, lady [and I use that term loosely]), is doing everything he can to starve, drown and flat-out ignore to death the entire fucking population of the city of New Orleans. The French and the Russians - they know how to treat aristocrats. That's all I'm sayin'. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:57:00 PM | Nothing Says "Photo-Op" Like Starving Black People Remember that open air food distribution point in New Orleans the Preznit visited the other day? It was phony. Unlike CNN, foreign TV networks showed the whole deal. There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.Yep, that's right. They set up a food distribution center, filmed that goddamn simpleton passing out a little food to some desperate niggers, then shut it down. It wasn't just those untrustworthy foreign news agencies, though - I mean, we can't trust them to serve up news that our networks conveniently "forget" to report. No, US Senator Mary Landrieu is on to the fucking bullshit Potemkin Village crap, too: I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims — far more efficiently than buses — FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.When Our Dear Laura wanted to be shown on TV helping those poor flooded-out black folks at the Cajundome, she shut down the communications room there, plus the fucking food service area - for EIGHT GODDAMN HOURS. Every time that fatcat motherfucker flies down to Lousisiana or Mississippi to show us how goddamn compassionate he is, ALL AID FLIGHTS IN A 60-MILE RADIUS ARE HALTED. People are still dying. The police in New Orleans are starting to commit suicide - they've been on the ground doing their fucking best to hold things together for over a week while FEMA refuses to allow supplies or aid in until they can do it during one of the Simp Chimp's photo-op press conferences. Aaron Broussard said it best: Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody’s promised. They’ve had press conferences. I’m sick of the press conferences. For god’s sakes, just shut up and send us somebody. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:38:00 AM | Sunday, September 04, 2005
Still Out Of grief, But Chock-Full Of Rage You want to know how well it's going in Louisiana? You really want to know? Then don't listen to the incompetent tool in charge of FEMA. He doesn't know. George Bush doesn't know, or care - he's too busy staging photo ops and getting in some more fucking golf. Here's how it's going. I read this and pounded my fist against a wall until my knuckles bled, because the people I want to hit - the ones that need to be hit - aren't anywhere near me. This is Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, telling what it's been like being "rescued" by the ham-fisted idiots from FEMA: We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast. But the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history. … Whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chainsawed off and we’ve got to start with some new leadership. It’s not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now.I'm telling you, people need to fucking hang for this. Hang the motherfuckers with a short rope and let 'em dance in the fucking wind for a while before they get the sweet release of death. There is no excuse - NO FUCKING EXCUSE - for people to still be stuck out there with no food, water or shelter. This is insane. This is horrible. This is enough to make me ashamed to call myself an American. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:32:00 PM | Saturday, September 03, 2005
Class Issues? Fuck, yes. The response to this disaster is all about race and class. First off, let's remember that the best evacuation plan the City of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana could come up with was "Get in your car and drive outta town." That's all well and good for the middle-class folks and the wealthier folks. They've got cars, cars that run. If they've made the choice to do without a car, they can rent a car, or take a train, or a plane, or a bus. For the 27.9% of the population that live below the poverty line, though, that's not an option. If the poor have a car, it's likely a beater - something bought for under $1000 that they keep together with baling wire and duct tape. Most of them aren't lucky enough to own a vehicle, though. If they can't afford a car, how can they afford to pay for a bus ticket, or a plane ticket out of town? They're stuck in town - and they're more likely to want to stay and protect what little they've got. It's like the old joke - Why is there so much backstabbing and infighting in academia? Because the stakes are so low. When you've got next to nothing, when the crappy 8" black and white TV set you've got set up with a coathanger for an antenna and a pair of pliers to change channels meant you had shave your already meager budget down a little more, you're going to want to keep an eye on it. You've got family that you want to keep an eye on, too. Your grandmother isn't in a specialized elder care facility - she's in the back room of the crappy duplex you're renting, and her insulin and oxygen tanks are paid for by MediCare. She can't leave - not easily. So you're gonna stay to help her. In New Orleans, 67.3% of the population is African-American. The sad truth is that if you're black, it's more likely you're gonna be poor. So it's poor, black folks that have to stay behind. Where are they staying? The poorer the neighborhood, the lower the ground. Considering that almost all of New Orleans is below sea level, that's sayin' something. The folks that can't afford to leave are stuck in the most vulnerable areas, in the worst housing. It just keeps adding up. Add in that money for cities has been slowly but surely drying up over the last 20 years or so - both from the state and federal governments - as wealthier folks move to suburbs and gated communities, their property taxes and income taxes leave with them. Poor, unemployed people, stuck in the lowest ground in a sinking city with no way to leave, crammed into ramshackle apartments and houses. Enter Katrina. By last Friday, it was clear that there was going to be something bad goin' down in the Mobile-New Orleans section of the Gulf Coast. As the weekend progressed, the bullseye painted on New Orleans got bigger and redder. On Sunday, the order went out - get the hell out! The city didn't have the buses or vehicles to get poor people out of the city, and to be honest, poor, black people don't usually get put at the top of the list when it's time to scramble. The best that could be done was to tell people to stay put and get to the Superdome and a few other large, strong structures if the worst happened. The city actually weathered the storm itself better than expected, but the trouble came when the storm surge hit Lake Ponchartrain. Levees and dikes that had been due for reinforcement and replacement for years were simply unable to hold up. City officials fought to block holes, but the help they needed wasn't there. The budget for repairs and emergency preparation had been cut by the Federal Government in recent years in order to place higher priority on a war in Iraq. Millions of gallons of water began pouring into a big hole that had been maintained for decades. As the waters rose, people died. Crammed in their attics, struggling to keep their heads above the surface, they died like trapped rats. Support, the bodies, equipment and supplies that a sane government would have had ready, sat waiting for the official order that never came until it was far too late. Offers of help from across the country and around the world were ignored while the one man that was supposed to deal with getting everything mobilized played guiter, played golf and talked about how swimmingly the war in Iraq was going. The men, women and children lined up outside the Convention Center, waiting in the hot sun, surrounded by sewage-filled water, for days - they didn't have the luxury of air-conditioning, or running water, or any of the things we all take for granted. They had faith that the government that told them to "Go to the Convention Center and we'll take care of you" wasn't blowing smoke up their asses. They had the privelege of standing and baking in the sun, watching old women die and hearing infants feebly wail for food that never came. They were lucky enough to have a roadblock between them and dry land, manned by police and guardsmen that pointed guns at them when they tried to walk out of the hellhole they were stuck in. When relief finally came, it was trucks literally stopping on the bridge above the Convention Center and throwing food and water over the side at them. Those that tried to approach the trucks once again got guns pointed at them. Meanwhile, at the Superdome, the "shelter of last resort", thousands of people were crammed into the building, without food or water or electricity waiting for the help promised them. As Air Force One dipped briefly below the clouds so George W. Bush could "inspect" the devastation from the window a mile or so up, there were rapes, murders, robberies and more deaths in the overcrowded, stuffy, shit-smelling Superdome. When buses finally arrived to take the desperate, dehydrated, starving poor from the Superdome to safety, there was one last insult: The 700 guests and staff at the Hyatt were bumped to the front of the line. That's not to say they had it easy, but they at least had running water, drinking water and food. As Condoleeza Rice laughed at the crazy antics of the cast of Spamalot, hospitals ran out of gasoline for their generators, doctors begged for help getting patients out, more innocents died. As Dick Cheney prepared for a major GOP fundraiser, more levees broke. The richest, most powerful nation in the world was unable - or unwilling - to act to prevent a disaster, and the man elected to lead it (the scion of one of our richest families) was too interested in golf, guitars and goofing off to make a single goddamn move to mitigate the horrible human suffering going on. Impeachment is too fucking good for that worthless, miserable failure in the White House. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:32:00 PM | Better Than I Could Say It Steve Gilliard tells the Kool-Aid Drinkers on the Right We Told You So We have been screaming for two years that Bush and his team sucked. That they had no clue. They sent soldiers to be wounded in Iraq without armored anything. And you idiots cheered him on from the safety of your keyboards. We told you he was fucking up Iraq. But no, we supported Saddam, we were racist, we blamed America. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:43:00 AM | Here's A Hero Someone not afraid to do something against the law to save lives. Teenager hotwires bus, rescues NO residents Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.They better not do a fucking thing to that man. No, I take that back. They need to give that man a medal. A couple of additional links: Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera, both on the ground in New Orleans, give pompous ass Sean Hannity some "perspective". Scenes of horror at the triage center at the New Orleans airport. Quelle surprise! Halliburton given a fat contract to rebuild - before the starving, dehydrated people are taken care of. A formal request for Federal Aid was made on Sunday by the governor of Louisiana - so why is it Saturday and people are still waiting to be evacuated? Were they afraid to interrupt the Fucking Moron's vacation? John Scalzi on what being poor means. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:23:00 AM | Friday, September 02, 2005
Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Part III In An Increasingly Infuriating Series Do you wonder why New Orleans has been hit so hard? It's not because Bush slashed funding for flood control and diverted what was left to his little war in Iraq. It's not because not one person at the Federal or State level bothered to have a goddamn thing ready to go to help the city and prevent catastrophic flooding. It's not even because no one could come up with a better evacuation plan than, "Ummm, get out? If you can?" Nope. It's because God Hates Faggots. PHILADELPHIA - Just days before "Southern Decadence", an annual homosexual celebration attracting tens of thousands of people to the French Quarters section of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina destroys the city.This shit is serious. There are motherfucking scum celebrating - celebrating - the horrible tragedy we're seeing unfold in front of our eyes. To sick, evil, twisted souls like theirs, it makes perfect sense that God would destroy a city full of innocent people just to keep some faggots from hanging out and having a party. Yeah, that's right. Better to kill hundreds to thousands of innocent men, women and children than let New Orleans do what New Orleans did best - throw a party. Michael Marcavage, you better pray to your pathetic little god that I don't ever run into you anywhere, because I will visit upon you pain and suffering so great that you'll welcome the sweet release of death. You deserve to get stuffed in a flooded attic in New Orleans and left to slowly bake and dehydrate, drinking your own piss to stay alive a little bit longer, beating on the walls in the vain hope that someone, anyone, will hear your desperate pleas, fighting off the rats that are clustering nearby ready to eat your tender flesh, slowly fading in and out of despair-filled consciousness and feebly trying to escape. You deserve that fate and then some. You are a twisted little jackal, a festering globule of phlegm, a sick, pathetic, evil piece of shit that needs to be scraped off the shoe of America and thrown away. Die, motherfucker. Die. Just die. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 2:28:00 PM | I Don't Have Any Room For Grief I'm hearing that the Federals are claiming that they're not allowed to act until they get a formal request for assistance from state and local officials. You know what? That's bullshit - that's a figleaf. For several years, I worked in retail. In the store I worked, customers were nto allowed to use the bathroom at the store. I had people ask me if they can use the toilet facilities - they might have just really needed to go, or change a kid's diaper - but I didn't care. I risked my crappy job to be a decent person and let them use the toilet. If I, a minimum wage sales clerk in a crappy store in a crappy mall was willing to risk my fucking job to let someone use a goddamn toilet, then surely some $100,000 a year desk jockey in the nice, air-conditioned offices of FEMA or the Pentagon could show some fucking balls and make an executive decision to get shit rolling, or at the very least READY. Fuck, were the little titty-babies afraid they might lose their goddamn pensions by choosing to save some people? Their nice parking spots? Fuck that! If the Goddamn Moron wasn't gonna get off his coke-addled ass in Crawford, then maybe Condi could have stopped shopping and made some calls, you know? Perhaps Donald Rumsfeld could have quit jacking off over photos of Iraq War dead and called an admiral in Norfolk and said, "Look, we might get cashiered for this, but go ahead and get those hospital ships on the way to the Gulf." Dick Cheney could have said from his Undisclosed Location, "Hey, this is some bad shit going down. We better get ready." Michael Chertoff did nothing to get FEMA ready. No one did a fucking thing until it was clear that any aid would be too little, too late. That's bullshit. It's cowardice. I mentioned on a friend's blog today that I'm full of rage over this. I don't have any room for grief over the death of a beautiful city, of entire towns in Alabama and Mississippi scoured down to the foundations by this storm. The only tears I have left right now over the hudreds, probably thousands of dead men, women and children are tears of rage. I want people to pay for this, and I want them to suffer for it. I want the idiots that think "Get in your car and drive" is a valid evacuation plan for a city in which over a third of the population live well below the poverty line and don't fucking OWN cars to go without food and water, up to their fucking necks in shit- and toxin- filled water for days on end. I want the goddamn shitbags that think it's fine to wait 5 motherfucking days before National Guard units even arrive to prevent looting and coordinate relief efforts to fend of floating balls of fire ants, stuffed in a stifling attic and hoping someone, anyone will come and rescue them. Driving to work this morning, I heard an interview with the mayor of New Orleans and it broke my heart. The Moron in Chief has acknowledged that the current situation is "not acceptable". Wow! Way to catch the Clue Train, dumbass! As James Wolcott posted yesterday, this is the perfect time to point fingers. It is perfectly clear that many, many people up at the fucking top of the chain didn't just drop the ball - they sat on their asses and watched it go right past them and didn't move a muscle. BIll Clinton was impeached over a FUCKING BLOWJOB. I'd say that thousands of people dead because on fucking moron couldn't be arsed to cut his vacation short and make a few decisions calls for something a little harsher than fucking impeachment by those standards. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:25:00 AM | Thursday, September 01, 2005
Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Part II In What Looks To Be A Series Condosleaza Rice shops up a storm in Manhattan to Just moments ago at the Ferragamo on 5th Avenue, Condoleeza Rice was seen spending several thousands of dollars on some nice, new shoes (we’ve confirmed this, so her new heels will surely get coverage from the WaPo’s Robin Givhan). A fellow shopper, unable to fathom the absurdity of Rice’s timing, went up to the Secretary and reportedly shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!” Never one to have her fashion choices questioned, Rice had security PHYSICALLY REMOVE the woman.I salute that woman, and hope she never has to pay for another drink in a bar - EVER. But wait! There's more! She caught Spamalot the other night as the rest of the Cabinet at least pretended to give a shit about the devastation of the American Gulf Coast. Nero fiddle while Rome burned, King George The Worthless strummed a guitar, and Condi is busy dropping huge chunks of change on some shoes while dead bodies bloat and rot from New Orleans to Mobile. Fuck you, you worthless Republican parasite shitbag scum. Fuck all of you. I suppose if we're lucky, Laura Bush might utter the following proposal to the starving clustered in the Superdome and outside the New Orleans Convention Center: "Qu'ils Mangent De La Brioche!" posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:19:00 PM | Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Remember back in 2002, when we were told by Condi Rice, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center...", and then we found out that just over a month before 9/11 Bush had been handed a briefing paper about that very possibility? And then there was that whole book by Tom Clancy and all those warnings the FBI Yeah. You know, as the parent of 3 children under the age of 8, I'm used to hearing them try different excuses on me. "I forgot", "I got carried away" and my personal favorite, "OK, so there was this big monkey, right? An' it came in through the window, and it dumped the milk on the floor, and then I didn't have any other way to clean up the mess so I put Baby Alec on the floor and rolled him in the milk to soak it up!" The kids never try the same excuse more than once, though. They figure out that I don't buy that line of bull and they 'fess up. It's a damn shame that the Preznit is trying the same stupid-ass excuse for the massive devastation in New Orleans. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees..." Oh, really? The folks at Popular Mechanics anticipated it. On September 11, 2001 (ironic, no?) they published an article entitled, "New Orleans is Sinking". During a strong hurricane, the city could be inundated with water blocking all streets in and out for days, leaving people stranded without electricity and access to clean drinking water. Many also could die because the city has few buildings that could withstand the sustained 96- to 100-mph winds and 6- to 8-ft. storm surges of a Category 2 hurricane. Moving to higher elevations would be just as dangerous as staying on low ground. Had Camille, a Category 5 storm, made landfall at New Orleans, instead of losing her punch before arriving, her winds would have blown twice as hard and her storm surge would have been three times as high.The blame for the current tragedy lies in front of more than just Bush - for the past 40 years, the city, parish, state and federal governments have largely engaged in the Civil Engineering equivalent of saying a prayer, sticking their fingers in their ears and going, "LALALALALALALALALALA!!!!!! I CAN'T HEEEAAAARRRR YOOOOUUUUU!" Still, in recent years, Bush appears to have taken an active, if negative, interest in the state of the levees in New Orleans. As the Chicago Tribune points out, Bush cut funding for the Army Corps of Engineers, diverting the money to Iraq rather than, oh, Idunno, repeal his tax cut for the wealthiest 1% of Americans. "I'm not saying it wouldn't still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have," said Michael Parker, a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002, when he was ousted after publicly criticizing a Bush administration proposal to cut the corps' budget.There's more than enough blame to spread around, and when you combine Bush's active de-funding of levee reinforcement with his lackluster response and then add in the fact that New Orleans appears to be following the same descent into chaos and looting that Iraq did following our invasion and it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that, for this administration, "advice" is something that happens to other people. Either they're blindingly incompetent or they're cruelly uncaring. Neither prospect really fills me with a tremendous amount of hope for the next several years. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees..." Yeah, nobody saw that one coming. I mean, why'd they even have levees in the first place, since if they didn't anticipate them breaking they surely didn't plan on using them to, you know, hold back water? Addendum From Knight-Ridder: Federal government wasn't ready for Katrina, disaster experts say The federal government so far has bungled the job of quickly helping the multitudes of hungry, thirsty and desperate victims of Hurricane Katrina, former top federal, state and local disaster chiefs said Wednesday.I'm reassigning some of that blame I mentioned earlier. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:54:00 PM | Doing Something. Anything. Just found out there's going to be some NO refugees housed here in Austin, so I've got a call in to the Red Cross to find out what they might need in the way of material stuff. Definitely deodorant, toothbrushes and other toiletries. We've got childrens' clothes and maybe some blankets, and I was thinking I might pick up some school supplies at Costco since the kids in the shelter will need them for school. Blog readers here in Austin, I'll post more specific details as soon as I find them. Folks outside of Austin, check with your local Red Cross. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:51:00 AM | |
