Café con Leche

What happen to the lights?

From NBC News anchor Brian Williams

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

emphasis added by me.

Katrina

There is a lot of things I want to say about Hurricane Katrina and the savage, apocalyptic vision of America that she revealed but I just don't have time to write it all down. I am horrified at the images that I have been seeing on Spanish TV; English TV is too sanitize for me. FEMA has even asked TV networks not to show the dead bodies floating and decomposing in the middle of the road waiting to be picked up.

As for other bodies his group encountered: ``Obviously we are not recovering them. We are just tying them up to banisters, leaving them on the roof.

I often wonder if we treat these dead people the same way if they were White.

Other Katrina news that you might have missed:

1. "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." from Rep. Richard Baker of Baton Rouge (R). What is wrong with these people?

2. In a TV interview on CNN or FOX first lady Laura Bush referred to Katrina as "Corrina" twice. Seriously, should she of all people know the name of the hurricane that is killing thousands of people.

4. President Bush signed an executive order allowing contractors to pay below prevailing wage in affected areas. Construction workers look for Davis Bacon work because it often pays better but Bush would rather give more profits to corporations like Halliburton then help the poor people of Louisiana.

5. FEMA Director Mike Brown is sooo under-qualified for his job.

6. "he point is if you look at the big picture, it’s a phenomenal accomplishment by everybody involved. It’s unbelievable." Tom DeLay can't stop gushing at how good of a job that is being done down there in Louisiana and Mississippi. Doesn't he watch CNN.

7. Pennsylvania Senator Santorum (R) said that people who do not heed evacuation warnings in the future may need to be penalized. Seriously these people just don't get it. They can't imagine that some people can't just pack up their Range Rover and drive to their summer home.

Nucular Summer

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has retired. This is going to get very ugly especially if Rehnquist retires too.

Dear President Bush:

"This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor.

"It has been a great privilege, indeed, to have served as a member of the Court for 24 terms.

"I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the Court and its role under our constitutional structure."

Sincerely,

Sandra Day O'Connor

The Presidents approval numbers have been really low lately and this is a welcome distraction.

President's Speech

ABC is reporting that the applause the President received was staged.

ABC's Terry Moran just reported that the only time Bush got applause was in the middle of his speech when a White House advance team member started clapping all on their own in order to cajole the soldiers into clapping, which they dutifully did. So even the applause was fake.

Apparently even Fox News is reporting on it. Ouch, this has got to hurt.

Unbelievable

Congressional Republicans warn Major League Baseball against allowing George Soros to take an ownership stake in the Washington Nationals.

While the Soros-Ledecky group is not seen as the frontrunner to win the bidding for the Nationals, who should be awarded to their new owner at the end of the 2005 season, the very prospect that Soros could have a stake in the team is enough to irritate Congressional Republicans.

"I think Major League Baseball understands the stakes," said Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R), the Northern Virginia lawmaker who recently convened high-profile steroid hearings. "I don't think they want to get involved in a political fight."

SOTU Address

Memoriable lines from last night's state of the union address

• "a taxpayer dollar must be spent wisely, or not at all"
• "By the year 2042, the entire system would be exhausted and bankrupt" -- inaccurate
• "I will cut the budget deficit in half by 2009"
• "And best of all, the money in the account is yours, and the government can never take it away"

More on the GOP's change

from David Sirota

Virginia Sen. George Allen (R) is introducing a bill essentially condemning the Senate for filibustering anti-lynching laws earlier in the 20th century. It's a laudable bill – but its author has anything but a laudable record on civil rights and racial issues. According to the Associated Press in 2000, Allen was discovered to have been displaying a hangman's noose and the confederate flag in his law office. As governor, Allen "signed a Confederate Heritage Month proclamation without denouncing slavery." Allen also "opposed a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King" and referred to the NAACP as an "extremist group."




According to reporters, Allen did not apologize, but instead "defended the flag and noose as mere decorations." What sensitivity.

The GOP wants to be the party of civil rights

and they are off to a bad start:

Republican strategists are aiming to win as much as 30% of the nation's black vote in the 2008 presidential election — an ambitious goal, given that polls have shown Bush won 11% in his reelection last year and that Democrats remain widely viewed as the party of civil rights.


Democrats say that such lofty GOP goals are the stuff of fantasy for a party out of touch with most black voters.


[...]


Referring to the GOP's new efforts to promote its civil rights record, Yale University history professor David Blight said, "It's appalling to me as a historian and as an American citizen. It necessitates ignoring and avoiding at least 80 years of the history of the Republican Party, that the Republican Party became the bastion of white solidarity, white comfort."


Republicans, however, insist their true history has been obscured — an argument encapsulated by a slogan on their new calendar.


"Celebrating a century and a half of civil rights achievement by the Party of Lincoln," proclaims its cover, which features a large image of the 16th president.

We are all 'Terrorist'

The Florida Marlins, already hinting they might move to Las Vegas, say it will cost taxpayers another $60 million to keep the team in South Florida. In response, the senate president says that he doesn't "negotiate with terrorists."

"I thought that we already appropriated money to help them move to Vegas," he said. "I was very disappointed that they publicly announced the negotiations and discussions with Las Vegas, and I don't negotiate with terrorists." - Tom Lee (R)

So I guess, anyone who doesn't agree with Republicans is a terrorist.

New Tactics being used by Bush supporters

Kira has a great picture of a new tactic that some Bush supporters are resorting to.

The Sandy Berger Story

1.Who is he? - Bill Clinton's national security adviser
2. Why is he on the news? - The FBI has been investigating him since last year for taking copies of some top-secret documents from the National Archive.

Berger, who admits he made an "honest mistake," is guilty of taking copies and handwritten notes (that too is a serious violation of the rules) but not original documents. He's returned most of them to the National Archives but says some are missing or discarded. His conduct is inexcusable. But traitorous?

Many suspect that the White House leaked word of the investigation to reports on Monday to do divert attention from the 9/11 Report.

"President Bush, meanwhile, used the White House bully pulpit yesterday to elevate the Berger controversy to 'a very serious matter,' prompting Democratic outcry that the president was hyping an ongoing criminal inquiry into Berger's actions to deflect attention from an independent commission's report on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which is expected to be released today."

This matter is minor compare to the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame.

By contrast, the motives for whoever in the administration leaked the Berger investigation appear clear enough. Like the outing of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent, someone is sending up a smoke screen to deflect more serious charges. By creating a brouhaha about Berger's actions, the leaker distracts attention from any criticisms of President Bush and his administration in the independent 9/11 commission report.

Fox News and a Misinformed Public

"Inappropriate" Bumperstickers

Louisville Kentucky Republican party was handing out copies of this bumper sticker ("Kerry is bin Laden's man/President Bush is mine" ). Imagine what the Repulicans would do if a local Democratic office did something similar.

Thankfully, Anne Northrup, local Congresswoman, has now asked the local party organization to take the decal down from the window and stop handing them out.

Tom DeLay

The NY columnist Paul Krugman writes about how Tom Delay became one of the most powerful men in America.

Now, e-mail and other Enron documents are revealing why Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, is one of the most powerful men in America.



A little background: at the Republican convention, most featured speakers will be social moderates like Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A moderate facade is necessary to win elections in a generally tolerant nation. But real power in the party rests with hard-line social conservatives like Mr. DeLay, who, in the debate over gun control after the Columbine shootings, insisted that juvenile violence is the result of day care, birth control and the teaching of evolution.



Here's the puzzle: if Mr. DeLay's brand of conservatism is so unpopular that it must be kept in the closet during the convention, how can people like him really run the party?



In Mr. DeLay's case, a large part of the answer is his control over corporate cash. As far back as 1996, one analyst described Mr. DeLay as the "chief enforcer of company contributions to Republicans." Some of that cash has flowed through Americans for a Republican Majority, called Armpac, a political action committee Mr. DeLay founded in 1994. By dispensing that money to other legislators, he gains their allegiance; this, in turn, allows him to deliver favors to his corporate contributors. Four of the five Republicans on the House ethics committee, where a complaint has been filed against Mr. DeLay, are past recipients of Armpac money.

Another GOP Ad

Vernon Robinson is running for Congress in North Carolina's 5th district and because the district is heavly Republican whoever wins the GOP primary will win the race.

The ad is quite possibly the most incredible piece of undisguised hate speech I have ever heard. President Bush and Karl Rove can try their best to reach Hispanic voters but ads like this show the party's true colors.

And while we are on the subject lets not forget GOP Chairman, Ed Gillespie. Jon Stewart caught him referring to Cinco de Mayo as "Stinko de Mayo Day"

Darrell Issa is Pathetic

Darrell Issa will urge a "No on Recall" vote unless either McClintock or Schwarzenegger drop out of the race.

Also on Monday Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, who bankrolled the effort to get the recall on the ballot with $1.7 million, said he was adamant that either McClintock or Schwarzenegger drop out of the race. If not, he said he would urge voters to reject the recall because it would assure a Bustamante victory.

A Bustamante victory is the GOP's biggest nightmare. President Bush has been courting the Hispanic vote and a Hispanic governor leading the country's largest and most important state would prove to be serious obsticle for him.

If Issa does end up urging a "No on Recall" vote then we will know for sure that the recall was not about removing Davis but rather about gaining political power.

Jorge Ramos slams Arnold

Jorge Ramos is the single best known TV anchor in Spanish television in the US. To give you an idea of what this means, imagine Tom Brokaw writing this piece in the New York Times.

A suprisingly large segment of Scharzenegger's early support has come from Hispanics who love his macho image. I've repeatly said that having Pete Wilson as deputy campaign manager and his unwillingness to admit that he made a mistake in supporting Prop. 187 would hurt his chances of winning the Hispanic vote. Jorge Ramos discusses (in Spanish) how and why Arnold has lost the Hispanic vote.

But I fear that Schwarzenegger did his political calculations and already made his decision. He knows that Hispanics, even though they are a third of the population of California, only constitute 12%of its electorate. That is why he prefers to woo the 59% of Californians who voted in favor of 187 and let the Hispanics vote for the principal Democratic candidate for the governorship, Cruz Bustamante.

"Arnold is teaching us the classic lesson of what any candidate should to lose the Hispanic vote. Being anti-immigrant in California, sadly, keeps earning votes. But there is nothing worse than when an immigrant forgets his past and turns his back on others like him. And Arnold's back sure is wide."

How the CA Recall Works

It's a two-part ballot. On the first part, the voters will choose "yes" or "no" to recall Governor Gray Davis while in the second part they select from a list of replacement candidates.

Voters are able to vote "no" on the recall and still select one of the replacement candidates or skip either of the two questions.

If a majority of voters choose to recall Gov. Gary Davis, then the replacement candidate with the most votes becomes governor. However, if the voters choose to keep Gov. Davis then the replacement vote is meaningless.

No tax refund for poor families

The vice president believes that only the right people ought to get tax relief. I don't think that's the role of the president -- to pick -- "you're right, and you're not right." I think if you're going to have tax relief, everybody ought to get it.

George W. Bush
Third Presidential Debate
October 17, 2000

The tax code is unfair for people at the bottom end of the economic ladder. If you're a single mother making $22,000 a year today, and you're trying to raise two children, for every additional dollar you earn you pay a higher marginal rate on that dollar than someone making $200,000, and it's not right, so I want to do something about that.

George W. Bush
Third Presidential Debate
October 17, 2000

The House refused to endorse immediate payment of an expanded child tax credit to millions of low-income families -- those earning $10,500 to $26,625 a year -- who were denied the benefit in a $350 billion tax cut that became law in May ... The vote left the House and Senate gridlocked over the issue.

Washington Post
July 31, 2003

This week, the checks for up to $400 per child started arriving in the mailboxes of American families. That money will help American families move the economy forward.

George W. Bush
Radio Address
August 2, 2003

Tom DeLay IS the one that has lost his marbles

Tom DeLay's webpage has a transcript of a speech he gave to College Republicans which is just plain bizarre.

Title: Fear and Loathing in the Mother Ship

Good afternoon, or, as John Kerry might say: “Bonjour!”

[...]
So in the interests of clarity, I have a simple message to pass along: the national Democrat party seems to have lost its marbles.

[...]
While everyone else got the memo that big-government, blame-America-first liberalism died with disco, the Howard Dean Democrats still want to party like it's 1979!

[...]
To try to gauge just how out of touch the Democrat leadership is on the war on terror, just close your eyes and try to imagine Ted Kennedy landing that Navy jet on the deck of that aircraft carrier.

I don't know about you, I certainly don't want to see Teddy Kennedy in a Navy flight suit anytime soon.

[...]
They're just trying to change the subject, because on the issue of Iraq, they have nothing of substance to offer: only fear, and loathing, and a motley crew of presidential contenders.

They've gone off the deep end.

[...]
It makes you wonder if at their next presidential debate, the Democrats are all going to show up wearing aluminum-foil helmets to protect their brain waves from the mother ship!

Clueless President

Seriously, I don't know whether he does this intentionally or if he really has no clue what is going on. This is what he had to say yesterday about the WMD:

Q So even though there has been some question about the intelligence -- the intelligence community knowing beforehand that perhaps it wasn't, you still believe that when you gave it --

[...]

The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful.

Where do you start with this? I agree that it is too early to say that Saddam did not have WMD but we certainly cannot say that we are "absolutely" certain that he did. We haven't even found them nor have we found any clear evidence to indicate that he had them.

And what's up with Saddam not letting in the inspectors? How clueless can you get. Seriously, he is the president and at the very least he should know that inpectors were allowed in. I mean we went to war over this. The US claimed and Hans Blix agreed that that Saddam wasn't cooperating fully with the inspecotors but he did let them in.

Spinning out of Control

Let's review the White House's convulated defense of the President's State of the Union.

It all started by:
1. The statement was wrong and shouldn't have been included in the speech.

then it changed to:
2. The statement was wrong, and shouldn't have been included in the speech, but it's the CIA's fault for not telling us to leave it out.

and then it changed to:
3. The statement came from the British and they say that they have other information to back it up.

and then it changes to:
4. The statement was and is "technically" correct, because all we ever said was that the British said it, and they did, and they're still saying it.

and now:
5. " No one can accurately tell you it was wrong. That is not known."
Ari Fleischer
July 14, 2003

Bush Chilly Reception

The reception for Bush in Africa is nothing like that of Clinton's. Five years ago when Clinton visited Africa large and adoring crowds greeted him, Bush gets none of that.

South Africa's revered former president, Nelson Mandela, who sharply criticized Bush on Iraq and once said Bush "cannot think properly," arranged to be out of the country while Bush is here.

The country's dominant political party, the African National Congress, led a 2,000-person march to the U.S. Embassy today in protest of Bush's visit. Hundreds more marched in Cape Town. President Thabo Mbeki left the country after a half-day with Bush to attend the 52-nation African Union meeting in Mozambique.

At a news conference today, Bush and Mbeki emphasized their common ground while avoiding differences on such contentious issues as Zimbabwe's leadership, AIDS and Iraq. Mbeki told Bush in a luncheon toast that "we would not but receive you as a friend and an honored guest," adding: "We're greatly strengthened, Mr. President, by the knowledge that we have you as our partner and friend."

When reporters quizzed Bush and Mbeki about their differences over Zimbabwe -- Bush has been highly critical of President Robert Mugabe while Mbeki has sought to negotiate with the authoritarian ruler to end violence there -- Bush said the reporters were trying to "create tensions which don't exist."

The Irony in Bush's Visit to Senegal

President Bush went to Goree Island, Senegal where he gave an "eloquent speech" denoucing slavery the only problem is that all the local residents were placed in confinement unitl Bush was done.

"We are very angry. We didn't even see him," said Fatou N'diaye, a necklace seller watching dignitaries file past to return to the mainland at the end of Bush's tour.

N'diaye and other residents of Goree, site of a famous slave trading station, said they had been taken to a football ground on the other side of the quaint island at 6 a.m. and told to wait there until Bush had departed, around midday.

Bush came to Goree to tour the red-brick Slave House, where Africans were kept in shackles before being shipped across a perilous sea to a lifetime of servitude.

He then gave an eloquent speech about the horrors of slavery, standing at a podium under a sizzling sun near a red-stone museum, topped by cannon pointing out to the sea.

The cooped-up residents were not impressed.

"It's slavery all over again," fumed one father-of-four, who did not want to give his name. "It's humiliating. The island was deserted."

Ann Coulter: "Crackpot Conservatism"

Ann Couter is the darling of Conservatives and is consider to be the hottest political analysts on TV. She is one of the most biased, angry and vulgar individuals I have ever heard on TV. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen reviews her latest book.

I am happy to report that Ann Coulter has lost her mind. The evidence for this is her most recent book, "Treason," a nearly unreadable slog through every silly thing anyone on the left has ever said. Coulter conflates dissent with treason, opposition with treason, being wrong with treason, being right with treason and just about anything she doesn't like with treason. If the book were a Rorschach test, she would be institutionalized.
[...]
The book is a hoot. It is also good news for liberals. It suggests that the right, at least the hard right, has finally dumbed out. This is the predictable cycle for all movements. They start with a genuine grievance and proceed from there to the totally ridiculous -- or, in some cases, to the downright macabre.
[..]
Now Coulter has gone from the mythical to the absurd. Nonconservatives are traitors. In another country and in another age, the remedy would be apparent: expulsion or something like it. As this is America, the best she can muster is scorn, ad hominem arguments (Bill Clinton's face is a "fat, oleaginous mug"; Jimmy Carter is "often maligned for his stupidity," etc.) and the shrapnel of quotes she accumulates after she has exploded their context. Sometimes she's oblivious to her own contradictions. The trouble with liberals, she says, is that they "believe they're God." This would come as news to the pious -- but stupid -- Jimmy Carter.
[..]
Coulter's book contains the usual name-calling, the usual spinning of the facts, the occasional racial insult -- McCarthy, for instance, "took enemy fire from savage Oriental beasts" in World War II -- and it revives the charge from the 1950s that the Democratic Party is the party of traitors. "The inevitable logic of the liberal position is to be for treason," Coulter says in the last sentence of her book. When it reaches the bestseller list, as it almost surely will, we will know that the conservative movement has finally cracked up.

Texas Republicans' Try Redistrict Again

The Texas GOP is trying to redraw the state's congressional map in a special session in which this time, Democrats will have to take a stand and stop them in the legislature. If they succeed, they will gain 5-8 seats.

The Texas Republicans' argument is that they need to redistrict again because redistricting should not be done by judges yet they were the ones who forced it into the courts in the first place.

For most of the past century, redistricting has been a fairly predictable though often contentious ritual. Every 10 years, state legislators would use the new census data to redraw Congressional district lines, and the party in power would usually manage to draw maps that gave it an advantage.

Now, thanks to a determined effort by United States Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, with the quiet support of the White House, that tradition may be crumbling, as legislatures draw new districts whenever they have a partisan advantage.

[...]

Mr. DeLay, a former Texas legislator himself, has been candid about his reasons for pushing for a new Congressional map, telling reporters at one point, "I'm the majority leader, and we want more seats."

[...]

Today, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature opened an extraordinary special session devoted solely to redrawing the state's 32 Congressional districts. If Republicans succeed in doing so, they could remove five or more Democratic congressmen and help their party consolidate its hold on power in Washington.

Republicans did much the same thing last month in Denver, pushing a new map through the Colorado Legislature specifically to shore up the seat of a freshman congressman who won office with a 121-vote margin. And Democrats are threatening retaliation in New Mexico and Oklahoma, while dropping hints about taking the redistricting battle to big-game territory: Illinois and California, where far more seats are at stake.

[..]

Once Republicans took control of the state House in January, Mr. DeLay began pressing for a new Congressional map, spending several days in Austin and dispatching the head of his political action committee, Jim Ellis, here to help draw a new map. Mr. DeLay's office referred calls to Mr. Ellis, who did not return several telephone messages.

The map that emerged last month would have carved up the districts of United States Representatives Martin Frost and Lloyd Doggett, two Democrats in otherwise safe seats in Austin and Houston. But it also endangered the districts of moderate Democrats like Charles W. Stenholm, a longtime leader of the centrist Blue Dog coalition in the House; Jim Turner, a ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee; and Max Sandlin, a member of the Ways and Means Committee and chief deputy minority whip.

Mr. Norquist said the point of the exercise was to help remove centrist Democrats from Congress, leaving only the most liberal behind.

"I don't care if Austin is divided eight ways as long as Doggett is gone," says Alan Sager, chairman of the Travis County Republican Party.

The Washington Post has a very good editorial on this today.

The President's Hypocrisy

The president is acepting public money for his political campaigns, but does not check off the box on his income tax return to give money.

Q And also in the last, 2000 and coming up, the President will accept federal funds in the general election.

MR. FLEISCHER: Correct.

Q Is there any dash of hypocrisy in that he doesn't contribute to that fund when he files his tax returns?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, interestingly, we talked before about taxpayer-financed elections, and while for the congressional races, Senate races and House races, and for overwhelming majority of the funds that go to presidential races is voluntary, there is that check on the tax reforms. And the best I remember this from IRS data is something like only 12 percent, or down to 8 percent of the American people check that box. So I think the President is in pretty good company with a number of American people who do not check that box.

Q Why would he take the money, then?

MR. FLEISCHER: As you know, he's not taking the money for the primary campaign; he will take it for the general.

Next time you do your taxes, think about this before you check off the box.

Department of Homeland Security & the Texas Republican Party

The Texas Republican Party convinced Tom Ridge that it was critical for the Department of Homeland Security to use its anti-terrorism-fighting resources to locating the plane of one of the missing Democrats.

Now Tom Ridge is in hotwater. He though he was doing the right thing in conducting an internal investigation into the matter only to find out that the man he selected to lead the investigation was a failed GOP congressional candidate who wouldn't expected to be impartial in the matter.

A columnist at the Austin American Statesman asks that the DHS help him find his Honda, if they have so much free time

"What's kinda scary is that the feds never did find that plane. Oh, well. They can't find Osama bin Laden, so why would you expect them to find Pete Laney's plane? Maybe they ought to practice and try to find Waldo. Come to think of it, maybe I ought to blow off calling Homeland Security and just go looking for my Honda myself. I don't have that kind of time. I've got to be somewhere next March.

Meanwhile, Texas Republicans have come up with a new color-coded security system to let people know the danger level of Democrats in the area: green, the lowest level of danger, through red, the highest."

The Jessica Lynch Rescue Story was Fabricated

The BBC will be running a story on one of their weekend TV news magazines that will state that the whole “rescue” was fraud