Bloomingpol's Blog

Maybe it is time we learned to ask for help?

This is like Iraq - we don't need your damned help! We can't leave because the Iraqis need us, but we never discuss having other countries take over there. And we have left thousands of American citizens from the Gulf Coast to fend for themselves because we just don't need any help from anyone.

Link: Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed - washingtonpost.com.

The struggle to apply foreign aid in the aftermath of the hurricane, which has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $125 billion so far, is another reminder of the federal government's difficulty leading the recovery. Reports of government waste and delays or denials of assistance have surfaced repeatedly since hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.

What are we eating?

Link: WP: FDA aware of dangers to food -
washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com
.

Tomorrow, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing on the unprecedented spate of recalls."This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road," said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the full House committee. Dingell is considering introducing legislation to boost the agency's accountability, regulatory authority and budget.In the peanut butter case, an agency report shows that FDA inspectors checked into complaints about salmonella contamination in a ConAgra Foods factory in Georgia in 2005. But when company managers refused to provide documents the inspectors requested, the inspectors left and did not follow up.

As always, the real news from Iraq from Juan Cole

Link: Informed Comment.

Reuters reports that a lot of wounded vets from the Iraq War are having to turn to private care. A chilling passage: "Of the nearly 24,000 wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, about a third suffer from some degree of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, according to the General Accounting Office."What? A third have brain injuries! That's 8,000 persons!Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki asked Sunday that the US military halt its construction of a security wall around the Sunni Arab district of Adhamiya. Al-Maliki spoke from Cairo where he is meeting with foreign ministers of Iraq's neighbors. The mainstream US media will sidestep this point, but al-Maliki pretty explicitly said that the reason he called off the wall building is that he doesn't want his government compared to that of Israel. That is, the Adhamiya wall is being likened in the Arab world to the Apartheid Wall being built by the Israelis in the West Bank. Al-Maliki made the statement in Cairo, and when he referred to the "other walls" he didn't want the one in Adhamiya compared to, he pointed toward Israel.

Wolfowitz's girlfriend problem | Salon.com

I wonder if maybe they just can't help themselves, that the temptations of power are just too great to resist. Makes you wonder how other administrations managed to refrain from such blatant patronage.

Link: Wolfowitz's girlfriend problem | Salon.com .

Paul Wolfowitz's tenure as president of the World Bank has turned into yet another case study of neoconservative government in action. It bears resemblance to the military planning for the invasion of Iraq, during which Wolfowitz, as deputy secretary of defense, arrogantly humiliated Army chief of staff Eric Shinseki for suggesting that the U.S. force level was inadequate. It has similarities to the twisting of intelligence used to justify the war, in which Wolfowitz oversaw the construction of a parallel operation within the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans, to shunt disinformation directly to the White House, without its being vetted by CIA analysts, about Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaida and his weapons of mass destruction, and sought to fire Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, for factually reporting before the invasion that Saddam had not revived his nuclear weapons program. Wolfowitz's regime also uncannily looks like the occupation of Iraq run by the Coalition Provisional Authority, from which Wolfowitz blackballed State Department professionals -- instead staffing it with inexperienced ideologues -- and to whom Wolfowitz sent daily orders.

Iraq veteran officer on guns

Link: Media Matters - Altercation by Eric Alterman.

Name: Lt. Col. Bob Bateman Hometown: Capitol Hill, Washington DC

I
am sick of stories about guns, and how the blessed Founding Fathers wanted
every little patriot baby to grow up with a Kentucky
long-rifle over the mantle. It is a lie. It is a myth. The very idea is a
concoction by people who want to believe something, regardless of the facts,
and the fact that the lie has deep roots does not make it any more accurate.

I
am sick of stories about people who claim that "guns don't kill
people, people kill people." Bullshit. You do not see 70+ people, or even
40, or 20 ... or, (you get the picture) randomly gunned down in any of the
countries where the tools of violence are confined to the authorities.

I
am sick of idiots with an agenda pretending that what happened at Virginia Tech
is not because we have too many damned guns in this country. Muzzle-loading
blackpowder rifles, single-shot breech-loading hunting rifles, and
single-barrel breech-loading shotguns, and that is about it, are all that should
be allowed. Those tools can be used, legitimately, to hunt. You want more,
move. Leave the United
States
to those who know the difference between something that is useful for hunting,
and something that replaces the manhood you never attained. If you want more,
join the Army. If you can't do that, and if you still want something that
reloads quickly and gives you plenty of shots, BUY A DAMNED BOW!

NH Patriot's Day Flood - my story

10 am - ish April 16
This has been a fairly terrifying morning. It rained and blew all night, with the tall trees all around our house swaying in the northeast wind and this morning I tried to make it to work. Pulling out of my driveway, water was rushing down the hill and the road was full of dirt and stones. We live on a small mountain, and are about 850 feet above sea level, and our road is steep and winding. There is nothing between us and the Atlantic except 25 miles of lower land, so nor’easters are really interesting here.
A culvert was blocked across the road and all the water was spilling onto the road, and down my neighbor’s driveway into his yard, and he said, his basement. Luckily a couple of years ago we fixed the end of our drive so that water cannot run down it from the road. Otherwise we would have the same problem. Living on steep slopes is a challenge. Luckily we are wooded and most of the frost was out of the ground.
I started out on my usual route to work. After driving through several places where there were inches of water coming over the road, since culverts were being overwhelmed, and passing many places where the woods and yards had huge standing puddles, I came to a place where there is a substantial brook going under the road. We have had problems in the past here with some clever beavers who decided that a dam was much easier to build at the culvert. They finally had to put up a grating to keep them away from the culvert.
Here the water was really deep. I watched a couple people go through, but when I can’t see what is under the water, I take the warnings we are given seriously. There might be a huge hole dug out of the road. So I turned around, and pulled off the road to call my boss. He turned out to have his sump pump quit sometime during the night, and had 10 inches of water in his basement! I told him I would try the other way to work.
So I came back to town and started east on our main highway, a two lane, well designed state road. After crossing a number of smaller floods across the road and seeing the sides of the road eroding in places where water was rushing down hills along the way, I came to another place that I was unwilling to cross. So again I turned around. I really couldn’t think of another route that wouldn’t take me through low-lying areas, we are in a hilly part of NH.
I called my boss’s house and told him I was going home and would call when I got there safe. Returned to my road, to find that a tree was down on the main road just past my intersection. Coming up the hill, there was a large tree leaning on the wires. I watched my neighbor coming down the hill and crossing under the tree, so I decided that I could safely make it by. It was clear that the power was going to be out when I got home. I carefully traversed the rubble on the road, stopped to check in with the road agent, who will be having a horrible day, since we have places in town that flood regularly, as well as a number of lakes with dams. Got home, my husband was clearing out culverts on our 300 foot drive, we started the generator and are reasonably comfortable, as long as the trees around us stay upright! No cable, but we do get our local PBS station since their transmission tower is at the top of our little mountain. No internet. But cell phones work.
More later...
Well, we are stuck here as of 1 pm. We tried to get out and go somewhere, but at one point or another, every road we took was blocked. There is a wire down across the end of the road, so to get out to the state highway we have to take a dirt side road. Then if we turn toward our road, and the town with the supermarket, etc., they won’t let us by our intersection. Going the other way, we can reach a gas station and convenience store, but after that the roads have cones across them. There is a lot of water alongside the roads, and a lot of washouts on the sides of the roads. This is going to be a very expensive storm.
I called my boss. He got to town and bought a couple extra sump pumps, and just made it home, the end of his road, where it joins the state highway, is washed out. Neither of us is going anywhere for a while. I don’t remember us ever closing the office before!
3 pm - We should be able to get out this evening. Also found out no one had reported the tree down across the wires on our road! Called the cable company (our phones are working, so all the wires aren’t down) to make sure they knew we were out and why. Told them nicely that I was going into internet withdrawal!
6 pm - Still no power.
7 am April 17
Got home around 9:30 last night and the end of the road was open, which meant no detour through the girls’ camp. That was interesting going out last night, two lanes of traffic on a wet, muddy, narrow road. We saw a lot of damage on our trek to meet some friends for conversation and commiseration. Wendy’s at the circle was closed due to a sink hole in their parking lot. The supermarket there had both drives into the plaza blocked due to washouts and high water.
We turned off the generator for a while last night to give it a rest and save gas (and pollution). Turned it on around 4 am so I could have hot water for a shower when I got up.
My husband went out this morning to get a newspaper and said the tree on the wires was gone, but no sign of repair yet. I am going to work today, I know how I can get there, and will have some limited internet access there. No personal e-mail yet, and a lot of the sites I read regularly to get the real news are blocked (I think DailyKos had too much traffic in the run up to the election so they blocked it, and other blogs, we are still running many offices off a satellite system). But at least I can catch up a bit.
The IRS has given us in the Northeast a two day extension to file taxes. I got mine in over the weekend, but need to check to make sure the money I owed (yuck, I hate financing these people) was debited from my account yesterday. (I don’t mind paying taxes, I figure we are better off pooling our resources than everyone going it alone, by far, but I really mind financing Bush taking my country apart!)
6:45 pm
Got home to find cable and Internet (whoosh, sigh of relief) working, but land line phones not, except in town. Verizon switching station for our area is flooded, so we can call in town, but not out, and no one outside of town can call us. Cell phone reception is not great at our house, but workable.
7 pm
Cable and Internet down again. Called the company, “due to weather issues, service out in the following towns...” Roads are out, phones are out, cable is out, wonder if the power will stay on.
I keep thinking about climate change and wonder if the weather will just get worse. NH weather has been changing recently, and one of the changes has been a number of nasty spring and fall floods that cause large amounts of damage. More rain, more wind, insects and plants migrating north, don’t you even try to tell me this is just a regular weather cycle. I have been in New England a great deal of my life, I am 64, and this is very, very different.
I can put up with a certain amount of change, even at my advanced age, but I find I worry most about losing my internet access. I am so used to using e-mail for everything now, keeping in touch with family and friends, doing community work and political networking, sharing information and laughter. And I pay bills on line, read the news on line, do research on line. But if we keep destroying our infrastructure this way, which is what floods and wind do, how will we be able to keep internet access going? Maybe I should look into using my cell phone? But my reception is not good here.
6 am April 18
Cable and Internet back this morning. All kinds of messes here in NH, flooded homes, dams we are worrying about with people living downstream, roads and bridges damaged or gone. If you want to see some local news and pictures from my area, try our citizen journalism paper http://www.forumhome.org/. My husband is going out today to take pictures of our town for them.
Heard from my brother who stopped in at the family summer house on the coast of Maine yesterday, no real damage but we are blessing the instincts which told my parents to take down all the big spruces around the house. A leak or two. I remember living through a couple of hurricanes at that house near Bath, near the end of one of the many points sticking down into Casco Bay, in the 1950s, I was around 10 years old. The soil is very sparse there, a few inches over the bedrock, so trees spread their roots along the surface and when the wind hits a big spruce, the ground literally rocks up and down as the tree sways. Terrifying, especially when the tree is right next to the house.
I hope this is the end of my personal story of this flood. Sounds like the phones won’t be right for some time, all the equipment at the switching center will need to be replaced, I hear. Hope all is well with everyone.

Here's something new on Imus

Link: Oh and yes | TPMCafe.

As a privileged user of the public's airwaves,with only conditional free speech, Imus had no right to make the remarks he made. For years radio shock jocks, of which Imus was one, have known there were lines they weren't supposed to cross, under the law. One of the tricks of their tawdry trade was to use others -- stooges, tapes of bad actors, quotes, callers on the phone -- to introduce offensive material, so the "host" could make light of it, while appealing at the same time to the worst of his or her audience. This time Imus slipped, said the offensive things himself, instead of eliciting the remarks from others. Based on past practice, he wanted the remark made, but wished he had had someone else make it. And when the target group got access to the media (which is unusual; typically his victims have no chance to defend themselves), they proved by their eloquent sincerity the wrong he had done them. Then everyone had to choose sides, and Imus was toast.

A career Justice employee looks at his agency under Gonzales

Definitely worth a read!

Link:
Law.com - Justice Department's Independence 'Shattered,' Says Former DOJ Attorney

.

Under Gonzales, though, almost immediately from the time of his arrival in February 2005, this changed quite noticeably. First, there was extraordinary turnover in the political ranks, including the majority of even Justice's highest-level appointees. It was reminiscent of the turnover from the second Reagan administration to the first Bush administration in 1989, only more so. Second, the atmosphere was palpably different, in ways both large and small. One need not have had to be terribly sophisticated to notice that when Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey left the department in August 2005 his departure was quite abrupt, and that his large farewell party was attended by neither Gonzales nor (as best as could be seen) anyone else on the AG's personal staff.

Third, and most significantly for present purposes, there was an almost immediate influx of young political aides beginning in the first half of 2005 (e.g., counsels to the AG, associate deputy attorneys general, deputy associate attorneys general, and deputy assistant attorneys general) whose inexperience in the processes of government was surpassed only by their evident disdain for it.

Having seen this firsthand in a range of different situations for nearly two years before I retired, I found it not at all surprising that the recent U.S. Attorney problems arose in the first place and then were so badly mishandled once they did.

Flash Earth ...satellite and aerial imagery of the Earth in Flash

Link: Flash Earth ...satellite and aerial imagery of the Earth in Flash.

This is really, really neat, especially for map freaks like me.

Good day

This has been a good day! The sun was out, which is so extraordinary this "spring." My husband and I went to the gym and did our strength and aerobic training, which is still new to us both. I feel very good after that. Then I finished laundry and shopped for food, and we took the dogs out in the woods for a while. They had a most marvelous time, running and sniffing and rolling in the snow, which is still a couple of inches deep under the trees.
Home to blog reading and getting ready for cooking chicken on the grill. Big nor-easter tomorrow afternoon, and we have to head to Maine in the morning to try to secure some windows in a summer property the family owns. Rush up, do what we can, and rush back before the storm gets bad, leaving beef stew to slowcook in the crockpot.
To me, this is a good weekend. Accomplishments, time to play political junky on line, housework done to some extent (I have been doing housework for 40 some years, not my idea of fun!), and happy animals.