Most Loathsome People # 17
Tony Snow
Charges: A soft-spoken scoutmaster with the obfuscatory skill of a Jedi car salesman. After years defending the Bush administration's worst excesses on "Fox News Sunday," Snow's job transition to White House Spokesman consisted solely of getting directions to the new office. Very first answer at very first press briefing was a lie, containing that old stonewaller's chestnut, "we will neither confirm nor deny." Snow's vast ignorance greatly enhances his ability to appear to believe the bullshit he emits for a living—he thinks evolution "is pure hypothesis," that black/white disparity in America has "all but vanished," and that the Baker-Hamilton report is "partisan." This kind of willful denial of reality makes him a much more sophisticated protocol droid than his monotonous predecessor.
Exhibit A: "Helen, the President understands that you cannot win the war without public support."
Sentence: Hugging electrified tar baby.
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Todays Laugh,
Psychiatrist to his nurse: "Just say we're very busy. Don't keep saying 'It's a madhouse.'"
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She Can't win in 2008 but then neither can he!
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton got very different receptions from the crowd at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting, where all of the party's presidential candidates spoke.Obama and the crowd exchanged "I love you"s and other endearments as he took the stage. And through the whole of his speech, the audience chanted, "You can do it!"Clinton's welcome was not just less enthusiastic, but hostile -- and though there seemed to be almost as many Clinton placards as there were people in the room, catcalls drowned out any roars of approval from her cheering section as she began to speak. In reaction to a claim that she had been a tough critic of the war, someone in the crowd shouted, "NOT!'' Code Pink protesters repeatedly interrupted her, yelling, "Stop funding war!'' and one Army vet kept calling, "How about bringing them home, Hillary?'' Definitely, the applause at the end of her address was much louder than when she'd started - which, as her campaign sees it, is how all of America will react once they get to know her. Unless, you know, they already did that.
He can win.
Edwards: "I Know A Lot More" Than I Did In '04
Fmr. Senator John Edwards appeared on Meet The Press Sunday to discuss his 2008 campaign for president. When asked if he was a different candidate than he was in 2004, when he ran as a vice-presidential candidate, he responded, "Of course. I know a lot more, I've worked a lot harder...I think I have a different level of maturity."
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Bush Backers Offer Payoffs to Undercut Global Warming By Chris Floyd
The new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just been released, and it looks like bad news for the home team, i.e., the entire human race. Things are going to get hotter, coastlines are going to go under, deserts are going to get wider, and millions if not billions of people are going to be on the move. In need, in conflict, in increasingly desperate straits - and it's all our own fault. What's more, the effects set in motion by our epic debauch with fossil fuels are going to keep on keeping on - although the worst outcomes can still be avoided, if the leaders of the world can bestir themselves to take action to slow the poisoning of the planet.
This is the consensus of more than 2,500 leading scientists from more than 30 countries - including the United States. But not to worry: That nattering nest of neo-cons, the American Enterprise Institute - which also functions as an employment agency for the Bush White House, sending innumerable nabobs into the higher reaches and greasy guts of the administration - has come up with a perfect solution to this threat to the life of the world: bribing scientists to say it ain't so.
As the Guardian reports, the good folks at AEI (American Enterprise Institute) - whose members were instrumental in bringing us the "splendid little war" in Iraq and are now agitating for an even more glorious bloodletting in Iran - are offering scientists and economists $10,000 each (plus extras) to tear down the IPCC report and snowjob the hoi polloi into believing that the crack pipe of the Carbon Era will never be empty.
AEI, its coffers bulging with funding from Exxon Mobil (whose former honcho, Lee Raymond, is vice-chairman of the group's board of trustees), is flashing ten grand (plus "travel expenses" and "additional payments") to any scientist, economist or policy analyst willing to rip the IPCC report as "resistant to reasonable criticism - and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work." These bold global warming revisionists can trouser the loot in exchange for their scholarly contributions to an "independent review" of the IPCC report, the Guardian reports.
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From The Onion
Calls Rebuilding Complete As New Orleans Restored To Former Squalor
January 30, 2007 Issue 43•
NEW ORLEANS—After an unprecedented 18-month cleanup and repair effort supervised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and several state and local government bureaus, Undersecretary for Federal Emergency Management R. David Paulison announced Monday that the city of New Orleans has been successfully returned to its pre–Hurricane Katrina state of decay and deterioration.
Civic leaders unveil the new old New Orleans.
"Our job here is done," said Paulison, who was joined by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco in a ceremony along the banks of the Industrial Canal. "Our beloved Big Easy has its soul back. The downtown shops are open and in full violation of code, the nightlife is alive with the sound of violence, and the streets are once again safe for poverty and vice."
The $41 billion restoration of the city's hallmark abandoned buildings, shacks, vacant lots, and standing trash piles was among the most complex and painstaking ever undertaken. Starting just four weeks after the August 2005 hurricane, workers recovered millions of pieces of flood-damaged debris, cleaned them of sediments and chemicals, and then replaced them where they were originally found.
The work, however, did not proceed without controversy, often grinding to a halt as preservationists quarreled in court over which sections of rot, toxic chemical compounds, PCBs, bacteria, and pathogens predated Katrina.
Crews reconstructed post–Mardi Gras filth and hosed down Bourbon Street with donated urine.
Despite the bitter disputes, Blanco declared the restoration project an "unqualified success," and invited the estimated 200,000 New Orleanians who still reside outside the city to return.
"We've done our best to ensure the city is as well off as it was before Katrina hit," Blanco said. "It's all back—the same abandoned cars, the broken bottles, the spent shotgun shells, the rat colonies, even the used diapers on the front lawns. People of New Orleans, welcome home."
The most impressive progress was made in the Ninth Ward, the lowest-lying and most devastated section of New Orleans. Due to severe water and mold damage, the difficult decision was made to gut or tear down a majority of the neighborhood's houses, then laboriously reconstruct them to their previous dilapidated condition seven feet below sea level. Many returning residents, including custodial worker and father of four Stanley Gibson, 41, expressed shock at the success of the rebuilding efforts, saying he "never dreamed in a million years [he] would be going back to that place."
"Before the storm, I lived paycheck to paycheck in a run-down two-bedroom house," Gibson said. "I never thought I'd see that house again, but here it is—same sagging roof, compromised foundation and everything. Someone even found my car and put a quarter of a tank of gas back in it.
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Stay Warm!
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