Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

The future’s so blight, I gotta wear shades.

Mouse Circus Summary of the Lead Stories:

On Face the Nation -- Katrina
This Week… -- Katrina
Chris Matthews -- Unknown.
Meet the Press -- Katrina
Fox News -- Kidnapped Fox Reporters Released.

“Fox News: We Slant. You Decide.”

And on Fox News Sunday

Fox Reporters Released. Which is good news. For the most selfish of reasons, I want reporters -- all reporters -- to be free to come and go from and within that region as free and unmolested as possible: Because I like my reports on the facts on the ground like I like my seafood. Clean and as fresh as humanly possible.

Then the talk turned to Katrina. And coming around the clubhouse turn, Fox takes a late lead in the Idiotic, Clutterhanded Metaphor Derby:

“New Orleans used to have two phone books. Now the yellow and white pages have been condensed into one book.

Back to you Chris.”

Wha?

Don Powell, federal coordinator for the Office of Gulf Coast Rebuilding, has learned the hard, Republican lesson of Katrina: Never, ever answer the fucking question you are asked.

Never get off the Talking Point Boat. Absolutely goddamned right.

Wallace: On the whole, NOLA seems about as fucked as it was a year ago. Are you satisfied with that.

Don busts out the tangentially-related factoid SuperSoaker and spackles the studio with stats: Tourism. Energy. Port. All good, baby. All golden. The future’s so blight bright, I gotta wear shades.

Wallace: But hasn't the Preznit reneged on two of the three iron-clad promises made on September 15th 2005 to the people of New Orleans.

Don: There has been an shitload of money spent, Chris. Just a shitload. It’s like you checking account. Money goes in. And then you can use it. Or something.

Don’s hitting the “check book” metaphor today for reasons that escape me.

Wallace: So...good news?

Don: Lots of progress. Lots of good news. We believe that Katrina is in its final throes. That we’ve turned a corner. That we’re gonna give it 110%. That it’s not over ‘til its over. I'd like to thank Jesus Christ my personal Lord and Savior, and give a shout out to my Mom. Made it Ma! Top 'o the world!

We will stand up when the debris stands down.

We will fight hurricane aftermath in NOLA so we don’t have to fight them in New York.

Sounded like a dying Iraqi Synthesizer trying to imitate the tongues of men before it shuffles off its digital coil...

Then Joe Biden comes hippity-hoppin’ down the bunny trail

Wallace: We’ve had a couple of weeks where the carnage wasn’t as bad as it has been, so doesn’t that prove the Dear Leader has been completely right and that you Liberal elitist swine are wrong about everything and have been since the beginning of time?

Wallace: General Abizaid sez there’s isn’t a really, really, for-real Civil War. General Abizaid sez you smell. That you’re a dirty hippy and you smell. So is it possible that General Abizade knows more than you do? Huh? Huh?

Biden summary: We’ve had a good couple of weeks, but look what it cost us. We had to bring in a lot more troops and go heavy in those few spots where the violence went down. We’ve had to take the lead because the Iraqi Army couldn’t swing their cods to save their lives. We tamp down, they melt away and the Iraqi “Army” hold our coats.

We move on to the next breach, and the place we left reverts back to Hell on Earth. Like trying to paint the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

with a couple of gallons of Glidden Interior Flat Latex.

As long as you can scam and threaten the media into pointing their camera’s at the three doors and trim that are painted a lovely Green Zone Jade, then you can continue to ignore the other 129,427,900 cubic feet of space that is going to rot.

Then came this a few hours later from the Associated Press...

By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 1 minute ago
A wave of bomb attacks and shootings swept Iraq Sunday, killing dozens of people despite a massive security operation in the capital and appeals from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for an end to sectarian fighting.
…

Across Iraq, Sunday's attacks left more than 50 people dead.

A group of assailants in three cars raked an open-air night market with gunfire, killing at least 12 people and wounding 25 others, police said.

The gunmen fired indiscriminately at throngs of people at the main market of Khalis, a mostly Shiite town 50 miles north of Baghdad, Diyala provincial police said. Earlier in the day, another six people were killed and 14 wounded when a bomb exploded on the outskirts of the town.
The U.S. military command said two U.S. soldiers were killed — one by small-arms fire in eastern Baghdad Sunday afternoon, and the other on Saturday night when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb southeast of the capital.

A U.S. official also said a U.S. armored vehicle was attacked on Sunday outside Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad, "resulting in casualties."

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the U.S. military command had not yet issued a statement on the incident, could not give details on the number of casualties or their condition.

In downtown Baghdad, a bomb in a minibus exploded outside the Palestine Hotel, killing nine people and wounding 16, while a car bomb outside the offices of a government-run newspaper left three dead and at least 29 wounded, police and witnesses said.

Two back-to-back suicide car bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk killed nine people and wounded 22, hours after another suicide car bomb killed one person and wounded 16.

In Basra, Iraq's second largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, a motorcycle bomb at a night market killed four people and wounded 15, the governor's office said.

Drive-by shootings also killed two people in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad; one in Numaniyah, a town near Kut, 100 miles southeast of the capital; and another three — believed to be the bodyguards of a member of parliament — in Dujail, 50 miles north of the capital, police in both cities said.

In Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, police found the bodies of eight people in various parts of the city, Capt. Rasheed Al-Samerayi of Mahmoudiyah police said. All had been handcuffed and blindfolded, he said.
…

I guess break time is over.

Oliver Thomas, N.O. City Council president, was supposed to be on but Wallace said he overslept. Not only overslept his teevee appearance, commented Wallace, and thus missed out on polishing the seat of a Fox News folding chair, but overslept a briefing on Ernesto.

Funny that Conservative-friendly mogul Steve Case was supposed to be there too and Chris Wallace did not find it necessary to editorialize on his absence.

I am reminded, for some reason, of this little tidbit about Mr. Case from waaaay back in 2000:

The controversy began with the Oct. 16 announcement that over a year ago Steve Case and his wife, Jean Case, formerly a public relations officer for AOL, donated $8.35 million to her alma mater, the Westminster Academy, a religious school in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It was seemingly the most innocuous of gifts, earmarked for a new high school building, student scholarships and the creation of a technology center. But Westminster Academy is affiliated with the fundamentalist Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, as the "statement of faith" on the school's Web site attests: "Westminster Academy is a parochial school, an agency of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. Primarily, it is committed to the education of the children of this Church and strives to implement a curriculum that reflects the variety of needs of these children, one that is based upon and is faithful to the Holy Scriptures as interpreted in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms."

Coral Ridge Ministries is best known among gays and lesbians as the proponent of an "ex-gay" agenda. The premise of the ex-gay mission is that homosexuals can be converted to heterosexuality or -- if that doesn't work out -- celibacy. Such "ex-gay" conversion therapy is not just one more queer political issue; it's a heated and emotional subject that cuts to the heart of gay and lesbian identity; it's a threat to people's very sense of who they are. And Coral Ridge Ministries is one of the most visible promoters of such queer "conversion": The Rev. D. James Kennedy spreads the word regularly on the bully pulpit of the church's nationally syndicated radio and TV program "Coral Ridge Hour." Among the church's tactics: launching a $500,000 national newspaper campaign promoting ex-gay ministries, and renting airplanes to fly anti-gay banners over Disneyland on "Gay Days."

Wouldn’t have even mentioned it but for the fact that Reverend Jimmy and his Coral Ridge Ministries propaganda butt-scooted across my teevee this morning on another channel altogether (see last review in this column) and brought it to mind.

Seemed like...destiny.

Since neither of them showed up this morning for their Fox News flogging or tongue-bath, should you ever cross the path of a stranger on the boulevard and think to yourself, “Hey, I wonder if that guy Oliver Thomas. Or Steven Case.”, for your edification I have included a picture of Mr. Thomas:


And a picture of Mr. Case.

He’s the smiley one, seated at Dubya’s Right Hand.

However for the record, I’m sure the reasons for respective absences and Chris Wallace’s need to pounce on one and not the other are complex and nuanced and not as simple as, say, Democrat and Republican.

I’m sure it can’t be that Black and White.


On Face the Nation: Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) David Paulison
Director, FEMA

Katrina and New Orleans.

We lead off with Chertoff video of Skeletor blaming Brownie for everything from his bald pate, Mr. Drysdale moustache and overall sinister mien.

Brownie: DHS is fucked, crotch-to-crown.

Brownie: The White House message on Katrina was a lie. We were saying that everything was fine, smooth, wang-in-tang slick and tight. In fact, everything was a friggin’ mess. Nobody knew what was going on. Everyone was bungling everything, and the red tape was drowning us.

Brownie: I will take the fall for the Preznit, but I will not take the fall for that dickhead Chertoff.

Brownie, the Now-Highly-Paid Disaster Consultant, an being a Highly-Paid Disaster Consultant: Who better than me to know what does and doesn’t work?

Rule One – Don’t Hire Brownie.

And then we move on to...

“This Week…” – Brownie, Mary Landrieu, Don Powell

And the subject is Katrina and New Orleans.

Don’s back, with the positive NOLA message and the “check book” metaphor again. Apparently everything is faboo now. Dubya is all over this shit. He’s crazy-focused on every detail. He demands action. The levees are now better than they were before Katrina.

The levees are sixteen miles high and are rising. Six miles thick. Patrolled by a fleet of “Day of the Dolphin” dolphins with lasers mounted on their heads.

And by 2016, the levees will be better that they were before NOLA.


Roundtable:Donna Brazile, Nicolle Wallace and George Will.

RepubliBlonde and White House Communications Director Nicolle Wallace:

On Howard Dean: He’s backing Ned Lamont! Can you believe it! He’s the gift that keeps on giving.

On Iraq: The President encourages robust debate and many points of view on Iraq. It is the Democrats who risk “contracting” to a monolithic Party.

On Stem Cell research: The Preznit and his people are keenly focused on all scientific developments. In fact there is a whole room in the White House that has been converted to a print shop specializing in converting complex, scientific papers into pop-up books for the Preznit’s bednight table with titles like “Oil -- Good Enough To Balm Our Savior, So Why Is The Christian-Hating Left Against It?” and “Jimmy Blastocyst – Pre-Boy Hero!”

Donna Brazile, Nicolle Wallace and George Will: Two Consies and one DNC-Hairball-Hacking loser.

Man, I love’s me some Librul Media Bias!


On Meet the Press: Ray Nagin. Then, a recovery efforts & preparedness update with FEMA’s David Paulison. Plus a roundtable with Robert Novak, Al Hunt, Kate O'Beirne & Eugene Robinson.

Katrina and New Orleans and the off to Politics

Al Hunt: Of all the available options, the one we know doesn’t work is “Stay the course.” Bush’s policy is the one policy that has no credibility whatsoever.

And responding to quotes by George Will and William Buckley that not only is Iraq lost, but that Dubya has fucked the this country’s reputation and future 30 years backwards with its pants on...

Snappy O'Beirne says: It is not true that there have been all these “arm-chair cheerleaders for Iraq.”

The muffled thunder you are now hearing like the faraway last five minutes of every 4th of July firework extravaganza going off like a string-of-firecrackers noise across the land is the sound of Wingnut’s heads exploding.

Seriously, for such a ridiculously lying dufflebag of shit as Snappy, the appropriate response would be for Punkin' Haid to hit her with a bucket of water and then pound the puddle of slag into which she melted with a 2X4.

Instead he let her live and let her keep talking.

Snappy: There are a certain percentage of people who are disillusioned with Iraq, but who are “persuadable”. But this whole “We ain’t leavin’ so long as I’m in charge!” eyewash from Dubya sounds “more stubborn that strategic.

Snappy: They don’t have to persuade “Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan”; they have to persuade former hawks.

Yes, Snappy, there is a “certain percentage”.

.00001% to be exact.

Novak: I was never for this war. Never, never, never. Slandering and savaging White House opponents with impunity whenever my ideological gout flairs up? Sure. Sniping from my dank and profitable nest between Dick Cheney’s flabby ass checks? OK. But I never said Iraq could be turned into Iowa. Now you have all these politicians who were booming this thing slinking for the exits, turning off the lights and cutting off Dubya’s tab at the bar. The real question that journalists should be asking is not whether or not the Iraq Debacle was done incompetently, but whether it was impossible from the start.

Eugene Robinson: Well where are Republicans who supported this war going to go? They have nothing left but to quibble about the competence with which it was done.

Novak: It is long past time that my (treasonous, back-stabbing, Republican, insider, Administration-Predator-Drone, spy-outing) source identify himself [in the Plame Affair].


And the cherry on top?

On WPWR -- Channel Fiddy to us locals – a 30 minute Jeez-o-mercial featuring anti-science theocrat Dr. James Kennedy trying to provoke a slap-fight over the ”controversy” of evolution.

“Evolution is a fairy-tale for adults.”

The support for Evolution is “crumbling in the science labs”.

And “Inherit the Wind” is a terrible, anti-Christian polemic and now, ironically, it is Evolution that is shamefully protected by law and God that has been driven from the classroom.

And who is Dr. James Kennedy, Ph.D.? Why according to his bio, he’s the:

“...senior minister of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and president of Coral Ridge Ministries. The author of more than 65 books, he is also founder and president of Evangelism Explosion and chancellor of Knox Theological Seminary. Dr. Kennedy is the most-listened-to Presbyterian minister in the world today”

So who knows but it may be that it was some of Steve Case’s dough that financed this little embarrassment to Western Civilization.

And who does Dr. James Kennedy choose to interview for her keen, scientific insights on cosmology, cosmogony, molecular biology, punctuated equilibrium and the current scientific consensus?

None other than “Disco” Ann Coulter.

Noted here for her Christian modesty and chastity:

"When I first met her," says a fellow conservative, "she was walking around with a black miniskirt and a mink stole, making out with Bob Guccione Jr. in the stairwell." (Coulter dated publisher Guccione, son of the porn mogul, for six months. She says the stairwell story "could be" true, although "I make out in public less often now that I'm publicly recognizable."...)

Temperance:

As for living on chardonnay and cigarettes, Coulter says that's "definitely true."

And shunning the jaded and worldy:

Coulter ... hardly ever misses the drag queens' Halloween parade in Greenwich Village.

Oh Lordy.

Like Gideon at the drinking fountain, Dr. Jimmy sifted through the Armies of the Lord and settled on Coultergeist as the perfect Christian Messenger for his message of ignorance and fear. Thanks to her infinitely rechargeable poison sacs which she will – for a juicy fee – happily puke all over whatever target she is programmed to attack, Dr. Jimmy chose this spindly sack of hateporn to vomit out his lies.

Which tells you all you really need to know about Dr. Jimmy. Who, one might suggest, would actually sound more credible interviewing a rabid dog’s ass for confirmation of his belief that integral calculus is the work of the Devil.

“Arf, Arf,” Coulter says, “Arf!”

Well color me shocked.

And proudly simian.