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Tuesday, September 20, 2005
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“Good leaders create a climate of honesty and integrity.” — George W. Bush, 10/26/00
VERSUS
According to the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, fifty percent of Americans say they would not call President Bush honest. — CNN, 9/19/05
(Via Think Progress.)
9:35:15 PM 
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The giant squid has the largest eye in the natural world. Although squid's eyes evolved on a separate branch of the tangle bank of life, they are remarkably like ours, except that they don't have the blind spot that human eyes have (Hack #16). This picture is from a book 'Extreme Nature' by Mark Carwardine (which the Guardian Weekend ran a piece on two weeks ago). This immature female is 17 foot long, but they go up to 49 foot apparently.
Photo from from here, some more on Giant Squid here
(Via Mind Hacks.)
9:20:18 PM
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A couple months ago I was bottling some nice malty stuff from a recipe I screwed up. I had left out a hop addition, but the malt tasted so good it was worth it. I called it the Zombie beer because I made it the day after seeing the most recent George Romero movie.
Anyway, at the time I had some Portugal Peppers growing in the back yard (still do, as a matter of fact). When we were bottling, Lyal and I stuck one of the peppers, whole, into a 22 oz bottle with the beer. I lost track of that bottle, and wondered what became of it; a couple weeks ago I spotted it and stuck it in the refrigerator. Lyal and I drank it tonight. I looked at it before opening, and saw a lot of solids at the bottom of the bottle. I figured it was going to be bad, contaminated, and that the bottle would volcano when I opened it. It did, and about a third of it went into the sink.
But the rest tastes amazing! Unlike some pepper beers I've had, this one is not too hot. It has a sting to it, and hits you good, but it's not too hot to drink. And the alcohol content on this bottle seems way above what it was on the others, because I've got a real good buzz after drinking 1/3 of the bottle (Lyal had the other third, and of course a third went into the sink). Alas, we did it only with one bottle. Next time I bottle, I'm going to do the same. I have some more of the Portugal peppers, and some jalapenos as well.
8:34:49 PM
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The story du jour (pardon my French, I took Spanish) among the chattering classes of the Con movement is that that dastardly Bill Clinton is violating presidential protocol in criticizing dear leader because no Republican, lest alone Dear Leader’s parental unit, would do such a thing.
Sorry. Try again.
* In a March 8, 1994, speech in Indian Wells, California, Bush repeated his criticism of Clinton’s actions toward Haiti. According to a Riverside Press Enterprise article published the next day, Bush claimed “he did not want to be a carping critic, but said President Clinton must be more consistent in carrying out foreign policy. Bush criticized the president in particular for sending a shipload of troops to Haiti last year and then ordering them home when ‘thugs’ threatened them from the shore.”
* On April 8, 1994, Bush gave a lecture at Carl Albert State College in Poteau, Oklahoma, during which he criticized Clinton’s proposed health care reform legislation. “This may sound partisan,” he told the audience, “but I don’t believe it will pass and I don’t believe it should pass.” [Associated Press, 4/8/94]
* During a July 26, 1996, news conference with Bob Dole, then the Republican nominee for president, Bush “criticized Clinton for boasting of current economic stability,” according to a Kansas City Star article published the following day. Bush argued that “he handed Clinton an economy that grew at about 5 percent in 1993.” “That was not recession,” he told reporters.
* While campaigning with Dole days before the 1996 presidential election, Bush suggested that Clinton had compromised the “integrity of the White House. “What matters to me now is the integrity of the White House,” he said. “I believe in duty, honor, country,” he continued. “I believe in service. I believe in keeping the White House above partisan politics, away from these puny, terrible disputes we’re seeing.” [Chicago Tribune, 11/1/96]
As is always true with the Cons, facts hurt brain.
(Via Oliver Willis - Like Kryptonite To Stupid.)
8:14:25 PM
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by hilzoy
I swear: you can't make this stuff up. Via dKos, this story:
"Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.
On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.
Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said. (...)
Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the National Guard to drive them. Each time the buses emptied an area, more people would appear, she said.
The buses took 15,728 people to safety, a Blanco aide said. But the state's fleet of school buses wasn't enough. On Wednesday, with the FEMA buses still not in sight, Blanco called the White House to talk to Bush and ended up speaking to Chief of Staff Andy Card.
"I said, 'Even if we had 500 buses, they've underestimated the magnitude of this situation, and I think I need 5,000 buses, not 500,'" Blanco recounted.
"'But, Andy, those 500 are not here,'" the governor said.
Card promised to get Blanco more buses.
Later Wednesday night, Blanco walked into the State Police Communications Center and asked if anyone knew anything about the buses.
An officer told her the buses were just entering the state.
"I said, 'Do you mean as in North Louisiana, which is another six hours from New Orleans?,'" Blanco recalled in the interview. "He said, 'Yes, m'am.'"
It was at that point, Blanco said, that she realized she had made a critical error. (...)
"I had security in the knowledge that there were 500 buses," she said. "Mike had emphasized the buses to me personally. That was not my first concern until I realized that they were not there."
Meanwhile, the state continued to send school buses into the affected areas.
One of Blanco's aides, Leonard Kleinpeter, said FEMA told him at one point that the state could stop sending school buses because the agency was going to bring in helicopters and use them instead of the commercial buses that still weren't there.
Blanco told Kleinpeter to ignore those instructions.
"She said, 'I'll be damned. You keep loading the wagons on the school buses,'" Kleinpeter said.
Kleinpeter said he now wonders if FEMA temporarily halted its buses because the agency thought helicopters would work better."
Brown told Blanco not to use school buses, which were in Louisiana, because they were not air-conditioned?? FEMA thought that they were going to evacuate tens of thousands of people using helicopters??
Reality: it's the new parody.
(Via Obsidian Wings.)
8:11:43 PM
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Salon.com - War Room
From Salon's War Room, John Kerry on "The Katrina Administration": "This is the Katrina administration," Kerry says. "Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the president so famously thanked him for 'doing a heck of a job' -- Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to 'slam dunk' intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom DeLay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to 'Mission accomplished' and 'Wanted dead or alive.' The bottom line is simple: The 'We'll do whatever it takes' administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done." We've known this for a long time... Is Bush's base finally getting clued in?
(Via The Liberal Avenger.)
8:11:37 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 10/1/2005; 12:09:07 AM.
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