In the wake of the Federal clusterfuck that is his administration’s response to Katrina — including everyone noticing he’d put a guy incompetant to run horse shows in as head of FEMA — Bush announced yesterday that the new point man for the Gulf Coast reconstruction effort will be…

Karl Rove. What. The. Fuck? First he suspends Davis-Bacon, thereby ensuring that whoever does the rebuilding gets to pay the local workers — the ones with no homes, remember — less than the prevailing local wage. Then he puts another non-disaster-qualified guy in charge, who if anything is worse than Brown. Rove is a political hack with a track record of politicizing everything he touches. He does no substantive work; his job is to get somebody elected and protect them once they’re in place. What the hell he can bring to a reconstruction effort — beyond spin for Bush — is a mystery to us.

Josh Marshall:

There’s real news to be reported — how the president is approaching the reconstruction, what plans he’s putting in place right now. He’s put his chief political operative in charge of running the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast. Shouldn’t that be raising a lot of questions — a man whose entire professional experience is in political messaging and patronage? He’s also at the center of on-going criminal investigation and the target of a much-rumored indictment. But set that aside. Then there’s what Rep. John D. Dingell (D-MI) said in his statement out this evening. “With a stroke of the pen, in one of his first Katrina directives, the President cut the wages of the workers who will undertake our largest reconstruction project since the Civil War.” That cuts right to the heart of the matter. The president’s first major initiatives were deep wage cuts for the people who will do the reconstruction.

BoingBoing informs us that smiling is no longer allowed on German passport photos.

Presented for your comparision:

• “Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades” (The Onion, February 18, 2004)
• “Gillette unveils 5-bladed razor” (CNN, September 14,2005)

Of course, the triple-bladed Mach III was also famously pre-parodied by SNL in the 70s (“because you’ll believe anything”), so this is actually the second go-round for this particular batch of silliness.

(via MeFi)

Over at Engadget, they note that Dartmouth researches create world’s smallest controllable robot, which is cool and all, but doesn’t it sort of imply that there exist smaller robots that they cannot in fact control? Should we be concerned?

So, Oracle will buy Seibel for an assload of money.

Big. Fat. Hairy. Deal. Honestly, to us it looks a lot like one party trying to ensure relevance in the face of rapidly encroaching open source options, and another party trying to cash in before they’re destroyed by someone more nimble.

It’s been a few years, Ground Zero is still empty, 3,000 people are still dead, and Osama Bin Laden is still uncaptured. We did, on the other hand, start a whole DIFFERENT war someplace else in lieu of, you know, focussing on actually catching the bastard. We reckon ought to be more forgiving on this, as it’s not like Bush vowed to capture this murdering freak dead or alive, right?

The NYT had a piece yesterday about losing OBL in Tora Bora. Read it. (Local PDF.)

Blues legend Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown died yesterday in his hometown of Orange, Texas, where he’d gone to escape Katrina. He was 81.

Let’s hope this gets some traction; it’s simply unacceptable that American law enforcement behaved in this manner. This goes well beyond simply failing to render aid. (Local PDF copy here.)

The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people, who, instead of complying immediately with orders to leave the bridge, pleaded to be let through, the paramedics and two other witnesses said. The witnesses said they had been told by the New Orleans police to cross that same bridge because buses were waiting for them there. Instead, a suburban police officer angrily ordered about 200 people to abandon an encampment between the highways near the bridge. The officer then confiscated their food and water, the four witnesses said. The incidents took place in the first days after the storm last week, they said.

Bush has suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that contractors for Federal projects pay their workers the “prevailing local wage” or better. This typically keeps the Halliburtons of the world from dragging in cheap labor from elsewhere rather than pay local labor their normal wages.

The NYT has already weighed in; we duplicate their editorial here because the Powers That Be at NYT are notoriously stupid in re: archive access:

A Shameful Proclamation Published: September 10, 2005 On Thursday, President Bush issued a proclamation suspending the law that requires employers to pay the locally prevailing wage to construction workers on federally financed projects. The suspension applies to parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. By any standard of human decency, condemning many already poor and now bereft people to subpar wages — thus perpetuating their poverty — is unacceptable. It is also bad for the economy. Without the law, called the Davis-Bacon Act, contractors will be able to pay less, but they’ll also get less, as lower wages invariably mean lower productivity. The ostensible rationale for suspending the law is to reduce taxpayers’ costs. Does Mr. Bush really believe it is the will of the American people to deny the prevailing wage to construction workers in New Orleans, Biloxi and other hard-hit areas? Besides, the proclamation doesn’t require contractors to pass on the savings they will get by cutting wages from current low levels. Around New Orleans, the prevailing hourly wage for a truck driver working on a levee is $9.04; for an electrician, it’s $14.30. Republicans have long been trying to repeal the prevailing wage law on the grounds that the regulations are expensive and bureaucratic; weakening it was even part of the Republican Party platform in 1996 and 2000. Now, in a time of searing need, the party wants to achieve by fiat what it couldn’t achieve through the normal democratic process. In a letter this week to Mr. Bush urging him to suspend the law, 35 Republican representatives noted approvingly that Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and the elder George Bush had all suspended the law during “emergencies.” For the record, Mr. Roosevelt suspended it for two weeks in 1934, to make time to clear up contradictions between it and another law. Mr. Nixon suspended it for six weeks in 1971 as part of his misbegotten attempt to control spiraling inflation. And Mr. Bush did so after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, two weeks before he was defeated by Bill Clinton, who quickly reinstated it after assuming the presidency. If Mr. Bush does not rescind his proclamation voluntarily, Congress should pass a law forcing him to do so.

No, seriously, that’s how it is in New Orleans: Red Cross is banned, but private mercenaries are patrolling.

The Cheney-Curser has been unmasked! He’s a Gulfport ER doctor with no love for this administration (clearly). After his comment the other day, some MPs came to visit, and probably would have hauled him off had the media not been on hand:

As he stood about 10 feet away from Cheney and his friend and some camera operators from CNN and other media filmed the scene, Marble suddenly yelled, “Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney! Go fuck yourself, you asshole!” Hey, at least Marble was polite. After all, he referred to Cheney as “Mr. Cheney.” “I had no intention of harming anyone but merely wanted to echo Mr. Cheney’s infamous words back at him,” Marble wrote. “At that moment, I noticed the Secret Service guys with a panic-stricken look on their faces, like they were about to tackle me, so I calmly walked away back to my former house.” His friend videotaped a little bit longer and then came back to Marble’s house. As they were salvaging a few things from Marble’s home, two military police waving M-16s showed up and said they were looking for someone who fit Marble’s description who had cursed at Cheney. “I told them I was probably the person they were looking for, and so they put me in handcuffs and ‘detained’ me for about 20 minutes or so,” Marble wrote. “My right thumb went numb because the cuffs were on so tight, but they were fairly courteous and eventually released me after getting all my contact info. They said I had NOT broken any laws so I was free to go.”

Via BoingBoing, we learn that CNN has blocked attempts by FEMA to restrict coverage of New Orleans.

This large gallery of New Orleans shots from before, during, and after Katrina and the subsequent flooding is worth your time.

FDA approves inhalable insulin.

ABC is reporting that Michael “Fired Horse Whisperer” Brown has been officially relieved of Katrina-related duties at FEMA, which makes us wonder what he’s going to do besides resign:

Sept. 9, 2005 — Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, under criticism due to his management of Hurricane Katrina as well as reported discrepancies on his resume, has been ousted from disaster relief efforts. And sources have told ABC News that Brown is also expected to be out as head of the agency very soon. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that Brown will return to Washington, D.C., and Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard will be elevated to take over Katrina recovery.

Lost in the shuffle of post-Katrina coverage is this: the Richmond Federal Appeals Court has ruled against Jose Padilla, overturning a lower Federal court’s ruling that he must either be charged or released. Padilla is therefore being held indefinitely as an “enemy combatant” despite being an American citizen arrested on American soil. As such, he may be detained indefinitely without access to counsel or the right to review whatever evidence incriminates him.

In other words, the Appeals Court feels that he — or any citizen — can be held forever just on the government’s say-so. This is NOT a power we want our government to have. Let’s hope the Supremes feel differently, as it’s a sure bet this will end up on their docket next.

Norwegian professor Espen Andersen has a fine post up about the hoax of Intelligent Design that includes links to The Textbook League’s site. As Dr Andersen puts it, they “[leave] no stone unturned in exposing vague, fake, and feel-good pieces in text books.”

Do NOT miss Richard Feynman’s discussion of his experience judging textbooks in California. The whole process is a joke, so we have every confidence that ID will be taught in darn near every science class before too long, further eroding whatever educational advantage Americans still retain.

From their flood coverage:

Another Saints Season Ruined Before It Begins NEW ORLEANS — Front-office executives of the New Orleans Saints football team provided a much-needed dose of normalcy Monday when they announced that, for the 23rd year running, the Saints season had been ruined before it began. “I’d say this is even worse than when Mike Ditka traded away all our draft picks to get Ricky Williams,” said Saints vice president of pro-personnel operations Bill Kuharich. “But there’s one thing we Saints can always rely on: our chances for a winning season being shitcanned before we play a single down. We’re proud to have carried on with this tradition despite everything.” The National Football League has declined the Saints’ “mercy rule” request to be allowed to forfeit all their home games, saying the team must set an example for its home city by being blown out in every contest.

From our hometown paper:

JANICE — Food was running low in this Perry County community, so the Rev. Dean Cook turned to a reliable source for help – his fellow board members with Coonhunters for Christ.

From the Onion:

Genie Grants Scalia Strict Constructionist Interpretation Of Wish WASHINGTON, DC — A genie freed from a battered oil lamp by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia granted the conservative jurist a strict constructionist interpretation of his wish for “a hundred billion bucks” Monday. “Sim sim salabim! Your wish is my command!” the genie proclaimed amid flashes of light and purple smoke, immediately filling the Supreme Court building with a massive herd of wild male antelopes. When Justice Scalia complained that the “bucks” had razed the U.S. Supreme Court building, trampling and killing several of his clerks and bringing traffic in the nation’s capital to a standstill for hours, the genie said, “Your honor, your wish is a sacred and unalterable document whose interpretation is not subject to the whims of society and changing social context.”

We haven’t had much of a chance to say anything about the passing of Chief Justice Rehnquist, which is good, probably, as there’s not much nice to say about a guy who fought for the causes he fought for. However, this shit just about takes the cake: remember that smiling empty suit Bush nominated to take O’Connor’s seat? The one who has only a couple years of judicial experience EVER, having spent most of his legal career a party functionary?

Yeah. Bush has nominated Roberts to be Chief Justice. Words fail me.

Jack Cafferty on CNN, via Kos:

The thing that’s most glaring in all of this is that the conditions continue to deteriorate for people who are victims and the efforts to do something about it don’t seem to be anywhere in sight. […] The questions that we ask in The Situation Room every day are posted on the website two or three hours before we go on the air and people who read the website often begin to respond to the questions before the show actually starts. The question for this hour is whether the government is doing a good job in handling the situation. I gotta tell you something, we got five or six hundred letters before the show actually went on the air, and no one – no one – is saying the government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamatous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I’m 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don’t think the world isn’t watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it’s fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see, in the way it’s handled this thing. We’re going to talk about something else before the show’s over, too. And that’s the big elephant in the room. The race and economic class of most of the victims, which the media hasn’t discussed much at all, but we will a bit later.

From a Yahoo news story:

“Officials with the U.S. Geological Survey who flew over the Gulf Coast from Florida to Louisiana said Thursday that most of the Chandeleur chain of barrier islands — the first line of storm defense for eastern Louisiana and western Mississippi — appears to be gone.”

Venezuela is seeking to extradite Pat Robertson for his “terorrist threat.”

BoingBoing has an excellent analysis of the sort of bullshit restrictions Redmond is building into the next version of Windows.

The Rude Pundit has much to say about the wackiness and “freedom” of the new Iraqi constitution. Can you say “theocracy?”

Article 17, Part 1 reads: “Each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general morality.” Article 36 says that freedoms of “expressing opinion by all means,” “of press, publishing, media, and distribution,” and “assembly and peaceful protest” are guaranteed “as long as it does not violate public order and morality.” And in that one word, “morality,” the hopes of a free and open and democratic Iraq are as dead as the soldiers falling there as this is written. […] In the end, banning offenses to “morality” means, simply, “we own you.” Quite a democratic document there, even if it only succeeds in starting a civil war, plunging the region into chaos. Yep, it’s worth a few thousand more lives to make sure morality is enforced, right?

If you think about it, it sorta reads like what the right wingnuts here would like OUR Constitution to say. The lack of actual unfettered rights and the supremacy of Islam make it abundantly clear that “freedom” isn’t exactly going to be the order of the day even if Iraq doesn’t collapse into a lawless failed state as soon as our troops come home.

Via BoingBoing: Cops have to pay $41K for stopping man from videotaping them.

…The ruling finds violations of the plaintiff’s first and fourth amendment rights. It states “The activities of the police, like those of other public officials, are subject to public scrutiny…Videotaping is a legitimate means of gathering information for public dissemination and can often provide cogent evidence, as it did in this case. In sum, there can be no doubt that the free speech clause of the Constitution protected Robinson as he videotaped the defendants on October 23, 2002….Moreover, to the extent that the troopers were restraining Robinson from making any future videotapes and from publicizing or publishing what he had filmed, the defendants’ conduct clearly amounted to an unlawful prior restraint upon his protected speech….We find that defendants are liable under ¤ 1983 for violating Robinson’s Fourth Amendment right to be protected from an unlawful seizure…”

Wired has a Jon Stewart interview worth reading.

Windows Still Sucks Ass

The AP is reporting that the TSA may relax restrictions on razorblades, scissors, small knives, etc., which makes huge amounts of sense. We’re pretty sure hijacking a plane is no longer possible, so frankly we’re comfortable with passengers carrying pocketknives and boxcutters and other nonweapon “weapons” all they want. Making the list of in-flight contraband saner would return air travel to a less-irritating level of ritual, and would allow the TSA to focus on finding actually dangerous items instead of knitting needles and Swiss Army knives.

But then there’s this paragraph:

Any of the changes proposed by the staff, which also would allow scissors, ice picks and bows and arrows on flights, would require [new TSA head Edmund] Hawley’s approval, this official said, requesting anonymity because there has been no final decision. [emph. added.]

Frankly, we wonder if this is some sort of giveaway to Ted Nugent, bowhunters in general, or them Duke Boys (though they’d have to buy their dynamite locally, as you can’t even have that in checked luggage).

National Labor Relations Board allows employers to ban off-duty fraternization between employees.

Ah, our government at work. From this CNet story:

1. The Copyright Office wants to know if it would be okay if parts of their site became Internet Explorer-only — despite the facts that (a) only absurdly incompetant or biased developers create software only compatibile with a single browser and (b) the Department of Homeland Security stated some time ago that users should avoid IE due to its absurdly poor security record.
2. They’ve invited comments on the subject that must be submitted on paper.

It is now illegal to prescribe, dispense, or advertise any form of birth control on any University of Wisconsin campus. From the linked story:

Wisconsin State Rep. Dan LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, introduced this bill based on the belief that “dispensing birth control and emergency contraceptives leads to promiscuity.”

What. The. Fuck?

(Of course, our other reaction is “thank God it’s not a Southern state.”)

This privacy advocate is convinced that RFID tags are a harbinger of Revelation’s “mark of the beast.”

So, Scottie has been getting a pretty rough time from the White House press corps over the Rove thing and, well, the lies he told about the Rove thing months ago. They’re being pretty tenacious, and refusing to let the issue drop, which is pretty amazing. Jon Stewart describes this phenomenon best:

We have secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters.

Odds are, we are now well and truly fucked.

The Discovery Channel’s list of the greatest Americans has some interesting problems. As one friend put it: “I’m inclined to distrust any list of ‘great Americans’ that puts Oprah Fucking Winfrey more than 50 spots ahead of Nicola Tesla.”

Here’s a list of people simply not on the list at all: Jim Henson, Dr. Seuss, D.W. Griffiths, Eugene O’Neill, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim.

To put that in perspective, the list does include Madonna, three Bushes (Barbara, George H. W. and George W.), Mel Gibson, Ellen DeGeneres, Tom Hanks, Pat Tillman, and Dr. Phil, for the love of God.

Follow-up
We have been alerted to this hilarious column wherein Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten has a bit of sport with PR flack Elizabeth Hillman at the Discovery Channel. A sample:

Have you seen the list of 100 people nominated to be the greatest American of all time, as chosen in an online poll? It’s a hoot. It’s going to be the basis of a month-long series on the Discovery Channel in June, featuring runoff elections where the public will finally choose a winner. I decided I owed it to history — the history of American humor — to phone a Discovery Channel spokesperson for comment. Me: So, are you happy with the 100 nominees? Elizabeth Hillman: Well, we were pleased at the number of people who voted. The results are not for us to judge. This is who America chose. This is the pulse of America. Me: America seems to have a dangerously erratic pulse. For example, there seems to be a bit of a bias toward recent times, since more than half of the nominees are currently alive or were alive in the last five years. Does that trouble you? Or are you just relieved that Lincoln made the cut? Elizabeth: Ha-ha. Well, I’m fascinated by the diversity of opinion! Me: Not only are both George Bushes on the list, but Laura Bush and Barbara Bush, too! Whereas, say, James Madison is not. So, basically, Laura Bush and Barbara Bush are deemed to be greater Americans than the person who wrote the United States Constitution. What philosophical statement do you think the American public might be expressing by this decision? Do you think the statement might be, “We are as shallow as a loogie on the sidewalk?” Or, “We are self-involved, self-congratulatory, parochial-minded nitwits with a ludicrous ignorance of our own national history?” Which one?

Equifax CEO says it’s Un-American that they’re forced to show people what they know about them. Jackass.

Now that the autopsy has, once and for all, shown everyone just how stupid and wrongheaded the whole “save Terri” thing was (and don’t get us started on Frist stating she was making eye contact — with, presumably, some other part of her brain than the visual cortext, which was GONE), Jeb Bush wants a prosecutor to look into indicting Michael Schiavo on the grounds that maybe he took to long to call the ambulance.

Fifteen years ago.

What. The. Fuck?

TMFTML points us to this gem by Mark Lawson on the end of Fleet Street:

Because the service marked the death of an address rather than a person, both congregation and celebrants seemed uncertain of the appropriate tone. As Murdoch walked past, one old journalist muttered ‘Christ, I’m close enough to kill him’, words which can seldom have been heard in an Anglican church since Thomas Becket.

Anybody wanna buy a used icepick?

Jacko joins OJ and Robert Blake in the elite club of “obviously guilty celebrity criminals acquitted for nebulous reasons.”

No word yet from the Cruise camp on how vitamins will cure whatever the hell is wrong with MJ or the jury.

(Alt.snarky.headline: “Pedophilia, like spousal murder, now legal for celebs in LA.”)

Senate panel votes to expand PATRIOT Act; if it passes as written, the Feds will have the power to get at things like medical and financial records without a fucking warrant. Judicial oversight keeps cops honest. Without it, they can and do abuse their powers, and that is dangerous to our republic. Call your congresspeople and tell them what you think of this blatent fearmongering powergrab.

Ohio’s $455,000 abstinence-only sex ed curriculum has been found to be astoundingly flawed by a Case Western public health researcher, including (among other howlers) the following:

• HIV can be transmitted through tears and open-mouthed kissing;
• Contraceptives are to blame for mental health problems in teens;
• Taking the pill will reduce a girl’s future fertility; and
• Students should just “follow God’s plan for purity.”

This in a public school, and funded with public money. ThinkProgress sums it up:

Keeping kids in the dark or filling their heads with misinformation about contraception doesnÕt keep hormonally charged teens from having sex. It just makes it less likely theyÕll have safe sex.

Despite the “liberal” media’s insistance on his popularity, Bush’s approval rating (according to the ABC/Post poll) is actually only 48%, or (by way of comparison) twenty points lower than Clinton’s on the day he was impeached (cite).

From here:

WASHINGTON, DC — On June 7, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) will celebrate the 40th anniversary of constitutional protection for using birth control in the United States. In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law that made the use of birth control by married couples illegal with its ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut. However, 40 years later, women still face unnecessary and often politically-motivated barriers to contraception.

Eisenstadt v. Baird followed in 1972, which extended that protection to the unmarried. Frankly, it’s still pretty staggering to think that anyone thought they had a right to regulate birth control in our lifetimes, but we reckon that’s (still) the province of the Jackass Right. Piss ’em off good, and have some non-procreative sex today!

Once again, it is pointed out in excruciating detail that Emperor TSA has no clothes, and therefore does zilcho to protect us from airborne acts of terrorism.

Brilliant and depressing; an excerpt:

The Rude Pundit doesn’t suffer fundamentalists gladly. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Bible-thumpin’ Christian, a Koran-riotin’ Muslim, or a ripped-to-shit flag waver, you can take your strict adherence to your religious and/or nationalistic code and, well, flush it down the toilet. Because, frankly, if you’re willing to go nutzoid over the desecration of a book, then you’re someone who’s willing to oppress real, living people – maybe that’s forcing women to always be accompanied by a man, maybe it’s not allowing gay people to marry each other or adopt kids, maybe it’s re-electin’ a lyin’ sack of shit to the presidency. However it forces you to behave, it’s gonna end up screwin’ someone else’s freedoms over. So fuck you. […] The issue is not the crazed religious beliefs of others. The issue is how a nation treats people. The issue is personal property. The issue is torture. The issue is the presumption of guilt. The issue is the inversion of everything most of us were taught about this great nation, whose fall from grace has been harrowing to watch. It’s not that a Koran or two or five were pissed on or stomped. Once we make it that, we buy into a religious doctrine that places faith over the physical. And we cannot make legal decisions in that way.

There is, of course, more.

Newsday has more on the sublime absurdity of Nixon’s convicted henchmen lecturing the public on ethics in the wake of the Felt disclosure.

From Newsday:

NEW YORK (AP) _ Comedian/magician Penn Jillette’s latest stunt didn’t involve his usual sidekick, Teller: He became the father of a baby girl. Jillette, 50, and his wife Emily, 39, welcomed 6-pound, 6-ounce Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette on Friday, according to publicist Glenn Schwartz. It was the first child for the couple, who married last year. “We chose her middle name because when she’s pulled over for speeding she can say, “But officer, we’re on the same side,”‘ Jillette explained. “My middle name is CrimeFighter.”‘ The typically mute Teller had no comment on the new arrival. Penn & Teller currently star in their own series on Showtime, and headline nightly in Las Vegas at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.

Our houseguest, when asked for comment, opined that the tyke was sure to have an interesting life. Upon reflection, however, it seems clear that any child of Jillette’s would have that taken care of more or less by default.