/ RANT / Why isn’t there a non-stop uproar about this?
Now to the evacuation of the Capitol and White House earlier this week after a small Cessna plane veered off course.
The White House admitted yesterday that while Vice-President Dick Cheney was spirited out of the White House in a convoy of black armoured vehicles and sped to a “secure location”, President Bush was oblivious and riding his bike around a Wildlife Research Centre in Maryland. … More outrage below:
Armed F16 fighter jets roared over Washington, circling a Cessna 150 that appeared to be headed to the White House, and fired warning flares to warn the pilot to turn around. It prompted panic as workers, including members of Congress abandoned buildings and ran out on to the street. The U.S. Customs service also scrambled Black Hawk helicopters during the red alert. At one point, national security officials considered shooting down the plane.The White House characterized the alert as the most serious since Sept. 11.
But it did not interrupt Bush’s bicycle ride until 40 minutes after the “all-clear” was given.
From this morning’s headlines on Democracy Now!
A lot of us have commented on this. Parker wrote a diary yesterday on the story.
But, my god, why isn’t every news channel and newspaper trumpeting this? WHY?
It gets tiresome to say, well, if Clinton had been riding that bicycle, holy hell would be going on. OF COURSE! That’s obvious.
Furthermore, that doesn’t make any sense. Clinton:
1. Would have been in the Oval at that hour.
2. Would have been immediately alerted.
3. Would have acted.
4. Would have spoken to the press afterwards.
Susan beats head against wall.
Does it take a non-poofy-haired, leftwing, Haiti-obsessed, brilliant, workaholic female anchor on an indy TV station — that most Americans will never hear or see — to tell us the f–king truth? / END RANT /
It is clear Bush does not run the government. Cheney and the multi-nationals do. Therefore, “W” does not need to know what’s going on because he doesn’t have to make any decisions…they are made for him.
He’s like a child. He’s out playing while the real work of government and handling crises gets done for him. Is he ever actually working? He’s vacationing most of the time and when he’s not he’s out riding his bicycle. I wonder if it has training wheels?
As for the media…
We have entertainment, propaganda media. No real news reporting in sight.
damage would a Cessna do if it hit the White House or Capitol Building?
I’m not saying they shouldn’t have evacuated the buildings, because they should have.
But a little old Cessna is not that big of a threat.
But it’s clear they didn’t see it as a serious threat, and that they pushed the hysteria into an all day media story for their own purposes.
Either that, or Bush has told people not to bother him the next time an airplane goes off its flight path and threatens Washington landmarks.
I want to know why, when the military base closing list was announced today and the talking heads made a big deal out of the $50 billion that would be saved over the next 20 YEARS by these closings, no one pointed out that we could save in <6 MONTHS by closing the bases in Iraq and Afghanistan and bringing our soldiers home.
Yes!
Why?
Seriously, my take on American culture has always been that it’s engineered to destroy the maximum number of braincells by the time an ordinary American reaches voting age. I grew up gay and in an ethnic minority in a factory town in Iowa, and I can honestly say that I felt much more persecuted and oppressed for being “smart” and “good in school” than for any other way I might have given “offense.”
The past few years, however, it’s my impression that American anti-intellectualism has increased, astronomically. Plus it’s not just “anti-intellectual” anymore; it’s anti-original thought of any kind. Even in liberal enclaves like Manhattan, people are loath to do the hard work of observing and contemplating current realities. My sense is that virtually all Americans are now, if not brain-dead, either too opiated by our mindless popular culture or too much in fear-driven denial to think clearly about what’s going on here and around the world.
End of rant.
“Do you really want to get me started?!”
I was pretending I was Brian Lamb.
Thx for voicing the anger Susan, I was enraged last night while reading about how close the fighter pilots were to shooting down the plane; yet Bush was oblivious. Apparently the plane was heading straight for the White House. The President wasn’t notified until 40 minutes after the all-clear was given because he wasn’t in danger? It stinks…badly. Here’s AP’s take.
They didn’t tell him because they didn’t want to risk the embarrassment of deer in headlights, oh shit look Dubba gets when he doesn’t have someone telling him what to say or do again. Don’t forget “My Pet Goat” and “Now watch this drive”. He never was and never will be our real President..leave that title to our co-presient Rove.
Thanks for the great rant. I felt the same way yesterday. Hey, another thought…was he really riding a bike somewhere or was he somewhere else that would be embarrassing?
There’s a very funny thread about it at Kos. One of the comments:
“Nancy Pelosi was lifted OUT OF HER SHOES by 2 security guys during it all. Pink high heels – they found 1, the other’s still lost.
OUT OF HER SHOES? And they let Georgy finish his bike ride?
“I say listen to the Will Durst clip: “Worried about George” (MP3) – he’s onto something.”
…..
I’m listening now. hilarious.
A political Cinderella story
Seattle PI
WASHINGTON — As mysteries go, the case of the pink pump doesn’t rank up there with the Green River Killer or even the Pink Panther. But as a modern-day fairy tale, well, it might qualify.
Dave Reichert, former sheriff and current Republican congressman, should know.
As he and hundreds of other lawmakers and staffers raced down the Capitol’s marble steps during Wednesday’s stampede to safety, a shoe, an expensive woman’s pump, suddenly appeared. “It popped up right in front of me,” Reichert said.
The freshman lawmaker from Bellevue caught it. And the case began.
“I started to look for a woman in a pink suit who might be missing a shoe,” he said. No luck. Reichert took the shoe with him to his office across the street and began piecing together the case. He asked his staff for help. He examined the evidence. He considered suspects.
The case, however, was no walk in the park. It was going nowhere until Reichert got his big break later in the day from an informant.
“My wife e-mailed me and said she heard the minority leader lost a shoe,” he said.
That would be Rep. Nancy Pelosi, of California, the highest-ranking Democrat in the House and in normal times a mortal enemy of Republicans, shoeless or not.
Sure enough, Pelosi was missing a shoe. In the rush to get her out of the Capitol as an unidentified plane was bearing down, her security detail literally lifted her off her feet.
“I said, ‘I’m losing my shoe,’ and they said, ‘That’s too bad, just keep going.’ And then the other one went flying through the air,” Pelosi said. Police quickly recovered one shoe but could not find the other.
Yesterday, the orphan was reunited with its owner. Though Reichert did not ask Pelosi to try it on, he did present it with a flourish during Pelosi’s weekly news conference.
“That is my shoe!” Pelosi chirped as Reichert knelt on one knee to present the missing shoe, for the record a pink leather sling-back pump. “Thank you so much. … A moment of community on Capitol Hill. … You are such a gentleman.”
“I’m proud to be here, and proud to present you with your shoe,” Reichert said. …
That is really too funny.
I’m sure if Bush was important enough they would have said something to him.
Amid the panic surrounding the White House and Capitol Evacuation, a few startling issues have come to light. Instead of alerting the President immediately, White House officials chose to let him finish out a bike ride in Maryland first. Apparently members of the President’s security detail had decided he need not be informed because there was no danger to him. So the Secret Service agents did not consult with White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card Jr. or other senior administration officials.
The decision has been justified by claiming “the protocols that were in place after September 11th were followed. The President was never considered to be in danger because he was at an off-site location. The President has a tremendous amount of trust in his Secret Service detail.” But one would think that in the event that F-16 fighter jets are deployed in our nation’s capital, our own president should know about it. … All at ThinkProgress
Susan,
In regards to:”Susan beats head against wall.”, please be careful. This administration, as well as the corrupt msm, give way to many opportunities to act out of frustration…. Time to take frustration out on this administration, as well as the msm…
That wall looks like hell! We may have to raze it to save it.
Magorn has his own great rant at Kos.
This headline is amazing: “MEMBERS SEEK WAR CRIMES INQUIRY
51 in House write Gonzales: ‘We are writing to request that you appoint a special counsel to investigate whether high-ranking officials within the Bush Administration violated the War Crimes or the Anti-Torture Act”
LINK: http://rawstory.com/
Going to the head goon, the one that wrote some of these memos are a joke…. Simply put on for Americans to think something is happening, that there is some checks and balances. Run to Congress, run to the attorney general, run to the courts, run to msm media. Run for safety is more like it !! The law as America knows it, is gone. These 51 good cops, just buying more time, for more rights, more money to disappear.
Angry Black Bitch via Bexley Lane.
Fantastic. .. Bexley is a great person/diarist.
You ask, Why isn’t there a non-stop uproar about the disengaged biker?
Why isn’t there a non-stop uproar about the Downing Street memo, only now surfacing a tiny bit after a couple of weeks of international coverage? god knows, I don’t have a sensible answer. Except that the general populace is catatonic from being fed too many years of crappy TV, and having to work two and three jobs to keep body and soul together, and the press is terrified of its corporate masters.
Move over, Susan. I need some wall space for head-banging, too.