Month: October 2005

National Guard soldiers stood between the surging mob and the buses there to evacuate the desperate out of the abject misery of New Orleans.
The troops were processing some 25,000 refugees spilling out of the squalor of the Louisiana Superdome on Sept. 2, working to keep families intact as they worked their way up the line of thousands.

“For God’s sake, please don’t separate yourself from your children,” screamed Air Force Capt. John Pollard of the Texas Air Guard’s 149th Security Squadron into a microphone. Pollard screamed numerous times. “Keep your families together. You need one another.”

But his amplified voice only reached a few rows into the mob.

As desperation and uncertainty grew, however, parents who wanted to ensure survival for their infant children starting passing them forward. The crowd moved them ahead, hand over hand, and presented them to the Guard members at the metal barricades separating them from the buses.

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Welcome back.

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I read RenaRF’s reply to Senator Obama’s diary.

Her diary clarified for me one of the problems I have dealt with in trying to reconcile my liberal views with reality.

What does Ms. RF want the Senate to do with the SCOTUS noiminations? Stonewall them all until the day the Democrats regain the White House and Senate majority?

Her tears aside, and the tears of frustration at another loss are understandable, the Senate Democrats had no choice but to confirm Roberts. In the absence of any skeletons found hanging in Mr. Roberts walk in closet, a rejection of his candidacy by Senate Democrats would only serve to alienate a voting majority of this nation (republicans and centrist independents)at a time when the future of progressive politics clearly seems to be trending to the positive.

Since Mr. Obama is a politician by trade and not a blogger, his post should be read in that context. The disappointment and the tears by the blogging left over yet another Republican political victory are a supreme waste of emotion for no gain in reality.

I am a Democrat. I see the signs of coming change in the nation’s perception of its conservative led government. Basically, the people know the conservatives are failed and failing in most areas under their responsibility.

The hurricanes are the powerful metaphors of this failure. So is Iraq. So is Delay. So is Rove.

John Roberts is not a metaphor of failure.

Bush himself has been a failed leader, time and again throughout his vacuous life. Clearly, he could not successfully run a small oil company, even with the “genetic” advantages he inherited from his aristocrastic family. His Texas Rangers are forever mired in the second division (and he didnt really run them anyway)and his Dept of Homeland Security the biggest bungled example of government bureaucracy since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

John Roberts is not a metaphor of Bush’s failure.

John Roberts is a metaphor of the failure of progressive Democrats in this country to win the White House and a Senate majority often enough to pack the Supreme Court with a majority of progressive jurists.

My advice to Ms. RF and others like her: hang the tears out to dry and join with Senator Obama to change the future.

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More government waste. More outrage. You decide.

Quick fixes.

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Amy Goodman and her crew at Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org) who produce the best alternative news coverage I know of, are seeking donations in cash or kind that will help them acquire needed equipment: video cameras and flat-screen monitors.

There’s an ad about the video cameras on their web site, and Amy mentioned the need for monitors at the very end of her Wednesday broadcast (which I only now have listened to via podcast).

If any of you can help, please email them at mail@democracy.org, or go via the website.

These are great people, doing fabulous and important work. Please support them if you can.

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