The current republican white house and congress are the the most secretive in history. Now in the wake of the collosal fuck-up the department of homeland insecurity and federal emergency mis-management agency have perpetrated on the people of the gulf coast, they are at it again. The republicans are trying to push through a nearly $52 billion aid bill. But they are refusing to allow any debate or ammendments on the bill. In fact they wont even let democrats read the text of the bill that they are expected to vote on. Clearly they are trying to hide something. Where is Tom Delay trying to send all this money? To Iraq? To Haliburton?

In the wake of what the Wall Street Journal projected may be the most expensive natural disaster in American history, the Republican Leadership in the House of Representatives limited floor consideration of the $52 billion Katrina relief bill proposed by President Bush and voted to reject any Democratic efforts to amend the bill to include a wider array of relief measures, RAW STORY has learned.

Democrats said no one had even seen a copy of the legislation.

Voting along party lines, Republicans denied a measure that would have allowed for two hours of discussion and opened up the measure to be amended.

Dave Winer has a really good editorial today the country needing to come together and take a fresh look at where we need to go in the future if we are to survive.

If we have to blame anyone, let’s take the blame ourselves. We thought we could get by without getting involved. If ever it was obvious that we must get involved, now is that time. First there are people to help, so many, that we must all help. Then there’s a city to rebuild, and that’s going to require a shift in thinking about the environment. There’s no maybe about it. On Meet The Press yesterday, a panel of people who clearly know what they’re talking about said that New Orleans’s present is the future for all coastal cities. A rising ocean level has the same effect for coastal cities as dropping land level (which is what happened in New Orleans). We have to change our way of life if we want New York, Boston, Houston, Miami, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles to survive. And that’s true of every coastal city in every country, not just the United States.

We definitely cannot rely on traditional politics to deal with these issues. We must acknowledge that ultimately we are responsible for what happens to our planet and our species. We cannot sit back and wait for an amorphous god to fix things. We cannot rely on politicians to fix the problem. We must start changing our own behaviour, Now! We need to use more fuel efficient vehicles, drive less, telecommute if possible, use the technology we have to reduce our consumption. We need to acknowledge that the Earth and all that it contains is a finite resource and we need to take care of it and preserve it for our future use and the use of future generations. I want my children to have the opportunity to live a good life and if we don’t all change none of our descendants will have the chance. Apathy won’t cut it any more. We must all particate in our future.

I found these on Daily Kos

It is all fits in with the extremist GOP plan to neuter the government. Is this really what American’s want? BTW that is an actual quote from Grover Norquist, no joke. If you listen to his words and writings over the years, the intent is precisely what it seems to be, it does not change by being taken out of context.

I generally don’t agree with much of anything that Andrew Sullivan has to say about anything. However, when writing about this weeks event’s he does make a good point about how the shrub administration are not really conservatives:

Kevin Drum wants to say that the difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals believe in funding organizations like FEMA or the Corps of Engineers and conservatives don’t. Nuh-huh. Real conservatives believe that the state should do a few things that no one else can do – defense, decent public education, police, law and order among the most obvious – and leave the rest to individuals. Funding FEMA and having a superb civil defense are very much part of conservatism’s real core. It’s when government decides to reshape society, redistribute wealth, socially engineer, and take over functions that the private sector can do just as well that conservatives draw the line. The reason I’m mad as hell over Katrina is precisely because I’m a conservative and this kind of thing is exactly what government is for. Bush in this sense is not now and never has been a conservative. A man who explodes government spending but can’t run a war or organize basic civil defense is simply a fiscally reckless incompetent. If this were a parliamentary system, we’d have a vote of no confidence. Instead we have three years of more peril.

Clearly the shrubbies have demonstrated time and again over the last 5 years that they are not conservatives. They are theocrats with there own twisted vision of evangelical christianity that bears little resemblance to anything taught by Jesus Christ. What would Jesus Do? Probably the exact opposite of everything that George W Bush has done in his life and career.

BTW Where is Umcle Dick this week?

I got back from my trip last friday afternoon and as soon as I looked at my browser I saw that there was a hurricane in the gulf of Mexico. I checked the weather sites and at that point the storm was already on a track for the coast of Louisiana. This was 3 days before it hit. Why were the National Guard already mobilised at that time and on their way to the Gulf coast? Why are they only arriving 4 days after the flood?

Clearly during the course of this week the bush administration has demonstrated such an extraordinary lack of judgement that clearly they cannot be trusted with any of their nominees for even the most trivial position. I believe that the congress should refuse to vote on any more bush nominees for the remainder of his term. After seeing the performance of his Homeland Security secretary and FEMA director (along with the various appointees in Iraq) none bush nominee for the supreme court should be approved.