Vaguely inspired by this story about an elephant herd that rescued a herd of antelope from a corral where they were being held prior to relocation to a private game reserve.
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“NO! Wait, I have to go back!” Gfsareo skidded to a halt and rushed back down the corridor in a vain attempt to get back through the pressure door before it slammed shut.
I’ve been wanting to get back to writing for a while now, even though I’ve never sold any of my fiction. Mostly because I rarely finish my fiction (there’s a reason, after all, that I call myself a “beginning writer”). I’ve started three novels, a screenplay, and several short stories, and have finished… well two short stories could be considered finished, I guess. If you squint a little and try real hard.
Robert W. Gordon, over at TPM Cafe, argues that Democrats should vote against the confirmation of John G. Roberts Jr. as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. After reviewing the various “yes” arguments, Gordon gets to the meat of his “no” argument:
By voting No, Democrats also take a stand on the principle that they won’t vote for stealth candidates. We need extensive evidence of nominee’s views on great issues of law and policy before confirming them to the high courts. Roberts has been a judge for a short time on a court that operates by consensus; the Administration won’t release the records from his time as Deputy Solicitor General; and he stonewalled the Judiciary Committee’s questions at the hearings.
I think we have to be wary of a “Katrina PATRIOT Act” arising out of the outrage generated by the Federal response (or lack thereof) to the devastation of Katrina. I think I’m seeing signs of TeamBush marshalling their arguments for such a move: A bill, like the despicable original, that gives Federal authorities more power than they need or ought to have, playing on the outrage generated by this tragedy (and which will actually have very little to do with what went wrong, but will be tied to it and “marketed” as a plan to “prevent” more such tragedies, all the same).
This is copied from my comment on the very excellent TPM Cafe reader blog Do We Now Have a Fascist State? by cscs, in which s/he notes that one of the elements of fascism is that it is a system of government that
engages in economic totalitarianism through the creation of a Corporatist State, where the divergent economic and social interests of different races and classes are combined with the interests of the State.
This is copied from my comment to an excellent TPM Cafe reader blog, The Dying American Republic by kiltedliberal, in which he notes:
I will grant the Republicans this: we are nothing like Nazi Germany. The Republicans don’t have the brains to implement their fascism in such an organized, methodical manner.
I have read many articles and blog entries – some of them by people I respect – that say that now is not the time for partisanship. After carefully considering their arguments, I must – respectfully – disagree.
It was a partisan agenda that gutted FEMA. It was a partisan agenda that de-funded the Army Corps of Engineers flood control project. It was a partisan agenda that, through tax-cuts for profitable corporations and the most well off in this country, robbed this country of the wherewithal to respond with more than a token amount of assistance to those who have lost everything in this disaster.
Jack Balkin over at TPM Cafe suggests in this post that
“Bush’s nomination of John Roberts to be Chief Justice is a shrewd short-term political move from a President who has repeatedly demonstrated a mastery of short-term political tactics.”
He adds that Bush is
“calculating that confirming Roberts as Chief might allow him to give his conservative base a relatively easy victory with relatively high salience because of the symbolic importance of the position of Chief Justice.”
As Josh Marshall noted at TPM, The Washington Post reported today that the Bush administration has sought to “wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D)” and assume “unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor.”
I told my husband a couple of days ago, that regardless of whatever else happened, that Bush would use the situation in New Orleans to try to grab more power. I hate being so cynical almost as much as I hate being right.