Miami Herald:

When California wildfires ruined their jewelry business, Tony Becker and his wife fell months behind on their mortgage payments and experienced firsthand the perils of subprime mortgages.

The couple wound up in a desperate, six-year fight to keep their modest, 1,500-square-foot San Jose home, a struggle that pushed them into bankruptcy.

The lender with whom they sparred, however, wasn't the one that had written their loans. It was an obscure subsidiary of Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs Group.

Once again I want to day how delighted I am to see HCAN join the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care in direct action against health insurance parasites.

So what did Cigna management do over its summer vacation? Well, on August 7 John Murabito dumped 13,500 shares of Cigna. On August 14 Peter Larson dumped 3,500 shares and dumped another 998 on August 31. On August 14 Edward Hanway dumped 183,693 shares. A lot of stock dumping on August 14, anyone with any ideas as to why that might have been?

And, they say that it's "just" a recession. Chaos decided to roost in Detroit, today, as the truly despressed and distressed came out in droves seeking housing and utility payment assistance from the City of Detroit:

The economic tsunami washing over metro Detroit swept its casualties to the doors of Cobo Center on Wednesday in the form of 35,000 people so desperate for help with mortgage and utility bills that threats were made, fights broke out and people were nearly trampled.

Some were treated by emergency medical workers on site.

There's just no point in commenting on something as self-evident as the cold, calculating fascism in this:

"The White House on Friday threatened to veto a $440.2 billion defense spending bill in the Senate because it wasn't enough money for the Pentagon and also warned lawmakers not to add any amendments to regulate the treatment of detainees or set up a commission to probe abuse."

Not enough money for the most wasteful program of corporate welfare ever devised by man! And we'll have none of that "accountability" horseshit, while we're at it; that stuff's for impoverished shitkickers and ghetto denizens. This is an administration that has carved out previously unhoped-for Executive power, thanks to the likes of John Roberts and Alberto Gonzales, and there's no way the Little Man is going to start answering to the American people, let alone Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Constitution.

Why, if we started expecting Bush to look critically at the waste of the Defense Department, or demanded he be held accountable for the deterioration and ruination of Constitutional law, we might actually expect him to put some of those much publicized Christian principles into play and help the hurricane victims. And Christ knows, that way lies madness. As Paul Krugman noted this morning:

"Start with health care, where conservative senators, generally believed to be acting on behalf of the White House, have blocked bipartisan legislation that would provide all low-income victims of Katrina with health coverage under Medicaid.
In a letter urging Senate leaders to reject the bill, Mike Leavitt, the secretary of Health and Human Services, warned that it would create "a new Medicaid entitlement." He asserted that victims can be taken care of by Medicaid "waivers," which basically amount to giving refugees the health benefits, if any, that they would have been entitled to in their home states -- and no more.
As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, many needy victims won't qualify for aid. For example, Medicaid doesn't cover childless adults of working age. In fact, surveys show that many destitute survivors of Katrina are being denied Medicaid, and some are going without medicines they need."

We have neither the time nor the dogma to get behind ministering to the health needs of those of our citizens who have lost everything but the clothes on theire backs. It simply doesn't fit into the Conservatives' New World Order. And we're not going to house them, either, unless it's to sit them on the curb while we funnel plenty of money to our buddies, then shove them into some trailer that will dump over like a toy when the next hurricane comes along:

"These days, both conservatives and liberals agree that public housing projects are a bad idea, and that housing vouchers -- which help the poor pay rent -- are much better. In the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge earthquake, special housing vouchers issued to victims worked very well.
But the administration has chosen, instead, to focus its efforts on the creation of public housing in the form of trailer parks, which have been slow to take shape, will almost surely be more expensive than a voucher program and may create long-term refugee ghettoes."

Krugman comes to the conclusion that Bush is trapped between being politically unable to ignore the needs of the hurricane survivors, and yet wanting to forge ahead with his destruction of the social safety net:

"So here's the key to understanding post-Katrina policy: Mr. Bush can't avoid helping Katrina's victims, but he doesn't want to legitimize institutions that help the needy, like the housing voucher program. As a result, his administration refuses to use those institutions, even when they are the best way to provide victims with aid. More generally, the administration is trying to treat Katrina's victims as harshly as the political realities allow, so as not to create a precedent for other aid efforts.
As the misery of the hurricane's survivors goes on, remember this: to a large extent, they are miserable by design."

As are the poorest and the working poor among us, and as are the prisoners of war being held legitimately and illegitimately by our war machine.

That "We" is bracketed because not all of us who oppose the Bush policies in Iraq were there. Corrente was represented by Riggsveda, and I'm sure we'll hear more first-hand reporting from her when the pain subsides from her broken toe, (not sure if this was a result of demonstrating, but as all who read her know, she is nothing if not intense, particularly about this demonstration).

I should admit right up front that I was somewhat skeptical of this demonstration. First, I have a real problem with ANSWER, even though I agree that it is outrageous only the left is ever called upon to renounce its idiot contingent; compare the actual power in the world of a Ramsey Clark to that of a Dr. Dobson, or a Pat Buchanan, who has a permanent berth of sorts at MSNBC, and I'm not even mentioning all those certifiable racist loons who are waiting for the confederate South to rise again, and who show up all over the place where Republicans gather.

Second, I always worry about lack of focus, as well as a dangerous sort of moral superiority that can develop in demonstrators, a topic for a later post. In spite of all that, had I not been a full continent away from Washington, I would have been there.

From The Chicago Tribune via Booman:

Two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, as images of devastation along the Gulf Coast and despair in New Orleans flickered across television screens, the head of one of the nation's largest bus associations repeatedly called federal disaster officials to offer help.

This morning Hurricane Rita chugs along at 140 mph, on target to flatten the coastline in her path as a Cat 4 storm. Better than a 5, absolutely, but its's troubling that it has lost so little power in the time it was downgraded yesterday.

I woke a little while ago to BBC World's dreary recitation of woes being experienced by the 2 million people fleeing Rita across the Gulf Coast: stalled lines of traffic more than 20 miles long, overheated and stalled and gasless cars lying in dead hulks by the roadsides, nightmare lines at the gas pumps and shortages there, calls from the governor of Texas to be patient and know that the irritated evacuees have done the right thing. And in the NYTimes the situation sounds even worse:

" Heeding days of dire warnings about Hurricane Rita, as many as 2.5 million people jammed evacuation routes on Thursday, creating colossal 100-mile-long traffic jams that left many people stranded and out of gas as the huge storm bore down on the Texas coast.
Acknowledging that "being on the highway is a deathtrap," Mayor Bill White asked for military help in rushing scarce fuel to stranded drivers. "

If the whole unfolding mess isn't futher proof of the utter failure of the Deptartment of Homeland Security in planning and helping municipalities plan for disasters,there's this:

"The Houston area's two major air gateways, Hobby Airport and Bush Intercontinental, suffered major delays when more than 150 screeners from the Transportation Security Administration, facing their own evacuation concerns, did not show up for work. The agency later rushed in replacements, a spokeswoman said, but passengers, already burdening the system with extra luggage for their trips to safety, waited for hours to go through security."

Don't even think about what might happen if we were faced with a more sudden emergency like a nuclear attack.

BBC World, who was reporting on all this as I blearily groped for the snooze alarm, turned to a by-now familiar bete noir of the Right's, global warming and its effect on the formation of hurricanes. They spoke with Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the British government, who told them in no uncertain terms that the waffling arguments being presented against global warning may represent dissent about it amongst laypeople, but in the scientific community there is no disagreement. Hurricanes form most frequently when the water's temperature goes to 28 degrees C and higher, and we have not seen the kind of temperatures that have led to Katrina and Rita in over a million years. CNN also reported today on a Brit scientist, Sir John Lawton, who has had it with the political agendists in the US who refuse to believe what’s right in front of their noses on this issue:

"Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution which advises the government, made what the Independent newspaper said was a thinly disguised attack on the stance of U.S. President George W. Bush's administration.
"The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming," Lawton told the newspaper in an interview.
"If this makes the climate loonies in the States realize we've got a problem, some good will come out of a truly awful situation," said Lawton...
"There are a group of people in various parts of the world ... who simply don't want to accept human activities can change climate and are changing the climate. I'd liken them to the people who denied that smoking causes lung cancer."
Lawton said hurricanes were getting more intense, just as computer models predicted they would, because of the rising temperature of the sea.
"Increasingly it looks like a smoking gun," he said."

It's massive, folks.

NOAA is giving a 13% chance of Hurricane Rita's eye passing within 65 knots of New Orleans between now and 1 a.m. Sunday. That could change, given the fickle nature of hurricanes, but it's still not worth sticking arounfd the wet streets of NOLA to take the chance. Galveston and Freeport, Texas currently have a 22% chance being hit. Galveston was wiped off the map and lost 6000 lives to the hurricane that hit it on September 8, 1900, still considered to be the nation's most deadly natural disaster.

Here's NOAA's latest advisory as of 3:00 a.m. EDT:

REPORTS FROM AN AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS REMAIN NEAR 175 MPH...280 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER GUSTS. THIS MAKES RITA A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. SOME FLUCTUATIONS IN INTENSITY ARE LIKELY DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 70 MILES...110 KM...FROM THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 185 MILES...295 KM.

THE LATEST MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE ESTIMATED FROM REPORTS BY THE HURRICANE HUNTER IS 897 MB...26.49 INCHES. THIS MEANS RITA IS THE THIRD MOST INTENSE HURRICANE IN TERMS OF PRESSURE IN THE ATLANTIC BASIN.

See Rita's most recent projected halo of influence here.

Hey, here's an opportunity for another Bush photo-op!

The government will pay more than $4 for each of the thousands of five-pound bags of ice ordered for Gulf Coast hurricane-relief efforts that are now sitting unused in tractor-trailers in Gloucester and across the United States, say shipping and ice-making experts.

Digby is kind enough to post a Wall Street Journal piece a friend sent him so ALL non-subscribing readers can have strokes. Dancing on the graves of those who died to provide them this opportunity, Republican zealots in Congress are crowing about enterprise zones, the murder of union representation, and wresting the legal system from those who might want to complain. Here's some of what gets these necrophiliacs hard:

"Just yesterday (the Bush administration) waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region."

Well, yes, because you know how hard it is to find blacks and Asians down there, and hell, you can hardly find women anywhere.

"Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims' right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and...Yesterday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would offer sweeping protection against lawsuits to any person or organization that helps Katrina victims without compensation."

Last thing you want is for people to demand recompense for losing their loved ones or everything they own by suing the assholes who could have prevented it. And never mind that much of the damage caused by the hurricane was the result of the destruction of the wetlands barrier around NOLA thanks to a callous disregard for environmental concerns over the last 20 years. Who needs environmental restrictions when there's lots more money to be made by the people who won't have to live with the result? School vouchers? All the better to eliminate that nasty universal free education cancer that resulted in all these over-educated drones thinking they actually had the right to expect a decent living. And as for protection against lawsuits for those helping Katrina victims, think of the experiments that could be done! All those folks exposed to toxic chemicals and bacteria! Why, I'll bet the EPA would have a field day mining that rich vein of poor people! Just offer them a nice baby bib and a video camera.   Read more…

I am not a journalist. I don't like exhaustive research, though I do respect such research. I have been skimming politics like a water bug my whole life: though I spent three years on the high school newspaper, I don't think I wrote a single straight news story. My whole itty bitty life has been about impressions and tones and intuition and snark and flights-of-fancy and bald-faced fantasy: don't get me wrong, I listen and read others and weigh the evidence that is laid out and then go on my way, writing lyrics or snark or nothing about these same topics. Hurricane Katrina has threatened my relationship with the written word, has clawed at it and mugged it and pulled me to the harder work of writing and making some kind of sense out of large disasters, but now I am slipping backwards inside myself, for I know there isn't anything more I can add in terms of "the facts of the case." What's weird is that I am a sort of mirror of the administration, fashioning reality as I go, adding textures and colors as I feel like, moving pieces around in often arbitrary patterns. The difference is I do it for fun while the Bush administration does it for profit.