It’s called Gigapan, a robotic panorama-maker. David Bergman used one to take the picture above (though his view was much larger) (you can buy your own for about $300 if you get in on the beta). The point, however, is that if you zoom in real close, you can see W’s pursed lipped scowl.

Sure, volleyball is the new gymnastics, so much so that the White House posted a picture of Bush with Olympians Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh in their “News & Policy” section. Chalk it up to August being a slow news month. Still, I can just imagine the old man telling Laura “I think you should invite those volleyball girls to the house sometime.” And Laura, I hope, responds: “You can watch them shake it on TV if you need another look.”

(via)

Stolen from Jessamyn’s photostream.

Is Bush really so hawkish that he refuses to formally declare an end to the Korean War?

bush, george bush, hawkish, Korea, Korean War, peace, george w bush

The neocons were right so far: civil war is erupting throughout the middle east and Iran is feeding the flames. Is this really what we (or anybody) wanted?

neocons, middle east, war, civil war, bush, george w bush, w, george bush religion

Bush gets queasy stomach when facing other world leaders at G8. The poor fellow is being shamed by his peers.

queasy stomach, G8, george w bush, bush, george bush, laughing-stock

The Huffington Post pointed out how the White House is doctoring video of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech from May 2003. Visitors to whitehouse.gov now get a video that crops out the mission accomplished sign.

How Orwellian will this president get? “The future of evil is in manipulating information.”

bush, george bush, george w bush, lies, manipulation, ministry of truth, mission accomplished, orwellian, revisionism, revisionist history, w

Mentioned earlier, but worth mentioning again: TrueMajorityACTION’s Take It Back campaign. Among the videos and political graffiti of the moment, don’t miss Freedom, Beat Box Bush, and Hijacking Catastrophe.

And as funny as the Brazillion Joke is, we need a government that doesn’t lie, a government that’s smart, a government that cares for its people, its soldiers and foreign civilians and our elections.

bush, election, george bush, george w bush, iraq, midterm, midterms, politics, progressive issues, bush, election, iraq, katrina, midterm, war, take it back, true majority, vote, voting, w, war

found by lorelei in Copenhagen.

discovered by Kieran’sPhoto’s’ in Cork.

bush, election, george bush, george w bush, iraq, midterm, midterms, politics, vote, voting, w, war

Karen forwarded mgarthoff’s Freedom, tagged: bush war election midterm iraq katrina on YouTube.

Freedom, bush, election, freedom, george bush, george w bush, iraq, katrina, mgarthoff, midterm, midterms, politics, video, vote, voting, w, war

Bush speech mashups rock. From Google Video:

So, you wanna learn how to beatbox? GWB is back with another amazing performance. Surprisingly he is actually very good.

Previously: State of the Union? Not good.

Also, note the tags on that video, and the way somebody snuck “????? ??? ? ???” past the filters.

awesome, beatbox, beatboxen bush, bush, bush beatbox, cheney, cool, funny, george bush, george w, george w bush, hilarious, lol, mashup, speech, stupid, w, weapons

Alpha Liberal reminds me that Bush somehow gets his head around the following:

“the jury is still out on evolution”

and

“the bird flu virus could evolve to a form that can be spread easily from human to human”

eh, I’ll take any excuse to point to Michelle Leeds’ photo and bash Bush’s stupidity.

bird flu, bush, cognitive dissonance, evolution, evolve, george w, george w bush, h5n1, regressive, regressive stupidity, stupid, stupidity, w

Frank Rich’s New York Times op-ed column today was full of the kind of easy one-liners that repressives conservatives usually like to use against honest people progressives. I got it from my friend Joe, but because The New York Times thinks their content is golden, they won’t let me link you to the full-text. Eh, I looked it up in LexisNexis (also a paid service, but better (marginally)) and posted the good parts here:

The Downing Street memo — minutes of a Tony Blair meeting with senior advisers in July 2002, nearly eight months before the war began — has proved as accurate as “Mission Accomplished” was fantasy. Each week brings new confirmation that the White House, as the head of British intelligence put it, was determined to fix “the intelligence and facts” around its predetermined policy of going to war in Iraq. Today Mr. Bush tries to pass the buck on the missing W.M.D. to “faulty intelligence,” but his alibi is springing leaks faster than the White House and the C.I.A. can clamp down on them. We now know the president knew that the intelligence he cherry-picked was faulty — and flogged it anyway to sell us the war.

[Former CIA agent] Drumheller says that until the White House “comes to grips with why it did this” and stops “propping up the original rationale” for the war, it “will never get out of Iraq.” He is right. But the White House clings to its discredited fictions even though their expiration date is fast arriving. There are new Drumhellers seeking out reporters each day. The Fitzgerald investigation continues to yield revelations of administration W.M.D. subterfuge, president-authorized leaks included. Should the Democrats retake either house of Congress in November, their subpoena power will liberate the investigation of the manipulation of prewar intelligence that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, has stalled for almost two years.

The only person who can try to save the administration from itself in Iraq is the president. He can start telling the truth in the narrow window of time he has left and initiate a candid national conversation about our inevitable exit strategy. Or he can wait for events on the ground in Iraq and political realities at home to do it for him.

1000 days, bush, dubya, failure, falsehoods, frank rich, george bush, george w, george w bush, iraq, iraq war, lies, op-ed, political expediencies, w, war, war crimes

President Bush, speaking in Alabama at the American Competitiveness Initiative, made a claim that would make Al Gore blush: he claimed to have invented the iPod.

After taking credit for the development of ultra-small hard drives, audio compression, and chemistry(?), he laid it out: “it turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod.”

Tip o’ the hat to Engadget.

a matter of trust, bush, bush lies, george bush, george w bush, I invented the ipod, ipod, ipod inventor, lier, lies, president bush, w

I wish I could admit the provenance of the following, but I’ve been sworn to secrecy. Here goes:

Donald Rumsfeld is briefing president Bush: “Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed.”

“Oh no!” exclaims the president, “that’s terrible!”

His staff is stunned at this unprecedented display of emotion, watching as Bush sits, head in hands.

Finally, he looks up and asks, “How many is a brazillion?”

bush, w, george w, george w bush, idiot, Brazilians, brazillion, president, el presidente

This should be no surprise — especially to those who’ve been appropriately concerned about electronic voting machines: Lyn Davis Lear is reporting on a GAO report that concluded the 2004 election was fraudulent and a Diebold insider is blowing the whistle (via Engadget).

What does the report confirm? Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman summarize:

1. Some electronic voting machines “did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected.” In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush’s official margin of victory.
    
2. “It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate.” Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.
    
3. “Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.” 3. Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.
    
4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a “widespread conspiracy” but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.
    
5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.
    
6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.
    
7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.
    
8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.

stolen, fraud, bush, george bush, w, george w bush, ohio, election, 2004, gao, report, confirmed, findings, conspiracy, democracy, selection

(about the photo)

The following report comes from CosmoBaker.com, which includes this preamble:

EDIT: The following is an email that was sent to my mother from one of her colleagues. Although I cannot substantiate the contents, after all the horror stories that I’ve heard so far, I though that this one was important to tell. Stand up and be counted. Spread truth. Stay awake.

C
—–Original Message—–
The following is a message from Tobias Wolff to his father, Robert Paul Wolff, professor in the Afro-American Studies Department at UMass Amherst, and contains an eyewitness account of two friends of Tobias who were trapped in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 11:07 PM

Subject: Saramago’s Blindness Revisited — an eyewitness account fromNew Orleans

Dad –

Forward this message to your friends in the department (and elsewhere) — it is quite something.

I found it linked in _rebekka’s Flickr photostream, where she remarks

Even if only half of what is written is true, it would be too horrible to imagine, yet i believe all of it is.

Please read. Please share.

Begin forwarded message:

Two friends of mine-paramedics attending a conference-were trapped in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. This is their eyewitness report. –PG
 

Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences
 

Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky
 

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen’s store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen’s windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.
 

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen’s gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.
 

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen’s in the French Quarter.
 

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with “hero” images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the “victims” of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators.
 

Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, “stealing” boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.
 

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.
 

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.
 

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the “imminent” arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.
 

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the “officials” told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City’s primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole.
 

The guards further told us that the City’s only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, “If we can’t go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?” The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile “law enforcement”.
 

We walked to the police command center at Harrah’s on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City.
 

The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, “I swear to you that the buses are there.”
 

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.
 

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander’s assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
 

We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.
 

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O’Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses. All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot.
 

Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.
 

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let’s hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts.
 

Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).
 

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community.
 

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in.
 

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.
 

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. “Taking care of us” had an ominous tone to it.
 

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, “Get off the fucking freeway”. A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.
 

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of “victims” they saw “mob” or “riot”. We felt safety in numbers. Our “we must stay together” was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.
 

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.
 

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.
 

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.
 

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.
 

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be “medically screened” to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.
 

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

tags: bush, catastrophe, dead bodies, email, email forward, eyewitness account, eyewitness report, forward, george bush, george w bush, hurricane, hurricane katrina, katrina, louisiana, new orleans, new orleans louisiana, nola, police brutality, shame, w

Reuters: FEMA accused of censorship:

“It’s impossible for me to imagine how you report a story whose subject is death without allowing the public to see images of the subject of the story,” said Larry Siems of the PEN American Center, an authors’ group that defends free expression.

Brian Williams’ MSNBC Nightly News Blog:

While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. …a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media… obvious members of the media… armed only with notepads.

…the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome)…

[emphasis added --Casey]

Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo:

…it’s pretty clear that a key aim of the Bush administration’s takeover of the [New Orleans] situation is to cut off press access to report the story.

Photo credit: Reuters, published in Mainich Daily News’ Katrina photo special. Request: honor the Katrina dead and the lessons they can teach us, don’t hide from them. Don’t ignore them the way Bush did while they were still alive.

tags: brian williams, bush, bushh, catastrophe, censor, censor this, censor this!, censorship, dead bodies, death, fema, george bush, george w bush, government, government censors, government censorship, hurricane, hurricane katrina, joshua micah marshall, katrina, louisiana, media, msnbc nightly news, national guard, new orleans, nola, pen american center, shame, talking points memo, w

DefenseTech’s Noah Shachtman writes:

Organizing thousands and thousands of people, in hellish conditions and in a hurry, is tough work. Let’s take that as a given. But still: We’re now a work week into a natural disaster that had been forecast for years, and New Orleans “is being run by thugs,” the city’s emergency preparedness director tells the Times. “Some people there have not eaten or drunk water for three or four days, which is inexcusable.”

In another post, Shactman asks how the DHS could fail its job so badly?

Meanwhile, Pravda declares George W. Bush has abandoned Americans and it turns out that FEMA is directing donations to Rev. Pat Robertson, yes, that same Pat Robertson who put a fatwa on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and is now wanted as an international terrorist.

Extra: Earl Hutchinson explores How to Create a Crisis.

tags: bush, defensetech, dhs, disaster, donations, emergency, fema, flood, george bush, george w bush, gulf coast, homeland security, hurricane, hurricane katrina, katrina, louisiana, new orleans, pat robertson, shame, w, wtf

Two items from the blogosphere about Rove’s Leak-and-Covergate at Tikun Olam and AlterNet.

tags: alternet, bush, coverup, george bush, george w bush, karl rove, rove, tikun olam, w, white house

First Lady Laura Bush speaking at the White House Correspondents Association gala noted:

George’s answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chain saw. Which, I think, is why he and Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well.

The quote is all over the net now, but I found it in the August issue of Vanity Fair.

tags: chain saw, cheny, cut it down, dick cheney, donald rumsfeld, first lady, george, george bush, george w bush, laura bush, president, problem management, rumsfeld, vanity fair, w, white house, white house correspondents association

On the heels of “Bush has failed the military on almost every level — marking the difference between being militaristic and pro-military.”

Discounting that he sent American troops into Iraq on false pretenses, a real commander would fight for the welfare of his troops. But Bush has demonstrated a consistent unwillingness to do so, and as a result many high-ranking officers have endorsed Kerry, including retired Navy Adm. William Crowe and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. John Shalikashvili.

Further, that the Bush administration has somehow linked our security with music piracy is even less comforting to me. Like “oh, terrorists might steal music, we better get them!” Sorry for the digression, but efforts like that cost money that could be spent on, say, body armor while doing little to actually make us safer.

Can our military afford four more years?

w, george w bush, bush, george bush, militaristic, support our troops