Let's talk about the Clinton family hypocrisy on...

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

September 7, 2005

Women were Being Raped, Babies were Being Killed, Alligators were Eating People, But Where the Hell was the National Guard?
How We Survived the Flood
By CHARMAINE NEVILLE

This is a transcription of an interview Charmaine Neville, of New Orleans's legendary Neville family, gave to local media outlets on Monday, September 5.

I was in my house when everything first started. When the hurricane came, it blew all the left side of my house off, and the water was coming in my house in torrents.

I had my neighbor, an elderly man, and myself, in the house with our dogs and cats, and we were trying to stay out of the water. But the water was coming in too fast. So we ended up having to leave the house.

We left the house and we went up on the roof of a school. I took a crowbar and I burst the door on the roof of the school to help people on the roof.

Later on we found a flat boat, and we went around the neighborhood in a flat boat getting people out of their houses and bringing them to the school.

We found all the food that we could and we cooked and we fed people. But then, things started getting really bad.

By the second day, the people that were there, that we were feeding and everything, we had no more food and no water. We had nothing, and other people were coming in our neighborhood. We were watching the helicopters going across the bridge and airlift other people out, but they would hover over us and tell us Hi! and that would be all. They wouldn't drop us any food or any water, or nothing.

Alligators were eating people. They had all kinds of stuff in the water. They had babies floating in the water.

We had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people. People that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals and from the old-folks homes. I tried to get the police to help us, but I realized they were in the same straits we were. We rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat from the 5th district police station. The guy who was in the boat, he rescued a lot of them and brought them to different places so they could be saved.

We understood that the police couldn't help us, but we couldn't understand why the National Guard and them couldn't help us, because we kept seeing them but they never would stop and help us.

Finally it got to be too much, I just took all of the people that I could. I had two old women in wheelchairs with no legs, that I rowed them from down there in that nightmare to the French Quarters, and I went back and got more people.

There were groups of us, there were about 24 of us, and we kept going back and forth and rescuing whoever we could get and bringing them to the French Quarter because we heard that there were phones in the French Quarter, and that there wasn't any water. And they were right, there were phones, but we couldn't get through to anyone.

I found some police officers. I told them that a lot of us women had been raped down there by guys, not from the neighborhood where we were, they were helping us to save people. But other men, and they came and they started raping women and they started killing, and I don't know who these people were. I'm not gonna tell you I know, because I don't.

But what I want people to understand is that, if we hadn't been left down there like the animals that they were treating us like, all of those things wouldn't have happened. People are trying to say that we stayed in that city because we wanted to be rioting and we wanted to do this and, we didn't have resources to get out, we had no way to leave.

When they gave the evacuation order, if we could've left, we would have left.

There are still thousands and thousands of people trapped in their homes in the downtown area. When we finally did get into the 9th ward, and not just in my neighborhood, but in other neighborhoods in the 9th ward, there were a lot of people still trapped down there... old people, young people, babies, pregnant women. I mean, nobody's helping them.

And I want people to realize that we did not stay in the city so we could steal and loot and commit crimes. A lot of those young men lost their minds because the helicopters would fly over us and they wouldn't stop. We would make SOS on the flashlights, we'd do everything, and it really did come to a point, where these young men were so frustrated that they did start shooting. They weren't trying to hit the helicopters, they figured maybe they weren't seeing. Maybe if they hear this gunfire they will stop then. But that didn't help us. Nothing like that helped us.

Finally, I got to Canal St. with all of my people I had saved from back there.

I don't want them arresting nobody else. I broke the window in an RTA bus. I never learned how to drive a bus in my life. I got in that bus. I loaded all of those people in wheelchairs and in everything else into that bus, and we drove and we drove and we drove and millions of people was trying to get me to help them to get on the bus, too.

Charmaine Neville is a member of the third generation of New Orleans's legendary Neville musical family. She fronts the Charmaine Neville Band.

THE GOP'S FILIBUSTER HYPOCRISY

Though seemingly forgotten by most TV talking heads, it was only three years ago, when the Republicans had control of both the White House and Congress - and "filibuster" was a dirty word.

It was usually coupled with "obstructionist" amid demands that any of George W. Bush's proposals deserved "an up-or-down vote."

Yet now, with the Democrats holding the White House and Congress, the Republicans and the Washington press corps have come to view the filibuster fondly, as a valued American tradition, a time-honored part of a healthy legislative process.

Today, it's seen as a good thing that Democrats must muster 60 votes in the Senate to pass almost anything.

When the TV pundits talk about Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan squeaking through the Senate, they're actually referring to a vote that might fall in the range of 60 or more yes votes to perhaps 38 no's, a three-touchdown "squeaker."

The only thing close about the vote is whether the package can overcome a Republican filibuster and get 60 votes for "cloture." To reach this super-majority, Democrats have been forced to accept a higher percentage of tax cuts, even if leading economists consider tax cuts one of the least effective ways of stimulating the moribund economy.

Yet, this anti-democratic fact about the GOP strategy - that it seeks to frustrate the will of the American majority, which rejected the Republicans and their policies in the last two U.S. elections - is rarely mentioned in the news.

Nor is the fact that Republicans railed against even a hint of a filibuster when the Democrats were in the minority just a few years ago.

Back then, when the Republicans controlled everything, the big story was how a threatened Democratic filibuster against, say, one of Bush's right-wing judicial nominations would be met by the Republican "nuclear option" - using a majority-vote on a rule change to eliminate the filibuster permanently.

For instance, in 2006, when Bush wanted to put Samuel Alito on the U.S. Supreme Court, the move amounted to a direct threat to the Republic. Alito was a staunch believer in the imperial presidency, a promoter of a "unitary executive" who would wield unlimited powers at a time of war - and the "war on terror" promised to be an endless war.

If confirmed, Alito would join three other justices - John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas - who shared his extreme views, and possibly another, Anthony Kennedy, who was considered only slightly more moderate.

In effect, the Alito nomination raised the specter of five right-wing justices effectively gutting the U.S. Constitution and its checks and balances in favor of Bush's personal rule.

The Republic in the Balance

With the future of the American Republic in the balance and Bush short of 60 votes in favor of Alito, a filibuster could have stopped this radical nomination in its tracks and could have forced Bush to select a less extreme nominee.

Many in the Democratic "base" urged Senate Democrats to use the filibuster at this critical moment - a time when Bush was viewing himself as a new-age monarch and his political aides were fantasizing about a "permanent Republican majority," transforming the United States into a virtual one-party state with the Democrats kept around as a cosmetic appendage.

As this drama played out, the Washington news media weighed in heavily against a Democratic filibuster, essentially repeating Republican talking points about the need to give the President's nominee an up-or-down vote and bemoaning the anti-democratic nature of the filibuster.

Republican leaders thundered that any use of the filibuster against Alito or other Bush judicial nominees would force them to go "nuclear" by outlawing filibusters forever. Then, the Republicans could ram through whomever - or whatever - they wanted.

Rather than call the Republicans' bluff, "moderate" Democratic senators joined a bipartisan group called the "Gang of 14," which agreed to forego filibusters except in "extraordinary circumstances." And despite the alarm of many Americans about Bush's moves to eradicate the Republic, this "gang" did not believe Alito's confirmation reached the "extraordinary" standard.

So, when a few Democratic senators led by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts tried to mount a filibuster, the Senate Democratic leadership refused to put up a fight, even as their former standard bearer was mocked by Republicans as a "Swiss Miss" for first urging the filibuster while he was attending an economic conference in Davos, Switzerland.

Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan piled on Kerry at a White House press briefing. "I think even for a senator, it takes some pretty serious yodeling to call for a filibuster from a five-star ski resort in the Swiss Alps," McClellan laughed.

In support of his filibuster, Kerry could line up only 25 votes, while the Republicans amassed 72 votes for cloture - a dozen more than the 60 needed to shut off debate. Those votes included 19 Democrats.

On the final confirmation vote, however, Alito was approved by a much smaller margin, 58-42, meaning that he could have been kept off the Supreme Court if all those who considered him a poor choice had backed the filibuster.

[As for the fate of the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy turned out to be less of an extremist than some Republicans had hoped. He joined with more moderate justices in key 5-to-4 opinions that rebuffed President Bush's assertions of unlimited powers.]

Reversing Majorities

Despite the timidity of Senate Democrats in the Alito battle, an energized Democratic "base" - joined by Republican constitutionalists - fought on against the "permanent-Republican-majority" dreams of Bush, Karl Rove and the neoconservatives. In November 2006, the Republicans were repudiated at the polls.

Suddenly in the congressional minority, the Republicans did a flip-flop on the filibuster, discovering the high principles behind the tactic. The GOP used the filibuster routinely in 2007 and 2008 to block Democratic initiatives, especially any challenges to Bush's expansive claims of executive authority.

Typical of the modern Washington press corps, its leading voices changed, too, joining the Republican chorus hailing the filibuster as an honored tradition of democracy and finding value in the need for the Democrats to muster 60 Senate votes to pass any significant bill.

Today, the press corps continues in that pattern, forgetting the GOP's earlier contempt for the filibuster and treating its use by the Republican minority against the stimulus bill as normal.

There are rarely any comments about obstructionism, nor are the Republicans compared to the Southern segregationists who famously used the filibuster to resist civil rights laws in the 1950s and 1960s.

Given this pass by the press, Republicans are making the filibuster their chief weapon in pressuring Obama and congressional Democratic to accept more of a Republican-style stimulus bill with less spending and more tax cuts, regardless of whether that represents the best hope for the U.S. economy.

But the stimulus battle is likely to be only the first taste of the GOP strategy to hobble the Obama presidency. The Republicans can be expected to use the filibuster again and again to prevent many of the social and economic changes that the American voters endorsed in November 2008, policies like national health insurance and spending on long-neglected domestic needs.

In this obstructionism, the Republicans appear to have a powerful ally in the Washington press corps that - with few exceptions - treats the GOP's promiscuous use of filibusters as some responsible application of a time-honored tradition. The press also forgets to remind the U.S. public that just a few years ago, the Republicans hated filibusters.

--------

Congressional Budget Increased to pay GOP Staffers

February 25, 2009 12:04 PM

A ten percent increase in the budget for Congressional operations was needed because Senate Republicans wanted to retain previous staff levels despite having lost roughly 20 percent of their ranks in the 2008 elections, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said Wednesday.

Congressional Republicans have been pouncing on any instance of wasteful spending they can find, but the congressional-operations line item will likely remain safe from their ire.

The one-tenth hike brings the budget for Congress itself to $4.4 billion.

Reid, asked about the increase at a press conference, initially dodged the question, speaking instead about spending in general.

The unsatisfied reporter repeated the question about a ten percent raise for the congressional budget. "How is that going to help get out of the depression?" she pressed.

Don't blame us, said Reid.

"We had a situation -- you should direct that question to Senator McConnell," he said, referring to the Senate Minority Leader, "because we had trouble organizing this year. He wanted to maintain a lot of their staffing even though they had lost huge numbers. And the only way we could get it done is to do what we did. So you should direct that question to Senator McConnell."

A McConnell spokesman didn't immediately return a phone call.

UPDATE: A GOP leadership aide is calling rubbish: "I just don't know how they can get away with blaming us for that 10 percent figure," he writes in an e-mail. "Republicans aren't getting a dime more in committee money for staff than we got last year. The entire pot of funding used to operate Senate committees and other 'inquiries and investigations' is around 3 percent of the total ($137 million of $4.4 billion). And the increase from last year's funding for the 'inquiries and investigations' account is less than 2/10ths of 1 percent of the entire bill."

He adds: "For perspective: all Senate operations funding increased 7 percent, the House funding increased 7.5 percent and the Architect of the Capitol funding increased 28 percent."

UPDATE II: A Democratic leadership aide picks up on the notion that "Republicans aren't getting a dime more," noting that while they aren't getting more, they aren't getting less, either, even though they have far fewer members.

"This would be funny if it wasn't from someone associated with the the so-called party of fiscal responsibility," writes the aide. "This is the height of hypocrisy and utterly fails to acknowledge the fact that in the past, when the spread has been like it is now, the minority party gets far less money than what they eventually got. It was an unprecedented deal that is more outrageous when you realize that they will end up voting against the bill."

Look at the previous posts from pubs. Key words include marxist, communist, socialist, illegal alien, Muslim (like that's a bad word), anti-American, terrorist, and the list goes on. So, according to your standards, pointing this out is a smear tactic? At least the McCain campaign actually knows what a smear tactic is.

He questions "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good," and then he turns around and marries a LAWYER!

This isn't surprising to me at all. Bush's is doing nothing but taking us backwards in time, whether it regards science or civil rights. The only area that is moving forward by leaps and bounds and progressing at an alarming rate is the price of gasoline.

She was left unsupervised at a very critical age (like the Down baby will be) and did not receive enough parental guidance to prevent this tragedy.

Barack and Michelle have been married for years with not a hint of scandal. they have two beautiful age-appropriate children. Joe Biden has a beautiful blended family that truly loves each other. McCain dumped his gravely injured first wife for a beauty queen. Then he was pressured into picking another beauty queen with an Down infant who obviously needs a full time mother and pregnant teenager for his running mate. Family values, family values, family values.

They looked great to me. Cindy McCain reached for the child, it wasn't handed off to her. Bristol looked anything but terrified. She looked proud of her mother. And well she should be. She is running for VP of the United States. I thought it was especially sweet with the little girl licked her hand to smooth down the baby's cowlick. Circus freaks are the last words I would use to describe this family.

of your business. I am being viciously mistreated by the press. Wait, film this. It will get me some votes. Watch me bravely send my first born off to the endless war my political party started.

by picking O and I have been running into a lot more people including strangers who also agree. No more freedom and some of the elderly seem to think our country is going to turn out like Germany years ago. I guess this is what the young people want.

There sure are a lot of people stocking up and buying ammunition too. Afraid guns will be gone and cannot buy anymore. Others believe to stock up on guns to use for barter exchanges down the road. That is what some Americans are seeing how our FREEDOM country will turn out down in the future. You can do A LOT OF DAMAGE in 4 years to this country. Just kissed good-bye to the ole USA as of late Nov. 4, 2008. I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK, DANG IT.