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"Rove was involved in the early White House response and subsequently has been a leader in the federal government's reconstruction effort."
It's the Dallas Morning News. The article asserts this as fact. I suspect that it is untrue and is planted information.
In my opinion, the ways that Bush got caught with his pants down in the newstream, in the first three or four (or more) days of Katrina, indicated that he was all alone, without his usual support system and with no spin machine. It was so noticeable that Rove appears to have issued a cover story, that he had been in the hospital with gall stones. Now the spin (re the lack of spin)--above--is that he was "involved in the early White House response," and then was "a leader" of the "reconstruction effort."
It was my theory that Rove was negotiating his Treasongate pardon, and was on strike when Bush was doing those insane photo ops with a guitar and with a cake, while a large chunk of the U.S. was getting blown off the map and thousands of Americans were dying. Then, after days of no spin, and extensive damage had been done to Bush's image, the spin machine abruptly started up again, and we got the "blame game" meme and Bush's first photo op re the hurricane.
It seemed like Bush's entire gang was AWOL--and he was hanging out there by himself "twisting slowly in the wind" (as I think John Erlichman said during Watergate). (Or was it John Dean? Can't recall.)
But Cheney was only pretending to be uninterested. He was said to be "gone fishing" in Wyoming--and seemed to have disappeared--but was quite active issuing orders to crews in Mississippi to work all night in dangerous conditions to restore power to a gas pipeline to send Texas gas through Mississippi and Louisiana to the NORTHEAST, rather than getting power to rural Mississippi hospitals, one of which was already on generators and the other threatened. (Local crews were surprised to find out--after working all night, thinking they were helping hurricane victims--that they had been restoring a gas pipeline; and local authorities seemed puzzled by this order from the V-P's office.)
But Cheney didn't crawl out of his rathole for a hurricane photo op until very, very late in the week--after the money train got going, with the first billions going to Halliburton. I figured he was blackmailing Bush with a threat to rat on him in Treasongate, that what he wanted was total control of LA--martial law, federalization, all power in the V-P's office--which is what prompted Bush to try to strongarm Blanco into giving up all control of her state, using the sick and dying poor as an extortion item--no martial law, no aid. (Blanco balked.) About that time, Daddy Bush and Clinton stood behind Bush Jr. in a somewhat weird press event--which I think might have been aimed at Cheney and perhaps Rove also. (--it's like they were saying, "We're siding with Bush Jr. in this.").
Rumsfeld wasn't really on vacation either--he was busy bombing the shit out of a village on the Syrian border (with Syria stating, a few days into this, that there was no border problem) (--all very ominous).
Don't know what Condi was really up to. But all of these people were noticeably NOT THERE for Bush Jr., as he floundered in the media.
I think the White House was in serious disarray during the first week of Katrina. And things have now settled down a bit, behind the scenes, perhaps only temporarily (--with some agreements about Treasongate and the Katrina loot.)
I think there may be a split between the indictable and the unindictable, and maybe between pro-Bush vs pro-Cheney factions.
As with everything Bush, it is probably smart to assume that there was a long term plan to profit from pain and suffering, by creating or exacerbating chaos--in this case, the 80% funding cut to flood prevention and disaster planning in New Orleans (a Democratic city), and the unconscionable delay in aid to the poor and the stranded. There was no incompetence involved whatsoever. The plan was to permit New Orleans to be ruined, and use it as the new cash cow for Halliburton and buds--with the Iraq war in disrepute, and questions arising about future war funding and the grand theft that has occurred there. (--and don't forget the play that Cindy Sheehan was getting, from the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, just before Katrina; they do not permit coverage of such things without a reason; I was thinking, at that time, that the war profiteers maybe couldn't squeeze much more out of Iraq and out of us, for Iraq, under Bush, and were laying the ground work for a War Democrat to be installed, to keep the war going).
But the Fitzgerald Grand Jury is something of a wild card in this situation--a profound threat to this regime that was lurking behind everything that happened over the last couple of weeks. When Bush was committing all those astonishing blunders, I thought, for a couple of days there, that the whole regime might be tumbling down. I considered that Bush was being actively sabotaged, and a Cheney coup was about to happen. Not until I thought about Treasongate did these events seem to fall into place--a divided White House, blackmail going on, presidential pardon negotiations, etc.
But it's like reading entrails, trying to figure out what's going on with this darkest of regimes.
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The light...
We need...
Paper ballots hand-counted at the precinct level (--Canada does it in one day, although speed should not even be a consideration, just accuracy and verifiability)
or, at the least...
Paper ballot (not "paper trail") backup of all electronic voting, a 10% automatic recount, very strict security, and NO SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code! (...jeez!).
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The will of the majority. The common good. The Enlightenment. The balance of power. Openness. Transparency. Progress. Positive leadership. Democracy. Peace. Justice. Lawfulness. And the avoidance of mass murder, egregious lying, massive looting and grave criminality in government--all depend upon honest elections.
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