I get a lot of requests to trade links, most of which I ignore, but if you really want to catch my attention, here are a few tips. First, write really great stuff. Consistently. Maybe I’m weird, but I like great stuff. Second, nag me incessantly. I simply don’t have time to visit all of my favorite blogs on a daily basis, so don’t assume I’ve seen your latest post. If it’s something you think I’d be interested in, drop me an email and let me know. And third, drop by Drinking Liberally and buy me a beer. I’ll feel a little guilty and indebted, and might think kindly of you the next time I update my blogroll. (But no promises.)
And then there’s brown-nosing. For example, take Darryl at Hominid Views, one of the recent additions to my blogroll. He writes great stuff, emails me frequently to tell me about the great stuff he’s written, and regularly shows up at Drinking Liberally to buy me a beer. What a guy. And then he goes out and earns extra brownie points today with an excellent bit of brown-nosing: “Goldy topples Brown!”
Keep up the great work Darryl. (And keep pouring those beers.)
R. David Paulison will make an excellent FEMA director. Thanks for helping getting rid of the unqualified Michael Brown. Good job, Goldy!
I respectfully disagree that James Lee Witt would be the only person capable of running FEMA. Time for a new person, and more than one person is qualified.
I wonder if this is the professional welfare bum Darryl that calls Carlson from time to time?
Chuck–
Perhaps this Blogger Darryl is Welfare Darryl’s brother….kind of like the Mackenzie Brothers.
You know…”This is my brother Darryl….and this is my other brother Darryl”!
Both a retarded with a combined IQ of less than 20 and live in a backwoods hovel!
Goldy is to be known by the company he keeps.
I do enjoy Goldy’s constant pleas for admiration. The desperation of those pleas are similiar to a little boy nagging his mommy with “He mommy look at me!!! Look what I can do mommy. Aren’t I cool mommy! Look mommy, I can walk with my finger up my nose and my thumb rammed up my ass!!!” Do you love me mommy? How much do you love me mommy??”
Like I’ve said previously, it’s a well-known fact in the psychology community that 100% of LEFTIST PINHEADS have some form of serious mental illness. Sadly…but predictably….our Goldy is just as crazy as the other stewed brained LEFTIST PINHEADS!!
Chuck and Mr. Cynical: I see you have no agenda either.
lucy–
NO AGENDA? NO AGENDA??
You think I have NO FUCKING AGENDA!!!
My agenda is clearly one that ridicules and exposes the fallacies that plague your fucking alleged mind!!
Whaddayamean I don’t have no stinking AGENDA!!
Like going into a coffe shop and buying Jesus a latte. Or was that DRIBBLYPUD?
Richard @1,
I agree, Paulison sounds experienced. But then, my understanding is, he is only the the acting director. It is not clear that Bush intends to appoint him to the position permanently.
In any case, it does feel good to know that I played my own small role in effecting positive change… getting a political hack out of office and replaced by a professional. The blogosphere — Daily Kos in particular — is an amazing tool.
Goldy:
Excellent work, Goldy. If only MSM media could do such journalism. It will be interesting to see who Bush appoints permanently to that job. The Republicans could still mitigate the political mudflow from this disaster, IF they act responsibly to correct what is terribly wrong at the homeland “security” department. When I think about the billions of dollars that those clowns have spent improving our “security” only to be shown to be the charlatans that they are … Now our country will face countless billions in recovery costs. Will the GOP act to prevent a run on those countless billions by politically well-connected corporations and individuals, with the same outcome (no improvement in “security”)? Or will Blackwater, Halliburton, et al again soak the middle class?
I dunno tho’, its to the point where if Bush appoints ’em, I don’t trust ’em. Still waiting for the other foot to fall on Paulson
Hurricane Katrina left behind a still untold death toll, but it apparently spared the lives of some 1,000 lucky chickens. Now, instead of meeting their fate in a Mississippi slaughterhouse, the birds are on their way to the Bay Area and other parts of the United States where they will live out the rest of their lives in sanctuaries and backyards. [There were reports of canabalism in New Orleans. Now, if there were plenty of chickens, why were blacks eating blacks? Was this a “black culture thing”?]
About 8,000 people with HIV and AIDS who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina now face the massive challenge of trying to manage their disease without their doctors, their clinics and their support systems. “I’m very frustrated right now,” said Noel Twilbeck, executive director of the NO/AIDS Task Force, the oldest HIV/AIDS service organization in the Gulf South. [FEMA should “relocate” these 8000 to San Francisco, or Cambridge, MASS immediately. Democrats at play!!]
windie, et al.
Contrary to popular belief, Bush isn’t inherently bad, he just has some very distinct priorities on running the Executive Branch that aren’t terribly healthy. Those are:
1) Keep as much authority in as few hands as possible. A small group of players can make decisions quickly. A large group will argue and debate incessantly (or so goes the theory). Everyone outside of the core group should have one job, and that is to implement the decisions of the core quickly and without asking questions or putting their own spin on it.
2) Pay extremely close attention to the mood of the electorate. It’s OK to appoint a tool to the United Nations, because nobody outside of the readership of The New York Times will give a rats, and most NYT readers wouldn’t vote for Bush if he was giving out free ice cream in Central Park, so why pander to a vote you will certainly lose?
Michael Brown’s utter incompetence was becoming an issue with people who probably would vote for Bush, so it was time to fix that.
Rule 2 came into conflict with rule 1 in this case. Unlike in Asimov, the Second Law trumps the First.
Goldy @ 7
You did more than a small role…you were the catalyst unleashing this entire set of events.
AMAZING and you deserve all the kudos sent your way.
Keep up the good work!
And one more thing, Goldy. Now is definitely the time to change your website name. Its fun and relevance are over — now that you have a national platform. Also, it won’t hurt your credibility in the eyes of many….
jsa@12
seriously tho’, name an appointment thats really impressed you up to this point, especially for FEMA and/or DHS. He has a real knack for picking the *wrong* person consistantly.
By all means, go buy Goldy a drink at “Drinking Liberally,” if just one more sorry leftist pinhead moonbat were to show up there, they might be able to fill up a 4-top!
Goldy @ 7
Good point. Paulison is only the “acting” FEMA Director. Will Bush find another political hack to present for Senate confirmation?
A few days ago, I analyzed the ten FEMA regions. Five of them had acting regional directors — usually the senior FEMA civil servant holding the place until a hack gets appointed. These people’s bios seemed pretty qualified.
But out of the five FEMA regions with regular directors, two of them didn’t even post their official bios. Out of the three regular directors that posted bios, one had a diploma mill bachelor’s degree (Pennington in our Region X), another had a two year associate degree (legit however), and the other had an MBA from a regular state university.
Goldy,
I cannot believe you are actually taking credit for Brown Resigning.
Give me a fucking break….
windie @15
According to Al Gore, if it wasn’t for appointee Norm Mineta at DoT, his medical rescue flights would have never gotten clearance to land. Because of Norm, they did–and about 250 patients and evacuees were airlifted out to safety.
So that’s one. :)
WOW! Here’s a first for this administration – Bush is taking responsibility for the faulty federal response.
The ONLY reason he’s doing it, is because the light of truth has been shed on the shabby planning and preparation by the DHS regarding our ability to respond to a region wide disaster.
For the president and the party that ran on preserving our “national security” it shows they’ve been, well, fucking off.
I can’t wait for the elections in ’06!
Looks like Bush has spent all of his political capital on this one. No more credibility in the publics view which translates to no more ramrodding legislation through congress. Bush has just become a liability to anyone on the republican ticket seeking office.
HA HA!
Nice strong leader ya’ll have in NO
The Dallas Morning News reports that Nagin has already bought a house in the city, and enrolled his daughter in school.
(did Rudy G flee to Boston after 9/11?)
“It would not take a large shift of population out of New Orleans to tilt the political balance in favor of the Republican Party,” Jim Nickel, the former Democratic state chairman in Louisiana, tells the Financial Times. “Although there are large African American populations in other Southern states, they have not been as concentrated and organized in a large metropolitan area. New Orleans has been a veritable ATM machine of votes for the Democratic Party.” [Here is the real issue in LA. Without massive voter fraud, Dems lose LA.]
20..Righton………Classic! Very funny!!! “Gotta gets outta the mofo city!!” JCH
(did Rudy G flee to Boston after 9/11?)
Was New York almost completely annihilated after 9/11? Are there any schools left in NOLA?
Aexia, was Rudy whining about nobody helping him, or was he just working…
@ 25
Rudy didn’t whine because everybody was helping him, including NATO countries!
Remember how long it took Bush to climb that pile of ruble?
9/11/01 WTC attacked 8:46am
9/14/01 Bush visit ground zero 7:12am (70hrs 36mns)
8/29/05 Katrina makes landfall 7:00am
9/02/05 Bush makes first photo op 10:00am (99 hours later)
This is what you call a “day late and a dollar short.”
NYC = 10 square blocks of destruction
NO = 80% of an entire American city wiped out.
The Bush Crime Family is about to come to justice.
Even the UK get’s it!!! from the Daily Telegraph. Oh and BTW, GBS, love your regurgitation of Rhandi Rhodes rants, the most un-listened to radio host in the country. have you ever had an original thought in your pathetic life other than how to keep that benefits check coming?
Bush kept his head and the danger’s passed
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 13/09/2005)
‘Flood That Released America’s Demons”, said the Sun on Saturday. Underneath the arresting headline was a column by Jeremy Clarkson, and, after the usual good-natured knockabout – “Most Americans barely have the brains to walk on their back legs” – he turned to the desperate scenes being played out in New Orleans: “On the streets you’ve got some poor, starving soul helping themselves to a packet of food from a ruined, deserted supermarket. And as a result, finding themselves being blown to pieces by a helicopter gunship. With the none-too-bright soldiers urged on by their illiterate political masters, the poor and needy never stood a chance. It’s easier and much more fun to shoot someone than make them a cup of tea.
“Especially if they’re black.”
I have to agree with Jeremy there. It is easier to shoot someone than make them a cup of tea. Especially if you’re the US Marine Corps and you’re making tea for some Brit columnist: don’t forget to warm the pot. Pour the milk before the water – or is it the other way round? Who the hell can stay on top of it all? Easier to pull out the .44 Magnum and say: “Go ahead, punk, make my Earl Grey.”
So, instead of Special Forces rappelling down with steaming samovars of PG Tips strapped to their backs, the helicopter gunships blew the poor needy starving blacks to pieces.
Hmm. I must have dozed off during that bit on CNN.
I’ll leave it to future generations of historians to settle the precise moment at which Hurricane Katrina finally completed its transformation into a Kansas-type twister, and swept up the massed ranks of the world’s press to deposit them on the wilder shores of the Land of Oz. But for a couple of weeks now they’ve been there frolicking and gambolling as happy Media Munchkins, singing and dancing “Ding Dong, The Bush Is Dead”.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the storm is exhausted, meteorologically and politically. Power has been restored to the whole of Mississippi (much quicker than in Euro-style big-government Quebec during the 1998 ice storm, incidentally), the Big Easy is being pumped free of water far ahead of anybody’s expectations, and, as the New York Times put it: “Death Toll In New Orleans May Be Lower Than First Feared”.
No truth in the rumour that early editions read “Than First Hoped”.
Still, the media could never quite disguise the impression that their principal enthusiasm for this story derived from its potential as “the Bush Administration’s political nemesis,” as The Sunday Telegraph’s Niall Ferguson put it. Predicting a back-to-the-Seventies economic slump, Prof Ferguson noted that post-Katrina “gasoline prices in some parts of the United States soared to $5 a gallon”.
I wonder where. In New Hampshire this weekend, gas was back below three bucks a gallon and heading south. Undeterred, the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland got out his crystal ball – for the 2004 election: “It’s safe to say that if George Bush was in his first term, he would now be heading for defeat.”
C’mon, man, how lame is that? At least Gavin Macdonald, a reader in Amsterdam writing to mock “Mark Steyn’s dependly nutty take”, is confident enough to declare that “the Republicans’ chances of winning the next election are already pretty much over”.
Let me dispel Messrs Freedland and Macdonald’s illusions: there will be no political consequences from Hurricane Katrina.
Apart from anything else, it would seem unlikely that in the 2006 elections voters in states unafflicted by Katrina would eschew Republican incumbents and stampede to vote for the party that’s given us the New Orleans Police Department, its clown mayor and Louisiana’s sob-sister governor. But forget the question of jurisdictional responsibility and instead grant the critics their fraudulent argument that this is all the fault of the federal government – ie, Bush and the Republicans. Why then will it have no electoral fallout?
For the answer, let’s go to Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives. At a meeting in the White House last week, she had the guts to walk up to the flailing Bush and demand he immediately fire the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Why?” asked Bush.
“Well,” said Mrs Pelosi, and then paused. “For everything.” Another pause. “It was so slow.”
“Thank you for your advice,” said the President drily. I’m often dismissed as a Bush cheerleader, though I disagree with him on immigration, education and bombing Syria. But come on, a guy doesn’t have to be great to be better than Nancy Pelosi, the armchair general of armchair generalities.
These days, the Republicans are the party of small government and the party of big government, and the party of all points in between. The Democrats, meanwhile, are the party of emotive know-nothings, the go-to guys for soap-operatic sobbing and righteous histrionics. You can understand why the 24-hour cable-news networks love the Dems. Just stick a camera in front of New Orleans’s Mayor Nagin: “To those who would criticise, where the hell were you?” he roared the other day. “Where the hell were you?” In a town you’re not the mayor of, happily. That’s how most Americans react. But the media think, wow, this is great television, he really socks it to Bush. And, if life were an especially bad daytime soap, he would. But ask Democrats for specifics and they’re either as blank as Mrs Pelosi or as mired in their ancient tropes as Jesse Jackson, who demanded Bush appoint more high-ranking blacks to the hurricane relief effort. Charges of Republican “racism” rang particularly hollow in the context of New Orleans, where sodden blacks might be better advised to ponder what they have to show for being a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party for four decades.
Unlike other dead horses flogged by the media – Cindy Sheehan, torture at Guantanamo, etc – this was at one point a real story: an actual hurricane, people dying, things going wrong. But that wasn’t good enough, and the more they tossed in to damage Bush, the more they drowned any real controversy in the usual dreary pseudo-controversy. After watching Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu threatening to punch out the President, a reader e-mailed me Kipling: “If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”
That’s all Bush had to do. The storm has passed.
GBS @ 26
Actually, the New Orleans timeline for Bush should be longer. His visit on 09/02/2005 only had him on the ground at the AIRPORT — which is about eight miles east of city limits. He flew over the city in a helicopter, but didn’t land anywhere.
Bush didn’t get on the ground in New Orleans until yesterday morning 09/12/2005. That is 14 days after Hurricane Katrina hit.
When 9/11 happened, Bush was on the ground in NYC less than 72 hours later, AND stood on top on a bunch of rubble from the World Trade Center
IDGAF @ 27
Good point. The Democrats need to offer the public some ideas and programs, rather than just criticize the Republicans all the time. That would make political discourse in this country more civil, political activity more beneficial to society — and WHO KNOWS maybe some of the Democrats’ ideas and programs might actually get adopted and implemented.
Richard Pope @ 28
If the lefties posting on this site are to be the source of the “ideas and programs”, don;t hold your breath. A sorrier group of neo-libs would be tough to invent.
Richard Pope and Zip: If the Donkcrats put their ideas into the public forum, they would be worse off in the electorate than they are now. Do you want the American people to prove Machiavelli was right – people really are stupid and need to be lead around by the nose? What ideas do donkocrats have?
As I remember, donkocrats are the eBay of DC, selling off military secrets and our freedom to the highest bidders. – The Chinese. So Richard and zip, I hope you are not saying “Grab Your Ankles America!”
Anything said by a Rep on this thread is dead wrong….
lucy has a brain
re 27: In 2006 , how will you blame gas-gouging on Dems.? It won’t fly.
headless lucy @ 33
‘In 2006 , how will you blame gas-gouging on Dems.?’
Shortages exasperated by opposition to new refineries, drilling for oil in the US and nuclear power. The dems want everything that makes fuel scarce and taxed high enough to reduce consumption, and then want to complain when the price is high. Priceless.
nowonder @ 34
which of these were NOT true a year ago, when gas was 50-75c cheaper?
as for democratic programs, read the Reid/Baucus slate of hurricane remediation initiatives. They were out first with constructive help, while the GOP was still falsely trying to blame the locals.
torridjoe @ 35
‘which of these were NOT true a year ago, when gas was 50-75c cheaper?’
None. Gas has been cheaper only when the oil supply AND the refining capacity were not at full capacity. With many countries, especially China, pulling out of recession at the same time as the US the supply of refined fuel topped out and the prices rose. Knock out a few of the refineries or mid-east supplies and the supply part of the supply-demand curve stalls.
re 35: You’re a mensch!!