Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny directs you to other people's really good stuff.



Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, He Gassed His Own People is a must read. as she talks about the 120,000 formaldehyde infected trailers that were set up by FEMA for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said FEMA obstructed the 10-month committee investigation and "mischaracterized the scope and purpose" of the agency's actions.

"FEMA's reaction to the problem was deliberately stunted to bolster the agency's litigation position," Davis said. The documents "make it appear FEMA's primary concerns were legal liability and public relations, not human health and safety."

About 60,000 households affected by Katrina remain in trailers.

On Alternet is an excellent column, Five Ways Bush's Era of Repression Has Stolen Your Liberties Since 9/11 by Matthew Rothschild. He discusses the actions that the current administration has curtailed liberty under the guise of security.

What the Bush administration did after 9/11 was not to engage in precise police work to find any would-be terrorists in our midst. Instead, it issued edicts and enacted laws that curtailed all of our freedoms. And it cast a gigantic dragnet over Arabs and Muslims in this country, treating many of them with a de facto presumption of guilt. To put those experiences in context we need to examine how the Bush administration constructed the edifice of repression.

It got the job done, in part, by blasting those who dared to dissent. When the president's former press secretary Ari Fleischer told people they should "watch what they say" after comedian Bill Maher on ABC's Politically Incorrect dared to question the label of "cowards" that Bush had slapped on the suicide bombers, it sent a message. As did the canceling of Maher's show. As did Bush's repeated assertion that "you're either with us or against us."

The entire article is a very sobering read.

Also on Alternet is Alberto Gonzales' Pants Are On Fire, an examination of our fearless Attorney General's propensity for lying with a straight face.

If Gonzales' testimony is accurate today, then he is confirming the existence of a new administration spying program.
Transcript:

SPECTER: Let me move quickly through a series of questions there's a lot to cover. Starting with the issue Mr. Comey raises, you said "there has not been any disagreement about the program." Mr. Comey's testimony was that "Mrs. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there to seek approval" and he then says "I was very upset, I was angry, I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man."

GONZALES: The disagreement that occurred was about other intelligence activities and the reason for the visit to the hospital was about other intelligence activities. It was not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people.

SPECTER: Mr. Attorney General, do you expect us to believe that?

At nobody asked. . . , in the post Patriotic Opposition. Winston quotes in total a concise letter to the editor of The Tennessean, about which Winston remarks,

What a great couple of concepts! (1) Spend on real security here at home to replace the joke and hassle that beefed up border patrols have become. So far these efforts have created problems primarily for law abiding U.S., Canadian, and Mexican citizens — families on vacation and people engaged in legitimate business. (2) And why didn’t somebody think of this before? Attack the enemy where he is. Wow! Quick, somebody tell the generals at the Pentagon…

The letter, by Steve Entman of Nashville, is well worth reading in its entirety.