The Road of Bones

At a Denver pit-stop in 2005, President Bush had several of his volunteers eject two members of an audience that had come to see him speak. The reasoning was that the two citizens disagreed with the President's policies, and arrived in a vehicle bearing a bumper sticker that read "No blood for oil!"

So, clearly, they had to be ejected.

Flash-forward to 2007. The civil suit against the volunteers who tossed the citizens out has ended. The U.S. Government - or, at least, the Bush Administration - won.

Casper and Klinkerman's lawyers said the government has the same rights as a private corporation when its officials speak.

"The president may constitutionally make viewpoint-based exclusionary determinations in conveying his own message," the attorneys said in the filing. "So in following the instructions of the White House and carrying out its viewpoint-based exclusions, Casper and Klinkerman did not violate any of plaintiffs' constitutional rights."

"[T]he government has the same rights as a private corporation when its officials speak"???

Great. Awesome. That's just amazing.

The Italian dictator Bonito Mussolini once said "Fascism rightly should be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."

Draw your own conclusions.

Labels: partisanship

Posted by The Gonzo Muckraker at Tuesday, April 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

On the surface, that's what the story in Hope, Arkansas appears to be.

The residents of Hope were displaced from their homes by a flurry of tornadoes. Sitting just 160 miles away, a field full of trailers purchased and furnished by FEMA in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- but never used due to vast incompetence.

It has been over a week since the people of Hope saw their homes destroyed. Why aren't the Fed's coming in with help?

Because unlike neighboring states Alabama and Georgia, which President Bush visited within 48 hours of the storms, Arkansas has a Democrat as governor. Alabama and Georgia are governed by Republicans.

Arkansas has received no help from FEMA because President Bush has not declared the sites to be a federal disaster area. But in Alabama and Georgia, it happened almost immediately.

Just what the hell is going on in the White House?

Heck'uva Job Brownie is gone. And now the Bush stands alone. Why is he refusing federal aid to the now-homeless citizens of Arkansas?

COULD THIS PRESIDENCY GET ANY WORSE?

Labels: FEMA, partisanship

Posted by The Gonzo Muckraker at Wednesday, March 07, 2007 | Permalink | Comments