And all the sons of Congressmen! And the two adorable 100 Proof Bush daughters! (Ginna and Tonic)

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people, On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
- H.L. Mencken

“That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them.  There is almost no kind of outrage - - - -torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians - - - - which does not change its moral color when it is committed by our side.  The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
-George Orwell

"Under the Bush administration, openness and accountability have been replaced by secrecy and evasion of responsibility. They abuse their power, conceal their actions from the American people, and refuse to hold officials accountable."
-Senator Edward M. Kennedy

“George W. Bush is deeply interested in Deep Space Exploration. His next project will be to circle Uranus and search for Klingons…..”
-Dallas Herald

“Once a Republican, always a coprophile…:”
-Mother Theresa

“Finally today convoys of troops and aid started to arrive along the Gulf Coast. Five days after the hurricane hit. Kind of makes you miss the innocent days when Bush only sat on his ass for seven minutes. It only took him four days to make a plan, but finally today he said he had a plan. Unfortunately it's a faith-based plan that involves getting two of every animal onto a big boat.”
-Bill Maher

America’s Enemies!

There are four entities who represent the most dangerous enemies to American liberties since George III.

They are:

1.                    The Neocons or Likudists who owe their personal allegiance to another country and now completely control our foreign policy. They lied and deceived us into the Iraq war and are demanding that more and more American soldiers die to preserve their own country and ideals.

2.                    The Christian Evangelical right who is trying to force the United States into becoming a theocracy under their rule. They know in their hearts that they alone can restructure a secular humanist America into their idea of Heaven on Earth.

3.                    An element of American society that call themselves Patriots and are obsessively militaristic and great admirers of the corporate or fascistic state. Many of these have been very minor members of the American military and as a counterbalance to their reserve or rear area tours of duty, are rabidly in favor of draconian military action, the bloodier the better. Usually these drumbeaters are too old, or too fat, to fight and have no sons of draft age.

4.                    George W. Bush, who is the worst president in the history of the United States and directly responsible for the huge death tolls in Iraq, is determined to rule the United States until God puts a stop to him and is even more determined to force the American people into becoming obedient, Christian and self-sacrificing lemmings who worship at his shrine and march in step.

Recommended reading

We gather information, on a daily basis, from many websites. There are a number of publications that are well worth viewing for their intelligent reporting of national and international news. All of those sources, listed below, are daily newspapers with the exception of the Asia Times. The latter is a very well written site with in-depth articles that are worth reading.

The New York Times:  www.nytimes.com
The Washington Post: www.washingtonpost.com
The Christian Science Monitor: www.csmonitor.com
The Guardian: www.guardian.co.uk
Seattle Post-Intelligencer:  www.seattlepi.nwsource.com
Asia Times www.atimes.com

Note: Very little of the information in this edition of TBR news has come from the mainline American media. It is just not there. Most of it has come from foreign sources and the Internet. Most of our sources can be seen on the main page.

The Voice of the White House

September 5, 2005: “Life inside the White House is like being in a zoo at feeding time only in this case, it is the public that is feeding on the animals. There is complete panic here as it is finally being realized that Bush has shot himself, and his friends, in the feet and they are all running around holding round the clock meetings to plan how to further con the American public. I said recently that Bush and his henchmen are racists. They are and now I can see this awful truth emerging in the mainline media. I have said before that this present administration is even more corrupt than the Grant and Harding ones. Neither Grant nor Harding were personally corrupt  but in the present case, Bush is worse than his hirelings.

As a case in point, let’s discuss FEMA here. There is no point in giving a background to this organization other than to say:  The organization is called FEMA, which stands for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Originally conceived in the Richard Nixon Administration, it was a product of a Presidential Executive Order, Executive Order Number 12148, and it was refined by President Jimmy Carter and given teeth in the Ronald Reagan and George Bush Administrations.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is under the newly-created Department of Homeland Security and interfaces with the Department of Defense for civil defense planning and funding. An "emergency czar" was appointed. FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic. Executive Order Number 12656 appointed the National Security Council as the principal body that should consider emergency powers. This allows the government to increase domestic intelligence and surveillance of U.S. citizens and would restrict the freedom of movement within the United States and grant the government the right to isolate large groups of civilians. The National Guard could be federalized to seal all borders and take control of U.S. air space and all ports of entry.

FEMA has worked on National Security programs since 1979, and its predecessor, the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, has secretly spent millions of dollars before being merged into FEMA by President Carter in 1979.

FEMA has developed 300 sophisticated mobile units that are capable of sustaining themselves for a month. The vehicles are located in five areas of the United States. They have tremendous communication systems and each contains a generator that would provide power to 120 homes each, but have never been used for disaster relief.

Under emergency plans already in existence, the power exists to suspend the Constitution and turn over the reigns of government to FEMA and appointing military commanders to run state and local governments. FEMA then would have the right to order the detention of anyone whom there is reasonable ground to believe...will engage in, or probably conspire with others to engage in acts of espionage or sabotage. The plan also authorized the establishment of concentration camps for detaining the accused, but no trial.

Now that we have a background on FEMA, who is in full charge of the disaster in the Gulf, let’s look at the man who directs it, Michael Brown., or “Brownie” (no doubt referring to the color of his nose)as the President likes to call him.

From an official puff-piece we read: “Michael D. Brown was nominated by President George W. Bush as the first Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response in the newly created Department of Homeland Security in January 2003. As the head of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Under Secretary Brown leads federal disaster response and recovery operations and coordinates disaster activities with more than two dozen federal agencies and departments and the American Red Cross. He also oversees the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration, and initiates proactive mitigation activities.

Additionally, Under Secretary Brown helps the Secretary of Homeland Security ensure the effectiveness of emergency responders, and directs the National Incident Management System (NIMS) Integration Center, the National Disaster Medical System and the Nuclear Incident Response Team.

Under Secretary Brown has led Homeland Security’s response to more than 164 presidentially declared disasters and emergencies, including the 2003 Columbia Shuttle disaster and the California wildfires in 2003. In 2004, Mr. Brown led FEMA’s thousands of dedicated disaster workers during the most active hurricane season in over 100 years, as FEMA delivered aid more quickly and more efficiently than ever before.

Previously, Mr. Brown served as FEMA's Deputy Director and the agency's General Counsel. Shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Mr. Brown served on the President's Consequence Management Principal's Committee, which acted as the White House's policy coordination group for the federal domestic response to the attacks. Later, the President asked him to head the Consequence Management Working Group to identify and resolve key issues regarding the federal response plan. In August 2002, President Bush appointed him to the Transition Planning Office for the new Department of Homeland Security, serving as the transition leader for the EP&R Division.

Prior to joining FEMA, Mr. Brown practiced law in Colorado and Oklahoma, where he served as a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court. He had been appointed as a special prosecutor in police disciplinary matters. While attending law school he was appointed by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma Legislature as the Finance Committee Staff Director, where he oversaw state fiscal issues. His background in state and local government also includes serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight and as a city councilman.

Mr. Brown was also an adjunct professor of law for the Oklahoma City University.

A native of Oklahoma, Mr. Brown holds a bachelor's degree in Public Administration/Political Science from Central State University, Oklahoma. He received his J.D. from Oklahoma City University’s School of Law. “

Brown, has never had any experience with crisis management, other than being removed as an executive of the International Arabian Horse Association for, as the numerous lawsuits filed against him state, “for intentional interference with prospective business advantage; 3) defamation; and 4) violation of the Colorado Consumer Products Act.” This ugly business can be found in public records,  viz

David C. Boggs vs. IAHA, Michael Brown, Tom Connelly, and Mary Anne Grimmell

Civil Action No. 99-CV-3430, Division 3,District Court, Arapahoe County, State of Colorado October, 1999

When Brown was elevated to high political office by Bush’s order, the press release read:

“From 1991 to 2001, Brown was the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, an international subsidiary of the national governing organization of the U.S. Olympic Committee.”

IAHA was never connected to the Olympic Committee, but then, the White House never tells the truth either.

Brown joined the Bush administration in February 2001 as General Counsel for FEMA. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he was nominated by Bush to be the deputy director of FEMA and was confirmed in that position by the U.S. Senate on Aug. 1, 2002.

As deputy director, Brown functioned as FEMA's Chief Operating Officer, assisting Director Joe M. Allbaugh, Brown’s college roommate, with oversight of the agency's activities. In particular, Brown served on Bush's Consequence Management Principals Committee, which functioned as the policy coordination group within the White House for the federal government's domestic response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The President later asked him to head the Consequence Management Working Group to identify and resolve key issues regarding the federal response plan. Brown also played a key role in managing FEMA's recovery programs for the victims of the World Trade Center attacks. Brown assisted Allbaugh with the approval of $5.5 billion dollars in federal assistance for New York City and anticipates the total to reach nearly $9 billion.

Brown is a grossly incompetent recipient of naked political patronage, but he is a Bush loyalist, all that matters to the President. To highlight the FEMA director’s total inability to function, a number of incidents arising from the New Orleans disaster need to be highlighted. These are not from secret files but taken directly from mainline media coverage such as the New York Times September 5, 2005:

• The hospital ship, USS Bataan “equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day” was sitting in the Gulf of Mexico, unoccupied by a single person, by specific order of FEMA director Brown.

• Wal-Mart sent “three trailer trucks of water” to the stricken area but these were deliberately  turned away by FEMA officials.

• FEMA workers prevented the U.S. Coast Guard, the only federal agency that effectively saved lives, from delivering 1,000 gallons of badly-needed diesel fuel to hospitals needing it to fuel their emergency generators,

• FEMA workers deliberately cut the emergency communications network in New Orleans, causing local police officials to reinstall it and post armed guards to prevent angry FEMA employees from further attempts to disconnect it.

• FEMA workers deliberately blocked badly-needed aid from other states, including offers from Chicago’s mayor Daley, and the Governor of New Mexico, Richardson.

The opportunities to take a profit from disaster lie in this: FEMA is given huge sums of money by Congress to deal with national emergencies. This money is to be spent at the pleasure of the Director of FEMA and is not to be accounted for.  A good investigative reporter, wishing to make a name for himself and his paper, ought to dig, as I have done, into the payment of “Disaster Relief” funds in the aftermath of the Florida hurricanes. It would be interesting to note which companies, run by staunch Republicans and Bush supporters, took in enormous sums of money and, even more interesting, how much of this largess was funneled back into the hands of those who gave it out in the first place.

The results of this investigation would, without question, make even more embarrassment for the Bush people than their flippant and unconcerned behavior during recent days. Great embarrassment indeed. Knowing what I do, New York Attorney General Spitzer would have half of FEMA under investigation but in the end, Bush would never replace Brown. To the President, blind loyalty and financial usefulness is far more important to him than peculations, thefts and moral leprosy.

During the Middle Ages, so-called alchemists labored for decades to transmute lead into gold but with no success. Now, we see the Bush administration completely successful in transmuting blood into gold…and lining their pockets with it.