Brad reminds us nothing at all happened in our nation’s capital today.

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Joss Whedon, the Oscar® - and Emmy - nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain [...]

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William Arkin:
Today, somewhere in the DC metropolitan area, the military is conducting a highly classified Granite Shadow “demonstration.”
Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control. [...]

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Makes you proud, doesn’t it?
SAN DIEGO - A branch of the U.S. Navy secretly contracted a 33-plane fleet that included two Gulfstream jets reportedly used to fly terror suspects to countries known to practice torture, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
At least 10 U.S. aviation companies were issued classified contracts in 2001 [...]

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Thoughtful piece from Democracy Arsenal. Interesting predicament, because the extremists like ANSWER are the only people calling for collective action against the war, but affiliating with ANSWER may very well undermine our effectiveness. Do read the whole thing and let me know what you think:
“The liberals were pretty much right on Viet Nam. And what [...]

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No comment:
SAN ANTONIO, Sept. 23 - President Bush was supposed to land here on Friday afternoon on the first stop of a tour intended to make clear that he was personally overseeing the federal government’s preparations for Hurricane Rita’s landfall. But the weather did not cooperate.
It was too sunny.

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A stirring moment at today’s anti-war rally: Evelyn Harris, former singer with Sweet Honey in the rock, leading the crowd in singing “Down By the Riverside.”
Ain’t gonna study war no more.

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It appears that the D.C. Metro was apparently shut down to keep people from getting to the rally. From a Democratic Underground reader:
My friend just called, they were able to get on a green line train and just made it there in time to see Cindy.
A worker told him they knew YESTERDAY that they were [...]

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Gee, I wonder what all those people who voted for Bush to get tax cuts think now:
Over the next 10 years, Americans will not receive nearly $750 billion in tax cuts sponsored by President Bush because the cuts will be offset by the alternative minimum tax, a new report by Congressional tax specialists shows.
The report, [...]

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If you truly want to understand the nature of contemporary Republican operatives, just go read this by Digby.

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Optimistic little bugger, isn’t he? Never underestimate the ability of BushCo to ignore unpleasant reality:
The violence of hurricanes Rita and Katrina should at last awake the Bush Administration to the danger of climate change, a leading British scientist said.
Professor Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, said the intensity of the [...]

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Such a nightmare:
W ORLEANS (CNN) — A storm surge from Hurricane Rita topped a damaged section of a New Orleans levee Friday, leaving the city’s 9th Ward immersed in floodwater as deep as 4 feet, a general who toured the area by boat said.
“It’s spreading rapidly down to the south-southeast, so they’re going to [...]

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And inhumane:
(New York, September 22, 2005)—As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff’s department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city’s jail, Human Rights Watch said today.
“Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst,� said Corinne Carey, researcher from Human Rights Watch. “Prisoners were abandoned in [...]

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I’ve been predicting this for years. It’s only a matter of time:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tax breaks such as deductions for home mortgage interest and state and local taxes cost the federal government $728 billion last year and need to be reexamined, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report on Friday.

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Good riddance:
WASHINGTON - Embattled Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester Crawford resigned Friday, saying in a memo to his staff that at age 67 it was time to step aside.[...]
But Crawford’s tenure was marked by increasing criticism of the agency, as the painkiller Vioxx was pulled off the market for safety problems and regulators held [...]

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From Doug Ireland, some shocking news:
The daily New Mexican reports that “U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan Foundation [...]

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Sounds like he’s modeling himself on Bubble Boy’s flexible ethics:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 - A spokesman for Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said Thursday that the Securities and Exchange Commission had contacted Mr. Frist’s office about the sale in June of his shares in HCA, the giant hospital company founded by his family.
Mr. Frist, whose [...]

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What would a White House press conference sound like in an alternate universe? Billmon ponders.

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Oh come on, they’re richer than they’ve ever been. I’m sure I saw it on Fox News:
WASHINGTON Sep 23, 2005 — Before Hurricane Katrina, they were among the poorest of America’s poor. In the hardest hit counties, some 305,000 people not only lived in poverty, their families’ income fell below 50 percent of the poverty [...]

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Just awful. Those poor people:
WILMER, Texas (AP) - A bus carrying elderly evacuees from Hurricane Rita caught fire and was rocked by explosions early Friday on a gridlocked highway near Dallas, killing as many as 24 people, authorities said.

And I read somewhere that a nursing home rented a dozen ambulances to evacuate their sick, elderly [...]

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I’ve always thought he’d be good:
Actor Warren Beatty “leveled a blistering political assault” on California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) last night, “accusing him of governing ‘by show, by spin, by cosmetics and photos ops’ while imposing Bush administration policies on California,” the AP reports.
“Beatty, a Democrat and longtime political activist who has been mentioned as [...]

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I have a large, painful cyst growing inside my ear canal right now. The inside of my ear is so swollen, I can’t even hear out of that side. And I have a lunch meeting, so that’s going to be fun - trying to have a conversation, I mean.
Maybe this is what it’s like being [...]

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From Political Wire, something that cheers me up:
Here’s one more reason why Republicans are worried about this developing scandal. The Washington Post reports GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff “bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring [...]

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Josh Marshall has something cool set up for TPM readers around the country - free passes to an advance screening of “Serenity,” the new movie from the creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel.” (You know I love me some Josh Whedon, so I’ll be there.)
It’s first come, first served to those who email [...]

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Via Democratic Underground:
[Talk radio host] Ed Schultz just interviewed an editor with the National Enquirer. The editor said the paper stands by its story “150%” and would go to court over it if they had to. He said that they have 2 different sources for the story, and that the sources had been informing the [...]

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From the L.A. Weekly, here’s why we call them the Corporate Media:
Once upon a time, large corporations and their executives typically avoided any public discussion of their politics because partisan positions alienated customers and employees. But all of that changed after GE bought NBC in 1986. For seemingly eons, Immelt’s predecessor, the legendary Jack Welch, [...]

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Duncan testified before Congress yesterday, and the press managed to mangle his common-sense contention: Why should speech on the internets be subject to regulation that doesn’t apply as well to the corporate media?

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Will Bunch tells us it’s deja vu all over again - this time, in Houston.
“Where are the buses?”
And yet, when I say this smacks of genocide, I’m some kind of nut. Yeah, well, just call me Ms. Peanut.

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From my buddy Dave over at Seeing the Forest, lots of avian flu stuff to make you nervous:
This might be a false alarm. There are some signs that human-to-human bird flu might be breaking out in Indonesia. I hope Katrina woke the Bush administration up. They should be turning back all flights from Indonesia, and [...]

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Absolutely outrageous. Go take a look at the deep cuts the Repugs are suggesting to fund Katrina reconstruction projects. Things like increasing Medicare premiums and eliminating loans for grad school - you know, the real problems.
Not a pork subsidy to be seen, of course. These people are shameless.
UPDATE: Kevin Drum says it’s the standard GOP [...]

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