bustardblog

Flowers at the Farmer's Market

Pls Double Click to Enlarge

The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring, tra-la
Union Square 03-31-07

03-31-06:    " I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them... I'm sure." Mme Secretary, Condoleeza Rice.

Manhattan Mini Storage

I had to move some things into storage, and went on line to try to find the best deal close to my apartment. Manhattan Mini Storage is nearby, but when I googled them I came across some political web sites. The Politics of Storage?

• Wing Nuts of the world, united under their banner of perpetual outrage, have decided that posters which make fun of Bush are really making fun of the murder of Daniel Pearl. According to these people, an ad that reads "Your closet is probably scarier than Bush's agenda", meant to imply an overly crowded closet, actually means "The Holocaust never happened - death to Israel." And so they declare that Manhattan Mini Storage must be boycotted. Hyena, like Pam at Atlas, are yet to explain what the ads  teasing Paris Hilton and her dog really mean.

The hyena might not be happy that upon seeing her post, I stopped comparison shopping. I went directly to Manhattan Mini Storage and signed up for a $165.00/month space.  Next in line was someone booking a $600.00 monthly space - when asked what brought him to Manhattan Mini, he answered that it was because of the ads and the reaction to them from nuts on the web. (The guy was an Israeli)

Lying Rudy

A lot of folks on the right are upset that anyone would ever question Rudy about 9/11. Like many other New Yorkers, the myth of his heroism is deeply offensive to me.

A.J. Strata is one that asks how Giuliani could be faulted for the inability of the firefighters and the police to communicate that day. He sounds eerily like so many Bush "No one could have expected..." kind of excuses. The first bombing of the W.T.C. in 1993 made the inadequate communication problem glaringly obvious. Rudy had almost 8 years in office to fix the problem. He failed to do so. Fearful of political fallout in his base, Rudy rarely challenged the firefighters or the police on anything while Mayor. The result was unnecessary deaths.

Today we read about Rudy's lying in an investigation of his former chauffeur, and police commissioner, Bernard Kerik.  Giuliani said he could not remember being advised by his own chief investigator that Kerik had close connections to a company with ties to organized crime. The idea Rudy, an Italian American former prosecutor, cannot remember that he was told about ties between his nominee and the Mob entirely lacks credibility. He makes Abu Gonzales look like a straight shooter.

Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Mr. Giuliani’s testimony amounts to a significantly new version of what information was probably before him in the summer of 2000 as he was debating Mr. Kerik’s appointment as the city’s top law enforcement officer. Mr. Giuliani had previously said that he had never been told of Mr. Kerik’s entanglement with the company before promoting him to the police job or later supporting his failed bid to be the nation’s homeland security secretary. (My Emphasis)

The Cowardly Mr. Giuliani

In Re Rudy Giuliani, the hero of 9/11:

Can someone please show me the photograph of Rudy running to the tragedy at the World Trade Center? I've seen plenty of him running away. I want to see the photo of Giuliani helping to pick up the fallen, moving a beam off the wounded.  When the police and fireman and other real heroes were running toward the Towers, Rudy and his entourage were running in the opposite direction.

There is nothing heroic about a coward.

The Lying Atlas Shrugs

It's standard operating procedure for some right wing bloggers, and helps explain the existence of thatl 25% that is so loyal to the Republican party.

You just make crap up.  Facts have no place on many wing-nut sites, and thus their readers are deceived.

Today's example:
Atlas Shrugs begins a post "The left sides with militant Islam because they are animals too, only with (marginally) better clothes." A sentence like that might make you wonder what makes her accuse the left of siding with "militant Islam." What justifies her conclusion her calling me an animal?

She continues with her post with a quote about a blogger named Eliot Stein's really nasty treatment of the recently deceased blogger Cathy Seipp. Assuming that the story is accurate and complete, his behavior was despicable, and it would be fair to call the guy an animal.

But what does that have to do with the left?  Absolutely nothing.

From the Desert and the Sea posted about the incident, initially writing:

"I guess there is some right vs.left angle to this."

But the writer had the decency to correct himself, clearly and quickly. The corrected post reads:

I guess there’s some right vs. left angle to this, (There isn’t:  See the first comment below.)

An actual, close friend of Siepp's named Kate Coe had commented: "Oh it's not that at all... Politics not even involved."

But the horrid harlot at Atlas Shrugs has no decency - she just makes things up; while using a tragic death to shamelessly manipulate and  deceive.

(h/t memeorandum)

Tal Afar

In April, 2006, the New Yorker published a piece by George Packer, in which he quoted Bush:

Last month, in a speech in Cleveland, President Bush hailed the achievement in Tal Afar as evidence that Iraq is progressing toward a stable future. “Tal Afar shows that when Iraqis can count on a basic level of safety and security, they can live together peacefully,” he said. “The people of Tal Afar have shown why spreading liberty and democracy is at the heart of our strategy to defeat the terrorists.”

Yesterday in Tal Afar:

In Tuesday’s truck bombings in Tal Afar, one suicide bomber lured victims to buy wheat loaded on his truck in a Shiite neighborhood. A second truck bomb exploded in a used car lot. The attacks killed 63 people and wounded more than 150.

Early Wednesday

Meantime, police and hospital officials said off-duty Shiite policemen enraged by massive bombings in the northern town of Tal Afar went on a revenge spree against Sunni residents there on Wednesday, killing at least 45 men.

(More than just a h/t to Rising Hegemon = This is really just a shorter version)

Signs in Parks

Please double click to enlarge.

Sign in the Hanging Garden*,  Malabar Hill
Bombay/Mumbai, taken March 05/07

Sign in the Playground, Union Square
New York, taken Jan 25, 07

Just next to the Hanging Garden, slightly down Malabar Hill, is a large walled off, natural  area. A few centuries ago, it was on the outskirts of the city, although now it is surrounded by high rises. This is the Tower of Silence where adherents of the Parsi faith, a religion descended from  Zoroastrianism, lay out their dead to be devoured  by vultures. They believe in neither burial nor cremation.  A shortage of vultures has made the community consider building a huge net over the area so that the vultures stay at their job.

Skateboarding in Union Square

Please double click to enlarge

Skateboarding in Union Square.

Taken 03-27-07

Walking the Dog,

Please double click to enlarge.

Temperature was supposed to hit 72 today.

Dog Walker with her charges on the way to the
Dog Run in Union Square.

A Suicidal Bush is not Sufficient

The results of the recent Pew poll can only be described as great news. But a recent piece in Salon, linked to by memeorandum, that says

"Democrats should give two cheers for George W. Bush.  He and his political mastermind, Karl Rove, dreamed of achieving a permanent Republican majority.  Instead, his disastrous presidency has dealt a devastating blow to the GOP, one from which it may not recover for many years."

is remarkably stupid. It's not alone.

The hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis are not going to be cheering anytime soon. Nor will those American soldiers being mis-treated in Walter Reed. The people suffering from the disaspora created by the bungling of Katrina, won't be rising up to join in the cheer either.
The last six years have been devastating to the GOP, but at what cost? They've also been devastating to the world.

And it's not all Bush's fault. We must not forget that he is the leader of the Republican Party, and he represents them well. Since Reagan, that party has argued that  government  itself is the problem and their abject failure at governing is the only possible outcome of that conviction.

In fact the problem is not in the person of George W. Bush; it is in the very principles for which the Republican Party stands.