Here’s a must-read report: Jeremy Scahill’s “Overkill” about the deployment of privatized paramilitary mercenaries in New Orleans, like those pictured below, as noted Cahill quotes one of the roughly “150 heavily armed Get thee to Washington. — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

As much as we love literature, we feel it’s more important to confront the Bullshitter-in-Chief’s regime. So it’s no contest for us. We’d rather participate in the National Book Festival, which begins there at the same time. (Vide Wouldn’t you rather attend the Operation Ceasefire Concert, than listen to book fest host Laura Bush extoll […]

We’re back from Chicago, the most underrated city in the country. One of the things we noticed on a cool, sunny day: Michigan Avenue, brimming with tourists and shoppers from the Tribune Tower, made New York’s Fifth Avenue look like a cheap alleyway. Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections at Northwestern University Library (just […]

As you probably know by now, the poet Sharon Olds has turned down Laura Bush’s invitation to this weekend’s National Book Festival in Washington and — “more better” (in the mortal words of the Bullshitter-in-Chief) — a chance to dine with the bullshitter’s wife-in-chief. Olds writes, protesting the war in Iraq and the regime’s attack […]

fell on deaf ears in the U.S. Supreme Court. And we have seen no news that Texas Gov. Rick Perry lifted a finger to prevent her from being executed either. Postscript:

look at this video of Frances Newton, who is miscarriage of justice.

Want some rare insight into the Katrina catastrophe? Check out Mike Howell on the looting he saw by middle- and upper-class whites, the evacuation procedures (or lack thereof) and what he terms “the seven betrayals”; and “Overkill,” about the privatized paramilitary deployment. Then have a look at this picture and caption worth a thousand words: […]

World News page of the WashPost web site. It’s the fourth story down on the LAT web site’s International news page. (In the NYT print edition it was slotted on page A6.) — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

In re:

Here’s a very stylish

Remember the lone violinist Samuel Thompson, who WFMT, in Chicago, which may do a story of its own about him. It ought to, we wrote them, because he seemed to us “a really fine person” whose “experience intersects lots of things,” including “classical music, African-American heritage, Katrina” and so on. Well, here’s an untold part […]

Forgive us, lawd, we know not what we do. Fools that we are, we offered an typical faux memo to “Iraq’s Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni leaders” from “An American friend.” Advising them on the impact Katrina is likely to have on Iraq, due to the weakened political capital of our Bullshitter-in-Chief, he tells them who’s […]

We don’t read Tom Friedman much lately, at least not with any expectation of enlightenment. But he surprised us the other day with a couple of things he wrote about the Bullshitter-in-Chief and his bullshit regime in re: Hurricane Katrina: These are people so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it, so much better […]

A friend writes from Portland, Oregon: — Hammond Guthrie EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Oh, about the Katrina rescue operation: Our Bullshitter-in-Chief “blithely announced at a photo-op cabinet meeting that he, personally, was going to ‘find out what went right and what went wrong.’ We can’t imagine a worse idea,” The New York Times said today in an editorial we wish we had written. Since we didn’t write it, […]

Violinist Samuel Thompson, who was caught on camera playing Bach for fellow hurricane survivors in New Orleans last week, had no idea he was being photographed by The (Baton Rouge, La.) Advocate — we posted the photo in Sonata No. 1 in G Minor (listen to a Sonata No. 2 in A Minor (listen to […]

Turns out we weren’t the only ones to note Mike Downey cited it, too. So did “I’m not sure the city can come back,”