Randi Rhodes is Completely Insane

Discussing New Orleans and response to Katrina relief efforts


Jim from Wisconsin calls in:

"The Bush administration isn't helping for two reason. Only democratic voters are dying, and the ones that survive are being moved to Texas where they will be told the Republicans saved them and their Democratic governor (Blance) failed them, thus creating a new bloc of GOP voters"
[paraphrased]

Randi's response?

"Oh my Gaawwwwd, you are soooo right."




Is this nut for real? Yesterday I tried to record the show with my MyFi in order to get some of it on here (she doesn't offer archives as far as I can tell, and I get why) but it didn't work.

In describing President Bush yesterday she alternated through "murderous," "psycho," "murderer," "alcoholic," "psycho," "racist," and "moron."

I have no idea how this woman makes it on during prime drive hours. The last week of her show has been like a cross between Art Bell and Teddy Kennedy.

She is also saying that she has seen rats eating people on TV [I have not heard or read that any place else, although some over at Huffingtons page claimed black people were eating each other to survive] and that America is racist because "she doesn't see a white face involved." Wouldn't that mean that the hurricane is the racist?

Just a warning, if the images and the truth of the horrors are enough to get you depressed, don't tune into AAR, which seems to be hyping as much negativity and human evil as it can in order to make the President look bad. Very, very nice.


UPDATE: In the middle of an oddly misplaced rant about this "incredibly and totally white" administration (do I really need to list the folks that aren't white, we all knwo who they are) and tossing around phrases like "illuminati" and "all seeing eye" (I have no idea where she was going with that) Randi Rhodes dropp the obligatory out of place Nazi refrence:

"They're raising good Germans!"

I can't believe it took a full two hours of listening to Air America Radio before I heard a Republicans are Nazis mention. The funny part is, she keeps bitching how President Bush is making this political (he is "murdering" these people because they are "the wrong type of Americans" and they "have democrats representing them") while she constantly laces her completely illogical, tin-foil-hat rants with GOP-bashing.

Jesus

This morning as I was at Bally's, Harry Connick Jr appeared on the TV. I know he is a native of New Orleans so I understood why he was in the city, and why he would be an interesting interview. I have sort of tried to distance myself from the news, part out of necessity (very very busy lately) part out of shock at what is going on in a city I have been to a few times (Mardi Gras has given me some of the greatest memories, and pictures/videos, of my life).

Anyway, Connick was asked about the situation in the Superdome. His response was "it can't be any worse than sitting there for three hours watching the Saints play." I laughed. It was funny because I didn't know the extent of the horror those in the Superdone are facing.

I do now...

A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers...

The Louisiana Superdome, once a mighty testament to architecture and ingenuity, became the biggest storm shelter in New Orleans the day before Katrina's arrival Monday. About 16,000 people eventually settled in...

"We pee on the floor. We are like animals," said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son, Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula provided by rescuers. Baby supplies are running low; one mother said she was given two diapers and told to scrape them off when they got dirty and use them again.

At least two people, including a child, have been raped. At least three people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for.

The hurricane left most of southern Louisiana without power, and the arena, which is in the central business district of New Orleans, was not spared. The air conditioning failed immediately and a swampy heat filled the dome...

There is no sanitation. The stench is overwhelming. The city's water supply, which had held up since Sunday, gave out early Wednesday, and toilets in the Superdome became inoperable and began to overflow.

"There is feces on the walls," said Bryan Hebert, 43, who arrived at the Superdome on Monday. "There is feces all over the place..."

Thankfully, the stadium could be totally evacuated by tonight, and one assumes that the Astrodome and other locations are better prepared to handle the crisis.

Honestly, there isn't much to say, help if you can.

EconoPorn

The New Economist has a bunch of papers and speeches up from the August 2005 Jackson Hole Greenspan Love-In.

Alan Greenspans opening remarks about the role of central banks is especially interesting, if you're into that kind of thing. He outlines the new role central banks are finding themselves playing:

Given our inevitably incomplete knowledge about key structural aspects of an ever-changing economy and the sometimes asymmetric costs or benefits of particular outcomes, the paradigm on which we have settled has come to involve, at its core, crucial elements of risk management. In this approach, a central bank needs to consider not only the most likely future path for the economy but also the distribution of possible outcomes about that path. The decisionmakers then need to reach a judgment about the probabilities, costs, and benefits of various possible outcomes under alternative choices for policy.

Cindy's Brain

Byron York uncovered an interesting tidbit about Mother Martyr Sheehan, namely that she is being directed by a professional protestor and world class bitch and moan artist.

A notice on Cindy Sheehan's website, meetwithcindy.org, asks for donors who might be able to offer a camper, or an RV, or just money, for Sheehan's upcoming cross-country tour, scheduled to begin Wednesday in Crawford, Texas, and end in Washington at the big antiwar demonstration scheduled for September 24. At the end of the note, readers with something to offer are asked to "please call organizer Lisa Fithian."

Fithian is a legendary organizer who operates in the world of anti-globalism anarchists, antiwar protesters, and union activists; an advocate of aggressive "direct action" demonstrations, she protested the first Gulf war, played an important role in the violent shutdown of Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting, was a key planner in protests at the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 2000 and 2004, and organized demonstrations at trade meetings in Washington, D.C., Prague, and Genoa.

An interesting way to make a buck, and Byron makes it sound like she is The Man when it comes to stirring things up, and that seems to be the image she cultivates:

"When people ask me, 'What do you do?' I say I create crisis, because crisis is that edge where change is possible."

Fithian is not exactly in line with the Wailing Mom image Sheehan has been trying to cultivate:

In an July 2001 interview with The International Socialist Review, Fithian — who told NRO she's been arrested "probably at least 30 times" — spoke of moving beyond the tradition of civil disobedience as practiced by Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.; her inspiration, she explained, was not so much those leaders as the anarchist movement in Spain in the late 19th and early 20th century. And that meant different ways of doing things. "Nonviolence is a strategy. Civil disobedience is a tactic," Fithian said. "Direct action is a strategy. Throwing rocks is a tactic."

"I guess my biggest thing is that as people who are trying to create a new world, I do believe we have to dismantle or transform the old order to do that," Fithian continued. "I just fundamentally don't believe it will ever serve our interests as it's currently constructed."

If this woman comes blowing into your town with Sheehan, better board up the doors and windows:

I have no issue with property destruction. I think sometimes it’s appropriate, sometimes it’s not. Again, I look at it strategically. Does this help us or does it hurt us? Does it help us achieve our goal, or does it not? We’re in a society where property is idolized, so a lot of people don’t get it yet that it doesn’t really matter. It’s just glass or products.

It’s exactly what we do in training. We try to help people understand that what’s violent to one is not violent to another. And what might be violent in one situation might not be violent in another situation. It’s very subjective.

The windows being broken in Seattle had absolutely nothing to do with whether we shut down the WTO or not. It didn’t add value in that sense.

Nothing like spending you life going from city to city trying to stir up a good ol riot! Quite a wagon you hitched yourself to Cindy.

Fuel: Time to relax

Yeah, gas is a touch higher for the next few days. Will it stay above $3.00, absolutely not. Will it ever get below $2.00, no clue. All over the medias today we are getting predictions of $3.50+, with almost no effort by any media outlets to contradict the predictions the "experts" are floating out doomsday scenarios. Econopundit offers some perspective:

Oil spiked to $70.80 a barrel in overnight trading, before closing at $67.20 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up $1.07 but short of the record close of $67.49 set Thursday. Prices for wholesale gasoline and natural gas leaped as well.

"This is unmitigated bad news for consumers," said Peter Beutel, an oil analyst with Cameron Hanover.

The fact is (as Paul Krugman might say) we don't really know how an anticipation of higher energy prices will actually play out in our economy.

Left over from the 1970's is the "stagflation principle" -- the idea that higher energy prices pushes the economy's aggregate supply curve to the left (simultaneously raising price levels and lowering equilibrium output and employment).

But left over from the 1980's is the "Lucas supply curve" -- the idea that anticipation of higher prices cause some firms to anticipate higher profits and consequently hire new workers faster than otherwise.

And to complicate things even more (ahem!) both principles can operate at the same time and to some degree cancel each other out.

So play it cool, don't hyperventilate, keep thinking about the sick and homeless and let the economy continute to do what it does best. You may be surprised.

The invisible hand is an amzing thing, best to just let it work its magic.