Author: briggs

  • Bush’s legacy: The Cheney Administration

    I think it’s clear now with the conviction of “Cheney’s Cheney” aka Scooter Libby that the Vice President’s Wizard-of-Oz-like pulling of levers behind curtains is the mind behind the Oval Office, and that fat balding head floating over us all is saying, “We have to make America the best place in the world to do…

  • California “here we come”

    The barbarians are at the gates, and Washington, D.C. may never be the same. If American voters thought the war in Iraq was the most pressing issue of the day, Barbara Boxer may soon be disabusing them of that notion. Likely to be the next chair of the Senate Environment committee, Boxer is ecstatically planning…

  • the golden grate

    Talk about diversity…here in the golden state we’ve managed to reach new heights of mixedness, all-over-the-mapness, and plain ol’ voter confusion as the results of the Caulifornia mid-term and governatorious elections illuminate the collective mind of the Left Coasters. We voted for a Republican Hollywood muscleman who lifted himself out of the political toilet by…

  • i got the antediluvian de-stroyed de-brised de-scouraged homeland insecurity blues

    Sittin’ in a friend’s Uptown shotgun listening to Bobby Lounge bang the ivories singing “do not pass on by” while the dog sleeps and the mockingbirds sing on a softly humid Monday morning. The friends are workin’, a blessing in this post-Katrina, trauma-tized, water-marked, limpin’ and hurtin’ New Orleans. “We Back” says the spray paint…

  • Rove calling, again

    “Mr. Rove said he had forgotten the call, one of hundreds he participates in each day.” A repentant Karl Rove admitted yesterday to a grand jury investigator that he could not recall a conversation with a journalist in which he revealed the secret code to White House situation room “nuke” buttons. In a sixteen hour…

  • Michael Jackson Bailout

    Michael Jackson Bailout Said to Be Close – New York Times

  • is it just me that thinks we’ve lost our minds?

    During all the recent news hoopla about the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui I kept trying to remember what he actually did. Did he fly the planes? (No, those guys are all dead). Did he plan the attacks? (Hmmm, wasn’t that Osama bin Laden?). Did he aid and abet any of the dead guys who flew…

  • P.S. to F.Y.T. PG&E

    “The new team” now running Enron, according to spokesman Harlan Loeb, believes a proposed settlement with federal regulators that would prevent disclosure of evidence that reveal how Enron gamed the energy trading markets during the California energy crisis, is “the best deal for creditors.” The audiotapes, email, and other documents detail how Enron’s energy traders…

  • well fuck you too PG&E

    Emerging from the basement where I am on flood watch, I went out to the dripping mailbox to fish out our soggy load of coupons, bills, and bank card come-ons, including the Pacific Gas & Electric Company invoice for the month of March. March, the “40 days and 40 nights” of relentless rain in which…

  • watching the detectives

    Tony Soprano shoulda thought of it: hiring a couple of NYPD detectives as mob assassins. But it was “Tony” Casso who thought of it first. In today’s installment of an entertaining and wryly horrific series, Alan Feuer at the NYT brings us the courtroom finale to the trial of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, found…

  • ghost workers of America

    I read with interest a review in the Sunday S.F. Chron by Noam Lupu of Louis Uchitelle’s new book, “The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences” which looks at the now common-place American phenomenon of worker layoffs and the effects of these layoffs on ordinary Americans. The statistics are startling but it’s the stories that…

  • what would Mr. Rogers do?

    can you say “habeas corpus“? What if King Friday got taken away to a secret jail in the middle of the ocean by the Central Intelligence Agency? And the government said King Friday could not file a writ of habeas corpus because he had no rights. Because Congress just happened to sort of incidentally take…

  • red dwarf exits red america

    Post.com Blogger Quits Amid Furor “When I was 17, I was certainly sloppy,” said Domenech, who did not graduate from college. “If I had paid more attention, none of these problems would have happened.” Is this statement: False__ Plagiarized__ Really stupid__ (what score did WashPost’s Jim Brady get?)

  • Lyons, Carnival, and FEMA oh my!

    We talked on the phone to our friends in New Orleans last night as they were out on their front porch directing traffic onto sidewalks and neighbor’s driveways for Mardi Gras parking. They sounded happy for the first time in a long while. Here’s some pics of their neighborhood at Inside The Bowl

  • Ex-America

    Fast-forwarding through the umpteenth ad for Big American Car in my quest for 2 minutes of olympic athleticism, I am coming to the conclusion that our economy is in desperate straights. If you don’t run out NOW and buy a Big American Car we’re going to hit the skids, pass on, be no more, cease…

  • Rocco lives

    Niger Uranium Rumors Wouldn’t Die – Los Angeles Times and the White House lies won’t die…. (Thanks to D. Wayman for the heads up)

  • Big American Car (Sports) Moments

    “When did Michelle Kwan get old,” said the man in the suit and tie in the leather chair under the banner “Chevrolet Olympic Moments”. Bob Costas, in an identical suit and leather chair, shook his head sadly. And then I blew up my TV.

  • The White House Lied While New Orleans Died

    “FYI from FEMA” said the e-mail to Homeland Security on the night the 17th Street Canal levee broke. The White House knew of flooding, stranded people and fires in the Crescent City by midnight. Then they all went about their business as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile the City of New Orleans fought it’s greatest…

  • Shooting Indians in a Barrel: The Trust Scandal

    It’s nearly as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Gale Norton’s Department of the Interior is so far winning the Bush Administration’s fight against the Indians. A ten-year-old struggle to right 118 years of wrongs against American Indians is at an impasse with the Bush government holding most of the trump cards. The fight,…

  • Killing Me Softly

    “…based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute– I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program…” –G.W.B. 2006

  • Abramoff vs The Tribes

    San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders sounded like Rep. Richard Pombo’s big sister taking on the corner bullies in her Sunday rant, “Lay off Pombo” in which she lit into “the left”, Nancy Pelosi, and Democratic party leaders for picking on Pombo for getting money from the tainted former lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, and his…