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As usual, most of the press are following the wrong story on the gaps in Bush's military service in Alabama. Dan Rather isn't the story.

It's great to be back alive and online.  Thank you for all your emails and phone calls.  I have over 3000 e-mails in my inbox; please be patient.

"What's the difference between Hurricane Ivan and President Bush? We know for certain that Ivan was in Alabama."
 -- Jay Leno

www.internetweekly.org

"Dick Cheney says the economic numbers don't take into account all the people making money on eBay. Yeah, if you lose your job, you've got to sell your car, your clothes, your house." -- Jay Leno

All Hat No Cattle Survives Ivan

AHNC Large Editor prevents publisher Lisa Casey from surfing as Hurricane Ivan approaches.

By Dave Casey
AHNC Large Editor

All Hat No Cattle resumes online publication today in the wake of Hurricane Ivan.

Although the storm compromised AHNC facilities -– shingles torn from roof, backyard fence flattened, loss of all utilities -– the staff considered themselves lucky because of the widespread devastation all around.

In other words, Casa Casey is built like a brick outhouse. It has survived Erin, Opal, Ivan and lesser storms.

Much of the rest of the Redneck Riviera from Mobile, Ala., to Panama City, Fla., now resembles the domestic economic accomplishments and foreign policy of the Bush administration. But things will get better; the President keeps saying so.

Dubya came through the area Sunday, and some of the local right-wing faithful described it like the Second Coming.

Many other area residents, however, would have preferred to see another Salvation Army food and comfort station established or an additional load of generators arriving. Actually, a few would have preferred a dose of food poisoning to the glad-handing and “God bless yous” offered by the Commander in Chief.

The economy of northwest Florida is shattered.

Pensacola Naval Air Station, where the Navy trains all of its pilots and thousands of other personnel, sustained damage estimated at hundred of millions of dollars.

All major bridges were damaged, with portions of the Interstate 10 span over Escambia Bay dropped by a wall of water approximately 40 feet high. Local ground transportation and long-distance trucking will be disrupted for at least a month.

Tourism, a mainstay of the regional economy, will not exist for at least a year. Who wants to visit a beach resort that looks like Baghdad?

Agriculture and timber –- major contributors inland from the Gulf of Mexico -– took massive hits that are still being calculated.

But let’s look at the bright side, as the Bush administration so often urges Americans to do when considering the Iraq war, job losses and a leader who cannot string together three coherent sentences.

The construction industry will continue booming on the Redneck Riviera. People will rush like lemmings to rebuild homes and businesses on the barrier islands, just like they did after previous hurricanes.

On the mainland, roofs will be replaced and the construction of new subdivisions will continue unabated, even though road infrastructure already lacked to support the population growth of the past decade.

The poverty rate and the quality of public education in places like Pensacola and Mobile will continue to be ranked among the worst in their respective states, let alone the nation.

And local politics will continue to be dominated by born-again Republicans who espouse God, guns and lower taxes while their communities decline.

Was that all of the bright side? Oh yeah -– it’s been sunny and dry since Ivan, so people can get up on their roofs to put plastic sheets over the leaks.  

dave@allhatnocattle.net

Comments:

E-Mail

Hi Lisa,

Here's the latest example of how the media continues to give Dubya a free pass. I've seen and heard about John Kerry's football faux pas about half a dozen times in the past few days (Calling the stadium in Green Bay "Lambert Field" instead of "Lambeau"). CNN's "Crossfire" went so far as to show both Bush and Cheney making fun of Kerry over the mistake. Tonight, I just read that Bush has repeatedly gotten the two terrorists Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas mixed up and has been doing so for some time now. Now of the two brain farts, which one really matters? The name of a football stadium or the names of terrorists? Duh!
Glad you made it through the storm.

Doug
Anchorage, Alaska

Thanks Doug. Being incommunicado over the past week I missed that Kerry mistake. No wonder Kerry got the coverage -- he doesn't make as many mistakes as Bush does.
The Large Editor and myself are injury free other than my lip I bit during Ivan's visit.

The-World-Is-A-Safer-Place-Without-Saddam News

• Web Site: 2nd U.S. Hostage Killed in Iraq  AP

• Battle kills two U.S. soldiers; Afghan toll reaches 99 Seattle Times, WA 

• American Reported Beheaded in Iraq NPR (audio), United States 

• Grief pours out for beheaded Hillsdale native Detroit Free Press

• Afghan Vice President Survives Attack Washington Post, DC 

• CIA Officer: al-Qaida Efforts Still Lag  AP

• Iran Vows Nuclear Program Will Go Ahead Radio Free Europe

• Microwave Gun to be Used by U.S. Troops in Iraq

• Costa Rica Dropped From 'Willing' List  AP

"A Bush administration official told Congress that the war in Iraq could cost almost $60 billion. President Bush said he plans to pay for it with a video series called 'Prison Guards Gone Wild.' " --  Conan O'Brien   

www.buckfush.com

Disturbing News

• NRC Says Ohio Reactor Damage 'Significant'  AP

• More than 600 dead in Haiti CNN

• Men Allegedly Bomb McDonald's Over Shake  AP

• Gunman in Illiunois Capitol Shooting Sought  AP

• EPA: 13 Percent of Airliner Water Unsafe  AP

Late Show with David Letterman:

"Top 10 Bush Tax Proposals" as read by Sen. John Kerry:

10. No estate tax for families with at least two U.S. presidents.

9. W-2 Form is now Dubya-2 Form.

8. Under the simplified tax code, your refund check goes directly to Halliburton.

7. The reduced earned income tax credit is so unfair, it just makes me want to tear out my lustrous, finely groomed hair.

6. Attorney General Ashcroft gets to write off the entire U.S. Constitution.

5. Texas Rangers can take a business loss for trading Sammy Sosa.

4. Eliminate all income taxes. Just ask Teresa (Heinz Kerry) to cover the whole damn thing.

3. Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent.

2. $100 penalty if you pronounce it "nuclear" instead of "nucular."

Bush, Annan trade barbs over Iraq at UN AFP

"President Bush spoke to a meeting of the National Guard in Las Vegas. Boy, a lot of those guys were excited to see him. Well, sure, a lot of them have been waiting since the early '70s." -- Jay Leno

Republican Shenanigans

• Report: U.S. Will Sell Israel Smart Bombs  AP

• Bush rebukes Israel over Palestinian "humiliation"

• TBN's Promise: Send Money and See Riches  Los Angeles Times

• Airlines Told to Turn Over Passenger Data  AP

www.buckfush.com

E-Mail
So glad to see you made it.
I'm sure I was not the only one on pins and needles out here, waiting to hear how you were.
Jack H
Salem, Oregon
 

Thanks Jack. I'm still on pins and needles knowing there is a possible hurricane out there with the name Lisa.

"CBS News issued a stunning retraction, admitting these documents, which questioned President Bush's National Guard service, are forgeries. The president's advisers knew the documents were fake because they imply Bush actually showed up for duty." -- Craig Kilborn

www.democrats.com

In a 2002 interview with USA TODAY, Dean Roome, a former fighter pilot who lived with Bush in the early 1970s, said that during the first part of Bush's pilot service, he was a model officer. But he described Bush's Air Guard career as erratic — the first three years solid, the last two troubled.

"You wonder if you know who George Bush is," Roome said. "I think he digressed after a while. In the first half, he was gung-ho. Where George failed was to fulfill his obligation as a pilot. It was an irrational time in his life."

Pressed for details during the 2002 interview, Roome declined to elaborate. In February this year, replying to an e-mail from USA TODAY, Roome wrote that he admires Bush and does not want to be seen as attacking him. "Only George W. Bush knows why he was unable to continue flying in the Guard," Roome wrote.

Good News

• Republicans Criticize Bush 'Mistakes' on Iraq  Reuters

• Mars gases reveal enticing clues for life ABC Science Online

• New Rules Clarify Vets' Rights on the Job  AP

THE LYNCHING OF DAN RATHER
On British TV, Dan feared the price of "asking questions"

Sept. 20, 2004

By Greg Palast

"It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions," the aging American journalist told the British television audience.

In June 2002, Dan Rather looked old, defeated, making a confession he dare not speak on American TV about the deadly censorship -- and self-censorship -- which had seized US newsrooms. After September 11, news on the US tube was bound and gagged. Any reporter who stepped out of line, he said, would be professionally lynched as un-American.

"It's an obscene comparison," he said, "but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be necklaced here. You will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck." No US reporter who values his neck or career will "bore in on the tough questions."

Dan said all these things to a British audience. However, back in the USA, he smothered his conscience and told his TV audience: "George Bush is the President. He makes the decisions. He wants me to line up, just tell me where."

During the war in Vietnam, Dan's predecessor at CBS, Walter Cronkite, asked some pretty hard questions about Nixon's handling of the war in Vietnam. Today, our sons and daughters are dying in Bush wars. But, unlike Cronkite, Dan could not, would not, question George Bush, Top Gun Fighter Pilot, Our Maximum Beloved Leader in the war on terror.

On the British broadcast, without his network minders snooping, you could see Dan seething and deeply unhappy with himself for playing the game.

"What is going on," he said, "I’m sorry to say, is a belief that the public doesn’t need to know -- limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war. It’s extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted, and I’m sorry to say that up to and including this moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current Administration revels in that, they relish and take refuge in that."

Dan's words had a poignant personal ring for me. He was speaking on Newsnight, BBC's nightly current affairs program, which broadcasts my own reports. I do not report for BBC, despite its stature, by choice. The truth is, if I want to put a hard, investigative report about the USA on the nightly news, I have to broadcast it in exile, from London. For Americans my broadcasts are stopped at an electronic Berlin wall.

Indeed, Dan is in hot water for a report my own investigative team put in Britain's Guardian papers and on BBC TV years ago. Way back in 1999, I wrote that former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes had put in the fix for little George Bush to get out of 'Nam and into the Air Guard.

What is hot news this month in the USA is a five-year-old story to the rest of the world. And you still wouldn't see it in the USA except that Dan Rather, with a 60 Minutes producer, finally got fed up and ready to step out of line. And, as Dan predicted, he stuck out his neck and got it chopped off.

Is Rather's report accurate? Is George W. Bush a war hero or a privileged little Shirker-in-Chief? Today I saw a goofy two page spread in the Washington Post about a typewriter used to write a memo with no significance to the draft-dodge story. What I haven't read about in my own country's media is about two crucial documents supporting the BBC/CBS story. The first is Barnes' signed and sworn affidavit to a Texas Court, from 1999, in which he testifies to the Air Guard fix -- which Texas Governor George W. Bush, given the opportunity, declined to challenge.

And there is a second document, from the files of US Justice Department, again confirming the story of the fix to keep George's white bottom out of Vietnam. That document, shown last year in the BBC television documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," correctly identifies Barnes as the bag man even before his 1999 confession.

At BBC, we also obtained a statement from the man who made the call to the Air Guard general on behalf of Bush at Barnes' request. Want to see the document? I've posted it at: http://www.gregpalast.com/ulf/documents/draftdodgeblanked.jpg

This is not a story about Dan Rather. The white millionaire celebrity can defend himself without my help. This is really a story about fear, the fear that stops other reporters in the US from following the evidence about this Administration to where it leads. American news guys and news gals, practicing their smiles, adjusting their hairspray levels, bleaching their teeth and performing all the other activities that are at the heart of US TV journalism, will look to the treatment of Dan Rather and say, "Not me, babe." No questions will be asked, as Dan predicted, lest they risk necklacing and their careers as news actors burnt to death.


"Bush Family Fortunes," the one-hour documentary taken from Greg Palast's BBC investigative reports, including the story of George Bush and Texas Air Guard, can be viewed, in part, at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

To receive more of Palast's investigative reports,

sign up at http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm

 

Biz/Tech News

• Israel Unions Start Nationwide Strike Reuters 

• Stewart to Surrender for Prison by Oct. 8  AP

• U.S. broadcasters object to planned digital TV bill USA Today 

• McDonald's Loses Legal Fight Against MacNoodles

• CBS to Name Panel to Examine Bush Guard Story  AP

• Governors Worry About Offshore Drilling  AP

• New Pickup Makes Hummer Look Rather Puny  AP

• Fed Expected to Boost Rates Again  AP

• Oil Hits $47 as Supply Worries Linger Reuters

• AOL Moves Beyond Passwords for Log-Ons  AP

 "Over in Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin is using terrorism to increase his power and erode his people's civil liberties. It's nice to see the American way of life catching up around the world." -- Jay Leno

Bush-Prison-Torture News

• After Abu Ghraib Guardian

• Only Two Women Prisoners -- Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax Scotland on Sunday, UK 

E-mail

I'm so glad you came back online. I've been saying my liberal prayers for you.

Thank you so much Cheryl.  I wouldn't want compassionate conservative prayers!

I need to put food on my family and a roof over our heads.

Please Support All Hat No Cattle

or send a buck or two to:

All Hat No Cattle

PO Box 5237

Navarre, FL 32566

"If South Dakota were a country, we'd be the seventh largest coalition partner today." -- Sen. Tom Daschle

Go-F*** -Yourself News

• Cheney's Plane Diverted Due to Bad Weather  AP

• Bush Must OK Clinton Document Release Plan  AP

Graphic By Pat Gerber, San Francisco

"What do you want in a female companion? What is the first thing that attracts you. Her ability to cook and keep house or is it the way she looks? It's not politically correct; GM hates it when I draw that analogy. But it's absolutely correct."
-- General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz likening women to an automobile's exterior design

Kerry/Edwards News

• Kerry, in jest, suggests further Bush tax cuts

• Kerry Accuses Bush of Incompetence on Iraq  AP

Shipping Bush/Cheney Back Home


The GOP Convention featured a rather unsubtle, if not unseemly, display of military music. So I decided to reciprocate with "Shipping Bush/Cheney Back Home,"  which you can sing to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along."

On the Hill, on the dale,
Kerry/Edwards will not fail.
We'll be shipping Bush/Cheney back home.

In and out, hear us shout,
Count'ring lies by right wing louts.
We'll be shipping Bush/Cheney back home.

Then it's hi! hi! hee!
USA's democracy.
Broadcast our message loud and strong.

For where 'er you go,
You will always know
That we're shipping Bush/Cheney back home.

Needless wars, jobless blight,
Action left beats action right,
So we're shipping Bush/Cheney back home.

On the hunt, pushing fear,
Bush will soon be shedding tears...

The rest is here:
http://www.madkane.com/bush_cheney_ship_home.html
 

Several Indicted in Texas PAC Probe  AP

"A law banning the sale of assault weapons has expired, which means it's now legal to buy Uzis and AK 47s. The NRA said that now its owners can protect their families from up to 200 burglars at once." -- Conan O'Brien

Odd News

• War is obsolete, Dalai Lama declares during Sunrise visit

• Tropical Storm Lisa's uncertain path could include S. Florida

• Senate Foes Daschle, Thune Swap Barbs in Debate

• What Next? Uzi Bourbon?

• 'And Up Through the Ground Come A-Bubbling Crude'

• Californians Clean Up Beach in the Nude

• Semi-Nude Motorcyclist Charged With Indecent Exposure WTOP

• Man Presumed Dead Calls Daughter at Wake

• Brazilian Woman's Poison Dart Tips Stolen

• Kids in Land of the Rising Sun in the dark over astronomy

• Guatemalan girl survives 16 days alone in jungle

• Taichung police orders fleshy 'betel nut beauties' to cover up

The Interstate10 bridge connecting Escambia and Santa Rosa counties in Florida was damaged by hurricane Ivan. A trailer from a semi is seen in the lower left hand corner. The truck cab and the body of the driver were found in the bay.

Peace.

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"Lisa, Congrats on your sweep! As George Bush might have said, 'Lucky me, I hit the trifecta.' Seriously, I'm glad to be able to salute you and all the great laughs you provide." - Daniel Kurtzman, About.com Guide to Political Humor.