Harry Shearer


Huffington Post

Attention, Don Rumsfeld: Here's What You've Yearned For

In an excerpt from his book on former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, Brad Graham quotes Mr. "Stuff Happens" thusly on the subject of the hated media:... ...


Is The Corps of Engineers Astro-Turfing Its Critics?

If you were inclined to disbelieve the three independent forensic engineering reports that blamed design and construction errors by the US Army Corps of Engineers... ...


Never Should Have Built it There--New York

After four years of hearing, from commenters on the New Orleans disaster, that "they never should have built it there...they should just move it inland/upstream/away",... ...


Slow-Walking Disaster Response Four Years Later

New Orleans has an affordable-rental-housing crisis, in the wake of the failure of the federal levees in 2005. Best estimates are that some 80,000 rental... ...


New Orleans: Not a City of Whiners

NEW YORK--When I say, as I did in a recent response to a commenter critical of New Orleans, that that city's people are the most... ...


What Did Powell Know, and Why Isn't He Subjected to the Pelosi Treatment?

Sunday morning Colin Powell went on "Face the Nation", ostensibly to debate the future of the Republican party. But late in the interview, Powell was... ...


"Unpleasant Things"

That was how Dick Cheney summarized what the International Red Cross described as treatment "tantamount to torture" handed out to certain US detainees. You pays... ...


Obama to New Orleans: Drop Dead?

CLEVELAND--Regular readers know I've been critical of the Obama administration for its do-nothing approach to redeeming the President's promise to redeem the promises Bush made... ...


Release and Conceal: The Mirror-World Edition

In the latest phase of what I'm proud to name The War on Torture, we've definitely entered Mirror World. In the regular world, we've become... ...


The Cheney Torture Tour: What's the Deal

Monday's NYT piece on the unraveling of the torture program during the second Bush term provokes a key question, and provides a stark answer. If,... ...


The First 100 Days in New Orleans

Let's see...Mayor Nagin's embroiled in twin scandals, involving his Sanitation Commissioner turning over private emails from city councilpeople and his former technology czar's ties with... ...


The Torture Debate--It's About Time

Several years too late, we've been dragged kicking and screaming into what a democratic republic should be engaged in: a public debate on whether such... ...


Chinese Drywall and the Cost of Truth-Telling

As if Formosan termites weren't bad enough (they devour everything, not just wood), now New Orleans, and Florida, are coming to grips with their latest... ...


Brand Extension--What Wall Street Borrowed From Madison Avenue

Reading the history of Joe Cassano's stewardship of AIG Financial Products, one thing--aside from the frequent lying about the lack of risk in the bets... ...


Why the War Crimes?

Sunday's Washington Post article, recapitulating much of Ron Suskind's earlier reporting, that Abu Zubaydah wasn't the feared number 3 of Al-Qaeda, and that the intelligence... ...


Who Is Ed Liddy, and What Did He Do Before AIG?

Mainstream media have portrayed Ed Liddy, currently the $1-a-year head of embattled AIG, as a good guy who gamely took on a bad job, unwinding... ...


New Orleans: Where Did the Money Go?

That's a question that's often asked by commenters here critical of my repeated suggestions that the Federal government, under both Bush and Obama, has failed... ...


"I'll Consider It Criminal"

The clock is ticking. Congress told the Army Corps of Engineers to give New Orleans what it thought it had, so-called Category 3 hurricane protection,... ...


Is It Too Late For a Sense of Urgency?

"Sense of Urgency Grips Coastal Restoration Summit", reads the headline in Thursday's New Orleans Times-Picayune. The story, about a summit of scientists and state officials,... ...


No One Belongs Here More Than You

It may be apparent to constant readers of my posts, or listeners to my radio show, that I've avoided satirizing, opionizing, or otherwise making public... ...


Plenty of Nothin'for New Orleans?


NEW ORLEANS--Yes, there's bitching and moaning about what's in, and not in, the stimulus package. And then there's this, from last Friday's Times-Picayune: The giant... ...


Harry Shearer:"We Won't Take That History Lightly"

LONDON--Yes, that pesky"history"thing rears its ugly head, this time in a quote from General David"Surge"Petraeus in today's Washington Post. It's neat... ...


The Tone of Washington

Watching the wave of euphoria sweep over Washington, and the country, I'm reminded of the last time an emotion this deep and wide settledt over ...


What Bush Forgot About the Katrina Event

Even while the rest of the country may have not noticed Bush's parting insult, New Orleans sure got the message. ...


They Kept Us Safe--or Did They?

President Bush and Dick Cheney, far busier with the Bush-Cheney Legacy Tour than with their final days exercising executive (or whatever branch Cheney's in) power--we ...


Is The Problem With Finger-Pointing That We're Using the Wrong Finger?

Help me. I'm confused. Are we supposed to ignore the past, forget finger-pointing and blame-gaming and look forward? Or are we supposed to demand accountability? ...


The Legacy Project and the Return of the Media Cringe

The Sunday-morning yak shows on the networks have long since all adopted the late Tim Russert's habit of confronting guests with previous statements that contradict...

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New Orleans Faces"The Nation"

It's holiday time and we probably all want to be thinking about something other than bloodshed and disaster. But the editors at The Nation... ...


The Most Trusted Name in News Can't Tell Sitting From Standing

Tuesday's edition of the Bush Legacy Project Television Show involved a visit by a suddenly softballing Candy Crowley to the White House for a CNN... ...


What's Missing From Obama's Infrastructure Plan

Friends of mine assure me that that little item is a stealth priority -- New Orleans is an issue that Obama cares so deeply about he dare not mention it yet. ...


Fixing The Responder, Ignoring the Cause?

NEW ORLEANS--In a Monday blog post, WashPost's Al Kamen reports that the incoming Obama administration will bring back James Lee Witt, who successfully whipped FEMA ...


From "No Doubt" to "Is That a Yes?"

When the Bush administration--yeah, they're still in office, and they like it when we're not paying attention--first trotted out its marketing campaign for the Iraq ...


The Difference Between Show Business and Business

In show business (masquerading as"television journalism"), Bill O'Reilly on Fox News Channel excoriates not only his time-slot rival Keith Olbermann for left-leaning views, but... ...


You Save Us, We Redeem You

At a Sunday night live broadcast of KCRW's"Left, Right and Center"an audience member asked the panel (Tony Blankley, Bob Scheer, Matt Miller and ...


President Elect Obama: Denounce and Renounce

This question needs to be asked of the president-elect: do you plan to denounce and renounce these extra-Constitutional ways of doing business, and the illegal policies that resulted, before you take office? ...


How to Come Down From Euphoria

I first voted for an African-American for President 40 years ago yesterday. The man was Eldridge Cleaver, then a well-known author ("Soul on Ice") not... ...


If You Like FEMA, You'll Love HUD

Not content to spearhead the bulldozing of thousands of habitable public-housing apartments while the erstwhile residents remain in exile, the Department of Housing and Urban... ...


Design Flaws: The Other (Minneapolis) Shoe Drops

Both liberals and conservatives would prefer not to confront an uncomfortable fact: something in our system of providing for major infrastructure has gone terribly wrong. ...


Forget the Yanks, Here Come the Dutch

New Orleans may be, according to the old slogan,"the city that care forgot", but, judging by this campaign, it's certainly the city America forgot. ...


What's Made the Price of Oil Take a Swan Dive?

It all seems so quaint and distant now, that debate about the cause of sharply rising oil prices during the first half of this year ...


The Failure of"Because I Say So"

LONDON--Over dinner last night, i was trying to explain to a British friend why the majority of House Republicans fled the bailout bill compromise. Reading ...


Alchemy Lives!

I'm not an economic idiot--I remember what"elasticity of demand"means--but I may be an economic special-needs person. Even so, there's one fact about the ...


Bush Favors Texas Over Louisiana--Even Bobby Jindal Notices

As horrible as Hurricane Ike was to Texas, and it was, one can't help noticing the disparity in death tolls between Ike and Katrina. It ...


Dick Cheney Lied--to a Republican

Of course, the Wall Street swoon is bigger news. But bigger news as well were the somewhat newsworthy revelations in Bob Woodward's book--bigger because Woodward ...


New Orleans Exhales, Then Gasps Again

Gustav, as far as New Orleans was concerned, was not"the mother of all storms", in the latest immortal words of Mayor Ray Nagin, and ...


New Orleans: Nobody Asked, Why Not Sooner?

LOS ANGELES--Of course, the primary hope is that this question remains, if not rhetorical, at least not forensic. The hope is that Gustav doesn't prove ...


Harry Shearer:"Katrina and Cronyism"

My friends in New Orleans are either deciding what to pack, or deciding to hunker down. There's an ominous mass gaining power in the Gulf ...


The Base Hillary Didn't Touch

Hillary Clinton's job, we were told, was to unite her supporters behind Barack Obama. The speech she gave had several mentions apiece of her chosen themes -- only one thing was left out. ...


All Those Federal Funds: Why the New Orleans Recovery is Slow

For commenters to my posts on New Orleans who keep asking a variant of"why, with all the federal billions sent down there, is the ...


What Bush Said in New Orleans Today, and What He Didn't Say

"Never before has our nation seen such destruction by nature". It's almost three years after the federal levees failed and flooded 80% of New Orleans, ...


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