One of my longer term crusades has been trying to get the Katrina 11 voted out of office. The Katrina 11 were the 11 Republicans who voted "No" on the bill that Congress approved and Bush signed to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. These are cold-hearted bastards who would willingly see Americans die for the sake of more tax cuts for the wealthy. Most of them eagerly supported no-bid contracts for Halliburton, but wouldn't give a dime to help American citizens after Katrina. So far two of those 11 Republicans have indeed been defeated, one in 2006 (Indiana) and one in 2008 (Idaho).

NJ-5 is one of the Katrina 11 districts. This seat is currently held by Scott Garrett who is widely considered far too much of a right wing extremist for his New Jersey constituents. Like Virginia Foxx of North Carolina (another one of the Katrina 11), he opposed renewal of the Voting Rights Act, and he supported oil drilling off New Jersey's coast, both very unpopular stands in New Jersey. He is anti-union, anti-choice, anti-Katrina victims and about as right wing as you can get.

There is a website dedicated to defeating Garrett I'd like to call your attention to called "Retire Garrett." From their site:
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Although I have done versions of this before, this was inspired by a Daily Kos Diary:

This is what happened Monday, Aug. 29, 2005...the day Katrina hit, John McCain's 69th birthday...the day America realized that Republicans don't give a shit about Americans.

Hurricane Katrina:

I remember the radar images from the weather channel the night before landfall. I remember distincly watching it and thinking, "My god...that's going to be bad." I also remember thinking that the government had better be ready to get people out and to deal with the situation.

I was right...it was going to be really, really bad. I mean THIS bad:

While Mississippi and Louisiana were getting slammed by Hurricane Katrina and Americans were dying, THIS is what Bush and McCain were doing:

From CurrentTV comes this amazing footage from WITHIN Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans:
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As if we don't already know, today is Trent Lott Appreciation Day. While this is a great step forward for mankind, Lott, featured above rocking his signature hip hop dance move, deserves so much more than one day of Appreciation. Because Lott is so much more than a mere mortal and senator. Did you know he was also
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1. a misunderstood STD: Of course Lott is an STD (Strom Thurmond-defending); and outspoken segregationist. But Trent is no racist, and is as opposed to racism and Strom Thurmond was opposed to miscegenation. He is actually color blind. Lamenting the Sunni/Shiite hoopla, Lott said: "It's hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what's wrong with these people. Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me." See! Like Steven Colbert, Lott doesn't even see color, or ethnicity!
2. a salt of the earth working man One of the many exploited workers in Washington D.C., and part of the great Capitol Hill to K street migration, Lott recently left politics in search of a better life and a living wage as a lobbyist. Luckily, and purely coincidentally, by stepping down before the end of the year, Lott avoided a law, that was about to come into effect, requiring that senators wait two years after retiring before they start lobbying their former colleagues.
3. a martyr: as if the abject poverty faced by senators weren't enough, Trent's economic woes were only worsened by Hurricane Katrina. Nobody felt Trent's pain more than the President himself, seen here either trying to hold back tears or looking at a pretty molding on the ceiling, who said:
   

AND WILL THEY SAY nobody could have foreseen the weakness of the levees?

For the first time, Washington D.C. has collected data on H.I.V. and found that in the nation's capital, the "modern epidemic"—as the Washington Post calls it—is now primarily one affecting blacks.

The numbers most starkly illustrate HIV's impact on the African American community. More than 80 percent of the 3,269 HIV cases identified between 2001 and 2006 were among black men, women and adolescents. Among women who tested positive, a rising percentage of local cases, nine of 10 were African American. [...]

The District's AIDS rate is the worst of any city in the country, nearly twice the rate in New York and more than four times the incidence in Detroit, and it has been climbing faster than that of many jurisdictions. [...]

—Study Calls HIV in D.C. A 'Modern Epidemic'; More Than 80 Percent Of Recent Cases Were Among Black Residents

And big propz must go to the woman who dares try and change the world, as well as shout out the truth as she lives and sees it:
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Some time ago I wrote about a progressive, Gary Anderson, running for Mississippi state insurance commissioner against an incumbent who favored insurance companies over average Americans. This left many victims of Katrina without recourse if their insurance companies tried to refuse to pay out what the victims deserved. My friend from Mississippi, who knows many Katrina victims, sent me this report on the 2nd anniversary of Katrina's landfall:

Most of the people who DID receive money from the insurance companies received only a fraction of what it would cost to replace what they lost. There was the on going battle of wind vs water issue. That even Trent Lott had to deal with. He sued state farm and they settle out of court kind of quietly... However, when Bush visited the coast he promised Trent that he would rebuild his waterfront house. I think it would be interesting to look into what really happened in that case. No one I talked to was happy with the insurance settlements that they received. Now premiums are so high that many people can only afford the basic coverage. Insurance companies were boasting at how much money they gained last year, mainly because they didn't pay the proper amount of money to the people who lost their homes in the disaster. Also, many people have not had the money to fix or rebuild their house and today is the 2 year anniversary.
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Liza's recent article on a humorous side to Republican Joe Barton's (TX-6) opposition to healthcare for Amreica's children rang a bell for me. I remember this Joe Barton. His current crusade is denying Amrerica's children healthcare, but in the past he has been cold-hearted in a different way. He was one of the Katrina 11, the 11 Republicans who voted “No” on the bill that Congress approved and Bush signed to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. These are the cold-hearted bastards who would willingly see Americans die for the sake of more tax cuts for the wealthy and for Halliburton profits.

Joe Barton is one of those cold-hearted bastards. Only now his target is also America's children. But that isn't even new. Barton was one of the Republicans who worked to block the Combating Autism Act in 2006. His actions were so deceptive and so awful, that Don and Diedre Imus (no left wingers themselves) were pissed off and offended. So Barton has a history of right wing extremism when it comes to helping America's children.

But Barton is more than just a cold-hearted bastard. He is also anti-science. He has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from oil and gas industries then, as chairman of the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee, he proceeded to go after climatologists whose work helped us understand global warming. Joe Barton has been bought and sold by the oil industry and has become one of their main attack dogs against scientists.
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