There just has to be

seven thousand ardent healthy Young Republicans out there who are willing to make up the Infantry's 2005 Recruiting Shortfall.

Think of the opportunities here kids, you can covertly politicize the army, collect liberal silencing service decorations, and yes possibly DIE for the greater Glory of La Famiglia Arbusto Owners and Proud Operators of Plantation U.S.A!
What more can a Young Patriotic Conservative ever Aspire to??
Lay down that blathering volume from Dinesh D'Souza and march my lads and lassies onto the Recruiting Stations...therein you have a heroic destiny waiting in the timeless sands of Iraq.
Go...
Please go in the name of All That is Holy!

The Next Conservative Utopia

A "whiter" New Orleans

Outed, Doubted & Tossed...

The Raw Story has the Dish
A deeply closeted homosexual is supplanted by an appalling corrupt gladhanding stuffed shirt...
Yipes, the leadership cadres on the GOP dominated Hill are gettin' mighty thin these days.

The President asks for "Sacrifice"

anyone heard his tinny halting requests for car-pooling,lower room temps, use of public transportation & the saving of gasoline in general? He sounded petulant, confused and whiny to say the least. President Carter, by contrast put way more moral force into his conservation homilies.
But then, Bush confused and malevolent as he may be is also a hopeless conservative utopian. Pleas for sacrifice are not really in his line...promises of blood, thunder, and free cashola are much more his style.
One might ask what sacrifices he has asked of the lobbyists who are constantly at the trough of his swinish Administration? What belt tightening has Halliburton, Chevron or Kellog, Brown and Root undergone? What have his so called "rangers" and sundry big money campiang contributors given back in this time of travail??
The answer is...nothing.
Right now our sacrifices are naught but their opportunity to cash in...

"Horse Thief Snarls his Defiance at Congress"

or so the headlines ought to read as far as I am concerned.
Instead Brownie goes before congress and is allowed to defame his betters in a desperate but logical bid for vindication.
After all, if he can successfully smear Blanco and Nagin,then he can credibly present himself as a martyr to the DC Praetorian class and thus rip himself off a nice piece of change on the rightical chic book & lecture circuit. Thus in days to come we can expect former FEMA chief Brown to blame the government's inept disaster response on Eastern Effete Intellectuals, Fuzzy Thinking One Worlder Socialists, Abortion Doctors, Secular Humanists et al...
Meanwhile this dismal little bastard is getting paid out of MY POCKET as a government disaster relief CONSULTANT!
Good lord in any well run Republic, Michael Brown would by now be hiding out on Cuttyhunk Island...but no, there he sits before congress alternately petulant and obnoxious...he knows as a part of ruthless rising class of conservative opportunists he need fear nothing in the long run.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

I got no beef with Deval Patrick...

but I'm not yet one of his supporters either. I've met him (Briefly) on one occasion he seems passionate, articulate,energetic and all that...but then again, so was Marjorie Clapprood.
So I'm slightly nonplussed to discover Patrick's new campaign blog actually links to this...th' "Little Blog that Cried"/
I mean good grief, you'd think that my constant drumbeat accusations of chronic onanism on the part of the current Governor of Massachusetts woulda scared Deval's people off.
but no, there they are blithely linking to Chimes at Midnight, butter clearly wouldn't melt in their mouths.
Here I'm stuck, I do have a "if you link to me, I'll link to you" policy (subject to revision)...and I'm loathe to ditch a fruitful link even its to a campaign with which I have no involvement.
So I'm gonna link back to his blog with the stated proviso that said link in no way constitutes an endorsement.
At an appropriate time, prior to the 2006 Gubernatorial Primary, Chimes at Midnight will post an endorsement for that key race. However, Humble Elias is convinced that the democratic field is not yet set and he wants to observe developments a bit. As Louis Armstrong once sang "We Have All the Time in the World".

Scot Lehigh apparently thinks

that Mitt Romney's decision to open Camp Edwards on the Cape to Hurricane Katrina refugees is a humanitarian triumph on a par with the Berlin Airlift.
Frankly this is yet another example of Lehigh's compulsive and shrill bar-lowering on behalf of the Romney regime. Hell, opening up state property to natural disaster victims ought to be a no-brainer to even the most corrupt and inept bureaucracies...the whole thing can be accomplished at the push of a button, especially in Massachusetts which is prone to the occasional hurricane!.
Not to Scot though, the whole thing is a victory for Mitt's dashing private sector values...ghod you can hear Scot sighing like a bobbysoxer in every paragraph.
Well, what of it?
Scot has found his own grinning godling and doesn't care a whit what people think when he grovels and renders homage....we have to accept that.

Mitt (may I call you Mitt?), if by some miracle you are reading this, when it comes time to run in 2008, and that time is soon upon us I know, please take Scot Lehigh with you into the snows and hollows of New Hampshire.
By some mysterious sycophantic alchemy, Scot Lehigh has become Waylon Smithers to your Mister Burns... and as such the poor man is simply ruined for anything so mundane as a sensible political commentary.
Take him, Willard, Scot Lehigh is truly your man in every way.

The Ideological Consequence of Catastrophe...

Karl Rove, the President's chief bagman, torpedo and ideological watchdog has been placed in charge of the post Katrina recovery effort.
And predictably, the broad normative aspects of the project have become readily apparent within a week or so of the flood. La Famiglia Arbusto plans to spend lavishly without regards to revenue or deficit projections, tax cuts and tax breaks will be handed out like candy to the right persons and entities, wages will be cut and voting will become a quaint Jeffersonian relic.
So in sum, post Katrina Louisiana is going to resemble post Reconstruction Louisiana in many ways...low wages, low taxes and keep the underclass divided and away from the polling stations.
And that in turn is the conservative utopia that haunts the collective dreams of the Praetorian Class.
La Famiglia Arbusto is driving this country towards revolution and the above is their publicly proclaimed blueprint for the U.S. Eschaton.
They think, when the whole thing goes to smash that the nation will somehow turn further to the right and favor them their peculiar utopian fantasies...but wouldn't be so cocksure nor so dependent on building a new ordnung out of the rubble.

Romney is a Fraud...

is BA-ACK Kiddies!

For however long I do not know but this is a welcome sight!

The Boston Herald is up in arms

over the spotiness of Boston's "evacuation plan".

Well what the hell, they may be right.
I think the whole state's evacuation procedures could do with a thorough top down review and reform.
Hell look at the sheer ineptitude and chaos avowed "Red States" and sundry Admin vassals can expect from their patrons La Famiglia Arbusto.
Now just imagine the sort of neglect and outright deliberate abuse the Commonwealth would have to endure if a similar sort of Hurricane came ashore up here.
Nope I say now is the time to review local disaster preparedness top to bottom.
Most of those plans were no doubt written back in the days when bureaucrats thought one could safely evacuate out from under an all out Soviet Nuclear Attack....but we ought to be able to rationally anticipate and deal with a simple hurricane.
And we need to, believe me, Massachusetts has no friends in high places these days we will need to rely on ourselves.

Scot Lehigh

takes Senators Kerry and Kennedy to task for their pending votes against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.
His thesis seems to be, that if the President's political machine incites vague rumors as to the moderation of their judicial nominee, then our Senators have no choice but to go along like good pantry boys and vote for Roberts.
This despite Roberts' remarkably close mouthed performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee and his long history as a shyster for various praetorian causes.
Nope...when a President renowned for his sneakiness and duplicity points someone out as a moderate...Scot Lehigh just sighs like a teenybopper and believes.

As I've said before, its not that Scot is a neocon and a praetorian camp follower, for these are common things among the punditariat....no it is his sheer mindless credulity that drives me crazy.
Romney give him an exclusive interview, tosses Scot a few moldy press releases and voila' Mitt is On the Job As Our Alert and Engaged Governor!
Ditto Bush and Roberts...a few blast faxes from deep in the heart of DC and Lehigh waddles over to his computer to tap out a ritual denunciation of our senatorial delegations.
Honestly Scot doesn't have a shred of judgement when it comes to the praetorian class...the man's writing style calls to mind a tenderfoot Boy Scout getting prepped for his first snipe hunt.

Health Care Blogging...

According to mein colleagues in the local blogoverse, everyone who is anyone is blogging on the subject of health care this week.
This is supposed to raise public awareness on the issue, stimulate the base with new issues, bring new voices into the debate etc etc etc.
Unfortunately, what Humble Elias knows about health care policy you can put in a thimble.
This Guy however, seems to have some good facts to start with.
Meanwhile how come we never blogswarm on something I understand?
Like local submarine sinkings, the politics of non-proliferation...3rd parties, failed fascist movements...movies...used bookstores...zeppelins...1960's sitcom starlets...something anything!!!!

Ay yi yi...."health care blogging" they want yet!

All I really know is that medicines ability to treat your illnesses successfully is a comparatively recent phenomenon. 50 years ago cancer was a death sentence, 75 years ago a post operative blood clot could kill you and a hundred years ago plenty of Doctors in (Romantic) Menotomy thought germ theory was "just so much chin music".
Medicine's former inability to render treatment went hand in hand with it's local decentralized & unprofitable character...one didn't make a lot of money at it because patients so seldom survived.
Nowadays, medicine is a predictable yapping blabbing self promoting big business because of course nothing in America so profitable ever escapes the myth of rugged individualism.
So it seems to me, if we wanna make health care more equitable, we've got to somehow separate it from the myth of private enterprise.
How we do that, ah do not know.

There...thats my health care blogging...SATISFIED!?

Just a quick note from the Florida Panhandle...

In addition to being craven, unctuous, patronizing, dishonest, blustery and opportunistic, we can also duly note that Governor Jeb Bush (Future Overseer of Plantation U.S.A.) is also barking mad.

In other news...

Senator Kerry has announced he will be voting against John Robert's nomination for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Now watch for the shrieking accusations of timidity and indecisiveness from Joan Vennochi, Randy Rhodes, Eileen McNamara and Scot Lehigh...paragons of lonely courage all of them.

Romney Finds an Escape Capsule?

Jon Keller is floating the notion that Mitt is on La Famiglia Arbusto's short list to lead the Katrina Recovery Effort.

I wonder who in the admin leaked this story?

Well if its true, then we can see the political parameters of Romney's exit from office quite clearly. He will resign, not to escape the guberatorial grind but to take care of those poor unfortunates down in the Bayou.
Good God if I didn't feel sorry for Katrina's victims before, I sure do now.
Romney is a cold, opportunistic, wealth worshipping dilettante and a great patronizer of the poor...a predictable choice on the part of the Bush Admin.
He "saved" the Salt Lake Olympics thanks to thousands of Mormon Volunteers and millions of dollars in licensing fees...none of which will be available in the wreckage of New Orleans.
The man is a palpable fraud and a more than a little spineless...yet he has been built up into a sort of 21st Century Adminstrative Genius by the usual lackeys and sycophants.

Mitt, Listen to me, as much as I want you out, if the call comes from Bush, turn the job down. The People of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi have suffered enough, they don't need you on the job....they just don't.

Look this link over and

in particular remember this face.

What a nasty dissolute punim...that boy just can't wait to punish us all.

Look at the utter hate in his eyes...like he wants to strangle the photographer or something.

Well give him time, 25 or so years from now he'll be running for President on a promise to abolish all public revenue, exile the democrats to the Phantom Zone and give da gummint back ta da grown-ups.

Just you wait!

John Kerry speaks at Brown University today...

and calls an entrenching tool, an entrenching tool among other things.

Oh...Good...

According to Yesterday's New York Times, Karl Rove is on the job in Louisiana:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development."

Now watch, soon enough Karl will have the NOPD in firefights with the NOFD, with the survivors being shipped out to Guantanamo Bay. After that Karl can spread the money around to the local grass-eaters and sundry loyalists...and who knows maybe if the President's approval ratings go up a bit he can finally simply put all the democracts behind barbed wire.
With Rove on the job a catastrophe of nature followed by a catastrophe and neglect, ineptitude & arrogance will now be capped by a catastrophe of malevolent commission.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Lawrence Novak resigns...

as the State GOP's Vice Chairman over allegations that he was laundering drug money for a convicted dealer.
And of course, champion enablers that they are, the Boston Globe relegates the story to the back of the Business Section.
Now watch, a decorous ninety or so days will pass then DA Sullivan's office will quietly announce a plea bargain and the whole thing will be deftly swept under the rug.
Novak will end up picking up trash by the side of Route 95 North or sport an electronic bracelet on his ankle....and the mystery of the Local GOP's gold will remain that, a mystery.

Romney tries his hardest to come up with...

a sensible anti-terrorism idea...and his best proposal involves wiretapping the Mosques of Massachusetts.

And you know what?
I agree with him.
With the proviso that the Commonwealth wiretap the Mormon Temple in Belmont and the Mormon meeting houses scattered thither and yon as well. Who knows what those Mormons are talking about behind closed doors, they too are an alien minority fond of secrecy with a strange authoritarian hierarchy looming over all and sundry.
Money, secrecy, bombastic architecture...it all seems fishy to me.
Well the answer to all this nonsense is, the Mormons haven't commandeered any jetliners and flown them into buildings...at least not as of 8:47am 9-15-05.
That sort of thing doesn't fall within the bailiwick of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints' long range investment strategy.
Nonetheless, Romney's ugly proposal does point up the man's utter deficit of class or even shame when it comes to anything pertaining to civil liberties.
For a guy who likes to fly off to Spartanburg South Carolina crying poor mouth and describing himself as a red speck in a blue sea, he sure doesn't think much of the rights and lives of other political, religious, sexual and racial minorities within the very Commonwealth he has sworn to defend.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Chertoff Next?

Someone in the La Famiglia Arbusto's High Command is leakin' like a depth charged U-Boat about dat sumbitch.

When I read...

a story like this I think to myself that the DA ought to put the alleged perp thru the proverbial third degree as it is likely they've been doing this sort of thing for years sans exposure.
This particular quote is especially intriguing:
Novak was arrested at his home later after he deposited $77,000 in a client trust fund account at Eastern Bank in Brockton and converted the rest into bank checks and money orders.
I'm wondering what were the denominations on those money orders and bank checks? Wanna bet they were gonna be in $2,000 increments and then bundled as campaign contributions to someone somewhere?
I've often wondered where the local GOP gets its scratch?
With their low numbers they either need regular infusions of out of state cash or....
:)
I hope Sullivan bears down hard on this one, I suspect there is a bigger scandal afoot.
Ah but Sullivan wants to run for Governor or Congress or the Senate...so no doubt this'll end in a quiet plea bargain and the mystery of Novak's Gold wil remain just that, a mystery.

"Brownie yer doin' a heck of a job....

now get out before I set the hounds on you".
Well hell Mister President if Brownie had to go a mere week after you hugged him like a black refugee...what about Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff?
Shit, that man is dumber than nine chickens and meaner than the proverbial Somerville junkyard dog.
For that fact,why not fire Condi Rice while you are at it? She went shoe shopping on Fifth Avenue like proper little Hapsburg Archduchess whilst the Diplomatic Corps clamored outside her office offering this republic hurricane aid.
We all know the answer to these questions, power rots from the top if Brown was culpable then so is the man who appointed him...but of course George Bush isn't going anywhere, Karl Rove will keep him in office if he has to pile up sandbags and string barbed wire outside the Oval Office.

More Bad News...

Jesus Christ, check this out...

New Orleans could end up being uninhabitable?
Sadly, this is nothing new, Lower Manhattan was heavily contaminated when the twin towers fell, the Bush Admin airly gave the toxic-all clear despite evidence from the EPA that conditions were still unsafe near the wreckage site.
Have no fear, La Famiglia Arbusto will do likewise and the same in New Orleans, they lie, they lie about lying and they lie like dawgs in the August Heat whenever their ineptitude and malevolence is exposes.

Personally, I don't think British Newspapers are any more inherently creditable than their stateside counterparts even if they do cover things that get missed or deliberately overlooked in America.
But this story is so scary, I'd be happy if they were in this case, well and thoroughly wrong.

Stunning Naiveté’

Whenever the so called free market fails us, as it so often does, Jeff Jacoby feels strangely compelled to rise to it’s defense no matter how big an ass he makes of himself.
Today for example, he thunders on self righteously about current round of extortionate gas prices. He blames the whole mishaugas on meddling politicians and hurricane Katrina conveniently forgetting that regular gasoline had already gone up a dollar a gallon over the course of the summer.
He then sternly lectures the price gouged to suck it up and buy less gas if they wanna bring down the price.
Which is hard news for America’s farmers and other citizens who depend on private vehicles for their livelihood.
Regardless of the harshness of his argument, Jacoby then goes on to make an entirely bizarre comparison between gas prices the price of land.
Clearly, young Jeff managed to avoid taking macroeconomics 101 as an undergraduate. Gasoline is a perishable item, once purchased by the end user it cannot appreciate in value, it can be consumed. Land however does appreciate in value, either slowly or quickly and depending on a host of factors. This is why five acres of prime building real estate in Henniker N.H. is considered safe collateral by a bank, and five hundred gallons of gasoline is not.
Well, what does this tell us?
Times like this remind me of how badly Jeff wants to be a Praetorian, but his nerves fails him and then sometimes his very logic goes south.
Jacoby just can’t make the mark, today’s thesis is the sort of tangled piffle that would be laughed out of the office of any Kampus Konservative Bundist Newspaper in the land.
I give him an A for effort,,,he wants to worship the free market like a good post conservative pagan, but he keeps tripping on his unkempt shoelaces and plunging into the baptismal font like he’s Jerry Lewis or something.
Dopey-assed reasoning like this, does the wretched wasteland that is the Globe’s op-ed page no credit.
Besides, isn’t it ironic that Jeff, that prophet of the jet propelled libertarian future of plenty and privatized elementary schools should be snarling at the peasants to “eat their peas and be quiet”?

Reilly caves...

and allows a restrictive anti-gay marriage question onto the 2008 ballot.
He calls this, a due deference to a strict point of law.
Where have I heard that before?
Oh yes, its always a strict point of law when the ruling favors the Praetorians and their agenda.
A strict point of law made George Bush President, and its has been all down hill ever since.
Now, thanks to Reilly's ruling, we can look forward to an invasion of Baptist Shamen, Born Again Witch Doctors, Book-idolators and sundry fanatical jetsam armed with money and intent on changing the Settled Laws of the Commonwealth to suit the back country parsonages of Spartanburg South Carolina.
What is worse, our institution of gay marriage will become a means to fund-raise for the Grover Norquists within and without the GOP.
In his own way, Reilly has surrendered to out of state wowserism as abjectly as the Governor he seeks to unseat.
Gay marriage is, sadly enough, an intensely emotional issue. I do not seek to export it beyond the borders of the Commonwealth into states that are not ready and plainly resistant to this simple and humane point of law.
The Chimes at Midnight cannot change the hard hearts of Waco Texas or Anniston Alabama...onlt time and reasonable discussion can do that.
But we must NOT put a matter of individual civil rights onto the ballot, to place that before a simple majority is to make a potential blood sacrifice of all our rights as citizens.
There is an interesting speech by Abraham Lincoln in Peoria Illinois circa 1854 that ought to be re-read when we discuss gay marriage.
Lincoln makes many arguments based on law and precedent...but his sanest and simplest thesis runs this way: if we assume the negro slave is a man imbued with inalienable rights by a benign creator, then placing those rights before an electorate, is the very negation of both popular sovereignty in general and civil rights in particular.
The negation of civil rights by free and fair election or the repression of said rights by a tyrannical regime amounts to the same thing, inalienable rights duly repressed.
This is Lincoln's precise quote:
The doctrine of self government is right—absolutely and eternally right—but it has no just application, as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such just application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, why in that case, he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent, a total destruction of self-government, to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than self-government—that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal;" and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.
The courts have spoken in respect of gay marriage, our courts in Massachusetts hold no brief in Missouri or Nebraska. It is up to a slow enlightening of public opinion to change hearts and minds. Here in the Commonwealth, we must not take back what has been granted, an institution that poses no threat to the law, precedent or the rights and lives of the citizenry.
I think Reilly has made a mistake, a catastrophic mistake that will kick in fully & furiously over time. As far as I'm concerned he is gonna have to start turning water into wine to get my vote in the 2006 primary.

Grim Prophesy...

A year or so ago, Senator John Kerry stood up before the world and said that He and Senator John Edwards had the "Right Values" to lead this Nation.
How right he was.
The chaos, casualties and needless loss of life that attends upon Hurricane Katrina are not the function of mere bureaucratic snafus or ill-preparedness or whatever today's excuse happens to be.
No..the current catastrophe is entirely the result of the wrong values being preached and acted upon at the very topmost echelon of this Republic. If you believe as George Bush does that the proper role of the Federal Government is to be a bodyguard to the Praetorian Class, war machine of choice and nothing else then the Katrina chaos is inevitable as night follows day.
A contempt for Federal activism and a fanatical wish to sever the public's occasional dependence on said action can be the only reason why FEMA and other agencies have been crammed full of crooks, laggards and hopeless ineptoids.
Forget the fact that the public has a constitutional right to expect such action, men must fit the praetorian ideology no matter what!
If your own personal ideology hold no brief for successful Federal action of any type, then get ready for ever more Katrinas...because this is the heartfelt belief of not only President Bush but VP Cheney and most of the men who aspire to the 2008 GOP Nomination for President.
Hell some of them will never admit it, but they are very much satisfied with the current outrage at FEMA etc...since by their debased beliefs this increases anger at the Federal Government and paves the way for the inevitable libertarian eschaton.
This is of couse, a value structure completely at odds with the majority of public opinion in the USA. Alas however the Praetorian Class and their clients in the GOP have never found this to be any barrier to gaining and holding power in the USA.

In short....this is only the beginning my friends.

Apparently, the Katrina Survivors

don't wanna to go state refuges and or "evacuation camps". The victims are reluctant leave the state.
Well, thats easy to understand, with hapless dipshits like Michael Brown & Michael Chertoff on the job, I'd like to hang around and keep an eye on things too. Sadly, given the hopless performance to date, the only way the people of New Orleans can influence the process is by sticking together...strength in numbers and like that.

"Shoot to Kill"

cried Jeff Jacoby this Sunday.
Predictable response really, the moment the first DVD player went out the plate glass window at Walmart you just knew Jeff would be yelling for firing squads.
"Looting" intoneth our laughing young senescence, is an economic crime that leads to human type crime.
Oh really?
This is the sort of tortured Cato Institute logic that Jeff dearly loves, facile and bloodcurdling at the same time.
After all just what is the original economic crime here? That the poor are rioting or that the hurricane breached the levee that La Famiglia Arbusto tried to fix on the cheap?
Now, just who is gonna do the shooting down there is open to question, the police have been out of ammunition until this weekend and the National Guard has been trickling in piecemeal. Moreover, the mobs down in New Orleans are now themselves armed. I say Jeff ought to throw in with the gangs, they're armed making them potential NRA adherents and the city's current anarchy is a thrving laboratory to test all his quaint notions about rugged individualism.
Jeff, if yer reading this, there is a golden opportunity for conservative civilization in those flood waters, why not fly on down to take charge?
The masses don't need water and bread, they need a thrilling ideology!
Anyhow, you couldn't do a worse job than Chertoff, Brown and Bush believe me.

Meanwhile back in the as yet undestroyed Bay State...

Brian McGrory resumes the hunt for the Great White Moderate Republican Man on Horseback....
Brian has apparently decided that GOP Boss Christy Mihos is the next Man of Destiny should Mitt bail on us this fall.
McGrory's hero worhip though, selectively ignores the fact that Romney is himself a creation of Mihos underhanded machinations to depose then Governor Jane "Jingle Money" Swift. Now Mihos wants the top job and a chance to personally push aside another female candidate for Governor....Swift, O'Brien and now Healey.
Brian also has this little snark at Shannon O'Brien:
Four years ago, Shannon O'Brien ran for governor repeatedly -- and in retrospect, laughably -- proclaiming that she ''blew the whistle" on the Big Dig. Mihos, in fact, is the real deal, and no one blew the whistle harder or earlier than he did.
Servile bastard isn't he?
Its just amazing the sort of sexism the local punditariat gets away with...

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Denny Hastert,

the bloated and corrupt Speaker of the U.S. House, confirms my worst suspicions.

Such is the state of leadership in America Today.

The Bodies haven't been pulled out of the water and counted yet, before Tom Delay's paunchy sock puppet is already hemmin' and hawin' about whether its worthwhile to rebuild New Orleans.
No doubt in the depths of the White House that sociopath Karl Rove is trying to figure out new ways to turn this catastrophe around to GWB's personal political advantage. The Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation will murmur about "breaking up a concentrated urban poverty cohort" and thus redlining democratic voters into safe red state precincts.
Thats not leadership either...
Keeping 48% of the population in a permament state of religious frenzy ain't leadership as well.
Getting a few crooks and felons to do your dirty work?
Nope it may make you seem tough...but it is not the MO of a real leader.

By every measure, the GOP and President Bush have failed the tests of leadership...and yet we are stuck with these fools and corruptards until 2008 when doubtlessly worse crimes will be perpetrated to make Jeb Bush or Rick Santorum Overseer of Plantation U.S.A.

What is to be done?
This is an American Chernobyl, and like the old USSR we arebeing lead by the same type of men that took Soviet Russia right off a cliff.

The news is uniformly bad...

New Orleans is under water, Southern Mississippi looks like it's been nuked, Scott McClellan claims Hurricane Katrina will only a "regional" impact (even as gas prices surge pass 3 bucks a gallon in Menotomy, the Crescent City's Walmart's gun sections have ben picked clean...and now shots are being fired at Army Helicopters engaged in evacuation work at the Superdome.
Meanwhile the Yahoo News Summary message boards are swarming with nasty little geeks all screaming for martial law, curfew, preventative detention and a shoot on site policy.
With what?
The National Guard is in Iraq...and you know armchair libertarian gun worshippers aren't gonna form up no posse to wading down Canal Street.

In sum it is just another typical day in George Bush Jr's Little Tin Fraud Life.

Sadly, the people of New Orleans and all other affected areas are about to find out the true value of George Bush's promises. He has in the past vowed to re-conquer the moon, fly to Mars, impregnate Iraq with democracy...smash terrorism, now he fantasizes about a gloriously revived New Orleans much as the Emperor Nero mused over the plans for his infamous "Golden House" after the great Fire at Rome.
Oh for a while we'll hear brave talk from Hastert and Delay and that whole corrupt & servile clique, but wait a month or so until the bills start coming in.
And coming in and coming in and coming in with the red ink rising like the waters from out the Gulf.
Soon enough there will be cover stories in the National Review with titles like "Is New Orleans Worth It?"
And then the hunt will be on with the whole Praetorian Class mounted up to find a decorous way to leave the City to it's fate.
Nevertheless, I feel for the plain people of that region, they didn't ask for this and certainly deserve better than George Bush's morally bankrupt leadership.