Glorious Parade for Maximum Leader to Proceed!

Albeit, with rules fit for a totalitarian state.

Beyond the utter tastelessness of the event PRIOR to Katrina and beyond its utter inappropriateness in lieu of Katrina, consider the utter ruthlessness of an administration that would celebrate its signature failure in the glare of only its most recent. As many (relatively) apolitical Americans reevaluate Glorious Leader and his performance (or lack thereof) in Katrina, tax dollars are being spent on an event which strives to elevate the ftard to an even higher level of deity.

You cannot maintain a cult of personality by humility, modesty, introspection, remorse. It's never his fault. It can't be. The bitterest irony of today's American Right: it rules by appealing to just those characteristics in Americans that it considers signs of personal weakness in themselves. All Hail Maximum Leader!

His Watch (short list)

True That

From "The Daily Show":

Ed Helms: "Jon, today, finally, a ray of hope. Eight days after Katrina came ashore, the federal government has gotten its act together, marshalling all of its resources in a desperate effort to save this beloved, and now beleaguered, president."

Stewart: "President? I thought you were talking about New Orleans."

Helms: "No, that place is [expletive]. But many here believe with quick action, George W. Bush's reputation can still be saved. . . .

"The main thing is, in a very reassuring sight, the federal government has finally brought in the heavy machinery: The Rove.

"Many believe he's the one man who can fix the gaping breach in the president's approval ratings."

Stewart: "But what impact will that have on the actual rescue effort?"

Helms: "The actual rescue effort? What is your obsession with the horrible humanitarian catastrophe?"

Let's Suppose....

Three days before a category 5 hurricane, drawing a beeline on New Orleans: Buses are readied, doctors are gathered. US Navy hospital ships are dispatched to the Gulf and US military bases are prepared for an influx of refugees. National Guard and Reserve troops are deployed to the NOLA area, complete with all necessary equipment. People are evacuted ahead of the storm. The storm prep, complete, executed with a respectable level of efficiency in front of the storm, costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

In the hours before landfall, the hurricane shifts courses, east, and while causing damage to the Mississippi coastline, which benefits from the storm prep, NOLA is not destroyed, the levees do not break, the city does not become a pestilential bog.

Can't you imagine that the fury on the Right over this stupendous waste of federal and state dollars would dWarf their crocodile-teared fury over the destruction of NOLA - which is solely based on saving Maximum Leader Nero's ass. Conservatives would jump on the mustering of state and federal assets as proof that state and federal assets are used as patronage by Liberals (pandering to the blacks, don't you know) and demand more tax cuts (well, they're still calling for more tax cuts even after Katrina, so...).

And they would work to ensure that such preparations would never happen again. They would continue to cut funding for basic infrastructure improvements - including levee rehabilitation. They would use the hurricane's near miss to undermine efforts to prevent the disaster that DID happen, unfortunately this time, in the future.

Slow Death versus Slower Death

Why isn't anyone - Bushco, local officials, (god forbid) Democrats - talking about the health risks to the country, not just NOLA and surrounds, of square miles of festering, sewage contaminated, mosquito-breeding, toxin-filled standing water?

Am I nuts to be worried, or are we about to see pestilential death on a scale not seen since the darkest days of the Dark Age?

Has anyone seen ANY coverage of ANY health official, local, state, Fed, talking about this?

Saving President Goat

* Blame local officials - check!

* Lie to media Rove addicts - check!

* Nominate rightwing tool to be
Supreme Court Chief Justice - check!

* Find a Tom to say blacks should be grateful to Bush - in process

* Nominate beyond-kooky rightwing black woman
to Supreme Court so Democrats and Liberals opposing
her can be accused of racism - upcoming.

Lessons in Priorities

That Karl Rove would make the President get up early, brush his hair, put on a suit, and trot him before the cameras at 8:00 AM on Labor Day Monday to announce that John Roberts has gone from Supreme Court nominee to Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee demonstrates nothing if not that Bushco is desperate to avoid even one more day of Saturation Katrina. This is the second time Bushco has rushed to nominate Roberts as an effort to change the subject, the first to divert attention from the fury over Rove's role in the Valerie Plame affair. It is truly a sign of how much Rove wants to change the subject from Katrina if he uses a tactic that will remind people of his own troubles, though counting on the MSM to make that connection is wishing on a grasp.

The irony, of course, is that John Roberts' political/judicial opinions mirror those conservative positions that Katrina's destruction re-revealed to the American public. The Talibamericans may congratulate themselves on their stroke because of Roberts' anti-abortion history - and rewarding the morally-retarded Right had some small part in Bushco's matrix - but the ideologues of the ruling Right want Roberts for his small government, pro-business philosophies. This is a man who, after all, has come out against equal pay for equal work for women, argued against a worker receiving Workman's Compensation for carpal tunnel syndrome, and has been a friend of Big Business, advocating less government regulation of industry.

In other words, Bushco is trotting out, to change the subject from Katrina to anything else, a walking poster of everything conservatism stands for that has been illuminated by the disaster they're trying to change the subject from. To change the subject from the failures of conservatism - it's indifference at best, contempt at worse, for the poor they would exploit, the environment they would pimp - Bushco has brought before the camera - again - a man who is a completely bought and paid for Borg of regal conservatism. It is on these grounds, with the visceral memories of Katrina still imprinted on the collective soul of American consciences, that Democrats should demagogue this fvcker, and these fvckers, before, during, and after his hearings.