Political Emergency Management Agency

So much for the defibrillator.

To paraphrase a friend of mine (who apparently takes exception to my giving Dubya the least amount of credit -- with good reason, it turns out), he's still trying to weasel his way out of admitting he screwed up. To quote COBRA's Baroness, "I take the responsibility, but not the blame! It's [his] fault!"

As others have pointed out (the brilliant Digby in particular), Bush has used liberal rhetoric before (anyone remember No Child Left Behind?) to cover up his fringe pseudo-conservative agenda, and he's doing it again now. If anything, the lies and greed are worse than ever. As Digby notes:

I missed the speech last night but I was on the road and tuned into KTALK, the liberal talk radio station here in LA shortly after it was over and heard Johnny Wendell, whom I usually quite like, saying that he hadn't heard a politician say anything like this in 30 years. And he thought that it was such good news that we should give George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt. It just proved that the era of Republican small government conservatism was over and liberalism was back, baby!

I was confused. I had read that article in the morning, after all. Then I came home and fired up the creaky computer and saw that Karl Rove was in charge of the rebuilding effort. Ah.

Read the whole thing -- Digby quotes an article on how the reconstruction effort is already being turned into one gigantic boondoggle combining radical conservative "free-market" theology and cronyism on a $200 billion dollar scale.

Okay, so he hasn't learned anything about the effectiveness of laissez-faire policy and placing spin doctors in charge of actual organization. I mean, ye gods, Karl Rove in charge of reconstruction efforts? Karl Rove?!? Given that they called it "reconstruction" in the announcement, I imagine for Southerners, even white fundamentalist men have to be twitching while they wonder what Cheniac is really up to. (Hint: expect a lot of Halliburton employees to make suitcases out of rugs.) But hey, he must realize that we have to start paying for this stuff, right?

To quote the title of another great blog, sadly, no! Read his lips, no new taxes. No old taxes, either -- don't worry about him even slowing down on tax cuts. After all, we can't hobble our brave, can-do billionaires as they feast at the trough of federal recon...er, I mean, rush in to bring that capitalist ingenuity to making money hand over fist...um, that is, creating a Brave New City built on conservative ideology and a whole new demographic. (IOW, no blacks need apply. Unless they're rich wingnuts.)

Even Prescott "The Profiteer" Bush would blush at the shamelessness of making money on the dead and destitute of a devastated American city. The debate is over: Bush is unbelievably stupid and amazingly evil. He is the front man for the Cheney/Rove axis, the living veil for a toxic stew of domestic piracy and foreign conquest. In spite of his stupidity, on some level he is clearly aware of this. It's time for Democrats to stop pussyfooting around this trained ape and wage politics with the same intensity (albeit not with the same mendacity) the Republicans do: as the small-d democratic equivalent of total war.
--
(/) Roland X
Theoden: I will not risk open war.
Aragorn: Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.