At Home and Abroad

Spent the weekend mostly working on my little sliver of lawn, and also went out and caught Good Night and Good Luck yesterday (as you might expect, I liked it).

Playing catch-up here this morning, I was struck by a couple of Schroeder's posts, which capture what for me is fury and frustration at Team Bush's particular brand of governance--a mix and match of genuine incompetence, perceived incompetence that hides a cynical cronyism, abject venality, etc:

Weapons of mass destruction my ass. New Orleans is being neglected by the Bush administration. This country is being neglected by the Bush administration. The domestic security of the United States is being neglected. Resources are being diverted from essential needs here at home.

Exactly. In the other post, PGR worries--correctly--that the still devastated Gulf Coast is being forgotten by the can't-be- bothered-with-poor-people media...which is a reflection of the can't-be-bothered- with-poor-people-federal-government:

This isn't just a national disaster, it's a national emergency. All the people who don't get it, and who think we can handle this problem in a business-as-usual mode should be ejected from office immediately. And the press needs to get their asses down here to New Orleans and start covering the vital stories about what is happening here...

Ah, if only, as Billmon pointed out last September, NOLA could've been in a swing state during an election year. Then Team Bush would've gotten off their sorry, corrupt asses.

Or if they'd been able to frame the storm on context of, oh, I don't know, a war on weather, complete with macho imagery of weapons being fired, bombs, be they smart or dumb, dropped from on-high by can-do top guns, videogame-like images of enemies being blown to bits...and flight-suited Codpiecers-in-Chief boldly strutting forth to declare Mission Accomplished.

Well, in the latter case, they DID sorta do a Mission Accomplished thing--the wierd Shrub speech from Jackson Square (he spoke from almost the exact same place where the anti-war march in 2003 concluded), bathed in a bizarre blue light...kind of a "Mission Beginning" address, except that the mission never really began. I guess it was more like your standard snake oil/used car stump oration, with the dauphin promising cures for rheumatism, bunyons, baldness...and 50 miles to the gallon, no maintenence, free tires for life...and let's get the hell outta here.

Of course, nothing's come of it. In fact, NOLA imagery (another hat tip to Schroeder for pics and links) often reminds me of Mesopotamian devastation--except we're ACTIVELY PAYING for the latter. And they're certainly two sides of the Team Bush coin: utter neglect of the homeland, and useless, counterproductive, indeed, dangerous misadventures overseas--a perfect storm, no pun intended, of stupidity, arrogance, greed, viciousness, cynicism, evil--and neglect...hell, they're so goddamned awful the redder than red (state, that is) Pic castigated the feds--on the front page--for, well, the metaphor they used was assault...sexual assault, if not rape:

They act as if we wore our skirts too short and invited trouble.

Strong words...but, then again, maybe it's necessary--although not nearly as necessary as booting these clowns out come 2006.