September 04, 2005


The other donation

Frank Rich, as many have noted has hit another homer today, and he closes his column with this:

The answers to what went wrong in Washington and on the Gulf Coast will come later, and, if the history of 9/11 is any guide, all too slowly, after the administration and its apologists erect every possible barrier to keep us from learning the truth. But as Americans dig out from Katrina and slouch toward another anniversary of Al Qaeda's strike, we have to acknowledge the full extent and urgency of our crisis. The world is more perilous than ever, and for now, to paraphrase Mr. Rumsfeld, we have no choice but to fight the war with the president we have.
One of the reasons that the 1600 Crew has been achieved so much success through mediocrity has been the way that it has effectively co-opted Congress at every step. Perhaps it's time to make a concerted netroots effort to reach out to Congress on both sides of the aisle and ask them to do a real bipartisan investigation of the 1600 Crew malfeasance in the wake of Katrina. Real committees, doing real investigations with real powers. If they want to Inerrant Boy to testify, then it's on the record, with no immunity, if they want any "exectutive" branch officials, same deal.

Clearly, the cronyism and incompetence of the DHS is not making anyone any safer. The color-coded joke scale was a cute attempt to show that they were "doing something", when in fact they were doing nothing at all. Except inspecting my shoes at airports.

This is an issue that affects every elected representative, regardless of party...the next Katrina or 9/11 may be coming to your state or district. If you only want to sniff the Preznit's butt crack for a few laurel and hearty handshakes and leave your constituents in the same shape as the residents of New Orleans, knowing that you could have taken postive action now, instead of dancing to the tune of Denny Hastert, Tom Delay and Bill Frist, re-election might be the least of your worrys one day...your family might be living in the next superdome, because when push comes to shove, starving, scared people aren't going to care who you're related to as they take what they need to survive.

I suspect that the moral cowardice of most congressional types on both sides of the aisle won't allow much questioning to be done. I hope I'm wrong. The 1600 Crew has already started the Swift-boats, not to save the destitute in New Orleans, but to make sure that their leaders never draw another breath in criticism of the Faultless, Blameless One.

Besides making that donation to a disaster relief organization, perhaps donating five minutes of time to call a congress person and demand real, honest-to-goodness oversight might make all the suffering have at least one positive outcome. Congress could do its job again.
posted by Jo Fish on 09.04.05 at 01:27 PM





Comments:

So let's see: eminent military historian Victor Davis Hanson doesn't know what he's talking about in a well-argued essay that cites scads of history, but it's worth quoting Frank Rich, eminent theater critic, who whines and complains and name-calls (gee, that sounds familiar) but puts forth no coherent argument?

 posted by: chester on 09.04.05 at 05:17 PM [permalink]


"But in Houston, there were hot showers, crates of Bibles and stacks of pizzas, while in New Orleans, many refugees scrounged for diapers, water and basic survival."

Crates of Bibles? Crates of Bibles?!?!?!?

Yep, just like the Republifuckups.

Let them eat Bibles. Let them drink Bibles.

Actually, now that I think of it, the pages from the Bibles could be used as a substitute for toilet paper.

Uh oh. Blasphemy!! Heresy!!

No, what is blasphemous and heretical is that in an emergency some idiot decided to include "crates" of Bibles in supplies (even though outside the immediate disaster area)...instead of crates of badly-needed food and water...thus wasting valuable space.

 posted by: The Oracle on 09.05.05 at 04:34 AM [permalink]

This is the url of a blog that offers up personal opinion based on facts in brief posts with links to longer articles. It doesn't pretend to be anything else.
http://www.usndemvet.com/blog/

On the other hand VDH is a very sad case of a bright man who just can't connect the dots, perhaps because he's both a social-darwinist and a believer in providence. Hansen thinks all history was preordained, nothing is to be learned from history, we are powerless to change course, that banging one's head aginst the wall repeatedly is not all that insane, its the neocon repackaged brand of patriotism mixed with a large portion of delusion.

Serious essays?

War College Study Calls Iraq a 'Detour'
Institute's report warns anti-terror campaign may launch 'open-ended and gratuitous conflict.'
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0112-01.htm

Soldier for the Truth : Exposing Bush's talking-points war

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Soldiers_for_the_022004.htm

What Have We Wrought?
All we've done in Iraq is replace one living hell with another.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10146

History does matter, and not just the history VD cherry picks.

The Reagan administration authorized the sale of poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses to Saddam
National Security Archive and
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0127-10.htm

 posted by: on 09.05.05 at 11:16 AM [permalink]

Well, if one thing is different from 9/11, Bush can't use "national security" to keep things classified.

 posted by: Jing Liang on 09.06.05 at 02:39 AM [permalink]


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All the original material © 2002-2003 Jo Fish
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