There are simply not enough lifeboats.
Gradually, one by one, conservatives and Republicans are waking up to find themselves neck deep in the raw sewage of this administration. No, I will not spill one single tear for these people, as it was their druggy nationalism and thoughtless followship that got us into this fucking mess. But it is heartening to see the mass epidemic of insanity begin to subside, and to see human beings actually prove themselves capable of changing their minds in the face of overwhelming facts.
To wit, Quin Hillyer of The American Spectator gives the holdouts something to think about in this eviscerating piece on Bush's Katrina response, or lack thereof.
Scathing doesn't begin to describe it.
Emphasis is mine.
Ding-ding. Round One:
What's most distressing about the Bush response, and non-response, to Katrina is that all the President's promises for a creative new approach to major-disaster relief have gone for naught. One of the world's great cities is dying before our eyes, yet the Bush administration has actively fought against the very recovery proposal that is the most pro-free market, most pro-private enterprise, most taxpayer-friendly, most accountable disaster-relief legislation imaginable. And when under fire for his opposition to that plan, the President instead touted yet another scheme to throw more money down an unaccountable rat-hole -- and compounded the error by including legislative language that would preclude the very uses of the money for which the President explicitly dedicated it.
Yeeeeah, that's going to leave a mark.
Ding-ding. Round Two:
Few principles are more important to conservatives than the one that insists on assigning responsibility where it's due. The claim that the feds, rather than Mother Nature, victimized Louisianans is not merely a criticism of what is generally acknowledged as an utterly inept response to the storm after it hit. Such criticism is of course true, but it is for these purposes only of minor relevance. Instead, the most important and most misplaced assignment of culpability comes from the Bush administration and far too many Beltway conservatives who seem to blame Louisiana Katrina victims for building in a flood plain. (Never mind that the White House itself is in a flood plain without anybody thinking that West Wing employees need flood insurance.) The problem with this blame game is that the residents had been assured that they lived in one of the safest flood plains in the country, because the top civil engineering minds in the country had repeatedly said their levee-and-floodwall system could withstand any storm that hit southeast Louisiana with the force Katrina mustered. It was the federal Army Corps of Engineers that built the floodwalls and was ultimately responsible for maintaining them -- and the Corps said the walls would hold.
You mean it wasn't the po' folks' fault after all? Ya don't say!!!
Fight fans, Bush is sucking fumes. He looks like he'd rather have a nappy-bye than come out for round three. But-
Ding-ding. There's the bell.
...the whole, bungled Bush response to Katrina has amounted to throwing good money after bad. Way too much money has been appropriated overall, but far too little has been put to good use. And the one creative free-market approach to rebuilding a storied city and region, the Baker bill which is designed to recoup money for taxpayers at the back end of the process rather than waste it through the ordinary free-spending bureaucracies, is the one that the Bush administration -- for reasons murky and perhaps uncharitable or even Machiavellian -- has opposed with all its might.
Memo to Bushie: You're doing a heckuva job.
BUSH GOES DOWN!!! BUSH GOES DOWN!!!