Who's Your Daddy Party?

Pravda's Dan Froomkin, who along with Terry Neal and sports commentator Mark Maske provide roughly 95% of what's good about that benighted publication, takes a poll and opens the window:

According to the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press , Bush's overall job approval rating has dropped to 40 percent -- an all-time low for this/that poll -- and his disapproval rating has climbed to an all-time high of 52 percent. That's a four-point shift in both numbers from July.

But look at the detailed results for the story behind the story.

That four percentage point shift from just two months ago isn't fueled by any significant change of mind among Democrats and independents. Instead, it's all a reflection of a shift in Bush's base.

Republicans polled in July said they approved of Bush by an 88 to 9 percent margin. In September, that margin was 79 to 18, reflecting a 9 percent shift from approvers to disapprovers. That's a very significant change.

Verily and forsooth, the wizard replied darkly. (Gratuitous Bored Of The Rings reference, for the five people out there who read it.) No, seriously, it is somewhat gratifying (I suppose is the correct word, but not in the "wet with glee" sense that the Coulterati assume we all are at the constant bumbling and smirking of His Incompetency) to have some numbers to back up the gut feeling that something's in the air.

The American people, they are a fickle lot. Too much talk about blowjobs -- pretty much a lock cinch for every normal guy's favorite thing -- and we suddenly got "Clinton Fatigue".

How should the American public feel about the track record of the current seat-warmer and his claque of shameless thieves? Suddenly blowjob talk seems quaint and desirable.

Digby, per usual, has an excellent way of explaining this shift in the formerly concrete base:

Daddy isn't supposed to snivel about how the locals didn't do their job. Daddy whining about "the blame game" makes the kids feel like Daddy still isn't in charge and doesn't know what he's doing. And he should not be making excuses for his idiot cronies or relying on politesse and bureaucratic snafus to explain why he was late when the crisis hit. Daddy isn't supposed to be late.

Bingo. The entire 2004 Republican campaign platform -- the reckless jingoism and yahooism at the RNC, the smearing of a decorated veteran by two chickenshit draft-dodgers, the cherry-picked mouth-breathers at every whistle stop along the way -- was based on a very simple theme repeated ad nauseam: I will keep you safe.

If they dick around on predictable catastrophes like this, what kind of clusterfuck will a major earthquake or terrorist attack be like? Will the third time be the charm, and someone will be dispatched immediately to help this moron distinguish between what is important (Americans dying) and what is not important (reading to first-graders; delivering birthday cake to John McCain; pretending Iraq is Japan while also pretending to play a git-tar)?

That's what all this fuss is about, for those who seriously think the stupid phrase "blame game" means something besides, "Hey, you're a poet, and you don't know it!". That phrase is simply more evidence that they think we're all slow third-graders. It's yet another way to condescend to us.

And when one of the reliable flunkies at The Corner of Shameless Hack Avenue and Doughy Pantload Boulevard turns on you, you know the jig is starting to be, as they say in the 'hood, "up".

It would be very wrong, I believe, to let the ignominious Michael Brown be the scapegoat for FEMA's sins. Check out this front-pager from the WaPo. Turns out that a raft of FEMA's top leaders have little or no emergency management experience, but are instead politically well connected to the GOP and the White House. This is a scandal, a real scandal. How is it possible that four years after 9/11, the president treats a federal agency vital to homeland security as a patronage prize? The main reason I've been a Bush supporter all along is I trusted him (note past tense) on national security -- which, in the age of mass terrorism, means homeland security too. Call me naive, but it's a real blow to learn that political hacks have been running FEMA, of all agencies of the federal government! What if al-Qaeda had blown the New Orleans levees? How much worse would the crony-led FEMA's response have been? Would conservatives stand for any of this for one second if a Democrat were president? If this is what Republican government means, God help the poor GOP Congressmen up for re-election in 2006.

Dreher is absolutely right, though he, through the rigors of rhetorical conditioning, reflexes over a very important point -- I doubt if many (if any) liberals would stand for this with a Democratic president. I sure as hell wouldn't. As far as I'm concerned, this is not a partisan issue, it's an American issue, and the simple fact is that the American government is and has been cutting corners when it comes to protecting the lives and domestic interests of the American people.

I was more than a little irritated to find out today that the Sacramento Valley is a prime candidate for catastrophic flooding, due to aged levees getting shorted on their allotted upkeep dollars [emphasis mine]:

New Orleans' levee ruptures have sparked fresh worries about the Central Valley's 1,600 miles of deteriorating levees, which protect half a million people and property valued at $47 billion.

A "ticking time bomb" is how a January assessment by the state describes the network of levees, dams, bypasses and weirs that protects the valley and Sacramento, the most flood-vulnerable metropolitan area in the country.

The fuse keeps getting shorter as state and federal governments reduce investment in maintenance and improvement costs that are pegged at $2 billion over the next decade.

California has waited a year for $90 million in federal money, a fraction of what's needed to shore up levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. If it's lucky, California will receive a third of the money next year.

I live roughly 100 miles north of Sacramento, out of the projected flood zone. But every once in a while the Sacramento River floods its banks and hits the neighboring town. My own house was flooded in 1998, after almost 60 days straight of rain, and a little too much water let out of the weir of the nearby dam.

I lucked out, compared to the horror stories we see in New Orleans or Indonesia or Bangladesh (though my backyard was on the Sacramento news for a few seconds that frabjous day). I only got a couple feet of water through my house. Of course, that water carried the distinct smell of cow shit and diesel fuel from the dairies a couple roads over. We immediately had to rip out the carpeting throughout the entire house. And we spent the next two months drying out the sheetrock with industrial air-blowers and dehydrators. Do you have any idea what that, coupled with the constant mildew smell, does to your sinuses?

And I was able to save my house, and with creative landscaping and berming (and a little luck), it won't happen again. But these poor people who are left with nothing -- have we learned anything from it, in the sense of being proactive about looking at potential trouble spots around the country and fixing them now? It appears not. Bush is more concerned with being photographed with his sleeves rolled up, walking around with firefighters. That's not polemic; that is exactly what he's doing.

Sacramento is a fairly conservative city. People outside California really have no clue how temperamentally conservative (or at least libertarian) many -- if not most -- Californians really are. The rest of the country tends to filter their perception by the goings-on in San Francisco, but most of the rest of the state is really not like that. Sacramento -- indeed, the entire San Joaquin/Sacramento mega-valley bisecting much of the length of the state -- is at least as conservative as more famously conservative parts like San Diego and Orange County.

I would be willing to bet that some of those conservative folk might be switching off Rush Limbaugh right about now, and paying attention to what Dear Cheerleader is actually doing to protect their lives and families, their homes and property. Because at the end of the day, after all the recriminations and cheap shots and partisan rhetoric, that's the only reason they -- and all the security moms and NASCAR dads -- voted for him. If they can't count on him for that, they no longer have any use for him.