Dodging The Bullshit

Let's take a look at some of the coverage of the political aspects of post-hurricane reconstruction, which is roughly 98% of it.

First is the notorious meme, perpetuated so far by Michael Chertoff and now by Richard Myers:

....here's what our top general had to say today about why the Bush administration ignored the disaster in New Orleans last week, and why Bush himself stayed on vacation even after everyone was drowning:

The headline, of course, in most of the papers on Tuesday — “New Orleans Dodged a Bullet,” or words to that effect...

Uh, yeah. Check out the link for the factual rundown of what looks to be pretty much every major newspaper in this country. The word I keep seeing is "devastation". Some bullet they dodged, no?

Even more pernicious is the stupid "blame game" phrase, which they're all practically singing in harmony, since they're all to blame. It says a lot about what we've devolved to when we're stuck with a group that by default retreats to cheap rhyming or alliterative phrases that a three-year-old could repeat -- and it will probably work to some extent. Blame game. Blame game. Not gonna play it. Blame game.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Puke.

Next is a rundown of the timeline of disaster and response, and how it contrasts with the Category 4 furious spin storm coming from the usual flunkies -- and uh, who they're trying to blame.

While watching the MSNBC program, CONNECTED, COAST TO COAST with Ron Reagan, a man from the Evergreen Foundation was on air spinning the myth that the President had to "beg" the Governor of Louisiana to take action. Having been on this show several times I called one of the bookers, Susan Durrwatcher, to alert her to the fact that this man was misrepresenting what happened. I offered Susan the following objective, documented facts (see timeline below). Susan thanked me for my "opinion" and said "we just have a different perspective". Stunned, I asked her by what standard of journalism that an objective fact was mere opinion? I asked her to simply look at the documents and correct the record. She declined. I asked her to remove me from the MSNBC list of contacts. I'm sure MSNBC won't miss me and I am certain I will have a happy life without having to subject myself to their unprofessional approach to journalism.

Well, at least Larry Johnson has some pride. Anyone else?

Then we have one of the more ludicrous -- and yet true -- illustrations to come down the pike. Fortunately, this one is already getting a lot of play along the internets, so there's an outside chance Li'l Russ or someone like that may sniff it out and hold it up.

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

Good for them, not that it stopped His Incompetency from using other firefighters as props for one of his rolled-up-sleeve looka-me-I'm-workin' photo-ops. Scarce helicopters, scarce firefighters, people drown, que sera sera, eh Chief?


Meanwhile, looks like Cheney has been rolled out of his sarcophagus to make yet another dangerous sojourn into sunlight to secure yet another payday for Halliburton.

A Halliburton Co. subsidiary that has come under fire for its reconstruction work in Iraq has begun tapping a $500 million Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and Marine facilities that were battered by Hurricane Katrina.

I would suggest keeping all receipts in triplicate. With these guys, you'll need 'em sooner or later.

But it wasn't all smiles and giggles for Cheney. Seems that on a visit to Gulfport, Mississippi, a heckler used Cheney's infamous Pat Leahy line on Cheney. To his small credit, if you watch Cheney, he scarcely misses a beat. It's almost as if he's used to people telling him to go fuck himself. Certainly I've said it a few million times, I just wasn't sure if he'd heard me.

Finally, just to demonstrate that there are actually even slimier, more narcissistic and off-putting people than just the Bush dynasty, here's a real peach, in full petulant windbaggery:

Yes, in the wake of the continued carping and whining and moaning, it seems only fair for the US to give the rest of the world and the New York Times what they really, really want -- a year free of US involvement in anything outside of its borders; a year free of the heavy, oppressive hand of the United States crushing the spirit and the will of all the other indigenous peoples of the world; a year in which the world will be allowed to just get on with the business of being itself, liberated finally from the Fear of Freedom.

The benefits of a US Sabbatical Year for the world that will substantial. It will, of course, gladly find another protector when,say, China finally decides to take the plunge and absorb Taiwan. I'm sure that the UN will be pleased to set up a series of meetings with the responsible parties. Should the misunderstood North Koreans and Iranian Mullahs decide to throw their weight around with nuclear missiles, it is a dead-shot certainty that the French will be able to find an amiable solution for this minor inconvenience. The suggestion of retargeting the missiles from Paris to Tel Aviv would no doubt be at the top of the list.

In such a wonderful and happy world, what could possibly happen to disturb Europe, Japan, India, Africa, South America or the Middle East when they are at last out from under the American economic and military umbrella? Surely many factions in these and other countries would see a year's break by the US as a golden opportunity to clear up those nagging territorial and factional disputes. Quick, clean, tidy, no regrets, and the Spring rains would wash away any evidence of the mass graves.

The whole thrust of this shoddy polemic, dimly proffered as yet another retread of the overdone "Modest Proposal" trope, is that the US should help itself and teach the ungrateful other 95% of the planet a lesson by disengaging for a year, and basically giving them all the finger.

Such an idea is stupid beyond all redemption. Clearly this moron is well-armed with a thesaurus and little else, as he has not thought through just how intertwined our fortunes are at this point with baddies like China and Europe. Evidently the trade deficit, the weak dollar, the decline of manufacturing, the negative savings rate in the US, and China hoarding T-bills for a rainy day, are not a collective massive signal to this Serious Thinker. Oh and uh, Serious Thinker -- we're not gonna make up that shortfall in oil by tearing up Alaska and Oklahoma. Not even fucking close.

This is another of the usual freeper morons that laments those damned ingrates because of all the foreign aid largesse we pump out. For decades, the two greatest beneficiaries of this money have been Egypt and Israel, whom we essentially pay to stay off each others' throats. I doubt Israel has ever been ungrateful for our help, and we have had a long-standing arrangement with Egypt, where they get to keep their teeming populace in line by watering them regularly with anti-American rhetoric in the state-controlled press, and we let Mubarak hold sham elections every so often and pretend it means something. Truly a win-win arrangement.

I could spend a whole 'nother post fisking and deconstructing the moron's puling, sulking bullshit, but I just don't have the time or patience right now. Suffice to say that this attitude, couched as it is in the context of disaster relief, is a slap in the face to a truly international effort to step up and help out. Japan and Europe have offered financial help, as well as price relief on oil. Even Venezuela has offered some oil help, though His Uselessness will undoubtedly decide that he's too proud to beg.

Whatever the case, they are helping out, and if this retard van der Leun insists on only taking help from whoever's left in the fabled Coalition of the Willing, he's welcome to whatever Tony Blair feels like handing out -- which, considering the way our willful, selfish child of a "leader" has treated him, probably ain't all that much. Can't blame him.

Whatever the case, here's the real deal -- the media are being very diligent right now in telling you how much of a spine they've grown all of a great sudden. Until they screw up the nerve to ask how this specifically will affect future emergency management scenarios, none of it matters. We just continue to be parties to our own demise, allowing these thieves to rob us blind while our infrastructure continues to disintegrate. Pictures of Captian Stupid tramping around with firefighters that oughta be rescuing people don't do shit for anyone but the simpletons.

We need to mentally fast-forward to the next earthquake or terrorist scenario and wonder whether he'll freeze up while he's readin' to first-graders, or deliverin' a birthday cake on his workin' vacation, or what. Chances are it'll be something. Feel safer -- or hell, even safe?