lessons learned

All of the blunt criticism over his botched reaction to Hurricane Katrina has evinced a totally new side of Bush (or should I say a new strategy?). In the past week we heard our heretofore unapologetic president take responsibility for the lack of response by the federal government. Then, in last night's press conference, Bush pledged "Federal funds will cover the great majority of the costs of repairing public infrastructure in the disaster zone, from roads and bridges to schools and water systems." It seems W has reverted back to a scheme learned long ago in his privileged youth: throw money at a problem and it will go away.

Yes, just like the time he crashed his car after drinking profusely with his fraternity brothers, he has simply apologized, thrown some money at someone, and gone on his merry way. What's he up to now? Closing military bases and ensuring Halliburton profits hugely from Katrina.

bush inaction

Thanks goes to Kitty at Progressive Society for this one.

President Bush continued to try to spin his own inaction yesterday, but he may finally have reached a patch of reality beyond spin.

He made the ultimate sacrifice and admitted his administration had messed up, something he'd refused to do through all of the other screw-ups, from phantom W.M.D. and the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to the miscalculations on the Iraq occupation and the insurgency, which will soon claim 2,000 young Americans.

Even though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention.

Newsweek reported that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after the levees broke, turning New Orleans into a watery grave. It took a virtual intervention of his top aides to make W. watch the news about the worst natural disaster in a century. Dan Bartlett made a DVD of newscasts on the hurricane to show the president on Friday morning as he flew down to the Gulf Coast.

The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be "cold and snappish in private." Mike Allen wrote in Time about one "youngish aide" who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during the first term, he "had dry heaves" afterward.

The president had to be truly zoned out not to jump at the word "hurricane," given that he has always used his father's term as a reverse playbook and his father almost lost Florida in 1992 because of his slow-footed response to Hurricane Andrew. And W.'s chief of staff, Andy Card, was the White House transportation secretary the senior President Bush sent to the rescue after FEMA bungled that one.

W. has said he prefers to get his information straight up from aides, rather than filtered through newspapers or newscasts. But he surrounds himself with weak sisters who don't have the nerve to break bad news to him, or ideologues with agendas that require warping reality or chuckleheaded cronies like Brownie.

The president should stop haunting New Orleans, looking for that bullhorn moment. It's too late.

And thanks to Maureen Dowd.

failure

Google the word failure. Go ahead. Try it. Let me know what comes up as the number one link.

a beautiful reminder

It's nice to know that Australians remember who we are, even if we sometimes forget.

gonzo suicide

I just found Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note which was apparently published by Rolling Stone last week. In the course of a long, exciting, incomparable career, it's the last thing he'll ever write.

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More
Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring.
I am always bitchy. No Fun - for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your
old age. Relax - This won't hurt.

watch out for flying pigs

Maybe I'm not reading this right, but it seems as though Bush has actually accepted responsibility for failure. Okay, so he couches it with "to the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right," but still, I don't think he has ever before suggested that anything he or his administration did was wrong or even improper.

Perhaps in the wake of another crazy trend I've noticed since Katrina hit, Bush has decided it's time to try a different tactic when it comes to the disasters that have plagued his administration. That trend is that the media has actually been critical of Bush and his administration. It's like they spent the last four years under some form of Bush-induced hypnosis - like they had all gone to a party together, got really wasted, did some REALLY embarrassing things (most of which they thought they had forgotten), and they all vowed not to talk shit on each other for a while - and then suddenly - as if they realized Bush was the only one who had actually done anything stupid and he had convinced them all that they did it too - they realized that they had nothing to fear. So off come the gags, and the media's really pissed at being fooled, so now all the criticism that has been held back for four years is flooding out through the airwaves.

Even the White House Press Secretary has contradicted Bush by saying that Bush did in fact know that Mike Brown had resigned as director of FEMA before Bush told the press he did not. I believe his exact words were, "Maybe you know something I don't." Duh. I'm sure the press knows plenty that the president doesn't. Like how to tie their own shoes.

brownie, you're doin' a heck of a job

Mike Brown has resigned as director of FEMA after the gross mismanagement of relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent discovery that he wasn't nearly as qualified as his resume made him out to be.

Now if we could only get our president to do the same.

Meanwhile, Ophelia can't make up her mind. Hurricane or tropical storm? She must be a blonde.

long time gone

Okay, I'm posting here today basically because I feel really guilty. I was checking a friend's blog this morning and decided to take a look at mine to see when I last posted. I was shocked to see just how long it had been. I'm going to justify it this way:

I started this blog when the days were still dark and cold. When the days got longer and warmer, I disappeared. Typically, winter is a time of introspection, and summer is a time of activity. Basically, that's my excuse. I was simply following the natural order of things.

The days are getting shorter now, and my mind has already started contriving things to occupy myself during the coming months of short, dark, cold days: ideas for stories to write, books to read, etc.

I did manage a few intellectual endeavors this summer. I read The Sun Also Rises and started reading The Heart of the Matter. While at the beach last month, I read a less literary novel ("beach read," whatever) by Dan Brown, Deception Point which was unfortunately predictable.

My schedule for the next two months is still pretty crazy, but I can feel my mind preparing itself for the relative quiet of winter. I'm hoping for a nice gradual transition into winter. Last year, we didn't have much of an autumn. The weather got cold and dark too quickly. So far, the days here have been beautiful - sunny and warm. The nights have been cool and clear. With any luck, it will continue that way through the end of October and then we can enjoy a cold, snowy winter with not much to do but read and write.

welcome spring?

Spring has sprung. The hills are now green and lush. Green leaves set off the clear blue sky. Azeleas have flowered along with the rhododendron, and peonies collapse under the weight of their huge blooms. Light breezes carry puffs of pollen that irritate my eyes and nose.

Apparently, my sinus cavities weren't quite prepared, and now I'm enduring the agony of sinus infection.

Such beauty! And such suffering!

national day of prayer

So today is our National Day of Prayer as declared by a presidential proclamation. Does anyone else find this disturbing?

The website I have linked above includes a page called "What to Pray For". It includes this quote:

Through this prayer guide, you will have an opportunity to petition God on behalf of our leaders and those who are in authority over us, as we are instructed to do in 1 Timothy 2:1-2: As you humbly come before the Lord and seek His face, please pray that these men and women will be granted divine wisdom, guidance and strength to fulfill their important roles.

I find this terribly offensive . . . and I was raised Christian! I can only imagine how Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others feel about this type of thing. Christians too should be offended for not only being ordered to pray but for being told what to pray for. Maybe it was just the way I was raised, but religion to me has always been a private, personal thing not to be flaunted in the faces of others. I have always mistrusted people who wear their religion on their sleeve like a badge of honor.

The line separating church and state seems to be getting thinner and thinner, and it scares the hell out of me. I recently attended a Board of Education meeting where they prayed before beginning the meeting. Today, a co-worker of mine told me there was a rather large crowd assembled in front of our courthouse praying and singing. These are institutions of the State! I just don't think prayer has any place in them. And you can say it's non-denominational and therefore should not offend non-Christians, but it's always the fanatical Christians who start this stuff, and the reference to "the Lord" and the book of Timothy above is proof of that. And you can bet that for the most part the prayers said outside of state and federal buildings today are addressed to Jesus and "Our Heavenly Father," not to Allah or Yahweh.

Call me crazy, but I think prayer should be a private thing unless you are in church. And it should never, never be mandated by the government (and yes, I know it isn't a mandate, but how far do you think we really are from that?) regardless of how much our government leaders can use divine guidance (which, with the current administration, is a great deal).