Personal responsibility

For conservatives, personal responsibility means they're not responsible for anything:

Though such extraordinary self-pity may seem from the outside depressing to live with, it has its advantages. It gives the sufferer's life purpose and meaning. Since he's always the victim, he never has to step up and accept responsibility for anything. In short, being a conservative means never having to say you're sorry, which makes it ideal for people who are fundamentally incapable of admitting they ever have anything or anyone besides themselves to be sorry for.

Even Katrina, not their fault!!!  (Petulantly...)

Oh, I know the wingers think personal responsibility is not blaming anything larger than the person connected to the trigger finger, and that's a good definition for the rest of us.  But fundamentally they won't ever accept blame for anything.

Grown-ups in charge

Barack Obama is not playing at being President. He actually has the capacity to handle the job - from the economy to health care to garden variety natural disasters like floods in the high plains. All at once.

If the people in charge believe in government, government can get things done. I just hope voters will remember the contrast between the unrelieved incompetence of Bushism and the cool can-do of Obama and the Democrats.

Rush, Rush, he's our man

If he can't do it, only god can. After all, that's who loaned Rush his "talent" for use as a service mark by Ego in Broadcasting.

Click image for the full glory of this Tom Tomorrow/Salon cartoon.

Storm surge of snark

The Republicans from Duhbya and Darth to McCain aren't so much afraid of the real hurricanes, Gustav and Hanna. What they really fear is the eye wall and storm surge of snark.

This is really too easy:

• Suppose they gave an RNC and nobody came.
• Photo-ops for a failed comb-over.
• Balloon drop into 150 mph winds!
• Obama had Invesco, but we'll always have the Superdome.
• Republicans in disarray - you hadn't noticed already?
• The RNC Welcoming Committee is all that's left. (And boy are they left!)
• McCain, why did you vote against hurricane relief?
  

These hurricanes are a complete PR disaster for the Republicans. If they weren't such venal, unsympathetic, and incompetent bastards, I'd almost feel sorry for them. But no, they deeply deserve to have what goes around come back around to land on them.

I'll save my concern for the innocents who'll lose their lives, their property, and their livelihoods in what comes. The victims may, like Katrina's, have their lives disrupted for years. They are the ones who don't deserve four more years of Bushist Republican misrule. Among others.

Image in the public domain. You and I already paid for it.

Update: See also "How many refugees". The snark continues.

Pray it away

Why can't Pat Robertson pray Gustav away? If God is a Republican as the Republicans seem to think (but won't admit they think), why would he send a hurricane at this critical time?

Republicans have learned something since Katrina: They've learned to turn disaster to PR advantage:

"He wants to do something service-oriented if and when the storm hits and it's as bad as its expected to be now," the McCain source said.

They are also hoping to get McCain himself to a storm-affected area as soon as possible.

There he goes again, presumptuously acting as if he were already President.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Update (8/31): More analysis, less snark at Massachusetts Liberal.

Sclerotic stasis he can believe in

It's amazing that anyone who would write this could get through graduate school. But this is a rather commonplace occurrence these days when completely unjustified laissez-faire economics is so stylish on the right.

A few of Navarrette's abject stupidities:

• It's hard to "thread the needle" between LBJ's Great Society and Duhbya's lazy-unfair society. - Yah, if your thread is too thick to fit in a yawning chasm that dwarfs the Grand Canyon.
• With individual responsibility on full display, no one needs mutual responsibility. If you sink, it's your fault, and why should we help you? - People who assume this generally deny that the government has ever helped them. When they do, you can start asking them about the schools and universities they went to and who paid for them, the roads they travelled and who paid for them, the public safety agencies and who paid for them, the Internet and who paid for it, etc., not to mention all the crises that can befall us without making us morally defective or stupid or less than normal.
• Government can't to anything right, and his evidence is Katrina. - Republican government can't do much right. If Navarrette were even a schosh open-eyed, he could see public sector successes everywhere. Bill Clinton's FEMA would have been in New Orleans promptly; he took the mission seriously. Duhbya didn't, and the results speak for themselves, but Navarrette is saying, "Nah, nah, nah, I'm not listening."

He finishes up with:

This is a party that maintains power by trying to convince people that our country is a dark place, devoid of opportunities, and that the answer is to elect more of them.

Oh, fuck you, Ruben. There is no Democrat, not a single one anyone has ever heard of, who has tried to convince Americans of this. Lots of unprincipled Republicans like you have tried to convince Americans that that's what Democrats believe, but it's a lie. Yeah, I just called your smarmy, wingnut, no-account, willfully stupid ass a liar.

What Democrats actually believe is that America can and should be better than it is. You apparently think it's perfect, Katrina and all. Yeah, sclerotic stasis you can believe in!

Why not say it

Only a Democrat gives a shit about repairing New Orleans for the poor people who used to live there, yet there's no mention in the editorial of the yawning partisan divide. Instead, the liberal media as represented by the New York Times is too ... establishment to say something so direct and obvious and hurtful to one side of the great bipartisan elite who really run this country and most of the buffets that journalists might graze on.

(Wow. That sounds really bitter.)

In good company

Click image for full Rob Rogers/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cartoon.

Photo op straight talk

So.

John McCain takes a stroll in New Orleans, no flak jacket or military escort required. Or so you'd think, though there are four soldiers in camo in this AP photo:
Now, years after it could have mattered, he blames government for its response. Years after it did matter, he defends his votes against the victims as pork prevention. On the campaign trail, he makes promises that next time will be different.

There's no reason to believe him.

Zell Miller not available

The typical Bushist tinkering with the make-up of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission is exceptional mainly for its bald-faced evasion of the spirit of the law. The Bushists are happy with the thinnest rationalization if it permits them to make an unprecedented evasion of the law's obvious intent. I mean, for chrissake, Abigail Thernstrom on the commission as a Republican is bad enough, when she has long stood for dismantling any civil rights protections that recognize the power asymmetry of historical discrimination. Flying a flag of convenience as an independent? Retch.

Of course, if the letter of the law is too clear and detailed to evade by pretext, the Bushists are willing to redefine the words. This is, after all, how they achieved power in the 2000 election debacle.

The dismal legacy of Bushism that I (idiosyncratically) rank worse than Iraq and Katrina is a thoroughgoing assault on the Constitutional rule of law, which otherwise might be a means to repair America and to prevent further Iraqs and Katrinas. But Duhbya's entire presidency has been a Tory coup d'etat in slow motion, and I refuse to ignore that fact.

Codifying ignorance

The Bushists think they are the first people ever to think about security, just because they rebranded it "homeland security". Here's the money quote:

"Homeland security both as a policy matter and as a concept didn't exist prior to 9/11 and prior to . . . President Bush assuming office," said Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser. "We believe that we had an obligation, regardless of who the next president is, Republican or Democrat, to leave them the benefit of our thinking."

The Bushists didn't know about it because they resolutely refused to listen to all the warnings and briefings and policy documents to come out of the Clinton administration. The Bushists were singing lullabies to Duhbya all of summer 2001 so that he could get away and clear brush for the cameras. (And, please note, no one resigned from pangs of conscience.)

And, now, at this late date, they have the utter, arrogant, absurd gall to emphasize disaster preparedness! These people have been obviously full of shit since their very first step onto the public stage. It didn't take Katrina to tell a lonely few of us. Why did so few other people notice?