New Orleans Today.....

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The ever vigilant and direct Charles Pierce on the current state of New Orleans (and the U.S. as a whole);

....it should be noted Tom Joyner did a first-class radio broadcast from the Ninth Ward on Wednesday morning. Things got so heated about the presidential photo-op later in the day that Mayor Ray Nagin started to sound very uncomfortable. (He does, after all, still have to deal with this pack of thooleramawns for a living.) Excellent radio all the way around. Meanwhile, here's some of the latest from the indomitable Times-Picayune. The numbers are mind-blowing, at least to me -- I mean, 105,000 buildings lost -- most of them residential structures -- and $14 billion-with-a-B in damages. In an American city. In my lifetime. And not just any American city, but one that is more important to the cultural identity of this country than any other except (maybe) New York. My favorite word in all the world is "self-evident," as in, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." Mr. Jefferson is saying that the monumental heresies to follow -- all men created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienables, etc., etc. -- are so obvious that they almost don't need to be explained, but that he will explain them anyway. That word set freedom itself free, which was the case in New Orleans more than it was in any other place I can name. An America without a New Orleans is just Great Britain with better beachfront property.

This, I believe, is in no small part why an administration with a cramped and vicious vision of the country, an administration dedicated to the depths of its rotted, vestigial soul to making this country less free, an administration that has us seriously debating how much torture is enough and whether the president should be forced to abide by the laws he signed, an administration that would sell the entire constitutional order down the river for a three-point bump in a poll full of fools, would allow this particular city to be so grievously wounded and then die in recovery. What are we to make of a country that allows these soulless, vacant fools to govern it with impunity? We are all in New Orleans, now, standing in the wreckage of a graveyard. The sun rises hot and merciless. The help never comes. And New Orleans, the birthplace of our national soul, just turns out to be the place where they took our national soul to die.

Cheney vs. Cheney

Seems prophetic, huh. Asshat should have listened to his 1994 self.

The True Republican Agenda

Matt has it right. Money quote;

The Republicans' strength as a coalition is that the movers and shakers behind it in the business community have a much more coherent agenda than does the interest-group coalition behind the Democrats. The formula isn't fool proof, and it can hit stumbling blocks every once in a while like a recession (1992) or a badly misfiring war (2006), but over the long run if you think of the modern Republican Party as an organized conspiracy for the purposes of concentrating America's wealth and income in the hands of the smallest possible number of people, it's been wildly successful for the past 30 years and we've yet to see any really clear evidence that the basic formula has stopped succeeding.

Rove

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Andrew Sullivan sums it up.

The man's legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited and disunited, a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history, a generational shift to the Democrats, a resurgent al Qaeda, an endless catastrophe in Iraq, a long hard struggle in Afghanistan, a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade, and the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa. For this, he got two terms of power - which the GOP used mainly to enrich themselves, their clients and to expand government's reach and and drain on the productive sector. In the re-election, the president with a relatively strong economy, and a war in progress, managed to eke out 51 percent. Why? Because Rove preferred to divide the country and get his 51 percent, than unite it and get America's 60. In a time of grave danger and war, Rove picked party over country. Such a choice was and remains despicable.

Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times. He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war - and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. His divisive politics and elevation of corrupt mediocrities to every branch of government has turned an entire generation off the conservative label. And rightly so. It will take another generation to recover from the toxins he has injected, with the president's eager approval, into the political culture...

Don't be a lapdog....

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Michael Bérubé has written a speech for our Democrat Congresswhimps. They should pin this to their lapels and attempt to read it or a appropriate facsimile out loud whenever confronted with any attempt by this president to obtain additional executive power ;

I come to you today to explain why I voted against the recent FISA bill. You may have heard some members of the press criticizing my vote; you may have heard members of the President’s party charging me with being “soft on terror.” I think that is a despicable charge, and I want to suggest to the President’s remaining supporters that their disdain for our nation’s civil liberties belies their claims to be defenders of “freedom.”

But I didn’t vote against the FISA bill only because I believe in Americans’ civil liberties. I also voted against it because I believe we have no reason to trust this President and his attorney general with any further expansion of executive powers. Their open contempt for Congressional oversight, for the American system of checks and balances, has been startlingly clear for years now. This is a President who simply does not believe he is accountable to anyone or anything– not even to the Constitution, which he is sworn to uphold but which he reads as a blueprint for simple executive fiat. And this is an attorney general who believes he can manipulate the judiciary branch for partisan purposes, and then lie gleefully to Congress about it– when, of course, he is not refusing to answer questions altogether.

I want to remind you all– and my colleagues in the President’s party– that whenever we have given this President the benefit of the doubt, the results have been disastrous for our country. Over four years ago, this President plunged us into a war that most Americans now recognize as one of the most militarily, politically, and diplomatically destructive wars this country has ever embarked upon. He justified that war, as he now justifies spying on Americans, as part of a “war on terror”; but the war in Iraq has been a terrible setback in our struggle against Islamic extremism, and the President’s domestic spying program, like his creation of secret detention-and-torture sites around the globe, has badly eroded our nation’s moral fiber. This President has shown time and again that he cannot be considered worthy of our trust; he has broken his vow to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and he has appointed an attorney general who believes, incredible as it may sound, that he himself is above the law. There is no reason whatsoever to give the President the powers he now demands.

The vast majority of the American people know this already. Less than thirty percent of them approve of the job this President is doing. To put this FISA bill in perspective, one would have to imagine Richard Nixon in 1974, with his 27 percent approval rating in the depths of the Watergate scandal, demanding from Congress the right to spy on his enemies– including his enemies in Congress. It would have been unthinkable for that Congress to give in to President Nixon’s demands, in order to help the President further undermine the Constitution and the rule of law; and it would be just as unthinkable today for this Congress to give in to President Bush’s demands, in order to help the President further undermine the Constitution and the rule of law. I will not be party to anything so foolish or destructive. I voted against this bill because I am loyal to this country and I do not trust this President– and I am proud of my vote.