O Tempora, O Mores!

We dimly recall that Robert Livingston, Republican House Speaker-elect, declined the leadership position and announced his resignation from Congress when his marital infidelities (legal but unseemly) were made public during the Clinton impeachment saga in 1998. Less than a decade later, Tom DeLay, Minority Leader, stepped down, temporarily he says, from the leadership position as House Ethics rules (which he tried but failed to change in advance of this moment) require, when indicted on charges of turning the Republican National Party into an illegal money laundering scheme. Mr. Delay, however, will not resign his position.

So much for the Ceasar's wife thing.

We Know It's Petty, But...

All we want for Christmas is a press conference from a White House where the thermometer has been set to 58 and during which il Ducetto sports a lovely cardigan knitted for him by the wives of the men who run Conservative Women of America.

"Bush." "conserve." Same sentence. Chuckle.

if W is to Nixon

Then who's the corallary to Abramoff? Josh Marshall makes a very good case that the answer is Bebe Rebozo, Nixon's bagman for undisclosed cash campaign contributions. Actually, Marshall's case is worse. Josh argues (and we think well) that Abramoff is the manager of the slush fund that the current criminal conspiracy that the Republican Party has become has created to manage its pay for play politics.

We spent the better part of the weekend at the Common Ground fair down the road a piece in Central Maine from the bucolic splendor Pudentilla is fortunate enough to call home, and thus lacked the time to follow the news too closely. Echos of rumors that il Ducetto spent the natural disaster that was hurricane Rita flying around sunny spots in the country reached us, however. We conclude that he does less harm when being jetted from one safe place to another and thought, despite the increase in jet fuel, it might be a model for the long quacking years left in his irrelevant presidency.

Thus, we were disappointed, if not alarmed, to hear this morning that all those hours in the sun this weekend has led il Ducetto and his merry men to decide that what the country really needs is the military in complete control of disaster response. We suggest that the nation consider this idea when the military demonstrate some capacity to respond to the disaster it has created in Baghdad.

Surprise, Surprise

According to the politics test, Pudentilla's a social liberal (66% permissive) and an economic liberal (8% permissive) best described as a socialist - best described as a socialist. We disagree. We think socialist is what fascists call people who believe that everyone (especially those who enjoy resources of political and economic power) should be subject to the market and denied the ability to transfer their actual costs onto other parties (especially those who do not enjoy resources of political and economic power). We note that the test does not contemplate the possibility that one might have strong and even traditional religious beliefs, but believe with equal conviction that the mere possession of such beliefs does not justify their imposition on others.

SNAFU

The other night, our practically perfect partner asked, in the wake of a CNN interview with two doctors who were prevented by FEMA from treating elderly ill patients at the New Orleans airport four days after Katrina struck, "what kind of person would prevent doctors from treating elderly sick people."

Our PP has never worked for the government, or for that matter, any large bureacracy. We cannot claim such innocence. So we offered our opinion. The kind of person who would refuse to let a doctor treat an elderly sick patient during an emergency is a career employee, in middle management, who has served long enough to fear losing his/her retirement benefits, and who is confident that his/her managers a) are inept leaders; and b) will offer any one down the chain as a scapegoat if anything goes wrong. Under such circumstances, the prudent thing to do is go by the book, for no post-event witch-hunt can get you fired if you can demonstrate that you were following approved procedures and that you had not been given discretion to vary from the plan. We recognize that whoever made the decision to deprive the elderly sick at New Orleans airport of medical care made a moral decision the propriety of which is open to question. But to be fair, we should also recognize that the person who made the decision made it in full confidence that il Ducetto's boys, in order to save their own sorry posteriors, would feed him/her to the wolves at the price of his/her job and the security of those who depended on that job.

Which is why putting people whose job experience includes running arabian horse associations or working on Republican political campaigns at the helm of a bureacracy charged with helping citizens during emergencies should be an impeachable offense in our opinion.

Let's Make America Work Again

Couldn't somebody in the Democratic Party start pushing a coherent line in the wake of the debacle the Republicans have made of hurricane relief and in anticipation of the 2006 elections?

Could we have a few commercials now with a theme like, "Let's Make America Work Again." Perhaps making the following points, 1) we've been in tougher corners (photo images of hoovervilles maybe); 2) we've always triumphed over every adversity we faced by pulling together (stock photos); and 3) sharing the sacrifices the nation has to make for the common good of all Americans (newspaper headlines on DeLay insisting on estate tax cuts; pictures of the Superdome); and 4) requiring our leaders to demonstrate competence and accountability (pictures of old "heck of a job" and il Ducetto).

We know how to solve the problems that confront us. The Democratic Party promises you that we will insist upon 1) independent, non-partisan investigations of all officials responsible for the failures that occured in the wake of Katrina; 2) a moritorium on tax-cuts and a repeal of pork projects in the Energy and Transportation bills; 3) an independent, non-partisan commission that will oversee the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast to ensure that all Americans affected by the hurricanes are treated fairly.

Call your Congressional representatives and tell them, you want them to support these initiatives - We know how to do this and it's the right thing to do. Let's make America work again, for everyone.

We Write Letters

Dear Sen. Reid and Rep. Pilosi,

Could some national Democrat suggest that for the $200 billion cleaning up Katrina will cost, American taxpayers deserve somebody more competent than the President's bagman as reconstruction-czar. Then could you name people Americans have heard of and respect, regardless of their partisan identity. Who could that be? Hmm. Bob Rubin? James Lee Witt? You might want to consider reminding people that while il Ducetto and his minions stand convicted of having no answers for the problems the country faces, the Democrats have a rather deep bench of proven problem solvers.

Sincerely,

Pudentilla

Separated at birth?

Fema's woes were merely the beginning - the trouble at federal agencies extends beyond emergency response. Aid is abundant, but prompt and accurate delivery is a problem. - washington — the federal government's efforts to help victims of hurricane katrina have been hobbled by inadequate planning and coordination, troubled computer systems and confusion over who will pay the costs.

Interviews with federal officials indicate that recovery difficulties have gone beyond the federal emergency management agency and span key agencies in washington, where top officials are trying to respond to a huge reconstruction problem for which they had no policies or plans. Large contracts are pouring out of agencies, but the task ahead involves issues washington hasn't thought seriously about since the 1960s.

You can't say we didn't warn you.

Some observations about blogging and teaching and life

1) It is easer to blog when one is on sabbatical.

2) We had the opportunity to truly confront our middle-agedness in a discussion with a new undergraduate advisee. Our question, "and what sort of things do you think you'll be interested in for extra-curricular activities?" The student replies that she had been very active in politics in highschool, working on a senatorial and congressional campaign, and of course on the Kerry campaign. She's quite burnt out now and disenchanted with politics. We gently probe, "because your guys lost?" She angrily responds. "No, because Kerry is the nicest, most down to earth guy anyone could meet and Edwards is all about himself but the media and everyone else got it exactly backwards."

We make noises about the better politics being about ideas not personalities and all politicians are imperfect messengers. But we know exactly where she's coming from and she doesn't buy. And it occurred to us, this is what the middle-aged do. We console the young and seek to turn their boundless energies always back to fruitful engagement with life and the world of ideas. We middle-aged ones suffer immeasurable energy deficits, but are blessed with a huge perspective surplus. So we apply balm to the real wounds and push and prod the young back into the ring.

We suggest to the student that working locally can be very rewarding and point to the student newspaper and the College Democrats. She looks doubtful. We pull the ace out of our pocket. "Well, the College Republicans are the most vibrant student group on campus. There kids care enough to do the work. I guess the Democrats on campus just don't care enough to fight for what they believe in, even in as tiny a place as this." Finally, she looks intrigued. Note to self - never underestimate the power of an appeal to the student's competitive instincts. We send the young warrior on her way and return to grading Latin assignments.

Dr. Rice's Previous Statement Regarding 9/11 Deemed Inoperative

on the one hand:

9/11: For The Record By Condoleezza Rice - WaPo - Monday, March 22, 2004; Page A21

Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack airplanes to try to free U.S.-held terrorists.

on the other:

F.A.A. Alerted on Qaeda in '98, 9/11 Panel Said - WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.

is this how il Ducetto's regime will end? with administration officials compelled either to admit their mendacity or concede their incompetence?

**We provide reference to the Washington Post here for the sake of proper citation - we will maintain our boycott of the rag until we learn who in the White House used the paper to slander Governor Blanco.

Bobo Makes a Booboo

David Brooks, storm trooper that he is, has been clearing the libertarian trail of withdrawal from the political disaster that is il Ducetto's administration. His basic argument is that Katrina proves that government doesn't work and has destroyed the public's trust in the very project of government. For example, today, bobo writes:

For the brutal fact is, government tends toward bureaucracy, which means elaborate paper flow but ineffective action. Government depends on planning, but planners can never really anticipate the inevitable complexity of events. And american government is inevitably divided and power is inevitably devolved. [--snip--]

So of course we need limited but energetic government. But liberals who think this disaster is going to set off a progressive revival need to explain how a comprehensive governmental failure is going to restore america's faith in big government.

The problem with Bobo's argument is that it is an example of inductive reasoning: government failed in Katrina, therefore government is inherently ineffective. Inductive reasoning is a powerful tool and in the hand of intellectually honest scientists has led to amazing discoveries. The reason it is so powerful is that intellectual honesty requires the makers of inductive arguments to recognize that a single factual assertion that contradicts their arguments, undermines their arguments. Forced to discard failed arguments, the intellectually honest persevere until they come up with theses that are incontrovertible.

The problem with Bobo's column today is that it doesn't consider the fact that FEMA worked quite well under the Clinton administration and even though it was staffed with political hacks under il Ducetto, when il Ducetto's election and his brother's state was in jeapordy, the kleptocrats in the White House found a way to make FEMA work in Florida. If one were intellectually honest, a more compelling argument to be made from these facts, is that when Republicans put hacks in FEMA, and there's no political gain for Republicans in making the agency work, FEMA doesn't work.

But Bobo's hardly known for his intellectual honesty, is he?

We Write Letters

After reading Josh Marshall's description of WaPo and Newsweek's bullhorning for Rove's lies in the poltical blame game about Katrina relief failures, Pudentilla has decided that she's mad as hell, and she's not going to take it anymore. We encourage everyone to do this. Perhaps the smugocracy in D.C. will get the message.

Dear Washington Post and Newsweek,

I'm not going to read you anymore. I suspect you don't care much about that fact, but, nevertheless, I'll share my reasons with you. You care about your anonymous sources more than you care about your readers, and the truth. And you're really negligent too.

Over the weekend, the Post allowed an anonymous source to use it as a megaphone in the blame game over Katrina. You printed a lie peddled by your anonymous sources at the White House that the governor of Louisiana had not declared a state of emergency in Louisiana, even after the hurricane had hit. This lie was easily proven false and the Post was compelled to quickly print a correction. Undeterred, Newsweek lent its pages to the White House mendacious campaign to protect its own questionable record in the debacle that we call Katrina disaster relief. As far as I can tell from the web site, Newsweek still has not corrected this error.

Now, I understand that journalism in the beltway is hardwork and sometimes your reporters and fact checkers and editors will just have so many cocktail parties to make that they don't have the time, to, you know, check the actual record. The existence of Google, which I'm sure you've heard of, no doubt has helped some of the horrible pressure of your daily grind, but I'm willing to forgive an error or two. Still, it is quite unnerving to think that no one on the news staff of your organization might have thought for a nano-second before he or she went out for drinks - "Hey, someone might be spinning me - I better check the facts."

And while it is heartening that the Post corrected its record (and bizarre that Newsweek hasn't), I found it incomprehensible that neither organization has written a story on how a White House staffer was caught in a bald-faced lie to a major news organization in an effort to falsely shape the public's perception and evaluation of the relief efforts in the Gulf. That you care about your sources more than the truth has is painfully obvious. I can only conclude you're too lazy to do your jobs, and that you value your relationship with anonymous sources, despite the obvious contempt in which they hold you, far more than you value your relationship with readers, like myself, who in all naivete think that one function of the press in a democracy is to inform the public of the facts.

Sincerely,

Pudentilla

A reader's revolt - who knows, maybe it will shake 'em up.

Après le deluge

We spent Sunday watching news coverage of Katrina, blogging, and reading Plato's Republic to prepare for class (yikes! - its starting) - in the process several thoughts occured to us:

1) No national Republicans have called for resignations regarding the botching of Katrina relief efforts. Now these folks spent millions of dollars and hijacked the political calendar for months on end to impeach Clinton because he had a blow job. But Rove has spoken and Republican guns have turned on state and local officials, lying through their teeth when necessary - and how convenient that the Post and Newsweek will print their bilge without any fact checking (may Judy Miller rot in jail) in order to spare il Ducetto and his minions any criticism. So, we can safely conclude that Republicans think that a middle aged man's bj constitutes a constitutional crisis - whereas the hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths caused by the indifference and incompetence of federal officials is no big deal. Nice to have your priorities straight.

2) We have often marvelled at the use of the term "RINO" - which we have heard wingnuts use to describe politicians who are elected on Republican tickets, but resist the efforts of Rove to turn them into his automatons ("republicans in name only"). We have decided the political vocabulary needs a new term to describe the kleptocrats who are running the country into the ground these days. We propose RINFIFs - "republicans in name, fascists in fact." But we're open to other suggestions.

3) In the wake of a tragedy that will require a poet on the order of Virgil, we understand that the RINFIFs intend to press on with their legislative agenda: less taxes for the rich and less funds for social programs that benefit the poor. We pray for redemption every day, but yesterday we prayed even more that there be a hell to which these souless, godless, hypocritical sobs may be condemned and in which they will suffer for eternity.*


(We know, we know, we haven't fully nailed the Christian thing.)

It's Mourning in America

It looks like awol is losing BoBo.

The Bursting Point - Last week in New Orleans, by contrast, nobody took control. Authority was diffuse and action was ineffective. The rich escaped while the poor were abandoned. Leaders spun while looters rampaged. Partisans squabbled while the nation was ashamed.

The Babbler can't quite bring himself to abandon his republican, conservative identity. There wasn't partisan squabbling last week. Democratic leaders criticized the quality of the administration's response to the disaster at the end of the week - bloggers have been outraged, but reporters on the ground from media outlets identified as both liberal (NPR) and conservative (Fox) have been outraged.

And the Babbler seems unable to draw a distinction between institutions and the folks that populate them and the resources afforded to them. We suppose that it is possibly that il Ducetto and his crew will soon succeed in effectively undermining heretofore excellent institutions of government, FEMA and the Social Security Administration are obvious examples. It is clear that their goal is to loot Social Security and to cut FEMA's budget and staff its leadership with incompetents. It was a Republican president and Congress that systematically cut funding to projects designed to improve New Orleans' levees and pumping stations. When thousands die in Katrina's wake and starve in their old age under il Ducetto's plan to make Wall Street rich with Social Security funds, it is the hope of reds everywhere that Americans will say - "oh, I guess Reagan was right. Government is the problem."

But it is equally possible that Americans will say - "Hey, those Republicans are really good at tax cuts that benefit the rich, but they couldn't govern a two car funeral on an empty street. Better vote for Democrats, because under Democrats, FEMA and Social Security worked well. Hey, wasn't it Democrats who invented FEMA and Social Security. They must like governing because under their leadership government solves the kind of problems we have." It might help if some Democratic leaders pointed this out.

A friend observed yesterday that il Ducetto always wanted to Reagan's heir, not his father's. We concur in her belief that the Gaza on the Gulf that Mr. Bush has created indicates he has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

Bush's Bilandic Moment

We were struck, yesterday afternoon, while listening to an NPR story on the humanitarian disaster on the Gulf Coast, by the venom in the voice of the reporters when responding to Homeland Security Director Chertoff's happy talk. Last night on CNN there was a gap between the words of the journalists and the words of the governing elite. Today, that gap has widened to a chasm. And this recalls for us Chicago's winter of endless snow in 1979-80.

Mayor Daley had died in 1976 and the city council picked Mike Bilandic, a loyal, if colorless surrogate who had, in his youth, dated Pudentilla's aunt, to serve as mayor until the next election. Bilandic and the famous Daley machine seemed bound to win an inevitable victory in the Democratic primary against challenger Jane Byrne, a Democratic hack and Daley protegee, with a reputation for enjoying her second manhattan even more than her first.

That winter it snowed constantly. You might as well have lived in Buffalo. Now in Richard J. Daley's day, snow didn't affect the parts of Chicago where wealthy or middle-class or white people happened to live. In those parts of Chicago, Richie J. would have had his mother and his wife driving salt trucks to make sure people could get to work. Mike Bilandic lacked the old man's iron hand in such matters and things kept getting worse.

And Bilandic and his cronies kept telling the reporters how great the city was doing and how unprecedented the storm was. Indeed, if Pudentilla remembers correctly, the City Council held a special meeting and passed a resolution congratulating the Mayor on his tireless efforts against the snow. And then they talked and laughed as they left the Council Chambers and waived at reporters. That, as Pudentilla's beloved grandmother used to say, is when the penny dropped.

The next day, the Chicago Sun Times ran a picture of Jane Byrne, who was a tiny woman, balancing precariously on the step of a big rig so she could talk the driver, some poor benighted soul whose truck had gotten stuck in the snow. Bilandic lost - it was, as one of il Ducetto's minions might say, unprecedented.

It seems to us in the context of this natural disaster, that members of the media, who were so effectively neutered by Rove et al. in the run up to the Iraq war, and hence have been unable to cover the debacle in Iraq (because to do so would be to admit their own complicity and failure), are unconstrained by their own history in this story - and perhaps hungry for a little payback at the way Rove has beaten them like drums for the last five years. In which case, Bush may be facing his own Bilandic moment - unless the Republicans figure out how to blame Clinton, when people start to ask, "who lost New Orleans."

We'll See Skippy and Raise You All


We had intended to write a rather outraged rant about the quality of the planning and response to Katrina today, but the master marsupial summoned the better angels of our nature. Skippy has posed a challenge to his co-bloggers and blog rollees - he wants to raise a million for the Red Cross to help out with the aftermath of Kristina. Upon reflection, we decided that Skippy was indeed a better person than we - certainly in the actions vs words department and properly chagrined we agreed to rise to the bait.

So, we clicked on this Red Cross Donation link . We filled out the form and donated not the sum mentioned by Skippy, but $110.01 (invoking the master marsupial's mantra, "if you give 'em any, add a penny," and yes, skippy coined the phrase). We confess, we're a bit competitive, plus our cousin and her son are among the refugees from Katrina - so we've got a dog in the fight.

Gentle Reader, you don't have to give a hundred bucks. $5.00 will probably buy some poor souls a bottle of water - and the situation's so bad, that could probably save a life. Skippy's right. At this point it's really not about red and blue. It's more of a Matthew 25:35 kind of thing:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: