'There was a disconnect'

Limbaugh, off the air in N.O. since Katrina managed to alienate the city on his first day back. Limbaugh tried to get New Orleanians to agree that the problem was New Orleans. New Orleans wasn't buying it.

A story on NOLA.com chronicles the debacle"

There was a disconnect'

WWL radio invites Rush Limbaugh to New Orleans so he'll know what he's talking about

Limbaugh, the most listened-to radio talker in the land, introduced caller "Ray from New Orleans," where, said the host, "They're getting back to normal in the city."

"Things are not returning to normal," said Ray. "I wish you would come down here to see for yourself..."

Ray set the tone by criticizing President Bush's fabulously framed Jackson Square TV speech to the nation.

"All lies," the caller said. "None of the things that he promised are happening."

It went on and on. Rush ineffectually tries to find some credible way to blame New Orleans for the plight she finds herself in but, shock, New Orleanians refuse to play his game. Rush usually makes his hay by ridiculing those that he thinks his audience resents. He forgot the basic formula here: you can't make much hay ridiculing your audience.

There's been a lot of right-wing nonsense smearing Louisiana that is intended to cover up federal incompetence. Rush thought that would be an easy game for him to play. But Ray from New Orleans wasn't having any of it. We shouldn't either.

It's our turn to say: We're angry and we're not going to take it any more.

Don't Blame Us. We Voted for Kerry and Blanco!

Louisiana Republicans, bereft of any ideas other than trying to gain political advantage from the catastrophe of Katrina and the disaster of Rita, are reportedly printing up bumper stickers that say, "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Jindal."

The idea is that Governor Blanco has somehow botched the response to these two storms and that the state would somehow have been better served had the boy genius won the 2003 governor's race.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour apparently disagrees. The Republican Governor of our neighbor to the east is putting blame where he feels it justly resides: the Bush administration's FEMA and the Republican controlled Congress.

Perhaps if Jindal and other Republican members of our congressional delegation weren't so busy sucking up to the corrupt leadership of their party and making the 'recovery' safe for no-bid contractors, the people of our state and Governor Barbour's might actually be making progress on this recovery.

Bush Giving up on New Orleans: Fallujah on the Bayou!

Read this Los Angeles Times Op-Ed piece by Mike Tidwell (author of Bayou Farewell) and weep.

Republicans, looking for a way not to fund a recovery package for New Orleans, compare it to Baghdad, saying both are corrupt.

The more accurate comparison is to Fallujah. In both Fallujah and New Orleans, policy and operation failures of the U.S. government resulted in the destruction of a city and thousands of death. In each case, U.S. promises to reconstruct the cities proved empty.

Boustany Traveling to Iraq with Ohio Congressman Implicated in Abramoff Scandal

The Daily Advertiser reported on Sunday that 7th District Congressman Charles Boustany is making a photo-op trip to Iraq later this month.

The story includes the fact that Boustany will be traveling in the company of fellow Republican and Jack Abramoff beneficiary Bob Ney of Ohio. It appears that this could be one of the last junkets Ney takes before what appears to be his near-certain indictment in the Abramoff corruption scandal. Ney and another of Boustany's patrons, indicted former House majority leader Tom DeLay, are said to be targets in that aspect of the Abramoff scandal involving bribing members of Congress and members of their staffs.

About the only thing more pathetic than the company Boustany is keeping these days is the attempt by Boustany and his staff to tie this current trip to the members of Louisiana National Guard units who have served (and returned) from Iraq. Here's Boustany's whack at it:

Boustany wants to see how the Iraqi government is working, but mostly he wants to see where Louisiana troops served.

"The biggest step is to see the troops on the ground," Boustany said. "I owe it to the families of those who lost their lives and served, and to recognize their hard work."

Then, a staff member takes another stab at it:

"He wanted to be in one of the first groups, considering that the TOW (Platoon 23rd Marines) and the 256th (National Guard Infantry Brigade) have come back," Jones said. "He wants to go and experience what they experienced and see what they have seen and what they went through."

Does that mean Boustany will be going on patrol in inadequately armored vehicles, like those Marines and National Guardsmen?

Look for 'Boustany the Liberator' images culled from this trip to be appearing in the Congressman's re-election campaign ads next year.

Fixing the Game - New York Times

In the eyes of Bush/Cheney/DeLay Republicans, government exists solely for the aim of advancing partisan advantage. In their view, there is no such thing as 'the greater good.'

This editorial from today's New York Times looks at how this approach to government has affected the Justice Department.

Here's the take-away:

Mr. Bush and his team don't understand that they merely hold the current majority in a system designed to bring periodic changes in the governing party and to protect the rights and values of the minority party. The idea that the winners should trash the system to make sure the democratic process ended with them was discredited back around the time of the Bolsheviks.

Ruinous budget deficits. Shredding the Bill of Rights. Launching an unprovoked war based on manipulated intelligence. Violating treaties to which the United States is a signator, including prohibitions on torture. Waging war on the middle class by shifting the tax burden off the wealthiest among us.

These people are not conservatives. They are radicals.

'Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War'

Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University, is author of "Transformation of War" (Free Press, 1991) and about 15 other books on military history and strategy. He is the only non-American author on the U.S. Army's required reading list for officers.

Here's what he wrote in the November 25 edition of Forward about the Bush War in Iraq:

The number of American casualties in Iraq is now well more than 2,000, and there is no end in sight. Some two-thirds of Americans, according to the polls, believe the war to have been a mistake. And congressional elections are just around the corner.

What had to come, has come. The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but how soon — and at what cost. In this respect, as in so many others, the obvious parallel to Iraq is Vietnam.

He continues:

Handing over their bases or demolishing them if necessary, American forces will have to fall back on Baghdad. From Baghdad they will have to make their way to the southern port city of Basra, and from there back to Kuwait, where the whole misguided adventure began. When Prime Minister Ehud Barak pulled Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, the military was able to carry out the operation in a single night without incurring any casualties. That, however, is not how things will happen in Iraq.

Not only are American forces perhaps 30 times larger, but so is the country they have to traverse. A withdrawal probably will require several months and incur a sizable number of casualties. As the pullout proceeds, Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge — if, indeed, it can do so at all. All this is inevitable and will take place whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice like it or not.

Mr. van Creveld says the U.S. will be forced to withdraw from Iraq but cannot afford to leave the region because of the oil there. He says the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice team is not up to the job of maneuvering the complex situation that will exist on the backside of the U.S. failure in Iraq:

First and foremost, such a presence will be needed to counter Iran, which for two decades now has seen the United States as "the Great Satan." Tehran is certain to emerge as the biggest winner from the war — a winner that in the not too distant future is likely to add nuclear warheads to the missiles it already has. In the past, Tehran has often threatened the Gulf States. Now that Iraq is gone, it is hard to see how anybody except the United States can keep the Gulf States, and their oil, out of the mullahs' clutches.

A continued American military presence will be needed also, because a divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets' nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah's name.

The Gulf States apart, the most vulnerable country is Jordan, as evidenced by the recent attacks in Amman. However, Turkey, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Israel are also likely to feel the impact. Some of these countries, Jordan in particular, are going to require American assistance.

Maintaining an American security presence in the region, not to mention withdrawing forces from Iraq, will involve many complicated problems, military as well as political. Such an endeavor, one would hope, will be handled by a team different from — and more competent than — the one presently in charge of the White House and Pentagon.

Mr. van Creveld has to reach far back into history to find a war of imperial overreach with such disastrous impact on the country that launched it:

For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.

My guess is that the first impact of this piece will be for someone at the Pentagon to make sure that van Creveld is no longer required reading at any U.S. military college. That's fits a Bush administration pattern, too: attack the messenger.

It's ALL ONLY about Politics for Republicans

Three stories in two days make clear that Republican control of the House, the Senate and the White House is not about governing. It's about making government an instrument of politics.

Story #1: The second redistricting of Texas (made possible through the use of illegal corporate campaign contributes in 2002 statewide elections) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to the staff of the U.S. Justice Department. Those opinions were overridden by the political appointees in the department, including Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Story #2: The Congressional Research Office says the Bush Administration's Environmental Protection Agency 'fixed' the analysis of the impact of the Orwellian-sounding "Clear Skies" air quality regulations to make them appear more effective than they actually are. (Fixing the analysis seems to be the hallmark of the political operatives of this administration; see, "War in Iraq" for details.)

Story#3: The so-called "Plan for Victory" in Iraq is not a military strategy. Turns out its a poll-driven effort to raise flagging public support for this foolish war.

This administration is not interested in solving any problems; only, gaining political advantage. That certainly explains to reliance on cronyism to fill government slots at places like FEMA.