Burbank Democratic Club

(or, "Adult Retraining Classes Do Pay Off")


So, let me get this straight …

(and totally ignore, for now, the deepening hole that will soon engulf John McSame’s impetuous, pandering and sell-out choice of an unvetted amateur VP merely to appease the Rabid Right)….

First the Repugs show their disdain and incompetence by botching both the prep and the response to Katrina in 2005 …

Then this week, they get to conveniently cancel the speeches of (the rocks around their neck) Bush and Cheney, due to the need to monitor “storm danger” (what? NOW you get it?) …

And then they actually glom onto it for political hash to show GOPers "really can donate to charities in time of need" … and take advantage of the soft-sell and distraction in overall media coverage to spin their convention's embarrasing prime-time exposure.

And NOW, Hurricane Gustav may not fill Katrina’s shoes at all, and reveal all the hand-wringing over the looming Apocalypse as pure overkill in relation to how much “rebranding”—i.e., the convenient running away from the record—the GOPers can get away with?

Make no mistake. Those Louisiana and Gulf hurricane victims deserve our thoughts, prayers, and support. For real. As do their first-responders and emergency workers.

That said, I’m more than a little sick of the all the reassuring press conference avalanche and political hackery-quackery over it all.

I’m sick of using the very same folks that were dumped on three years ago as pawns. I know they know it too, as soon as they can think straight again when the immediate danger passes.

I’m sick of using the residents' potential misery to dodge having a full-blown convention and avoid full exposure, as the Democrats underwent last week.

And I’m most of all sick of celebrating mere competence, when that’s supposed to be reassuring and make us forget how much was ignored and botched three years ago. Nobody needed to “learn” anything from Katrina about hurricane operations. We are not reinventing the wheel here—disaster response is a known business and craft (at least it is in Democratic administrations, where cronyism is not the rule in basic public safety positions. Or the military.). While we cannot control Mother Nature—yet—we can certainly hire people to do the job before, during and after. This is not rocket science.

I’m just sick of the big parade marching by for people who otherwise should just be doing their tragic jobs again—and that even includes Dubya and Dick. The news should all be about the storm and suffering—it’s become about the fact that some Republican “wheels of government” might actually work after all. We never got a routine federal follow-up investigation of tracking and avoiding the breakdowns—the vote fell down in the Senate on the 55-45 Repug majority line—so Gulf residents will just have to trust that having people who really show up for work will have to do. (“Ooo, ooo, look what we learned in three years!”? Give me a break.) Not to knock those brave souls out their risking their lives in public and private systems…no, we’re talking about the suits in D.C. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a GOP governor in Louisiana now, either (as well as a horrific “what NOT to do” example everyone is scrambling to run away from, in hindsight. With lots of photo opps (see photo above). And stuff.)

If the hurricanes thankfully slack off and spare a lot of damage and casualty, I just wonder what the Repugs will use to duck reality then. Otherwise, seeing “mere competence” being celebrated now as a sign of the Second Coming just makes me madder for what didn’t have to happen three summers ago.

(GLOM II: Just now I caught Texas's Rick Perry proclaiming, "I just want you to know that we Republican governors are taking care of our Republican states down here on the South Coast..." IT'S A VIDEO TO THE RNC! ... Oh no, no PR manipulation of misery here! ...And now it's the Alabama guv that Rove helped steal the chair for by throwing Don Siegelman into the gulag! Incredible....just incredible ... Rove's politicized Feds weren't about to cooperate with Gov. Blanco in '05; that would make Dems look competent, even if everyone looked incompetent. )

Labels: cronies, Gustav, Katrina, RNC