Comments on: A Note to Our Conservative Friends, Pt. II

By: Fuzzert

Fuzzert — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 06:09:08 +0000

Bush Loses Republican Base In the Wake of His Response to Katrina

The plight of the victims of Katrina and the utter failure of our government to respond (the word adequately isn’t appropriate here–there was no response, at all) to Katrina is devastatingly sad. For some, it has confirmed their worst fears…

By: D. Sidhe

D. Sidhe — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 06:08:30 +0000

I wonder if Kate Hale would marry me.

By: James Emerson

James Emerson — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 02:10:40 +0000

Sheesh…I can’t understand why you guys are so mad at Mr. Brown for his handling of the Katrina crisis. I mean really…”He’s done a hell of a job, because I’m not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm,” said Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief.”

Here

By: D. Sidhe

D. Sidhe — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 11:34:43 +0000

The point is often made that the republican argument, from Reagan on down, has been that government is not the solution, it is the problem.
So if you can appoint ninnies and nutjobs and morons to government positions, then you can point to them and say, “See? It doesn’t work!”
Then you can cut their budget because obviously if you gave them more money they would only accomplish more screwups.
Of course, once you’ve cut their budget, they will inevitibly screw up even more. And the cycle of endless Grover Norquist masturbation continues.
You’d think this would backfire on them after a while, but it never seems to, because “Government takes your money and can’t do anything right” is a very easy premise for any idiot to grasp, whereas “If you want them to do a better job, you must give them more money, even if you think, right at this moment, that they are jackasses, and the people we currently have in the jobs must be replaced” is more complicated.
Giving a failing student more money is counterintuitive, though giving him more money for decent schoolbooks is a good idea.
And, let’s face it, the notion that government employees are all lazy idiots is so deeply ingrained in us all that it’s difficult for most of us to imagine that the next guy in the job will be any different.

Needless to say, this is all very, very depressing. But we went to the zoo today, as my birthday is tomorrow, and I saw porcupines and ratfish, so I’ll survive it.
Seriously. I was born on Labor Day, many years ago. It explains a lot.

By: parsec

parsec — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 08:41:42 +0000

Well, it makes perfect sense if Government is the problem. You can’t possibly do anything to screw it up any more. Might as well treat any and all government posts as sinecures funded by suckers if they can’t figure out that all needs and desires can be met by unfettered capitalism.
Why require demonstrated competence from any office holder?

By: Dan Someone

Dan Someone — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 22:39:03 +0000

On a serious note, what greater evidence does one need that this admin. hates the flying fuck out of America?

Wait for it. A couple of months down the road, they’ll give Brown the Medal of Freedom.

By: Pinko Punko

Pinko Punko — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 07:01:08 +0000

So the Bush M.O. has been to hire the most inappropriate person for the job for many positions (Bolton at the UN, Leavitt at EPA and now HHS) but couldn’t they come up with a greater walking disaster than this guy? I mean he just sounds so qualified. I guess they really went against the grain on this one.

On a serious note, what greater evidence does one need that this admin. hates the flying fuck out of America?

By: Timmah420

Timmah420 — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 06:49:08 +0000

So he had a job where it sounds like you basically fuck the dog all day and somehow he got fired for “supervision failures”. Is that anything akin to being a lazy asshole that does less than nothing all day? We have a few of those at work too, only when the workplace catches fire they aren’t the ones in charge.

By: John Protevi

John Protevi — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 05:53:24 +0000

Necessary background reading to New Orleans in terms of race, class, geography and history:

Craig Colten, _The Unnatural Metropolis_ (LSU Press, 2004).
Robin Blackburn, _The Making of New World Slavery (Verso, 1998).
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, _Africans in Colonial Louisiana_ (reprint edition, LSU Press, 1995).

Please read and cite these titles to ignorant ones.