The King’s triumphal resurgence in front of a national television audience on Thursday night had all of the typical hallmarks of a Karl Rove bullshit epic: the extensive attention to detail in the staging, lighting and angles that allowed Bush to be shown at the podium with the perfectly illuminated Jackson Square in the background as well as the absence of any extemporaneous activity or pesky reporters or audience members that could provide a distraction from the great and mighty leader. This was yet another meticulously crafted public relations achievement by a White House propaganda machine stocked with those highly influenced by the work of Leni Riefenstahl and given the fact that they had to truck in their own lights and generators to pull off the big con of putting the bloom back on the rose, polishing the turd or otherwise putting lipstick on the pig that any documentary footage could be transformed into a modern masterpiece that would totally blow away Triumph of The Will. Dan Froomkin’s most recent Whitehouse Briefing blog has an excellent bit on just how bogus that it all was but you will need to register in order to view it.
It’s a good thing that the reopening of the French Quarter and its legendary drinking establishments are the first and foremost priority in the plans for the rejuvenation of the Crescent City because you would have to be pretty fucking snockered to place any credibility at all in Thursday night’s shameless horseshit disbursement ceremony. In the speech itself there was the obligatory linking to terrorism and 9/11 although it was much more subtle than the fear mongering of the past. More predictably and perhaps more alarmingly there was a super sized helping of the usual red meat that is thrown to the radical ‘christian’ crusaders that comprise the majority of Bush’s base and the holy warriors can expect even more as Rove orders the government to spend like drunken sailors which is certain to alienate the fence sitting fiscal conservatives who are growing more nervous by the day at the profligate in chief maxes the national credit cards for present gain. The speech if anything was well put together, Rove’s screenwriters did a great job as is typical, especially the historical references which are rare for an administration determined to keep the public as ignorant of the past as humanly possible. I have absolutely no doubt that a good percentage of simple minded Americans have are thoroughly convinced that their divinely annoited emperor actually penned it himself with talent on loan from God, a real miracle from a man whose literary skills were most recently displayed while scribbling slips seeking permission to go potty, and he didn’t even use a crayon.
After playing the God and Terror cards, Bush’s dissertation also contained stunning promises of massive government largesse and the ensuing piling on of even more debt to an already unseemly deficit that is groaning under the burden of frivolous tax cuts (Bush later absolutely ruled out tax increases to finance the grand rebuilding plans put forth), an extremely costly foreign war (that for the time being much to Rove’s delight has been forgotten the mainstream media and consequently by the general public who are focused on New Orleans) and the government sanctioned graft machine that has become so overtly prevalent during the past four and a half years of Rove’s agenda and the unscrupulous reign of Tom DeLay. The massive expansion of federal government this time is sanctioned by traditionally anti-big gov’t ideological think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and underwritten by radical special interest groups who only hate government spending of goliath proportions when they don’t control the politicians who control the purse stings.
When examining the transcript of the speech keep in mind the following excerpt from a recent Wall Street Journal story:
“Some new measures are already taking shape. In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.
“Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims’ right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction.”
Surprise, surprise, the radical right is seeking to use the reconstruction efforts to further their own agenda, no wonder why their Republican prostitutes in congress are so disinterested in pursuing an independent inquiry over Katrina.
Bush’s earlier contrition and weasel word ‘apology’ is nothing but more of the same spin, if you need any convincing of this you only need reference the September 14th New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson that states:
Not that the immersion of the public in the whirling typhoon of administration spin on Thursday is the final product, advance teams led by longtime Bush lackey Karen Hughes had already been laying the groundwork and broke through the line following the lead block of damage control queen Condi Rice, a woman so close to Dubya that he apparently even seeks her approval to take a leak as the earlier link demonstrates.
And if the involvement of longtime Texas crony and top operative Hughes isn’t bad enough, Rove himself told the audience at a North Carolina fundraiser that the full story of the disaster would be told : translated this means that the White House propanda operatives are now working overtime to not only take the blame game to the next level but to obfuscate and distort the truth to the extent that in short order ‘television lobotomized’ Americans will not be pointing the finger at godless liberal tree huggers in general and most likely traditional bogeyman Bill Clinton in specific for destroying the functional ability of FEMA and the storm itself will be renamed Hurricane Hillary.
Strangely enough the devastation wrought by Katrina as well as the indifferent initial response of the Bush administration, the GOP Congress and the Federal Government offered Americans a real life look at the true face of this country, the ugliness that is hidden behind the fantasy façade of consumerism and mass marketing, of television and advertising glamour. This drawing back of the curtain revealed the ugly little uber capitalist trolls pulling the levers of power and briefly exposing the true ugliness of the festering wound on the nation’s soul that was opened by the ‘Reagan Revolution’ and has worsened by over 20 years of the neglect of the poor and the shrinking middle class whose terrible plight has been held away as far from the public eye as technologically possible so as to allow the illicit transfer of wealth to the richest of all.
Excuse me but where is the honor or dignity in using yet another national tragedy to further a radical and corrupt political agenda? Then again, these are the same rat bastards who were using the agonizing deaths and suffering of the victims of 9/11 to advance their agenda before the first bodies were pulled from the rubble at Ground Zero and the smell of rotting flesh was freshly hanging in the Manhattan air. Ghouls exploit death and exploit it both callously and without regard to the long term moral implications that their pathological buzzard-like traits to elicit profit from the wreckage of the lives of the innocent represent. The stench of decomposing bodies was still heavy in the dank and fetid Louisiana air on Thursday, mingling with the malodorous bullshit scent of the same ole, same ole from Rove and his crew of crackerjack production experts in propping up the most pathetic excuse for a leader in American history yet again for the ever present cameras all while a large portion of the city was still underwater and the unrecovered dead lacking both the dignity and compassion that a truly humble god fearing man would marshall all forces within his power to provide.
This is the accountability moment America, do you seize this rare and maybe final opportunity to stop this insane dismantling of the social contract, of progressive government, of civil liberties, of our American legacy itself…or do you rub your eyes, change the channel and immerse yourselves in a comfortable world of familiar fantasy once again?
You decide….if two plus two equals four than everything else is a given but the moment that you allow yourselves to be duped into believing that two plus two equals five then you have already sold your soul to the company store.
Posted by Donn Marten 
Bahoowah 