Maybe you want to spend $200 billion on rebuilding the Delta region too. Fine. Something like that will probably be necessary. But don't fool yourself into thinking that what's coming is just a matter of a different chef making the same meal. This will be Iraq all over again, with the same fetid mix of graft, zeal and hubris. Cronyism like you wouldn't believe. Money blown on ideological fantasies and half-baked test-cases.
What's weird is that Joshua Micah Marshall wrote it a day before the president said anything, but that doesn't make it any less true. Personally, I don't think New Orleans will ever be rebuilt. I can't remember who said this, but it's not original to me: Ask yourself how much progress has been made in rebuilding anything where the World Trade Center used to be. That's two buildings. New Orleans was a city.
The president's plan is about two things, neither of them rebuilding New Orleans: Greasing his friends and trying to get his numbers as a strong leader who is trustworthy in a crisis to go up. Everything else is just smoke on the water.
One of the things the president said was:
"Every time the people of this land have come back from fire, flood and storm to build anew -- and to build better than what we had before," he said. "Americans have never left our destiny to the whims of nature, and we will not start now."
To which I say yeah--every time we weren't being led by you.
Looking at some of the conservative blog reaction to what Bush said, it looks to me as if they're concerned, first and foremost, with how much it's going to cost. Which doesn't seem to have bothered them about Iraq, but hey, that's a war on people who attacked us, you know. This is, um "helping people" who are "down on their luck," and that goes against all republican logic.
What's really weird is that it looks as if at least some of them were really hoping Bush would be a Big Man and essentially tell New Orleans and Louisiana "Who told you to live on the goddamn Gulf Coast in the first place? You get yourself out of it and when you do, you report to me, cause I'll give you a beating."
They think it makes him look small even to just be pretending to be compassionate. It makes me wonder, and I'm going to try not to inject too much wishful thinking into this: Is Bush going to be ground between the rock of his conservative base and the hard place of liberals like me?
One group doesn't want him to do anything that might cost them money or make him look weak. The other will never trust either his intentions or his ability. Are there enough people in-between for republicans to keep power?
PS: And yes, I'm back.
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