Then you’d be a betting fool. There were major disasters under the Clinton appointed fema director, and he consistently won praises for his competence and experience. Brown has consistently failed when major disasters have struck.

While it is true that the butter at home isn’t being tended to, it’s because of incompetence as much as anything. It’s true that the volume of the response is lower than it could have been if the national guard units now in iraq were at home, but in reality there was no significant response for 5 days – and the only reason that was the case was utter mismanagement and incompetence.

Don’t confuse your late empire metaphors with simple good governance. Similar things happened throughout the entire roman empire lifecycle – and well before collapse of the empire. Making sure that the ‘butter’ is handled will ensure the ‘late’ stage of the empire, but then again a rational person would expect this to be the case.

The gist of the conservative position is that lawlessness in Iraq represents a threat to our way of life; besides, our way of life is one in which people look out for themselves, unless they represent a significant voting block.

Neither political party, nor ideology, disputes the major principle of Late Empire: the imperial government should provide bread and circuses at home (including protection from flood, storm, pestilence, and famine)…and seek to improve the world by engaging in almost constant wars all around the periphery.

The argument is only about which bunch of incompetents will do a better job of it.

Had Katrina struck during the reign of William J. Clinton, rather than that of George W. Bush, we doubt that there would be one single fewer body floating face down in New Orleans. On the other hand, by so openly and proudly taking on imagined enemies overseas, Mr. Bush has raised expectations. He has offered to make the world a better place than the place people make of it on their own. He showed himself ready to send troops wherever he thought they were needed. He made it clear that no sparrow could fall anywhere in the world without it being a cause of concern to the snoops and world-improvers in Washington.

If the all-knowing, all caring authorities in Washington would notice the falling of a sparrow between the Tigris and the Euphrates, wouldn’t they also see when a taxpayer drops along the Mississippi? If the Pentagon could send troops to Iraq on a whim, wouldn’t they rush them to the Gulf Coast on a worry?

By intervening so readily with guns in Baghdad, the citizens of Biloxi were encouraged to hope for more butter. When they didn’t get it, they turned a little sour.

If you need a bit of comic relief from all of this try:

The Color of Chaos

Beleaguered FEMA implements color codes to forestall future failures.

EWM – (September 9, 2005) As part of a massive restructuring of the FEMA side of the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Michael Chertoff is implementing a color-coded system to direct staff on protocols to be followed for a pending natural disaster…

…The colors will be communicated to FEMA personnel via GPS-controlled mood rings and the threat status will not be announced to the public.

http://www.eyewitnessmuse.com/musings.php?p=147

The solution is for every responsible citizen to get on grand juries and indict each and every one of the criminals including the Bush, Bush’s appointees, Cheney,Bush’s GOP supporters, Congressmen, Senators, and every other gad damn official that are in any way connected to any criminal activities. All the criminal activities the GOP has been involved in has contributed the disaster in New Orleans.

The crimes of the GOP in election fraud is just as responsable for the deaths in New Orleans as the FEMA incompetents that Bush has in charge.

If Bush is indicted and convicted then he must be removed from office as per the U.S. Constitution.

File the indictments quickly and bring them to trial tomorrow (yesterday is better).

HILARIOUS. The main sources of this problem are corruption and VOTE FRAUD.

We have caught them stealing the elections of 2000, 2002, 2003 (CA recall), and 2004.

Blaming the Dems for a COUP is equivalent to willful ignorance about how our government is set up.

Under Dem leadership, Kerry, Pelosi, Boxer, Kennedy, Byrd, Conyers, and on and on, would be doing good, sometimes great work.

Regrettably, there is little that our Constitution provides for single-party takeovers which nullify the impeachment RIGHT.

Fight for state voting rights! Drive out the Diebolders.

Blaming the Dems for the collapse of the impeachment power is not an effective solution.

Suggesting that ‘we need to start anew’ is just leftist BS, the usual leftist BS in fact.

There is no power to do so, as is demonstrated by the lack of a SINGLE third party representative in DC. To want to start a new party is to want to wait TWENTY YEARS we don’t have.

We need to defend and strengthen THESE Democrats. And don’t kid yourselves otherwise.

1) Two or three of the five major fires were ARSON. Those arson fires linked the otherwise separated fires.

2) Rove and his Schwartzenegger protege used those fires to propel their vote-fraud special election.

Bush is busily burning roads into our national forests. They have ZERO compunction about destroying NO through avoidable flooding. They have ZERO compunction about burning down California’s forests.

Who started those fires? Who is blowing up levees under a press blackout in Louisiana?

Who has now killed a reported 1895 US soldiers in an illegal invasion?

All roads lead to Rove.

I agree, Ryan. The elections are rigged. Mathamatics demands that there’s something fishy at the ballot box. It aint rocket science.

And Bush is a hopeless, miserable failure – except to his handlers. Morford has a good piece in the San Francisco Gate – regarding his “success.”

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/09/09/notes090905.DTL

Notice I did not
mention Valerie Plame???

I would like to see the links.
I have heard a good deal of “buzz”, but
it seems like I never saw the analysis
to be able to make anything out of it.
I am skeptical of “tinfoil hat” stuff,
but always try to keep an open mind toward
scientific method, i.e., theory, experiment,
and proven results.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0411/S00072.htm

The first 10 states listed have virtually no electronic machines, and you’ll notice the exit polls match almost exactly. Whereas the states that have replaced those machines with Triad and Diebold in particular appear to be completely out of whack with the exit polls. You may also find it interesting this story was first published in new zealand and not in the american press… How sad that the foreign press has to tell us that we had a coup d’etat in our own country…

There’s also a whole master set of links, analysis and useful stuff here.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/2004votefraud_1142004.html

And I could flood you with other analysis done by universities, governments, press, etc. that isn’t here. It’s so well known internationally, but virtually unknown in this country. I was out of the country last month, and I would talk about the stolen election and fraudulent voting machines abroad and they already knew about it! And yet the average american is clueless that this has even happened because the corporate press has been muzzled by its management… A couple of reporters said something right after the election at CNN and they were stopped in their tracks…

They have rigged the voting machines, the proof at this point is rather conclusive despite rather limited mainstream coverage for ‘obvious’ reasons. Do you want me to post the links to some of this? I did so recently on some of the threads, but I can go dig up the most relevant links and post them if you like.

Apparently exit polls are generally accurate to within 1% point of the final results. In states where the voting machines are new, this varies as much as 14% statewide – and interestingly it ALWAYS varies in the favor of republicans. When they break out the numbers to states without the machines, or to counties with older machines, they fall within the 1-2% range consistently…

It’s all math and simple common sense… I don’t want to believe my fellow americans would do this either, but it’s clear they don’t see the same america of fair play, honesty and integrity that I do…

He moves to an administrative position out of the glare of media but, a position where he can STILL preside over FEMA’s multi-billion dollar budget.

I really wonder what Bush would do if Brown had raped Jenna or Barbara Jr.? Would he still be hog-tied and unable to cut him lose?

George Bush is a failure — period.

…SO LET’S GET DR. BEN MARBLE ON THE AIR!! Get e-mailin’, folks. I’ve pulled the following news e-mail addresses off Google, so I DON’T know that they’ll all work, but I’m sure many/most will. I’ve taken the liberty of coming up with a brief sample message, or write your own:
**********************
Hello. I would like to know more about the gutsy citizen who told V.P. Dick Cheney to “Go F— Yourself” in Mississippi yesterday. His name is Dr. Ben Marble, an emergency room physician who lives in Gulfport, where Cheney spoke. Dr. Marble, an intriguing personality who also organizes charity fundraisers and plays in a rock band, had lost his home to the flood just days earlier, about the same time his wife gave birth to a baby girl. THIS STORY BEGS TO BE COVERED! I’d love to see your news program interview this colorful individual — apparently he has A LOT to say. His contact info is below. Thank you.
http://www.hurricanekatrinasucked.com
http://www.theharbinger.org/xix/000919/smith.html
*********************
feedback@cnn.com, Sidebar@msnbc.com, viewerservices@msnbc.com, KOlbermann@msnbc.com,
news@msnbc.com, JScarborough@msnbc.com,
lou@cnn.com, evening@cbsnews.com,
nightline@abcnews.com, 60m@cbsnews.com,
dateline@nbc.com, Tucker@msnbc.com,
Paula.Zahn2@cnn.com, newshour@pbs.org,
charlierose@pbs.org,