Category: Old Dish

Harry Shearer – perhaps unintentionally – exculpates the Bush administration for ignoring the plight of poor black people in the response to Katrina. The federal response in Mississippi may be even worse – and it’s whites who are still waiting for basic aid. The point is not that this administration is somehow racist. It’s that its incompetence rains down on all of us alike.

BLOGS VERSUS AVIAN FLU: There’s now an avian flu wiki. Here’s a very useful link to various sources of breaking news and information. They could save your life: get your doctor to prescribe you some Tamiflu now. The British government has a helpful FAQ page as well. There are some signs that the U.S. government is slowly moving into action.

I’m as eager as the next guy to prevent pork-barrel spending, and I’d definitely support this effort. But the blogosphere campaign to battle pork in the face of Katrina, however admirable, still strikes me as too easy. The truth is: even if we got rid of all the pork, we’d still be in deep fiscal doo-doo. People like me who want to find the money to pay for Iraq and Katrina should be asked what we’d cut. Here’s my basic list: postpone or repeal or radically scale back the Medicare drug benefit so it only affects the truly needy; restore the estate tax in full; phase in the means-testing of social security; end agricultural subsidies; kill off all corporate tax relief and the mortgage deduction and move toward a flat tax. That’s a start. How many fiscal conservatives will bite these bullets?

It’s hard to know what’s going on in the detention camp in Cuba, but we do seem to have a hunger-strike on our hands. The question is: why? One potential answer might be found here:

Mr. Stafford Smith said the current strike began after some detainees reported witnessing the abuse of a prisoner, Hisham Sliti, when he returned to his cell after an interrogation session. He said that Mr. Deghayes told him that he had also seen a guard throw Mr. Sliti’s copy of the Koran onto a cell floor.

Once again, we have three options. This is more Qaeda-based propaganda. Koran-abuse is still going on. Or both.

“After the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, Clinton asked for more than $3 billion to offset the new costs. The Democratic Congress gave it to him. After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Clinton asked for more than $1 billion in cuts. The newly Republican Congress insisted on more than $15 billion in offsets. (Let’s hear it for divided government!) Since taking office, Bush has yet to ask for a single offset to disaster-related spending.” – Ryan Sager (reg req), today. Yep, fiscally, Clinton-Gingrich was a conservative administration. Bush, in contrast, is a compulsive spendthrift.

One of the more irritating aspects of the post-Katrina debate has been the assertion by some liberals that the failure to provide emergency assistance for citizens hit by a natural diasaster is a function of conservatism. The notion is that conservatives hate government so much that they do not even think the government has an obligation to act in a natural disaster. In fact, the opposite is true. Real conservatives (I’m not referring to the crew now in the White House) favor energetic executive action where only it can do the job: police, war, disaster relief, a basic social welfare net. What we’re against is social engineering, redistributive taxation, over-regulation of private activity, etc. What conservatives want is a smaller yet stronger government. And getting smaller helps government focus on what it really should do, not on all the illusory goals that some liberals believe in, like, er, ending human inequality. Here’s Hayek, for example, cited on Jack Balkin’s blog, perhaps the philosophical lode-star for a certain kind of conservatism:

[T]here can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody…
Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance…the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong….
To the same category belongs also the increase of security through the state’s rendering assistance to the victims of such “acts of God” as earthquakes and floods. Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken.

What has happened under Bush is not a function of conservatism. It’s a function of abandoning conservatism.

“Most conservative books are pseudo-books: ghostwritten pastiches whose primary purpose seems to be the photo of the “author” on the cover. What a tumble! From ‘The Conservative Mind’ to ‘Savage Nation’; from Clifton White to Dick Morris; from Willmoore Kendall and Harry Jaffa to Sean Hannity and Mark Fuhrman–all in little more than a generation’s time. Whatever this is, it isn’t progress.” – Andy Ferguson, Weekly Standard.

YGLESIAS AWARD NOMINEE II: “When Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi stands up and proposes a Marshall Plan for the gulf states, as she did on Thursday, she reminds voters how bankrupt her party is when it comes to new ideas.” – Eleanor Clift, Newsweek.

(The new Yglesias Award is given to writers or any public person who tells truths likely to be highly unpopular with their natural supporters or political allies.)

Robert A. George wonders how much more he can take:

First came House Speaker Dennis Hastert openly considering “bulldozing” parts of New Orleans — at a point when the city was still 80 percent under water, bodies were still being fished out and people were still stranded in the convention center…
Then, former First Lady Barbara Bush uttered words in a radio interview which will unfortunately haunt her remaining years: “What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.” Those that heard the contents state that she notably “chuckled” during the last phrase.
Now, for some, Katrina may present new opportunity. But if poor children lost their parents and were adopted by a wealthy couple, would one chuckle that things were “working well for them”?
And then, to complete the hat trick, an actual Louisiana congressman pops up telling lobbyists, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” Baker claimed that he was misquoted or misheard or something…
Honestly, I might be inclined to give Baker the benefit of the doubt, if it didn’t seem like this disaster has given Republicans the opportunity to “share” how they really feel. Similarly, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t include Barbara Bush’s comments. But, not this time. It just happens too often to ignore them anymore.
Ironically, the concern uttered here is not that the statements are necessarily racist or suggest some animus toward minorities. That’s not the point. It is that the speakers seem unable to see those suffering as as actual people.

Robert has struggled mightily in the GOP for years and years. I wonder if he has the steadiness of nerve to continue. And if you think his cognitive and moral dissonance is rough, try being a gay Republican …

Someone broke the off-the-record rule.

GOOD NEWS IN KABUL: Oxblog updates the news from the Afghan elections. It’s amazing they are such a non-event in some ways. But this really is a triumph for the West and the Bush-Blair policy of democratization.

More evidence of continuing FEMA disarray piles up.

Merkel underperforms; the FDP does much better than expected. Full bloggy coverage at MedienKritik.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “On Friday, you posted a fellow reader’s comments on Bush as a man of integrity. I felt compelled to say something about this issue. A man of integrity is a man who is consistent in his values and actions, and those values in turn are grounded in reason and truth. The word “integrity”, however, has been hijacked by everyone, especially politicians who no longer understand what it means, but who know that it is a word that people associate with respectability.

A man who hires somebody like Karl Rove to obfuscate and spin the truth and to vicitimize minorities for political purposes is no man of integrity. A man who has so ineptly planned for the security of this nation (and Iraq) as was vividly revealed by Katrina when he has stood in front of millions of his citizens saying otherwise is no man of integrity. A man whose government is filled with incompetent cronies, and who values loyalty above merit is no man of integrity. A man who spends so irresponsibly the money of generations to come and who does not think of the economic and social consequences for this nation’s future is no man of integrity. A man who courts the views of extremists and fundamentalists whose own views are grounded in hate and fear and who would choose to scapegoat homosexuals to win votes is no man of integrity. A man who would ignore scientific evidence and instead professes support for the dodgy theory of intelligence design is no man of integrity.

The word integrity actually needs to mean something. It should not be a platitudinous word that is used by men so flippantly. Your reader is wrong in this regard. George Bush is no man of integrity.”