The Dish

I think it’s pretty clear that’s the Bush administration’s fundamental response to Katrina. The key test of their responsibility will be if they cut spending elsewhere to come up with $200 billion. But they won’t. Guns and butter – borrowed from us, the next generation and the Chinese government. I really didn’t believe that the president would actually spend more of other people’s money in his second term than in the first. But he looks set to pull it off. Peggy Noonan says we need a debate about conservatism. Here’s a starter: fiscal conservatism as we have known it is over. No liberal Democrat would ever have managed to spend as much and as incompetently as this administration. Even in opposition, the GOP would have mounted a defense of the country’s fiscal standing against such reckless big government liberalism. But in power, the only difference between the GOP and, say, a Ted Kennedy administration is that the Republican free spending goes to different interest groups, has no restraint or domestic opposition, and rests on borrowing rather than taxing. Yes, Katrina reconstruction is inevitable and important. But $200 billion doesn’t grow on trees. Where is it going to come from? Part of the point of fiscal responsiblity, after all, is that disasters do happen and the government should have fiscal lee-way to respond to them. But we have no lee-way at all, thanks to this president and his party. Tonight, the president will try and rescue himself politically by spending money he doesn’t have. As Margaret Thatcher once remarked, the only thing socialists are good at is spending other people’s money. That’s the one thing this president has known how to do – whether it was daddy’s money or yours.

“On one hand I couldn’t give a shit about Germany and on the other I’m full of rage … The general atmosphere of depression makes me furious, the utter idleness, this uptight existence. It seems to me that the whole of Germany is sitting on the toilet, groaning. You know exactly what has to happen for things to get going again but the German sits there cursing that there’s no toilet paper left and that’s why he can’t do it. That’s Germany.” – German theater director, Christoph Schlingensief, in the Guardian today.

There’s a plan to put together a film trilogy in honor of the Dutch film director who was murdered by an Islamo-fascist.

We now have two state legislatures backing marriage rights for gay couples. Since the advent of marriages for gays in Massachusetts, public opinion has swung dramatically in favor of them. Why? The reality is that this is a sane, modest, conservative, practical reform – and when you actually see couples committing to one another and taking responsibility for each other, very few are dismayed. I’m waiting for the reaction from the theocon right. They have always framed their arguments around judicial tyranny. Now, they have democratically elected majorities and states’ rights to fight against. In Massachusetts, the vote to abandon the constitutional amendment banning marriage was a whopping 157 to 39. What’s their argument now?

The two keep getting closer. Check out this and this.

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “‘Andrew Sullivan is completing his transformation into a Kos Diarist.’ Don’t you understand yet? You are either ‘with’ them or ‘against’ them! I understood perfectly well from the outset that all you were trying to do was show that the triumphalism of the Bush apologists (including Reynolds) was, shall we say, er… premature. Instapundit has been quoting and linking to triumphalist anecdotes about Iraq for the past 2-1/2 years, wholly unfazed by the fact that the news headlines give the lie to it just about every other day. Only unswervingly partisan hit-men seeking to score rhetorical points would have interpreted what you wrote the way Reynolds and his correspondents did. This is another example of the way your friend has lowered the level of debate. You should not have apologized.”

That seems to me to be the buried lede in the NYT poll today. The public is now evenly spit on that question – which may reflect the success of the recovery effort since the initial debacle. The CBS poll showed that a week ago, 58 percent disapproved. Today that number is 50 percent. More whites approve than disapprove now (49 to 46 percent), although the damage that Katrina has done to Bush’s attempt to win over blacks is probably permanent. Yes, Bush’s general numbers are still the lowest of his presidency. But if you can have his record on the Iraq occupation and Katrina response and still get 40 percent approval, you have a pretty solid floor. My own view is that 35 percent of Americans would support him whatever he actually does. That’s how polarized we are.

“I was there for the Hitchens-Galloway debate last night. I’m a moderate lefty with uncompromising pro-regime change sentiments. Hitch came out and was his dazzling self. There is no one alive with his talent for disputation. He hit masterfully all the blunt and subtle points of the the pro-regime change argument. In response, Mr. Galloway stirred up a pep rally with buzz words catering to the lowest common denominator and, tragically, elicted cheers and raves. A sad night indeed. I see now, for once and all, the “left” is truly not interested in reason, logic, or even humanity. It’s a self-sustaining mob mentality of Bush hate and free-floating paranoia. I’m deeply disturbed by the anti-war factions feverish embrace of a man such as Galloway. I see the writing on the wall. The left has already become the right. They do not care about internationalism, freedom, or just causes. They walk around in search of another reason to denounce Halliburton. Dark dark days.”

The DP, beagle and I crashed at a friend’s place in NYC two nights ago on the way home from the Cape. Our friend lives in an apartment building with a very strange problem. He just got a formal letter from the building manager:

I am writing because one tenant is creating a truly ridiculous problem. We have repeatedly found used toilet paper at the bottom of the air shaft outside the window of the lowest apartments in the line. The only logical explanation seems to be that someone is throwing this used toilet paper out of their window. Whoever is doing this please stop at once. Not only is this unfair to the building staff who then have to clean it up, this is a terrible health hazard that could easily cause your neighbors to become sick. If the problem is that someone’s plumbing is not working properly we would be happy to fix it if you inform me that there is a problem. But if this problem continues I will install a video camera looking down the shaft and have whoever is responsible evicted.

If you peer out the window into the courtyard in the middle of the building, it’s festooned with white paper blobs with brown streaks – the paper soon turns into mush with rain. Existential statement? A response to bad plumbing? Or New York City?

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: “Perhaps today’s astounding Tom DeLay quote … about how there’s no way to cut the federal budget will offer a useful reminder to conservatives that while they may be aligned with Republican Congressional politicians, Republican Congressional politicians are just that — politicians first. There is too often a rush on to defend any and every GOP pol by conservative bloggers and e-mailers on the grounds that if they’re being attacked by the MSM, they’re victims of injustice. Sometimes, though, they’re just … indefensible.” – John Podhoretz, National Review Online. Like, er, when they cannot cope with a major urban catastrophe four years after 9/11?

Oodles of it. Liposuction, please, Mr DeLay.

He needs to go.