Incompetence is a cover

I posted this response at Kevin Drum's Washington Monthy.

I hope you people realize the far greater implications of what happened in New Orleans. This has nothing to do with incompetence. There was a major tug of war between Blanco and Bush about Blanco handing over total control to the Feds. Brown and Chertoff did their jobs perfectly saying stuff is on the way. The SS... er National Guard were extremely effective at making sure no one got in or out except the media. What we have is a fascist government dressed up to look like incompetence with the ready availability of sacrificial lambs for slaughter.

In the meantime, the DLC is mightily silent on all this and I gotta wonder why they aren't using this opportunity to score major political points for '06 and '08. Instead, they are focused on John Roberts and the Supreme Court and not going near Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans with a ten foot pole. Odd that. Except for the Black Caucus that is.

However, despite all this, and despite what the media does after the major focus is off New Orleans, is that the media was there. Many of the reporters (Shep Smith, Joe Scarboro, Tucker Carlson, Geraldo, and others) were faced with a humanitarian catastrophe and they showed us what was going on and asked the same questions any sane person would ask. It doesn't get any more real than this and it threw political ideology right out the window.

Though I am very cynical and still consider the march of fascism a genuine danger, I am going to hope that the political fallout from this marks Hurricane Katrina as a watershed event. Also, be advised that the reverberations of this through the economy will bring on a major recession.