Alright, I’ll admit it. I’m lazy.

There are so many things I’ve wanted to write about recently – Able Danger, Iran, our space policy, the UN, the idiocy of the left, the Antietam anniversary, shake up at the CIA - the list goes on.

For a long while I was trying to post at least twice a day. Lately, it’s been a struggle to post even once. That will change this week as I’m making a commitment starting tomorrow to post at least once in the morning and once in the late afternoon or evening.

After all, it’s not like there’s nothing to write about! I just have to get my lazy ass in gear…

To my loyal readers (and I know there are one or two of you out there) I thank you for your patience. And to those of you who perhaps recently discovered this site, I’d like to welcome you and express the hope that you’ll check in once or twice a week. I won’t disappoint you.

Calling all bloggers!

You have until Monday night at 10:00 PM to get your entries in for this week’s Carnival of the Clueless.

Last week’s Carnival was the best yet with 34 entries from both the right and left side of the political spectrum hammering those individuals and groups among us who are truly clueless.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT..

You can enter by emailing me, leaving a link in the comments section, or by using the handy, easy to use form at Conservative Cat.

Cindy Sheehan is a living photoshop image. Set her down anywhere on the planet, put a microphone within 10 feet of her, and out of her mouth will spew the counterintuitive, the illogical, and the jaw dropping rants of a half-crazed, drooling dervish; a maddening combination of weepy radicalism and angry ideologue. Her appearances, now carefully scripted and choreographed, have degenerated into caricatures of her once tearful soliloquies. She has truly and totally been captured by the revolutionary left.

Does she realize what her benefactors have done to her?

These are not your garden variety leftist lickspittles who are holding Cindy Sheehan hostage. The hard-eyed men and women who now surround her are not interested in political change except as it can be used to achieve their revolutionary ends. People like Cindy Sheehan (unwittingly?) and Ward Churchill (willingly) are stage actors in their Grand Drama of the Republic. They are the cockroaches of our culture who thrive on chaos, grow strong in disaster, and whose message resonates the most with those on the fringes of society.

Thus are the armies of the revolution built.

They have learned their revolutionary craft at the feet of the masters. Lenin, Mao, and Hitler all came to power amidst chaos and unrest following some great upheaval. Revolutionary Russia seethed with discontent but it took the massive societal dislocations of the Great War to hasten the advent of Bolshievism. Mao’s ultimate victory was sealed in the immediate aftermath of World War II as the 4 year Chinese Civil War ravaged the countryside and cost up to 6 million lives. And Hitler came to prominence and power first when the hyperinflation of the mark impoverished the middle class in the early 1920’s and later as the Great Depression destroyed it.

So what better place for Cindy Sheehan to bring her Magical Mystery Tour Bus than the storm ravaged city of New Orleans. Not only will she be able to rail against her imagined nemesis President Bush, but her script supervisors and image consultants have some wonderful visuals they can use for the travelogue DVD they are making of this quixotic, cross country defeatist tour. Are they consciously trying to evoke memories of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and their coast to coast “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests” where, besotted with drink and tripping the light fantastic on LSD, Kesey sought a changed reality that included being able to experience the psychedelic without the use of drugs?

I doubt whether the sourpuss lefties who are running Sheehan actually have the sense of humor to understand what Kesey was trying to accomplish so any parallel would be purely accidental. And Sheehan herself, suburban and sheltered for most of her life, acts the part of someone who has been so intellectually starved that the radical ideas she’s been exposed to hit her full force and bowl her over, so raw and powerful are the emotions engendered by the combination of the loss of her son and the imagined gain of a belief system that explains that horrible fact.

Sheehan on the tragedy in New Orleans:

I don’t care if a human being is black, brown, white, yellow or pink. I don’t care if a human being is Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or pagan. I don’t care what flag a person salutes: if a human being is hungry, then it is up to another human being to feed him/her. George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his self from power. The only way America will become more secure is if we have a new administration that cares about Americans even if they don’t fall into the top two percent of the wealthiest.

That quote could have come from “A Communist Revolutionary Handbook” stressing as it does the brotherhood of man, the evils of capitalism, the wildly exaggerated rhetorical flourish of “occupied” New Orleans, and a call for a “new Administration” despite the fact that even if Sheehan and her cohorts got their wish and George Bush rode off into the sunset (or climbed the steps of a guillotine) his Vice President, whose connections to Haliburton have been fodder for leftist bombast since Mr. Cheney took the oath of office, would carry on pretty much as before.

These are truly the bottom feeders of American politics. And Sheehan, once hailed as the Madonna of the American anti-war movement among the more mainstream Democrats finds almost all of her erstwhile supporters tip-toeing away hoping no one will notice or remember that they and their allies in the media made her such into such a heroic figure. No peacenik Joan of Arc she. There will be no Sheehan led assault on the still 2/3 majority idea that we must stay in Iraq until the job is done. Now she looks behind her and instead of seeing throngs of admirers she sees the crouching tigers and hidden dragons who only see the war as a way to divide America so they can conquer her.

Should we pity her loss? Yes, but for how much longer? When does her radicalism negate whatever sacrifice she has given in the effort to defeat Islamism, that other radical ideology whose rhetoric about the west and America is so similar that it could have been born of the same mother’s tongue? In Sheehan’s case, her message of hate will continue to fade until only the echoes of abomination and self-loathing are heard in the mostly empty halls and rooms of a radical on the declining slope of noteriety.

Sophocles rightly said “Only the dead are free from pain.” For Cindy Sheehan, there will come a time when she prays for the playwright’s wisdom to overtake her folly.

UPDATE

For a true and proper fisking of Mrs. Sheehan’s idiocy, AJ at Strata-Sphere is a must read.

Goldstein adds some thoughts from Billy Jack.

LGF (whose server crashed when Drudge linked the original post) has some truly great and funny thoughts in the comment section.

John Cole has an interesting picture of Mother Sheehan fraternizing with the enemy.

John Hawkins thinks Sheehan still is “an influential and beloved figure on the left, and she obviously speaks for much of the anti-war crowd in this country.” I disagree, although she’ll have one last major hurrah at the anti-war rally in Washington next week. After that, only C-Span will have any interest in her.

Sister Toldjah has a revelation regarding one of Cindy Sheehan’s new friends in Louisinana.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Much has been made of the fact that the President’s appointment of Michael Brown to head up the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was a matter of pure politics, a plumb assignment given to a loyal partisan who was a college roommate of Bush confidante and former FEMA head Joseph Allbaugh.

This may be true. And it also may be true that although Brown proved himself competent in other disasters, his performance in the aftermath of Katrina has been almost universally condemned both by partisan Democrats and even many Republicans. The criticism is usually attributed to the fact that Brown’s appointment was based not on his competence to do the job but rather his political connections.

The one does not necessarily preclude the other. There are numerous examples in history of Presidents appointing cabinet officials for political reasons who turned out to be outstanding, even brilliant public servants.

Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet was made up almost entirely of men who had opposed him for the Republican Presidential nomination. Salmon P. Chase was a former senator and governor who Lincoln named Secretary of the Treasury and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. A lawyer with no experience in finance whatsoever, Chase proved himself to be an able and innovative Treasury Secretary. He is generally credited with keeping the government on sound fiscal footing while raising the cash necessary to pay for the Civil War.

Another political appointee of Lincoln’s was Secretary of State William H. Seward whose policies helped to keep England and France on the sidelines during the war. Intervention by either of those two European superpowers could have spelled doom for the union. Edwin Stanton, who took over at the War Department for Simon Cameron, a corrupt political appointee, was an outstanding administrator and oversaw the rapid expansion of the armed forces.

Lincoln’s most unusual and most successful political appointee may have been newspaper publisher Gideon Welles who served as Secretary of the Navy. It was Wells who commissioned the ironclad Monitor whose famous battle with the CSS Virginia changed naval warfare forever. Wells also came up with the plans for a naval blockade of the South that eventually contributed mightily to ending the war.

None of these men were especially suited for the tasks assigned them. And yet, each performed magnificently in very trying times. Lincoln, like all Presidents, chose his subordinates based on a wide variety of factors, not the least of which was loyalty. And in Lincoln’s case, the political factor of geographic balance was vital to maintaining the support of a majority of northern citizens.

But by far the most spectacularly successful political appointee of all time came about as a result of one the first acts of the Second Continental Congress of 1775; the naming of a Commander in Chief of the citizen army encamped outside Boston.

Up to 12,000 militia had gathered to lay siege to the city following the April battles of Lexington and Concord. The Congress wanted to claim the army as its own but to do that involved some very delicate political maneuvering. The army was made up almost entirely of Massachusetts militia with a smattering of units from other New England states. Clearly, a way must be found to nationalize the army so that it at least appeared to represent all 13 colonies.

Enter a young lawyer from Massachusetts named John Adams who had a burning desire to see America independent of Great Britain. Adams originally had plans of his own to lead the army but realized what was needed most was the naming of a commander who would nationalize the effort.

There were candidates galore for the job. President of the Congress John Hancock had the advantage of being one of the wealthiest men in America but shared the same disadvantage as Adams; he hailed from Massachusetts. Israel Putnam, the pugnacious Major General currently in charge of the motley collection of militia and volunteers occupying the heights outside of Boston, was from Connecticut and had fought at Bunker Hill. But he was considered too provincial and perhaps too old by some to lead the army. Other General officers serving in the “New England Army” as it was called either weren’t well known or didn’t have the experience to lead such a large body of men.

Besides, “the business needs a Virginian” as John Adams was said to have remarked. Adams recognized that if the Congress were to name a Commander from the south, it would unite the colonies behind the army and make it easier for the states to support its functions. Since Congress itself had no money, the army would be entirely dependent on contributions from the states for its sustenance – a fact of life that the Continental army dealt with until the end of the war.

If the “business” did indeed require someone from the largest and oldest colony, Virginia obliged by supplying three qualified candidates for the job as Commander in Chief. Two of the candidates had extensive if not distinguished service in the regular British army. Charles Lee had joined the army at age 12 and steadily moved up the ranks. He served as an officer under General Braddock during the Fort Duquense expedition, a military adventure that saw his other rivals for command – George Washington and Horatio Gates – also present at that famous but ill-fated battle. After marrying the daughter of a Mohawk chief, Lee went back to England where he served in Portugal and Poland. Considered a brilliant tactician, he was nevertheless thought to be arrogant and eccentric – two qualities that came to the fore later in his career.

Horatio Gates was another officer in the regular British army whose experience outshone even that of Lee. In addition to service in the colonies during the 7 Years War, he also participated in the capture of Martinique, one of the more spectacular British victories of the war. He rose to the rank of Major but due to his lowly social status was prevented from further advancement. He retired in 1769 and moved to Virginia.

Almost to the end of the Revolutionary War, Gates had admirers both in and out of Congress who believed that he was the best man to lead the American armies to victory. The reason for this is largely hidden from us as Gates’ military abilities were more than once found wanting. However, in 1775 he looked like a pretty good bet except for one thing; many in Congress simply didn’t trust the fact that he had recently immigrated from England.

John Adams had his own candidate from the beginning; a Virginia planter and former Commander of the Virginia militia named George Washington. Washington had the advantage of being well known throughout the colonies for his service during the 7 Years War, having in effect started the conflict with France by attacking a small party of French regulars near today’s Pittsburgh. He also distinguished himself in retreat during the Fort Duquense fiasco for which he became something of a hero . Otherwise, Washington’s military experience was extremely limited. In fact, he resigned his commission in the militia in 1759 because the British refused to make him an officer in the regular army.

But Adams had bigger fish to fry than simply naming a commanding general. Washington had served in the Virginia House of Burgess and was as well known a political figure in the south as he was a military commander. It was part of Adams intent to cement the planter class in Virginia and the rest of the south to the cause. For that reason as well as the necessity to name a commander based on geographic balance, Adams successfully nominated and shepherded Washington’s election to the position of Commanding General of the Continental Army.

There’s no doubt on paper that Washington was the least qualified of the three Virginians to lead the Continental army. While obviously a capable man, there was really nothing in his background to suggest greatness as a military commander or leader of men. As it turns out, Washington began his career as Commanding General with the disastrous New York campaign during which the Continental Army was almost destroyed. But Washington eventually developed a strategic sense that far outstripped both his rivals for command and his enemies. It was George Washington who saw early on that if he could keep his little army from being destroyed, the Revolution would go on. Following his brilliant victories at Trenton and Princeton, Washington stuck to that strategy until the end of the war. It is doubtful that the European trained Gates or Lee would have been any where near as successful.

Appointing people to positions based mostly on politics – even to positions of enormous importance – has been done by every President in history. Harry Truman named Jame Byrnes, a long time politician with zero experience in foreign affairs, as Secretary of State in 1945. In his less than two years in that position, Byrnes proved himself to be pretty much of a non-entity, eventually being eased out by Truman in 1947.

George Bush miscalculated when he named Michael Brown to the position of FEMA Director. But that doesn’t mean he appointed Brown thinking he wouldn’t be capable of doing an outstanding job. There are usually good reasons for appointing some one to fill an important position in the federal government. Sometimes, those reasons are political. Call it “cronyism,” the fact is that President’s want people they can trust implicitly in key positions. It’s just at times, the individual named just doesn’t seem up to the challenges posed by the office. In that case, good Presidents cut their losses and get rid of the appointee as soon as that becomes evident as Bush has now done.

And while it may not satisfy his critics, Bush has a tremendous ability to expertly judge talent. Don’t be surprised if his recently named FEMA Director R. David Paulison proves himself more than capable of handling the job.

CORRECTION

Despite initial reports that Michael Brown was a college roomate of former FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh, they are apparently untrue. Allbaugh and Brown were friends in college but not not roomates.

I apologize for the error.

Leaders in a crisis have only two options; either they can try to control events or have events control them. Judging by the remarks made by former FEMA head Michael Brown in this interview with the New York Times, it appears that leaders at all levels – local, state, and federal – not only became captive to events surrounding the aftermath of the hurricane, but also failed to work together to get on top of the situation, wasting precious hours dithering about a “unified command structure” while the situation in the city spiraled out of control.

If it was Mr. Brown’s purpose to defend his actions during the disaster, he did a horrible job. Brown is revealed to be clueless, an absolutely disasterous choice to lead an agency where a hard nosed “can do” attitude is absolutely essential. Instead, he appeared in New Orleans believing himself to be a glorified waiter – someone whose job it was to write down the state’s order for hurricane relief rather than act as an executive who should have anticipated what was needed and behaved accordingly. This quote from Governor Blanco’s communication director is revealing:

Governor Blanco’s communications director, Mr. Mann, said that she was frustrated that Mr. Brown and others at FEMA wanted itemized requests before acting. “It was like walking into an emergency room bleeding profusely and being expected to instruct the doctors how to treat you,” he said.

It’s clear that Brown believed his job was to stay in the background and act as a facilitator of federal help:

When he arrived in Baton Rouge on Sunday evening, Mr. Brown said, he was concerned about the lack of coordinated response from Governor Blanco and Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, the adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard.

“What do you need? Help me help you,” Mr. Brown said he asked them. “The response was like, ‘Let us find out,’ and then I never received specific requests for specific things that needed doing.”

Of course, the scope of the disaster made “specific requests” moot. New Orleans needed everything and they needed it yesterday. Once this became clear – certainly by Tuesday morning- Brown should have been screaming for every available federal resource to be put into the pipeline and sent towards the beleagured city. Instead, like a good little waiter, he sent a list of what the city needed to Baton Rouge!

The next morning [Tuesday], Mr. Brown said, he and Governor Blanco decided to take a helicopter into New Orleans to see the mayor and assess the situation. But before the helicopter took off, his field coordinating officer, or F.C.O., called from the city on a satellite phone. “It is getting out of control down here; the levee has broken,” the staff member told him, he said.

The crowd in the Superdome, the city’s shelter of last resort, was already larger than expected. But Mr. Brown said he was relieved to see that the mayor had a detailed list of priorities, starting with help to evacuate the Superdome.

Mr. Brown passed the list on to the state emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, but when he returned that evening he was surprised to find that nothing had been done.

“I am just screaming at my F.C.O., ‘Where are the helicopters?’ ” he recalled. ” ‘Where is the National Guard? Where is all the stuff that the mayor wanted?’ “

This is simply unfathomable. Officials in Baton Rouge were already overwhelmed and Brown wonders why his little “to do” list wasn’t acted on?

This was a man in clearly over his head. This should have been apparent to the White House when Mr. Brown called to complain that he couldn’t get a “unified command structure” going with the state of Louisiana:

On Monday night, Mr. Brown said, he reported his growing worries to Mr. Chertoff and the White House. He said he did not ask for federal active-duty troops to be deployed because he assumed his superiors in Washington were doing all they could. Instead, he said, he repeated a dozen times, “I cannot get a unified command established.”

Here’s where Governor Blanco proved herself to be an empty suit. It’s apparent that this lack of “unified command” applied not just to coordination between state and federal authorities, but also between the governor’s office and the Louisiana National Guard. This becomes clear when General Honoré shows up and someone finally takes charge of the situation:

By Wednesday morning, Mr. Brown said, he learned that General Honoré was on his way. While the general did not have responsibility for the entire relief effort and the Guard, his commanding manner helped mobilize the state’s efforts.

“Honoré shows up and he and I have a phone conversation,” Mr. Brown said. “He gets the message, and, boom, it starts happening.”

There is no more damning piece of evidence that proves that officials at all levels of government simply froze up in the face of the daunting challenges posed by the aftermath of the hurricane.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the New York Times unless they tried to place the blame squarely on the White House. This piece of editorializing shows that the Times has a knack for not letting relevant facts get in the way of some good old fashioned Bush bashing:

But Mr. Brown’s account, in which he described making “a blur of calls” all week to Mr. Chertoff, Mr. Card and Mr. Hagin, suggested that Mr. Bush, or at least his top aides, were informed early and repeatedly by the top federal official at the scene that state and local authorities were overwhelmed and that the overall response was going badly.

Mr. Brown’s version of events raises questions about whether the White House and Mr. Chertoff acted aggressively enough in the response. New Orleans convulsed in looting and violence after the hurricane, and troops did not arrive in force to restore order until five days later.

New Orleans “convulsed in looting and violence” less than 24 hours after the hurricane hit because of the absence of local police (a third of whom simply deserted their posts) and the necessity of using the National Guard in the effort to rescue the thousands of citizens trapped on rooftops and in crawl spaces by the flooding.

And the reason that the troops didn’t arrive until “five days later” (there were 7,000 National Guardsmen on the ground in less than 3 days) was because Governor Empty Suit didn’t ask for the troops until Wednesday – two days after the hurricane struck.

It would have been an interesting New York Times article to read if the President had sent in troops on his own. I daresay the Times would be calling for the President’s impeachment following Mr. Bush’s declaration that the state of Louisiana was in rebellion – the only way the President would have been able to send regular army troops into Louisiana to help in law enforcement activities.

The interview with Michael Brown shows that President Bush made an error in judgement when he named this political hack to head up FEMA. But it also shows what happens when events outstrip the ability of leaders to manage them. The monumental nature of this disaster was clearly beyond the competence of governmental institutions to handle. It was made worse by the failure of those in leadership positions to act decisively.

The votes have been counted from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category was yours truly for my Katrina Response Timeline. Finishing second was “Learning from history: the relief and rebuilding of New Orleans” by The Glittering Eye.

The winner in the non-Council category was Varifrank for “10 Things I learned From Hurricane Katrina.” Cold Fury’s “Tom Ridge’s Duct Tape” finished second.

If you’d like to participate in the Watchers Vote, go here and follow instructions.

I took a little test this morning to measure my “outrage quotient.” I’m sure you’re familiar with this test. Although it doesn’t require medical supervision, I recommend that at the very least, you have a friend or family member present just in case something goes wrong. After all, trying to gauge how angry you can get at the mainstream press or the left can be a dangerous proposition. There’s always the chance that you’ll come across something so spiteful, so biased, so…so…outrageous that a myocardial infarction becomes a distinct possibility.

Sue was dead set against me taking the test. “What happens if you read something from Daily Kos and your head explodes?” she asked plaintively.”Or watch Anderson Cooper emote like a cheesy actor in a bad production of Hamlet and throw up? I just did the floor, ya know.”

You can see it took a little convincing.

After promising to accompany her to Pier 1 Imports to pick up a wicker chair to replace the one that our loving cats eagerly shredded by peeling, ripping, biting, and chewing the offending furnishing to smithereens, she agreed to closely monitor my vital signs in the interest of safety.

We started with something easy; the indictment for homicide of the husband and wife owners of a nursing home where 34 elderly patients drowned during the hurricane. Evidently, the owners failed to accept an offer to evacuate the residents prior to the hurricane’s arrival.

My reaction surprised me. Didn’t the Mayor of New Orleans do exactly the same thing when Amtrak offered to evacuate several hundred people the day before the hurricane by train? According to the Washington Post, Amtrak ran a “dead head” train to move equipment out of the city. The company says they offered to move several hundred people but city officials turned them down.

I waited anxiously for the bile to rise in my throat in disgust and my blood pressure to careen out of control, but nothing happened. I glanced at Sue who looked relieved. I could have explained to her that the Mayor of New Orleans has become an untouchable. Any responsibility for the catastrophe rolls off his back like the water that inundated the hundreds of buses left in a municipal parking lot to become submerged instead of being used to evacuate citizens.

Since that didn’t elicit much of response, Sue tried to get a rise out of me by showing me a story involving the other half of the disaster duo, the Governor of Louisiana. It seems that Governor Blanco continues to exhibit a bit of peevishness at the federal government, this time because the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is taking too long to recover the dead bodies left in the wake of the hurricane. She says that the dead “deserve more respect than they have received.”

For a moment, I thought I detected a slight rumbling in my gut, a sure indication that my outrage was about to burst forth into a white hot series of invective and angry retorts. I wanted to say something like “maybe you should worry about giving more respect to the living, you cretinous lickpsittle! Start thinking about all the citizens of your state you let down so ignominiously in the hurricane’s aftermath! ” Alas, the rumbling was only indicative of a little indigestion from the Dominoes Pizza we had eaten the night before, not of any real outrage at Governor Blanco’s extraordinary mismanagement of the crisis.

I was beginning to get worried. The test was not going at all like I planned. Even Sue had begun to look at me as if something might be wrong. Then she remembered the story about the Louisiana Congressman who used to National Guard to retrieve his personal belongings while they were still carrying out search and rescue operations.

It seems that Representative William Jefferson (D-LA) commandeered some National Guard troops on Friday, September 2 to take him back to his house in New Orleans so he could pick up a few odds and ends – three suitcases, a laptop, and a box “the size of a small refrigerator.” This is the same Rep. Jefferson who last month had his home searched by the FBI in connection with a corruption probe.

Kind of makes you wonder what was in the box, no?

Sue looked downright crestfallen. No response worth mentioning. My heart never skipped a beat nor was my respiration affected at all. Again, I could have clued her in that having lived and worked in Washington D.C., you develop an outrage proof attitude when it comes to members of Congress. The venality and amorality is so widespread and endemic to the institution that it becomes depressingly the norm to read about such things.

So far, nothing had been able to raise my hackles. It really looked like, with a nod to Jo Dee Messina, “My Give a Damn” was really busted. Then I saw the fearful look on Sue’s face.

“I don’t think you should see this,” she said carefully. “It’s from a diarist at Daily Kos and it’s in response to the President’s statement that he takes responsibility for the federal foul-ups during disaster relief.”

I laughed and Sue nearly swooned. “You don’t get it,” she said angrily. Do you have any idea what this moonbat said?”

“Let me guess,” I chuckled. “Now that Bush has taken responsibility for mistakes made by the Federal government, he should be impeached. Am I right?”

“How did you guess?”

“Honey,” I said patiently, “Nothing those idiots at Kos say either surprises me or causes me much anger any more.”

Sue looked desperate. She thrust a printed copy of the offending passage in front of my nose:

Now that Bush has taken responsibility, he must resign. He has pleaded guilty. He has admitted that he was complicit in the deaths of thousands of people.

Haul his ass in front of the House of Representatives for an impeachment trial, and then ask him to confirm that he admits responsibility. If he denies this, he will look like a flip-flopping liar; if he confirms that it was his fault, Congress will be forced to impeach him.

I actually giggled after reading that. Somehow, the avalanche of lies, distortions, bias, and prejudice had numbed me. I felt like a wet noodle. I got the feeling that nothing the left did from here on out could possibly affect me one way or another. In short, I was suffering from “Outrage Fatigue.”

Then again, maybe it was that Dominoes Pizza we ate last night and by tomorrow I’ll be back to my old apoplectic self.

I will be a guest on the Charles Booker Show on KAHL in San Antonio, 1310 AM to talk about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

If any of my readers live in San Antonio and have the ability to tape my segment, which begins at around 5:30 PM, I’d appreciate it.

The Carnival is back!

GLENN REYNOLDS SAYS “DON’T MISS IT!”

Simonides: Judah Ben Hur! You’ve come back to us like a returning faith! I want to laugh again, Judah.
Judah Ben-Hur: We will laugh.
Simonides: Laugh, amidst the dust and cobwebs… [sobs]
(Ben Hur: 1959)

It may surprise you to learn that the #1 best selling work of fiction in the history of the United States – at least as far as a percentage of contemporary population – is not a book by Stephen King or any other contemporary author. It is, in fact, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by a mediocre Civil War general and failed politician by the name of Lew Wallace. It has had hundreds of reprintings and has been translated into more than 70 languages. By the late 1890’s, perhaps something on the order of 25% of the literate population of the US had read the book, numbers if translated today would dwarf any other work of fiction by tens of millions.

The story is one of renewal and redemption. These are themes we should certainly be thinking about over the next months as we observe the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast following the most destructive and expensive national disaster in American history.

The faith found by Judah to replace the hate and anger in his heart – a faith that was kindled when he heard Jesus on the cross forgive his executioners and he “felt his words take the sword from my hand” – could hold some lessons for us in these trying days. Perhaps the politicization of the relief efforts surrounding the aftermath of the hurricane was inevitable. Frustration on the left at Bush’s presidency exploded into recrimination almost before hurricane force winds moved inland from the stricken areas on the coast. And the predictable push back by those of us on the right who were at first taken aback by the ferocity of the attacks and then frustrated ourselves at some of the coverage in the MSM has not been a very edifying display for the rest of the world to see.

This is politics in America at the turn of the 21st century. Troubling to some, tiring to many more, I am clueless as to how to fix it or who can fix it or even if it needs fixing. There have been many periods in American history where this kind of partisanship has been the norm. We’ve survived it and gone on to thrive as a nation and a people. I suspect the same will happen here.

That said, sit right down in your easy chair and let your face assume that Carnival stare! Perhaps laughing at ourselves is the best medicine after all.

The American people are very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible exception of stupidity.
(Will Rogers)

Right again, Will! Just ask Michael Brown.
(Me)

*********************************************************************

Mark Coffey is asking why Eleanor Clift isn’t writing for the New York Times since her clueless screeds fit right in with the MoDo-Krugman-Rich Bush bashers.

Smart and sexy, Mensa Barbie has a jaw dropping story about an Alaskan man who doesn’t have a clue how lucky he is. And to prove how clueless this walrus brain really is, he sues his saviors.

Matt Johnston wonders if the clueless left has their own version of the Constitution of the United States. I’ve often wondered that myself…

Fred Fry has our first entry in the “Sean Penn for Cluebat of the Year” contest. What possessed this guy – besides a healthy dose of hubris – to go into a hurricane ravaged city in the first place?

Jebediah, subbing for Bill Teach on White Trash Wednesday, wonders what planet the dynamic disaster duo of Blanc-o-Nagin comes from.

Kim, subbing for Raven over at And Rightly So wonders if Bill Clinton is actually a First Lady (man?) in waiting. Kim refuses to call the ex-despoiler a man – a designation that may in fact become moot if Hillary becomes President.

The Maryhunter tracks down some past cluelessness of the New York Times on flood control advocacy. When is the Times going to learn there’s an internet out there?

Cao of Cao’s Blog (pronounced “key”) uncovers some interesting associations between Cindy Sheehan (whose Magicial Mystery Bus tour came within a stone’s throw of where I sit this week) and Neo-Nazis. Birds of a feather…

Our friends at The Common Room offer two clueless creeps this week as the Headmistress wonders why Mayor Nagin turned down the use of an Amtrak train that could have evacuated hundreds while Equushick has an interesting question about Sean Penn.

Beth is on a rant again. This time it’s against rich hotel guests in New Orleans whose story reveals a “Trail of Idiocy.”

Josh Cohen has moved to some new digs but still has time to clue us in on some cluelessness in the radio industry. Josh wondered how long it would take advertisers to start cashing in on Katrina…Question answered.

Giacomo has found some (gasp!) cluelessness at the Huffington Post! This time it’s Nathan Gardells who comes in for a well deserved spanking.

Van Helsing buries a woodens stake in the heart of Richard Cohen who seems to have found something wrong with John Roberts. In the immortal words of Gomer Pyle “Well Suh-prahz, suh-prahz!”

The folks at Different River skewer al-Reuters for a bizarre article about hurricane victims in Utah. What part of “Christian charity” don’t the knuckleheads at Reuters understand?

The SoCal Pundit has some choice words for the UN and their so-called reform package. Did you know Kofi “I am not a crook” Annan was going to write them himself?

Orac has an incredible expose of one of the major urban legends that have grown up around the hurricane aftermath. To bogus stories like the 2 year old with the throat cut and canniblism can be added the euthanizing of patients by doctors before evacuating. Excellent and original work!

Here’s a trio of satires that will leave you rolling on the floor. First up is Mr. Satire himself whose site is not safe for work. How does “Black Cannibalism Resurfaces While Katrina Subsides” sound ?

Then there’s the incomparable Mr. Right and his homage to one of my favorite bands. The hurricane and “Bohemian Rhapsody?” Don’t worry, it works!

Finally, The Nose on your Face has “Bush’s Hurricane-Blame Numbers Take A Scary Dip.” The site’s motto says it all: “News so fake you’ll swear it came from the mainstream media.”

The Enticy Institute has the politics of brain function...or is it the brain function of politics?

Don Surber has a strange one from the Nebraska State Fair where officials wanted to shut down an “Oxygen Bar.” Oxygen as a prescription drug? Yikes!

Jay at Stop the ACLU has an Open Letter to ACLU Members. We hope it does some good, but we’re doubtin’ it.

Lovely Pamela at Atlas Shrugs has a dainty, ladylike question for the cluebats who accepted a design for the Flight #93 memorial that included a “Crescent of Embrace” in their design: “Are we f**king crazy or am I in a lunatic asylum and just don’t know it?” Um…good point.

Willisms wonders about the disparity between rank and file voters of the two parties and their attitudes toward the state of Israel. Who’s clueless here? Perhaps Jewish voters should take a second look at Republicans.

Poca-Dot Blog has a quiz. Every time I see this thing I wonder how we can have cluelessness like that exhibited by George Galloway.

Harvey at Bad Example proves absolutely conclusively and beyond the shadow of a doubt that Katrina was in fact George Bush’s fault.

Northstar at People’s Republic of Seabrook asks some very penetrating and relavant questions about FEMA’s role in the disaster.

A North American Patriot asks the question of the week; where were all the 9/11 tributes from the left? Not the first blogger to notice the left’s forgetfullness but with a little more pointed query: “Heads in the sand…Or heads up their asses?”

The smartest pachyderms on the planet – Elephants in Academia - has some real cluelessness on the part of the Washington Post in their coverage of The Freedom Walk on Sunday.

Jimmie K wonders “Where did all the Democrats Go?” at a “coming together” event in Maryland. It being September 11, they were probably sleeping – just like America for the 8 years prior to the attacks.

AJ at Strata-Sphere has been on top of the “Crescent controversy” regarding the Flight #93 memorial and has some choice words for dummies who accepted the design saying it was “the most ignorant and unfeeling act of ‘art’ ever produced in this country. Amen.

Mean Ole Meany is really, really mean and nasty to Cluebat Hall of Famer Michael Moore for writing a letter to people who voted for Bush. Talking about Michael Brown’s qualifications and Moore’s girth is spot on I’d say.

Gentle Miriam laments the passing of Labor Day as a meaninful holiday and wonders it isn’t time to change.

The Skwib has a piece on one of the most exciting scientific hunts in history. Will we be able to find the source of “Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSMS), also known as Pastafarianism?” I hope they find it before I give in to this irresistable craving to go out to dinner at an Italian restaurant…

Finally, here’s my own piece on the exhiliration exhibited by the left as Bush’s numbers fell in the aftermath of the disaster. “Dancing on the Graves of Black People.”

Calling all bloggers!

You have until Monday night at 10:00 PM to get your entries in for this week’s Carnival of the Clueless.

Last week was the best yet with 35 entries from both the right and left side of the political spectrum hammering those individuals and groups among us who are truly clueless.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT..

You can enter by emailing me, leaving a link in the comments section, or by using the handy, easy to use form at Conservative Cat.