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Grover Norquist, the architect of the Bush tax cuts and general right-wing asshole, is famous for his remark about wanting to drown the federal government in the bathtub.

We’re all in that bathtub, now.

Randy Newman sang this song from his “Good Old Boys” album at the outset of the benefit concert tonight for hurricane relief. It made me cry.

Louisiana 1927

What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through cleard down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, “Little fat man isn’t it a shame
what the river has done
To this poor crackers land.”

Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away

How conservatives see liberals in America:

POLL: Which do you hate the most?

(a) Freedom
(b) America
(c) The troops
(d) Jesus
(e) Hate all equally.

(stolen from comments at Balloon Juice)

“What’s unusual for an event on the Mall is the combination of fences, required preregistration and the threat of arrest.”

–The Washington Post, on the frankly obscene war rally planned for Sept. 11 in Washington. D.C.

Wouldn’t Martin Luther King Jr. be proud!

UPDATE: Since I don’t have the strength to write the kind of rip-roarin’, over-the-top rant that this event deserves, I’ll leave it in the capable hands of The Rude Pundit.

The Blame Game
n.
Accountability.

“A quick observation: when people don’t want to play the blame game – they’re to blame.“
-Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, 9/7/05

Bush to Investigate Self
from Opinions You Should Have

The Do-It-Yourself Emergency Management Guide
from Fafblog!

Other suggestions? Let me know in the comments.

Being a die-hard Bush supporter (and let’s face it – is there any other kind?) is much like joining a fraternity. You go through Hell Week (9/11), and after that, it’s just too difficult to break away. You’ve already defended the frat when that pledge died of alcohol poisoning, and during that massive cheating scandal. Then there was the bonfire that burned down the dorm – I mean, who could have predicted that would happen? Nothing will shake your faith in your brothers – nothing. So when two girls are raped after a keg party, no matter how much evidence piles up against the frat President and his roommate, you deflect. And defend. And never admit so much as a speck of culpability for the Prez, or anyone in the fraternity. If you did, your whole world would crumble around your feet. And nothing – nothing – will make you turn against this organization you’ve staked so much on.

Which explains why, if President Bush slit their grandmother’s throat on national television, people like Dean Esmay would clutch her gurgling body and declare, for the cameras, that she had it coming.

Your city is hit by a massive terrorist attack, nuclear or biological in nature. Thousands are dead and many thousands more are homeless. You won’t be able to return to the home you and your family have known your whole life – for months, maybe years. President Bush spends the first two days after the attack playing guitar and having cake.

That’s OK, right? Anything else would just be stupid symbolism. After all, what can *he* do, right?

Run that one up the flagpole.

According to the right-wing media on TV, radio and on the web, the President isn’t responsible for anything that happens in Iraq. And now with the hurricane, we learn that nothing here at home, even disaster planning by his shiny new Department of Homeland Security (I get a little shiver every time I hear that name), is his responsibility. What do we want him to do, build a levee or something? I mean, a giant multi-state disaster has nothing to do with the federal government, right? Nope.

So according to this, the President has no responsibilities. He’s done the impossible – made himself redundant, as they say in Britain. So I guess he can just go back to Crawford permanently and not bother us any further.

Whew. I feel better already!

UPDATE: Steve Gilliard has some great righteous anger to share. (Personally I loved the “live-action Chauncey Gardiner” line, which is spot-on.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY: From a wire story on tragically-unqualified FEMA head Michael Brown…

In Mobile, Ala., on Friday, Bush said the response to Katrina was unsatisfactory. But he had nothing but praise for his FEMA director. “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” the president said.

Hooray for the Accountability Administration!

“A lot of the people — a lot of the people who stayed wanted to do this destruction. They figured it out. And that’s — I’m not surprised.”

-Bill O’Reilly last night, explaining that “a lot” of the people who remained in New Orleans did so because they were looking forward to looting

To Bill O’Reilly, John Gibson, Bill Whittle, and all the right-wing crapweasels who want to make this tragic story about the looting instead of about how thousands of people lay drowned in their ruined homes, and thousands more are stranded; to those who want to place the blame on the poor of New Orleans instead of the people who were supposed to save them:

Fuck you. Fuck you very much. Double-fuck you. Fuck you times infinity.