{"id":8665,"date":"2005-09-12T07:58:33","date_gmt":"2005-09-12T14:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/09\/12\/an-early-and-thus-probably-contra-indicated-prediction.html"},"modified":"2005-09-12T07:58:33","modified_gmt":"2005-09-12T14:58:33","slug":"an_early_and_th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/09\/12\/an_early_and_th.html","title":{"rendered":"An early (and thus probably contra-indicated) prediction"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is indeed possible to argue that some of the broader accusations regarding the Katrina disaster are poorly founded (that the hurricane was caused by the Bush refusal to sign Kyoto, that the Bushies robbed the New Orleans levee projects to seek cheap oil in Iraq, that a Cat 4 hurricane can hit a major metropolis that sits below water and within three days everyone in the city can be sitting in government-paid-for comfort at Hyatt hotels around the country, sipping afternoon tea and playing Fantasy Football). <\/p>\n

That said, even if <\/em>every single politico, from Bush down to Joe-Bob Police Commissioner in NOLA, were as innocent as the driven snow and as diligent as Javert in having tried to avert the catastrophe and recover from it as quickly and intelligently and compassionately as possible, the very nature<\/em> of what’s happened and the inevitable difficulty in recovering from it would have spelled political doom for all of them. The fact that the preparation and recovery effort have been filled with — to this day<\/em> are filled with — not just the normal difficulties of getting past a cataclysm of this sort, but difficulties compounded by missteps, miscommunication, abdication of leadership, imposition of piss-poor leadership, and just general mismanagement from soup to nuts — aided and abetted by obstinacy, barbarism, and cruelty amongst some of the the citizenry of the NOLA area — makes that doom even more certain.<\/p>\n

The fact is, I expect nearly every elected official in Louisiana to be shown the door in the next election, certainly in the executive branch, regardless of political party. And I expect the GOP to take it in the shorts in the midterm elections next year, quite possibly losing majority in status in the House. And I suspect that Bush’s ostensible successor, whomever that turns out to be, to lose pretty substantially to a Democratic challenger in ’08. <\/p>\n

At the very least, 2008 is now even more the Dem’s election to lose — which, to be fair, they’ve shown admirable ability to do over the years. All the Dems have to do is show themselves more interested in solving <\/em>the problems than in shrilly pointing fingers at their opponents or coming across as trying to exploit this politically. The fact is, the Katrina disaster is a huge political win for the opposition party, without the need to rub it in. It demonstrates just how ill-prepared the Bush Administration is, after four years <\/em>of post-9\/11 activities, to keep the US safe. I mean, substitute a dirty bomb or a bio-weapons release or some similar mass destructive event for a Cat 4 hurricane, and NOLA could have been any of a dozen different scenarios that the DoD and DHS and everyone else in DC should have been preparing for since September 12, 2001. That, even with advance warning,<\/em> they’ve so bungled the recovery<\/a> (and washing one’s hands and saying it’s a “local” matter is hardly convincing in this case), puts lie to the idea that we are significantly safer today than we were back then.<\/p>\n

Today, let alone in 2008, the US populace is generally tired of the Iraq War, even if they agree(d) with it. The economic recovery is real, but hardly the booming ’90s (as unrealistic as that would be, or was), and is likely to get seriously dinged by Katrina and fuel prices. The “values” position is still up in the air, but the Right has gotten progressively more tarnished on the matter (lack of backing up words with deeds in Louisiana being a fine example of this). And the final pillar of Bush\/GOP political success since 2001, the idea of being secure and protected by the Federal Government against terror attacks and their aftermath<\/em>, has taken a catastrophic hit in the levees by Katrina.<\/p>\n

Unless the Dems manage to completely blow it (not beyond the realm of possibility, sadly), I expect things to mightily change in Washington after the ’06 elections, and even moreso after ’08. And, frankly, I’m looking forward to it.<\/p>\n

And, now that I’ve said it, watch it all not<\/i> come true, dagnabbit.<\/small><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is indeed possible to argue that some of the broader accusations regarding the Katrina disaster are poorly founded (that the hurricane was caused by the Bush refusal to sign…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[54,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-2008","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6541,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/08\/19\/motivation_3.html","url_meta":{"origin":8665,"position":0},"title":"Motivation","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 19-Aug-04 12:33pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Jeb Bush is seems to know why meteorologists were unable to track Charley's course before it came on-shore. The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, surveyed the devastation by helicopter....","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6419,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/09\/07\/blowing_hard.html","url_meta":{"origin":8665,"position":1},"title":"Blowing hard","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 7-Sep-04 6:18am","format":false,"excerpt":"I have to wonder if all the folks who (rightfully, IMO) slammed Jeb Bush for attributing Hurricane Charley's unpredicted course into Florida as \"God\u2019s way of telling us that he\u2019s...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":38533,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/21\/barack-obama-atheistic-kenyan-communist-time-traveler.html","url_meta":{"origin":8665,"position":2},"title":"Barack Obama: Atheistic Kenyan Communist TIME TRAVELER!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 21-Aug-13 1:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"At least that's what one presumes, since when Louisiana GOPers were asked \"Who do you think was more responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina?,\" 28% answered George W. 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Or even in books.2005 is literally in the middle of 2001\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Storm5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Storm5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Storm5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8676,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/09\/08\/the_pork_corps.html","url_meta":{"origin":8665,"position":5},"title":"The Pork Corps","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 8-Sep-05 6:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Army Corps of Engineers is a curious beast. On the one hand, there's its heritage -- the gung ho combat engineers who would be out there in bulldozers building...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}