Burn, baby, burn!

At TAPPED, Garance Franke-Ruta quotes an emailer on the flag-burning idiocy:

For the sake of argument, consider this: Go ahead, outlaw it. I mean, really, who gives a f*ck? So you won't be able to burn the flag. Big whoop.

You should encourage Democrats to pass it. Here's why:

1) Get it off the table, since the only point of the amendment is
to put Democrats in an awkward position over an almost purely symbolic issue.

2) Who does this effect? A couple of jackassess who think burning
flags is a groovy way to protest. Screw'em. They should get a life. Draw a sign, for God's sake.

3) Let conservatives expend money and manpower getting this thing passed all across the country. It'll take years.

4) Watch them look stupid as years of silly litigation unfolds,
with courts trying to settle the obvious questions raised by such an amendment - if you burn a teeshirt with a flag on it, are you burning the flag? How about accidental flag desecration? Etc. They'll look stupid in the end.

Indeed, they will. I’ve always thought that if you want to see more flag-burning, outlaw flag-burning. Such a law will present a wonderful challenge to creative types to come up with ways of burning flags without actually burning flags. For example, if you project a photograph of a flag onto a screen, and then burn the screen, have you burned a flag? The possibilities are endless.

They are not to be trusted

Ezra Klein has a good post over at Tapped, responding to Jacob Weisberg's bizarre suggestion that liberals oppose the Bush administration's prescriptions for the suffering people of the Gulf Coast because they're afraid they might work. What "moderates" like Weisberg fail to grasp is that Republicans do not propose antipoverty initiatives in order to reduce poverty. They do so in order to reduce the political negatives associated with the Republican agenda. Republican proposals purportedly addressing the problems of poverty are not designed to work. They are designed merely to look like they might just work if only the liberal handwringers would stand back and let the market do its magic. Failure can then be tagged on the liberals. Republicans simply want to be able to claim that their agenda will fix all of the social ills that the Democrats have thus far failed to cure, and it won't cost Joe Taxpayer a dime! Do not trust Republicans! Ever!

Only his hairdresser knows for sure

So, it appears that FEMA director Michael Brown's resume padding has turned out to be as undetectable as his hairpiece. Amazingly, the man has still not been fired. I see a Medal of Freedom in Drownie's (tip o' the pen to John Aravosis) future.

So the locals screwed up. That does not excuse presidential negligence.

Let's concede for that sake of argument that the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana dropped the ball in responding to the Hurricane Katriana disaster. So what. If the state and local people weren't getting the job done, for whatever reason, the President of the fucking United States of America, the most powerful person in the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the planet, should have been screaming into six telephones at once, cussing a blue streak and threatening to fire, no, grind into dust anyone who failed to fix the problem yesterday. He should have been a veritable hurricane of furious action. This is what we expect from a president in a time of dire national emergency. George W. Bush is simply not up to the job. Who doubts that Bill Clinton would have been tearing a thousand new assholes for anyone who got in the way of an immediate and massive federal response to the crisis?

Read this Miss Alli's post for a more eloquent expression of my sentiment.

No motivation

What does it take to motivate G.W. Bush to take decisive action? An enemy. He is worthless without bad guys to focus his energies on. If Huricane Katrina had been the work of swarthy Saracens, we would have seen an overwhelminjg federal response to the disaster. Bush's energies are entirely negative. He cannot act with resolve unless it it against some sort of alien monster. Bill Clinton would have spent the early hours of this catastrophe screaming on the telephone, bullying, cajoling and threatening to fire anyone who didn't get the job done in as short a time as possible. He would have bulldozed over any and all bureaucratic obstacles in the interest of saving lives. I have no doubt that hundreds, yes hundreds of people have died and will die unnecessarily because George W. Bush is president, and not someone of stronger character and better competency. Had Al Gore won in 2000, or John Kerry in 2004, fewer people would be dead or dying right now.

Forgetful Federalist

Molly Ivins explains how the White House has managed to make Supreme Court nominee John Roberts's past links with the notoriously right-wing Federalist Society a salient issue.

Liberal wimps

God, is Billmon ever right about liberal namby-pambiness. It's time to once and for all abandon Bidenism/Liebermanism. No quarter.