THE BABBLINGS OF PAT
Well, now we know why those puff-headed preachers of the ultra-right are so eager to have the Ten Commandments plastered everywhere – apparently they can’t remember them. Take that ever-babbling tower of biblical love, Pat Robertson. His grip on commandment No. 6 – thou shalt not kill – keeps going all slippery on him.
Not only has Pat called for the assassination of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, but he has shown a macabre tendency to wish the angel of death on any and all who draw his wrath. For example, this venomous man of the cloth has told his TV flock that he’d like to set off a nuclear bomb in the State Department. Then, when Disney World displeased him, he threatened all of Orlando with a hellacious rain of death involving “some serious hurricanes … terrorist bombs … earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.”
This bull goose, loopy blowhard should, of course, be laughed off as a totally ridiculous sideshow – except that he remains welcome in the Republican Party’s inner circles of power, treated with deference and courted as a valuable political ally by both the White House and congressional leaders. Imagine if some Muslim cleric had called for the assassination of, say, Tony Blair. Oh, the condemnations that would boil out of Washington!
But, with Brother Pat, the reaction from our top governmental leaders was muted – or nonexistent – as though officials were afraid of offending the offender. The State Department gingerly termed Robertson’s call for assassination “inappropriate.” Donnie Rumsfeld dismissed it by saying, oh well, “private citizens say all kinds of things all the time.” George W., who wears his Christianity like a radiant political cloak, said nothing about his ally’s un-Christian, immoral, and illegal call for the murder of a fellow child of God.
In the eyes of the Bushites, Robertson’s only sin is not that he wants to kill … but that he said it aloud.
BUSH STIFFS NEW ORLEANS
Finding Waldo is easier than finding George.
The day that Hurricane Katrina was poised to sock New Orleans right in the teeth, our country’s president blithely winged his way westward to Arizona and California. He went out there politicking while Katrina was devastating the people of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi – indeed, Bush’s handlers could not get him to report for duty at the White House until two days after the catastrophe had struck.
Maybe it’s just as well, for the real damage he did to New Orleans was in previous months when he was at his desk, drawing up budgets. In order to pay for his misadventure in Iraq and his tax giveaways to the rich, Bush made drastic cuts in funds for hurricane protection and flood control, specifically for New Orleans.
For 2003, he slashed the money for an essential project to shore up levees around New Orleans and build more pumping stations, stalling the project. Then, in 2004, Bush approved less than 20% of the funds his own Corps of Engineers said were necessary to shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, so that project had to be put on hold. When hit by Katrina, Pontchartrain’s banks broke open, flooding the city’s neighborhoods up to 20 feet deep.
Also in 2004, federal funds were pledged for a crucial study of how New Orleans should prepare for a category 4 or 5 hurricane, such as Katrina – but the Bushites, still diverting funds to their occupation of Iraq, ordered the local office of the corps not to begin any studies, and their budget for 2005 eliminated all money to develop hurricane protection plans for the city.
It’s not like a big blow to the Big Easy was unexpected. Local and federal experts have been warning for years that it was coming, but the Bushites said the money was needed in Iraq to protect our national security. As a dismayed local official pointed out last year, however, “[Finishing the levees] is a security issue for us.”
This article appears in September 16 • 2005.