Cave Shadows

Bush's Goddamned Luck

As I am watching Bush give his pronouncement on the Katrina disaster I can't help but bemoan the supreme misfortune which seems to follow this man.  Follow.  Every disaster lies behind him, yet his power grows as those around him suffer.

After the Supreme Court handed Bush the Presidency I tried to remain positive.  Look, I would tell disheartened friends, that George W. Bush is the luckiest son of a bitch to ever walk upright.

Consider how he was born into one of the richest and most powerful political families in the country.  He attended both Yale and Harvard without smarts or ambitions.  George W. avoided possible death or disfigurement by dodging the draft with his family's connections.  Not only did he get into the Texas Air National Guard's champagne unit, he didn't actually have to do anything.  And nobody cared.

Bush's business fortunes were even luckier.  First, he managed to raise capital and run his own company without any business experience.  When the Arbusto venture inevitably failed, he found another executive position at Harkin.  When that venture also tanked, George W. managed to pull out his own money in a clear violation of SEC rules.  Luckily again, nobody cared.  Bush was again rewarded for his incompetence by allowing his dad's friends to partner with him and loan him money to take over the Texas Rangers.  As the Rangers' chief his team never lit up the baseball world, but the citizens of Arlington did give him a stadium on a silver platter.  The value added to the Rangers through the free stadium --land obtained courtesy of eminent domain-- enabled Bush to sell out his share for a massive profit.  With his new money Bush bought himself a ranch: a ranch without cattle.

Bush's familiar name made him an instant player in Texas politics.  Then again, without any political experience or vision, George W. was promptly elected Governor of Texas.  And from there, without much accomplishment, as the weakest Governor in the nation, Bush the draft-dodger, the business failure, the empty head with a familiar name, won the Republican nomination for President.

Bush's luck at capturing the Presidential Election of 2004 defies any possible explanation.  From the Florida fiasco of butterfly ballots and hanging chads up to the unprecedented activist intervention of the Supreme Court, Bush's occupancy of the Oval Office was evidence of the most remarkable rise of a completely unremarkable individual in the history of the planet.

Wasn't that lucky?  I told my friends, tongue wedged into cheek, that we needed someone like this to be President.  Won't his good fortune trickle down to us?

Except that there was always a horrible consequence to Bush's luck.  Every one of Bush's successes also marked someone else's misfortune.  His entrance into Yale, into Harvard, cost some deserving scholar a valued education.  His place in the draft was taken by some other poor soul sent to die in a cause that Bush himself never opposed.  His business partners bore the brunt of his failures, happily accepting their losses as the cost of access to his Presidential father.  The people of Texas were left with a massive deficit that Bush inadvertently engineered. 

So this Bush luck isn't so lucky for us.  September 11 guaranteed that Bush would leave his mark in history books and that despite his administration's overwhelming corruption and ineptitude he would receive a second term.

And now he has yet another chance to leave his mark on the world and guarantee his immortality.  And all because he happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.

Bush's first term started off with disappointment and loathing.  September 11 changed that.  Bush's second term has started off with disappointment and more loathing.  Hurricane Katrina may rescue him yet.

Sabinus

Katrina Relief

We urge everyone to do what they can to help out our brothers and sisters who have suffered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

For Hurricane Relief, check out TruthLaidBear.com

For a permanent solution, find or create a legitimate opposition political party that doesn't ape the stupidity of our current political culture.  Sorry, I'm not sure where to start.

A Prayer for New Orleans

Like millions of Americans we are horrified by the current destruction in the Gulf Coast States.  Hurricane Katrina has blown endless torment into the lives of millions of Americans.

New Orleans is gone.  No other devastation can match the complete destruction of one of our most cherished cities.  With over 80% of a million-plus city underwater, there won't be much left to salvage.

As the full consequences of the hurricane were beginning to seep in, Louisiana's governor did what only politicians can do, she called for a Day of Prayer.

But New Orleans doesn't have a prayer left, not anymore.

We should hope that while a politician will never miss an opportunity for a cheap political stunt, Governor Kathleen Blanco might be doing a bit more: Get off your knees and start helping out!  Your largest city has just been annihilated, it's safe to say that you've missed that window for petitioning the mercy of supernatural beings.  Now get to work repairing all those lives that your political culture has ruined with its neglect!

New Orleans, and most parts of these Gulf Coast States, have been adrift in a level of poverty that not even the mainstream media is willing to acknowledge.  Many "Blue State" Americans would be horrified to discover that these Gulf Coast States have been languishing in Third World standards for nearly the entire life of the country.  Anyone who has journeyed into the Deep South can attest to this, if they are honest.

Who is to blame for this poverty?  Are these "Red States" harboring a population of loafers and social leaches?  No, but they are harboring a culture of public servants, Democrat and Republican alike (though mostly Republican), who have strenuously avoided dealing with the issues which most affect their constituency.

For New Orleans to even exist has required enormous State subsidy.  The intricate levee system was not built by commercial enterprise or free-spirited entrepreneurs, it was built by the government, and the government was needed to maintain it.  Up until yesterday, that was money well spent.  New Orleans was one of our most important cultural centers and commercial ports.  A few dollars more could have saved it.  But it seems the President had other priorities, and Louisiana's politicians didn't care enough to make it the President's priority.

So now this disaster has exacerbated the rampant poverty of these Southern states.  What can be done for a people whose representatives find it easier to offer them prayer than bread?  How will the populations of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama ever recover with a political culture more dedicated to rewriting science books than ensuring full employment?

This Southern disaster wasn't brought on by a hurricane, the hurricane merely exposed it.  And if a prayer is all that Louisiana has left, it is because that was the actual priority of its government.

Why is there more violent resistance to American Occupation than there was to Saddam?

Our inaugral post addresses the foremost event of our time with the question we've pondered for the last few years.

We know that Saddam was a bastard: a cruel dictator who would stop at nothing within his overreaching power.  But we've known this for quite a while.  We knew this in the 1980's, when Saddam was at his most barbaric and was in the warm embrace of the Reagan administration.

We sometimes forget that Saddam's brutal proclivities were not especially extraordinary in the Cold War era and that alliances with despots were standard fare.  However, even as the United States government coddled, trained, and bankrolled innumerable Latin American strongmen to catastophic effect, Saddam stood apart from the other pro-American tyrants, mass murderers, and thugs.

Saddam retained ties to the Soviet Union:  his Baath Party had bolshevik-style origins and management, his entire armed forces were outfitted in Soviet armaments, and Iraq was a strategic trading partner with the Evil Empire.  Unlike so many South American generalisimos or Southeast Asian Presidents-for-life, Saddam was neither an obvious anti-Communist tool nor a ready market for American weaponry.  So what pragmatic goal could prompt the world's richest nation to nurture and support such a murderous goon?

Marriage to Sadaam and his evil deeds were sealed in an effort to resist Islamic fundamentalism.  To balance the loss of influence, and oil, which the Islamic revolution in Iran secured, the United States government opted to partner with Sadaam's secular power.  The irony of toppling Sadaam on the pretense of a war against Islamic extremism is breathtaking.  American power was quite content to let Sadaam butcher fundamentalists, within or without Iraq's borders, which came to be his specialty.

So now, after several decades of Sadaam's despotic rule there is finally an effective organic resistance in Iraq.  But their target is not Sadaam.  Where were the suicide bombers and IED's hampering Sadaam's tyranny?  Why was Sadaam never cowed into considering an exit strategy?

We know that there was opposition to Sadaam: mass graves bear witness to his wrath and retribution.  But his opposition never waged such a violent onslaught as is now waged against American occupation.  The fight for freedom from Sadaam was never as visceral as resistance to the infidel.  Why?

It cannot be that Sadaam's tactics were more effective than that of the greatest military power in history.  Such reasoning would justify those mass graves and rape rooms.  The insurgency is not a testament to American timidity.

So we pose this question with sincerity and beg a reasonable answer:  Why is there more violent opposition to the American occupation of Iraq than there ever was to the evil rule of Sadaam Hussein?

We hope that the answers to this question might lead us to a safer and more secure Middle East, America, and civilization.