Democratic (in)action – Page 7

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez. Pas.

Published on July 12, 20071 Comment

Diaper fetishes, financial shenanigans, brothels, corrupt senators – courtesy of a commenter at Tbogg comes a fascinating New Orleans political blog, Your Right Hand Thief, which lifts the lid on sexual corruption and hypocrisy in the Katrina-devastated city. It’s damned good reading, once you get the cast of characters sorted out in your head, but it’s not for the easily shocked.

In New Orleans not just the infrastructure’s buggered; the politicians are too. The difference is the politicians enjoy it. Take a particularly vile Louisiana Senator named Vitter, whose sexual predilections allegedly include a taste for wearing dirty diapers. (This seems to be becoming a popular pastime amongst politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, if persistent rumours are true. But I digress.)

Vitter’s just been named on the DC Madam’s list (download from cloggie.org here) and is also said to be a customer of the infamous Canal St Madam too:

Tonight I got confirmation from a solid inside source who has no ideological ax to grind. The source said Vitter was a client at Canal Street, and provided some additional details that shed light on Maier’s comment that there was “more to the business than sex”. [Update: Based on her comments about Vitter not having “unusual predilections”, I would interpret this comment to mean something like companionship and social interaction rather than fetishes… etc.] These details are not for the faint of heart, either.

We’re talking about, among other things, Diaper Fetishism. That’s right folks, according to a trusted inside source, Vitter was well known among other Canal Street Brothel patrons to like diapers as well as other bizarre “fetishes”. I don’t have much more info than that from my source, except that some of the other patrons at the brothel included a well known business-minded New Orleans Republican and a well known Democratic ex-governor. There are many other well known patrons who never held public office, too. You’ve probably heard various names floated about.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love that New Orleans has more than its share of sex fetishists and preeverts who can’t come missionary. This ain’t a vanilla town, kids.

But the thought of Vitter prancing around in a dipey is a bit jarring, especially since I’m changing those nasty things every day. I can’t help picturing the scene and wondering about the details. I assume they were adult sized. But were they cloth or disposable? Did they get dirty? Was there a diaper genie available? What about a tube of Boudreaux’s? Were they customized in Vitter Blue? How old were Vitter’s children when this was going on? Did he change diapers in the morning and then wear them at night?

Enquiring minds would like to know – including mine now. I’m hooked.

But although this is a great blog for lovers of the picaresque and of sex scandals in a steamy southern setting, it’s important to remember it’s not fiction. It’s horribly, disgustingly real: Vitter and his friends’ disgusting political, financial and sexual corruption is worsening the lives of families already devastated by nature and poltical negligence. First they were fucked over by nature, the Corps of Engineers and FEMA: now they’re being fucked over even more by people who care only about the money to be made out of their disaster, not about getting people home.

The hurricane season is coming. The Corps of Engineers’ new maps show New Orleans is still not protected, and its elected representatives are out drinking, catting, coming in their shitty nappies and making lucrative deals while doing so.

Click image to download .pdf

Three weeks late, the Army Corps of Engineers released maps today revealing the West Bank’s severe vulnerability to storm surges, a predicament that hasn’t changed in the two years since Hurricane Katrina, given that the region awaits major improvements to its gaping line of levees and floodwalls.

It’s a source of continued surprise to me that there hasn’t been an armed insurrection in New Orleans – but then I guess that’s why they made sure the refugees couldn’t return to see what the bloated vultures are doing to their city.

Only 21 percent of the 77,000 rental units in the five parishes in the New Orleans metropolitan area are slated to be rebuilt through government grants and tax credits, according to a recent study by PolicyLink, a nonprofit research institute, with a disproportionate number for families on teacher or police officer salaries, rather than much lower-paid home health aides or hotel clerks. Rents on the remaining units have doubled or even tripled.

Despite pitched opposition, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is going forward with plans to demolish and redevelop the city’s four largest housing projects, knocking out 3,000 apartments that were occupied by low-income families before the storm and adding middle-income families to the mix. So far, there is money in place to rebuild only about 1,000 units affordable enough for previous residents.

At the state level, officials have allocated $6.3 billion for the Road Home’s assistance program for homeowners, dwarfing the $869 million allocated to the Small Rental Property Program, which housing advocates say is the most likely to replace affordable units quickly.

Clever- no rental homes, no problem with those pesky Katrina refugees. Plenty of room for carpetbaggers and whores though.

What’s happening to New Orleans and its people is a lesson to all of us who think we are safe from natural disaster. I’ll give NOLAnian blogger Gentilly Girl the last word:

[…]

Without our area America would never have come out of the Great Depression, never could have been the liberator in WW II, and never could have placed Humans on the Moon. This Nation would never have achieved the status it has today without using US. WE ARE the major power for this country, and even today, we are the basis of much of what the U.S. is and can be.

We gave willingly as dutiful citizens, but then there came a storm in August, 2005. Our protections against such storms, promised by the same Nation that was destroying our lands, freakin’ damned FAILED, AND MANY OF US DIED OR BECAME HOMELESS. Our world, our little part of it, almost died. Many voices called for our death, but we would not hear them. We are rebuilding OUR land.

Our place almost died. Can you understand that statement? Look around what you perceive as your community being totally gone. Can you stomach that? That your friends, neighbors, shops and eateries are wiped from the face of the Earth? To know that the faces you have known for years are no longer next door or around the corner? To realize that the children (who you hated because of their pranks and noise), are no longer in the place their parents lived in? That they aren’t there to remind you of the continuity of culture? That you are no longer a part of the Dance of Life?
Can you imagine that in the place where you live?

Can you?

More…

UPDATE:

Commenters as Democratic Undergriound have given the good Senator the sobriquet “Vitter The Shitter”.

Wahahahahahahahaha.

After the Democrats win the elections

Published on July 7, 2007

At some level the Democrats should be grateful to Bush, as it has largely been his overwhelming mendacity that made their party look appealing by comparison, to everybody from disgruntled conservatives to diehard leftists. The party did not need to change all that much to get the benefit, as long as it managed to present itself as opposing Bush and let him have enough rope to hang himself. That strategy may have cost them the 2004 presidential elections, as nobody could accuse John Kerry of providing a real alternative to Bush, only a slightly more sensible version of Bush, but by “heightening the contradictions”, with the War on Iraq and Katrina, the 2008 elections are almost in the bag. And that without making the party more leftwing, or less part of the Washington establishment.

Which probalby means that if a Democratic candidate wins the presidential elections next year and takes residence in the White
House in January 2009, we should not expect too much from them. The wider Waar Against Terror will certainly continue and even the War on Iraq is not likely to be ended abrubtly. In fact, while the Democrats may take cautious steps to end the US occupation of Iraq, expect belligerent behaviour towards Iran to continue unabated. The War on Afghanistan will of course continue.

Why do I expect all this? Because nothing in the Democrat’s recent history has lead me to believe they’re uncomfortable with
humanitarian interventions; quite the opposite, as they, unlike the Republicans, actually believe in them. Remember the liberals’ last great cause, Kosovo?

(Crossposted from Wis[s]e Words.)

Well, There’s A Surprise.

Published on June 19, 2007

Maybe it’s time for Congress to round up all the wingnut sysadmins and apply a little Bushco-style LARTing?

After all, phyiscal mistreatment up to but not including major organ failure’s Ok for everyone else, why not their own operatives?

WASHINGTON (AP) – E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88 White House officials who had electronic message accounts with the Republican National Committee, the House Oversight Committee said Monday. [….] The 51 include Ken Mehlman, a former White House political director who reportedly used his RNC account frequently, the report said.

‘Missing.’

Uh-huh, and I’m… well it seems I’m already Marie of Rumania several times over so if those emails and/or related logfiles – if they are actually, physically missing, then I’m… the Pope of Greenwich Village. CB Fry. Enver Hoxha. The Duchess of Duke Street. Virginia Plain.

Take your pick, all of those as are likely as those emails not being safely stashed away somewhere for use when most politically expedient. Try again, Oval Office.

Centre For American What?

Published on June 18, 20074 Comments

Via Max Sawicky. I see that the Center for American Progress hosted a conference last week to examine

” how the United States can re-assert its leadership for a more peaceful, prosperous, and secure world. “.

Are you kidding me? Re-assert it’s leadership? Not “work with others on a multilateral approach to international peace and justice and clean up the godawful fucking mess we made”? That’s what I’d call progressive,

But no, as it always is, it’s all about asserting US dominance some more, which in case no-one noticed, is what got us into this mess to begin with.

Guess which ‘progressives’ CAP chose to lead the discussion?

Speakers included former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former CIA Director John Deutch, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Egypt Daniel Kurtzer, former Secretary of Treasury Bob Rubin, Senator Gordon Smith, and former Deputy Commander, Headquarters U.S. European Command Charles Wald

Yeah, because they did such a brilliant job last time. Former director of the Trilateral Commission Brzezinski and Bush wiretap program supporter Tom Daschle are bad enough: but Madeline bloody Albright?

The woman who said this?

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

–60 Minutes (5/12/96)

[My emphasis]

Wow, I bet that little gang have some new and inniovative political ideas like… er….er… I’m going to go and bang my head on the table for a while.

“Centre for American Progress” my ass; how about “Centre for American Exceptionalism and Hubris”? There you go, do-nothing centrist liberals, I fixed your elitist dem thinktank title for you.

Well, Since We’re Piling On…

Published on June 14, 2007

In amongst the snark, sometimes Sadly, No makes a serious political point that cuts right to heart of current ‘progressive’ discourse: today it’s HTML Mencken (best blogonym evar) that’s taking on soft liberals, specifically Matt Yglesias:

But, you know, I’ll skip the thing about the war per se right now, and go to the other point this brings up: the definition of “Progressive.” I thought it meant something closer to ‘left-wing’ than ’sensible centrist.’ The cluelessness of some of these people with regard to their own position on the ideological spectrum simply astounds me. Yglesias, who has railed against left-populism, who is if anything to the right of Brad DeLong on free trade, who gave his blessing to a stupid fucking war, actually thinks he’s some kind of flaming lefty.

One of the many, many things that drives us real lefties (by which I mean those of us who don’t hesitate to descriobe ourselves as socialists as opposed to just playing one on the internets and who even join a socialist political party) is bloody, bloody US centrist ‘liberals’, especially those who describe themselves as ‘left’ or ‘progressive’ when they’re nothing of the sort – Like Yglesias and Kevin Drum to name two of the most prominent, who think their own mushy political tendency should have, by right, the lion’s share of the leftwing transatlantic discourse.

Well, they have had, and look where it’s got us.

There’s a lot of useless centrism about. That’s why we have two categories in our list, ‘Sensible liberals’ and ‘Democratic (In)action’ – and this gets filed under both. I’ll let HTML explain why:

Let me be helpful: Just because you fiercely oppose — so fucking belatedly — a certifiable crypto-fascist like George Bush does not make you George McGovern, or even FDR.

Gah. And look, here’s Kevin Drum calling himself a ‘Social Democrat.’ Hilarious. That’s even better than Brad Delong’s working definition of ’social democracy’ — a progressive taxation scheme and education spending.

If these people are social democrats, WTF do you have left to call the Swedes? If these are social democrats, then Greens must be… ooh, communists! Thanks for doing the wingnuts’ work truncating the ideological spectrum for them, nimrods!

Actually, General Glut was right so long ago: there isn’t a bit of difference between these people’s ideology and, say, John Anderson’s in 1980. They’re basically Rockefeller Republicans. Just the kind of folks wingnuts want as leaders of the opposition.

Sadly, yes.

No backbone, no gumption and fungible politics; always triangulating, always looking for the angle, never sticking to a political principle for more than 5 minutes at a time or until the next fashionable political buzzword comes along, whichever’s soonest – because of their self-absorbed political finagling, in which their future careers as pundits hold equal weight (and I’m being generous there, it’s probably more weight, if truth be told) with the future of the nation and the world, Bush has walked all over democracy, and they’ve let him.

They’re careerists pure and simple, who’ll say what’s necessary to advance said careers, and I hold them personally equally morally responsible, with the Republicans, for the godawful political mess we’re in.

No doubt there’ll be offended squeals from the sensible liberals over these attacks on their amour-propre. Tough titty. It’s been something I and many others on the European left have been saying for a long time and it’s good to see the US left awake to it too.

And yet for pointing this out those of us who are yer actual leftists get attacked by the reasonable liberals and the otherwise politically in tune yet persuadable that this is being uncivil and divisive.

T’ain’t us who’s divisive: the likes of Yglesias and Drum have been doing the Right’s job for it all this time with their support for the war, their counselling of ‘reasonability’ and their advocacy of arcane process politics, as if the Republicans haven’t just demolished the political process like a ten ton steamroller.

“Listen to us, we’re the reasonable people, not like those wild-eyed uncivil lefties!” – to deliberately disengage a huge swathe of politically sophisticated and committed people from your party by denigrating them as little more than online thugs – that’s divisive.

What you’ve got from all this is a compromised and powerless opposition party with the soft liberals in charge, useful tools every one. Does anyone really see the Democrats as anything more than than that? They’ve done effectively nothing since the midterms and if anything have enabled Bushco further. It’s their careers, see.

It’s been nothing short of infuriating to see suckup milquetoasts held up as the voice of the left when they’re the voice of what the US Right wants the left to be. There’s a reason their careers are going so well, and it’s because they’re saying what the Right wants them to.

But they still just don’t get it: useful they may have been but in the end to the Right we’re all the same – not them, ergo enemies. We’re all enemies if we disagree, whether we’re being their useful tools or not.

What the likes of these pundits have actually been doing all this time is little short of appeasing a quasi-fascist movement, and that makes them complicit in it. I’m sick to death of this “Not me, guv, I may’ve supported the war but I’m OK really” business. Too late, they should’ve thought on at the time. In supporting the war they enabled all the rest.

So don’t come running to the left when you need protection, kool kidz, we won’t be there for you. You weren’t there for us when we were the only ones telling the truth before the war; too interested in making a name, sucking up and getting the good gigs. Let’s see if your sparkling pundit/political consultancy careers keep you warm when it all goes to shit in DC.