Here Comes The Storm

Originally posted by Nadir at LastChocolateCity.com

One year after Hurricane Katrina devastated the US Gulf coast, America holds its collective breath, bracing for the next catastrophe.

Hurricane Ernesto is building strength in the Caribbean, threatening the impoverished islands of Haiti and Cuba. Meanwhile, the government of the world’s richest nation is still reeling from a violent 2005 hurricane season, its floundering imperial adventures in the Middle East, and tumultuous mid-term election politics. The US is ill-prepared for the first Hurricane of the new season or the impending political whirlwind that will accompany it.

The Army Corps of Engineers admits that the hastily repaired Louisiana levee system that failed last year may not be strong enough to withstand a new storm. Katrina recovery efforts have languished in a bureaucratic quagmire that rivals the maelstrom’s immediate aftermath, prompting Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) to remark, “We’re seeing the same thing going on with the recovery as we did with the immediate response. We’re going through another unfolding disaster.”

Grand Wizard GDub’s latest “pass the buck” move, asserting as he did in the days following Katrina that state and local officials should take the lead in repairing the Gulf Coast, offers another example of his inability to lead the country anywhere but into the eye of the storm. Bush’s presidency is marred by lies, deceit, criminality and incompetence. Two questionable elections, intelligence failures preceding 9/11, foolhardy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on American civil liberties, illegal surveillance of US citizens, financial mismanagement, fear, torture, mayhem… the list gets longer every week.

The Democratic Party has been complicit in many of the Bush regime’s missteps, and as a result looks clumsy in its attempts to mount a serious offensive to recover one or both houses of Congress in this critical mid-term election. Hillary Clinton’s offer of aid to Conneticut Senate candidate Ned Lamont can be viewed both as an optimistic sign that the Dems are finally rallying the troops or a forboding omen that the party will attempt to lure Lamont away from what has gotten him this far - his opposition to the War in Iraq. As Joe Lieberman spokesman Dan Gerstein said, “Senator Clinton’s position on Iraq is far closer to Joe Lieberman’s than it is to Ned Lamont’s.”

All of these alarms are indications that a flood of discontent could sweep the nation this autumn. Batten down the hatches. Stock up on provisions. Man the lifeboats.

Here comes the storm.