Friedman: Osama and Katrina (* Philosophy We're at War, Let's Party)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/opinion/07friedman.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

<snip>

For instance, it's unavoidably obvious that we need a real policy of energy conservation. But President Bush can barely choke out the word "conservation." And can you imagine Mr. Cheney, who has already denounced conservation as a "personal virtue" irrelevant to national policy, now leading such a campaign or confronting oil companies for price gouging?

And then there are the president's standard lines: "It's not the government's money; it's your money," and, "One of the last things that we need to do to this economy is to take money out of your pocket and fuel government." Maybe Mr. Bush will now also tell us: "It's not the government's hurricane - it's your hurricane."

An administration whose tax policy has been dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist - who has been quoted as saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub" - doesn't have the instincts for this moment. Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded. And I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town.

The Bush team has engaged in a tax giveaway since 9/11 that has had one underlying assumption: There will never be another rainy day. Just spend money. You knew that sooner or later there would be a rainy day, but Karl Rove has assumed it wouldn't happen on Mr. Bush's watch - that someone else would have to clean it up. Well, it did happen on his watch.

<snip>

As my Democratic entrepreneur friend Joel Hyatt once remarked, the Bush team's philosophy since 9/11 has been: "We're at war. Let's party."

[bemildred]

1. Let the butt covering begin.

Mr. "Who me? Support Bush?" decides to try to save some shreds of credibility.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. Friedman never quite got it reight

No, Bush and Cheney weren't the right guys to go after Osama. They just play a couple on TV.

Friedman is a couch patato.

[DaveT]

3. Friedman is a weasel.

Whenever Bush's excesses cause problems he coughs up one of these YES,BUT columns. Then he goes back to carrying water for the Junta a few weeks later.

He makes me want to puke.

[Colorado Blue]

4. This is an interesting piece, worth reading. Don't let the

negative comments dissuade you. He is absolutely correct about the Administration's failures concerning the environment, the tax cuts, and of course this storm points up all the domestic neglect and the deepening fiscal divide of the past several years.

We can do better. We must get serious about the science of environment, about conservation, about the phenomenon known as "Pake Oil", and mostly about the fact that America belongs to ALL the people - not just to the "ownership society".

[bpilgrim]

5. he ain't worth reading as he is always years late and billions short

and he cheered the neoCONs all along their disastrous course.

he will never get any respect on DU as he has only earned our disdain.

peace