"...mixing inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies."

[CarolNYC]

Liked this from Josh Marshall at TPM, on Bush's speech....

"Then there's the president's great line from the speech: "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces."

No, it's not. Actually, every actual fact that's surfaced in the last two weeks points to just the opposite conclusion. There was no lack of federal authority to handle the situation. There was faulty organization, poor coordination and incompetence.

Show me the instance where the federal government was prevented from doing anything that needed to be done because it lacked the requisite authority.

This is like what we were talking about a few days ago. This is how repressive governments operate -- mixing inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies.

You don't repair disorganized or incompetent government by granting it more power. You fix it by making it more organized and more competent. If conservatism can't grasp that point, what is it good for?"

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.php#006550

[Helga Scow Stern]

1. Nominated. More authority, my foot!

[liberal N proud]

2. What I want to know is how is making this a military state going

to make us safer from Hurricanes?
More authority and broader role for armed forces translates to a military state.

[DLnyc]

5. I think the idea is that if we fight evil weather in Louisiana, then evil

weather will be attracted to Louisiana and then we can fight evil weather there, which is a whole lot better than having to fight evil weather in Houston. I think.

[Veronicrat]

3. CALLOUS CONSERVATISM

this is the height of callous conservatism, and it is time we call it for what it is. bush & co have put fear into the American people and it is working. We are now that much more doubtful of our governments ability to work in an emergency situation. the time when we need them the most.
The American government is getting more facist & authoritarian eveyday.

Now in the spin, its more money to the companies who will "rebuild" make no mistake about it.

How do we begin to fight back, and help our country to be a place of freedom in our hearts. for this is the most important place we have.

[whatever4]

4. Echo that with a bull horn nm

[bluedawg12]

6. Fascist tendencies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

"Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, was the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. Similar political movements spread across Europe between World War One and World War Two and took several forms such as Nazism and Clerical fascism. Neofascism is generally used to describe post-WWII movements seen to have fascist attributes.

Fascism was typified by attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life. The definitional debates and arguments by academics over the nature of fascism, however, fill entire bookshelves. There are clearly elements of both left and right ideology in the development of Fascism"

[Inland]

7. Fascism is an assumption that concentration of power = efficiency

The assumption of the proto fascists in America is that if Bush could simply free himself of the restraints of, say, Congress or laws and do what he wants, he could achieve success.

But the plain fact is that whenever Bush has been given a blank check, as in Iraq, he has completely botched it. TP is right: more power doesn't make an otherwise incompetent government competetent.

However, it does prevent anyone from knowing the full scale of the fuckups, as the power is used to shut down debate and bury the bodies. For it turns out that power IS an excellent means to achieve power.

As the mother of a friend once said about her childhood in Italy, Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time, but he did make people stop complaining about it.

[gkhouston]

8. Nominated. Why reward them for fucking up?

Especially when they screwed up so magnificently that it smells like they screwed up just so they could make this power grab... and people have suffered and died for it?