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Republicans Put Karl Rove In Charge Of New Orleans Reconstruction

by reposted
"Instead, administration officials and a Republican close to the White House said Mr. Bush would offer some general principles about "building a better New Orleans" with stricter construction standards to try to avoid a replay of the recent catastrophe. Republicans said Mr. Bush would not mention a price tag, in large part because of budget and political pressures from House Republicans and other supporters angry about administration spending.

Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/politics/15bush.html

Speaking of playing politics, I love how the news that Karl Rove has been placed in charge of the reconstruction effort was buried in the ninth paragraph of a twelve paragraph New York Times story on Bush’s big speech.

This assignment proves that despite the president’s lofty rhetoric about “building a better New Orleans”, his main concern is stanching his political bleeding. Let’s be honest, when it comes to large-scale efforts like this, Ol’ Turd Blossom isn’t exactly Gen. George Marshall, who, before devising the Marshall Plan, had, among other things, been responsible for deploying over eight million soldiers in WW II.

Rove’s genius (aside from a Mensa-level mastery of dirty trickery) is for using imagery, spin, and atmospherics to turn political liabilities into political opportunities.

So here is the White House’s Katrina Plan in a nutshell: block any independent examination of its failings, put the Einstein of damage control in charge of reconstructing New Orleans, keep the dead bodies out of sight, try to get away with general platitudes and palliatives, offer watered-down acceptances of “responsibility” while trying to pin everything you can on local yokels and fall guys like Brownie, and let Bush’s corporate cronies get fat on hefty no-bid reconstruction contracts.

So get ready for the New New Orleans -- Karl Rove’s Big Easy -- featuring the Halliburton French Quarter, the ExxonMobil River (formerly the Mississippi), Lake MBNA (formerly Pontchartrain), and Eli Lilly music (formerly jazz).

by WP
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, September 15, 2005; 12:00 PM

All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson's story in the New York Times this morning:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

Rove's leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration. More specifically: With an eye toward increasing the likelihood of Republican political victories in the future, pursuing long-cherished conservative goals, and bolstering Bush's image.

That is Rove's hallmark.

Rove, Bush's long-time political adviser and the "architect" of Bush's ascendancy, was rewarded after the 2004 election with a position at the White House with overt policy responsibilities. But whereas in some previous White Houses, governance took precedence over campaigning once the election was safely over, Rove has shown no sign of ever putting policy goals above political ones.

More
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/09/15/BL2005091501098.html
by more
I have to admit that I have had a hard time believing the reports in the New York Times and Washington Post this week that the administration has placed Karl Rove at the steering wheel of the vast Gulf Coast Reconstruction project Bush formally announced last night.

On some level, obviously, Rove is always in charge of everything important this administration does. But the idea that he would actually push aside the veil and take operational command of the largest domestic spending initiative in many decades is really breathtaking.

After all, Karl Rove is (a) the man most responsible for the entire strategy of partisan and ideological polarization that has poisoned the atmosphere of American politics, and (b) a consistent practitioner of a form of politics that relentlessly focuses on the conjunction of money, ideology, and (in his mind, at least) purchasable voter blocs, and (c) the potential object of a federal indictment for violating national security policies, and his own security clearance, by "outing" an undercover CIA agent to punish her politically inconvenient husband.

It's an open statement that more than 200 billion dollars in taxpayers' money--financed by still more borrowing from hostile foreign governments--will be put to the task of repairing George W. Bush's political condition and paving the way for a GOP succession in 2008.

Can anyone imagine what would have happened if Bill Clinton had put James Carville or Harold Ickes or (horror of horrors) Dick Morris in charge of a giant disaster recovery project in the 1990s?

The whole thing reminds me of the old and probably apochryphal story (which I will bowdlerize, since this is a Family Blog) about LBJ's first congressional race, when he supposedly told his campaign manager to begin circulating the rumor that his main opponent, a pig farmer, was practicing animal husbandry a bit too literally.

"Jesus, Lyndon," the campaign manager was said to have responded. "Nobody's going to believe that."

"Yeah," quoth LBJ, "but I want to hear the SOB deny it."

In this case, the unnatural act of Rove's husbandry of Gulf Reconstruction funds is not a barnyard rumor, but best we can tell, a fact.

As is often the case with Rove, the strategy is to do something so audacious that the opposition is left too astonished to respond until it is reduced to impotent and hysterical-sounding spluttering.

Let's all agree that our goal is to make 'em deny it, before it's too late.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/16/182356/358
by more
Bush appoints his political operative as head of Katrina reconstruction and all I see is people saying just that. It is more than just that. Appointing Rove is as great an outrage as disassembling(with apologies to speakers of English everywhere) on WMD. Bush has given us (read Liberals, Progressives, Democrats, etc.) the best ammunition we could want and no one seems to give a damn or is too chickenshit to use it.

Why did FEMA fail? A political hack with no expertise was in charge. Why has DHS failed? A political hack with no expertise is in charge. Karl Rove is the ultimate political hack. And he is good at what he does. If you consider destruction of political enemies a good thing. He has either appointed or influenced the appointments of nearly all political hacks and cronies in this administration. Their raison d'être is Crony Capitalism.

Look what this has done for American ideals in Iraq. Unless something is done, we are in for more of the same. More Halliburton type corruption, more sweetheart deals, less oversight.

And what are Rove's qualifications. He has even fewer than Brownie. Turd blossoms are a bitch to step in (just ask Clarke, Wilson, etc) but can be used to grow halucinogins. This must be Bush's source.

We now have an unqualified hack (Rove) running reconstruction on a situation exacerbated by an unqualified hack (Brown) working for another unqualified hack (Chertoff), all working for the untimate unqualified hack (do I have to say Bush?). Doesn't anyone see an opening here?

Where is Dean, Clinton, Clinton, Biden, Kennedy, Conyers, even MoveON, etc?

If they won't step up, they should all step down.

http://warrenreports.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/16/124133/316
by daily Kos (reposted)
The person who is being placed in charge of the Gulf Coast rebuilding effort, in the wake of stunning government bungling of a national disaster due to political patrons who had no expertise in their ostensible "duties" for which they were collecting paychecks: yes, Karl Rove. And apparently, nobody in the media has a problem with this, because we're essentially all used to the notion that the manner in which, for example, primarily-black neighborhoods in New Orleans get rebuilt, or not, is a task best left to the President's loyal election strategist...

True Conservatives are tonight up in arms over the cost of rebuilding New Orleans, and demand budget cuts to pay for it. Budget cuts deemed necessary to pay for the Iraq War? None. Zip. Nada. Well, a few minor levees that nobody really cares about or will ever notice...

Insane Foaming Monkey Conservatives are working themselves into a more foamy state than usual, and apparently have some sort of blastfax campaign going on over the design of the Flight 93 Memorial which -- shudder -- is crescent-shaped. I hereby predict the next wingnut attack will be upon... the accursed, goddamn, communist moon. Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the moon, the news reports will gush, as the rockets are readied in order to square that damn puppy for once and for all...

Pre-Inquisition Conservatives are proudly hawking the notion that dinosaurs and blue-eyed white guys were holding bake sales together 5,000 years ago. Because it's not enough to merely believe God created the universe -- he also specifically planted an entire false history of the universe to screw with you, you sodomy-loving, DNA-believing-in, post-Newtonian bastards. You just wait, we're only a few months away from digging up an authentic handcrafted dinosaur saddle that will prove that at least one prehistoric Big 5 Sporting Goods Store survived the Biblical flood. Presuming you're among the Pre-Inquisition Conservatives who acknowledge the existence of dinosaurs at all, mind you -- and if you are, the rest of the non-believing-in-dinosaurs movement hereby condemns you for falling for another of God's devious nature-based soul mousetraps: yep, you're going to Hell.

But hey, on our own side of the ideological divide, I just followed a circuitous trail of links and trackbacks taking me to one single very astute opinion that... ugh. You know, never mind. Insert your own war here, I don't care which one. Suffice it to say that if conservatives had a lock on every half-baked unnecessarily conspiratorial premise on the planet, I'd die a happy man. But they don't, and I won't. The salad fork goes on the left side, dammit, or it proves you may not carry the holy mantle of Blogtopia, which is big and shiny and knows all and is all powerful and likes me better than you and could easily beat Chewbacca in a fight as long as nobody had blasters!

That's it. I'm done. You might as well kill me now, because it's the Apocalypse. All life on this planet is no doubt mere days away from coming to an end, because really -- mankind couldn't possibly get any stupider. Not possible.

In my life, I've seen 70's-era fashions that seemed to be based on the fabric equivalent of haggis. I had to listen to Ronald Freaking Reagan being praised as The Great Cultural Father. I've watched Britney Spears become famous. I've seen a Leading Religious Figure hawk videos during his Happy CouchPotato Prayertime Hour detailing how President Clinton was incontrovertibly a Central American drug lord. I've watched Orwell become praised by the right. I've watched Ozymandias become a Republican military strategy guide. I've seen the pilot episode of Manimal.

And this is worse. This, finally, is the long-awaited Apocalypse. Clearly, Terri Schiavo was the glue holding the last threads of the universe together, just as Tom DeLay had foretold in his Holy But Questionably Legal Checkbook Prophesies.

And I really, honestly feel fine, now that I'm adjusted to the notion.

Well, aside from a slight stinging sensation in the center of my brain. But I'm sure it will pass.

If you want, you can use this as an open thread. Or you can reflect back on how great the universe was, back when it actually existed, and when you, personally, realized the end was near. Good bye, cruel world. Good bye.

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/16/72256/7415
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