Steven Johnson, one of my favorite non-fiction authors, who wrote "Emergence," a book about the science of emergent order and complexity, has a very interesting essay over on his blog detailing how Katrinagate (my words, not his) perfectly illustrates all eight of Bush's key weaknesses:

Obsession with Iraq at the cost of all other national priorities
Unwillingness to admit mistakes
Hostility to science
Embarrassing juvenile attitude
Indifference to the fates of the poorest members of society
Cronyism and unwillingness to fire anyone for incompetence
Tendency to spend way too much time on vacation
Inability to plan and execute large-scale operations effectively

I haven't laughed this hard in days. Don't read if you're an Administration apologist.

I'm tired of hearing apologists. I'm tired of excuses. I'm tired of no real explanations about all the people who sat and WAITED for DAYS for Federal help that came far far FAR too late, and as a result, suffered and died.

Let's get this straight. What is the purpose of the Federal government? Is it to create a plutocracy? Because that's what they're doing right now. Anyone who is pretending that that isn't going on is amazingly good at fooling themselves, or they just don't care. The rich are getting richer in America, and the poor are getting poorer. And it's not by accident or mistake, it's by design. There's plenty of evidence for those willing to look for it.

The true purpose of the Federal government is to "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," according to our Constitution.

Has the general welfare been promoted? I would say not. What about insured domestic tranquility? Nope. FEMA has fucked that ALL up.

I won't even talk about a war that we fought for all the wrong reasons (and how many people died as a result), or a peace that we're losing thanks to administration bungling, or the breeding ground for terrorist cells that WE'VE created. I won't even talk about funny business with the elections, even though there's plenty to support such a view. This is all about THIS particular series of criminal fuckups.

I'll end this simply with another quote from the Constitution:

"Section 4 - Impeachment

The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Yet more of what my in-laws would probably claim is a liberal rant:

Over on metafilter there's a thread about how the Bush administration essentially tried to give Governor Blanco an ultimatum, to try to gain Federal control over New Orleans, which would have certain fringe benefits eventually for Bush's corporate cronies.

Here's the blog the thread links to. I find it very interesting.

Impeach the lot of them, I say. This is profoundly criminal. The next time I hear a Republican spewing about 'state's rights,' 'integrity' or 'family values' I'm going to vomit. I'd vote for a zombie FDR at this point. Hell, even a zombie Harry Truman, as long as he kept his mits off my brain.

End rant.

In other news, I'm reading this cool book by S. M. Stirling, the guy who wrote the Draka Series, called the Protector's War. It's set in an alternate universe in 2006 where, for some as yet unstated reason, some massive worldwide catastrophe in 1998 called 'the Change' essentially destroyed all electronics. Maybe a massive solar flare. Who knows? Anyway, it's a neat kind of near future, post apocalyptic sort of quasi-medieval romp. Dark, gritty, but very very interesting and believable.

In other news, my wife and I are going to go see Ravi Shankar at the Walton Arts Center. How cool is that?

Oh yeah, and this is a cool flash game (but very hard) about a ninja. I suck at it, but it's kind of fun, in a stick figure ninja sort of way. Found on metafilter.

So, this is really cool. Someone put up a circuit-bent Casio SK-1 for sale on ebay, and it ended up going for 375 dollars. The SK-1 was a very primitive sampling keyboard, and what's really cool about it is that it is very bendable. It's rather easy to get it to make glitchy noises.

So what they've done is house the original keyboard in a larger case, and created this type of patchbay using banana clips. Very neat.

This has me considering redoubling my efforts at both scouring the local flea markets and garage sales for bendable stuff (toys and keyboards, mostly) and at actually finishing some circuit-bending projects.

Here's some pictures (found at MusicThing):