Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The influential Norquist's policies are being carried out by a ruling junta determined to "drown government" as established by the Constitution to aid the common citizenry.  Layer by layer the neocons of the Cheney-Bush Junta have chipped away at such protections, hacking away at environmental standards, job security and rights of union workers and teachers.  The same applies to disaster prevention, and this is germane to understanding the ongoing New Orleans tragedy.  Punitive powers are necessary to hold the citizenry in check while a steadily expanding military is essential to further burgeoning Empire in the pursuit of globalization.  

An active tax cut policy is essential to destroy what was once an active middle class, replacing it with the socioeconomic composition of a traditional banana republic where a servile population services a ruling class in which advantages of the entrenched wealthy are expanded while the rights and purchasing power of the middle class is ultimately destroyed.  It is the rights and prosperity of citizens outside the sphere of enormous wealth whose rights are expendable, and they are the ones symbolically meant to be "drowned in the bathtub."  

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune over a year ago on June 8, 2004, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay.  Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."    

Maestri covered the twin tiers of concern for Bush, the military as a means of pursuing Empire abroad while neglecting needs of citizens at home. A rigid dictatorial conformity is enforced through blatantly exploiting 9/11 and referring to what was once called a country or nation as a "Homeland" with the inference to be drawn that Big Brother the protector is in charge.  It was no accident that Bush's ranch was purchased prior to his entry into politics.  It was Karl Rove's ploy to give a Skull and Bones Eastern corporate elitist a human face to con as many Nascar dads as possible and create a viable constituency as a precursor to launching a plutocracy consisting of government by and for entrenched wealth at home while spreading Empire abroad.  

The Cheney-Bush Junta ruthlessly slashed funds for Corps of Engineers projects to strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees, diverting the money to the Iraq War.  Plenty of person power in the form of National Guards troops was also diverted from the areas impacted by Hurricane Katrina.  According to the Washington Post, Mississippi's National Guard currently has over 4,000 soldiers lost to the Iraq campaign, while Louisiana has lost 3,000 troops in Baghdad alone.  

While you think about the fatal victims of starvation and thirst resulting from the hurricane, also think about those fortunes being made in Iraq via no bid contracts to Halliburton engineered by its former CEO Dick Cheney.  Also think about the large sums of money provided by the U.S. government, meaning your tax dollars, to enable con artist Ahmad Chalabi, who is back on the scene as a member of the current Iraqi government, to feed lies about alleged weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam Hussein to Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle to strengthen a bogus case for going to war.  None of it was ever about protection; it was all about expanding Empire and ruling the globe through a plutocratic junta.  

   The ruling junta's fair-haired boy, Senator William Frist, Bush's closest friend on Capitol Hill, says, "This is not a time for pointing a finger of blame."  Senator Frist, this is a lot more serious than the extra-marital sex act that your stalwart Republican allies thought egregious enough to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency.  We know, Senator Frist, that if anything anywhere close to a tragedy of this magnitude had occurred on Clinton's watch that you would have observed the rule of no finger pointing and said nothing.  The Fox corporate mouthpieces are noted for their quiet probity.  Certainly the same can be said for the soft spoken and meek Ann Coulter and always-circumspect Rush Limbaugh.

 Look for Rupert Murdoch media toadies such as Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Brit Hume and Neil Cavuto to seek to repel any demand for answers to the shameful policies pertaining to the Hurricane Katrina disaster by once more resorting to the familiar Nixon-McCarthy two step with the omnipresent 9/11 twist tossed in for good measure.  "Here we are in the middle of a war on terror and you are again attacking our president!" they will self-righteously bellow.  "These attacks give aid and comfort to the enemy!"

It is up to the citizenry to become more vigilant than ever and hold the Cheney-Bush Junta accountable for policies that have drastically weakened America in the midst of running up an ever-spiraling national debt that now stands close to $8 trillion.  Tell the corporate towel boys of Fox and other strident Cheney-Bush media apologists that you know who they are, what they stand for, and how they earned their blood money by selling out the interests of average Americans through serving as mouthpieces for a prevailing unelected plutocracy.