Bob Herbert, whose column is only available on-line through Time Select, nails it today by taking to task the "liberals" who are "no longer hopeful" that Bush will address poverty and race when dealing with the Katrina disaster. He questions how anyone could have believed a word Bush said in front of the cathedral at Jackson Square those weeks ago:


As usual, Bob Herbert is right.

As I've said before, I think of the Bush administration's privatization schemes as a gangster-style money laundering system: take money from the people, filter it through government, then hand it out to corporations, all the time wearing the pastor's cloak to lend "legitimacy" to your actions. They are pillaging our country in the same fashion the PRI pillaged Mexico (and as it continues to today). Last week I heard on Chicago NPR's WorldView (an outstanding show, btw) that the US now ranks third in economic disparity and corruption, under Mexico (#1) and Russia. We are going through a dramatic "Mexicanization," which certainly doesn't bode well for our future seeing that Mexico is going through a transformation too, what Margarita calls "Colombiazacion," as the government is being taken over by drug cartels. Frankly, I don't see us too far away from that, it's just that our drug cartels don't peddle in heroin and cocaine but oil and other natural resources, including human beings.

The Chicago Tribune ran a series last week, "Pipeline to Peril," about KBR's subcontracting for third world labor in Iraq. The series focused on twelve Nepalese workers who were kidnapped and executed by insurgents on the road to Baghdad from Jordan. Most had been promised high-paying jobs in luxury Jordanian hotels by labor brokers who took $3,000+ brokerage fees from each of the men in exchange for the "opportunity." The average annual salary in Nepal is about $270, so the families of these men had to borrow a decade's worth of salaries (some at 36% interest) to pay the fee, only to have the men end up in Jordan and told there was no work there after all. It's a horrendous story and not so different from what is happening now in New Orleans, except the Ecuadorian men my friend Lisa met are still alive. Apparently, though, slavery (or at least indentured survitude) is making a come back wherever we're "rebuilding".

Like Herbert, I am shocked when anyone trusts anything Bush says. And frankly I'm insulted when a liberal claims to. When have Bush's words jived with his actions?  Not once! Instead, it is nationalistic rhetoric laced with religiosity delivered on a patriotic, well-lit set, bleeding the language of all meaning through his repetitive use of a handful of words and phrases. Herbert calls the Bush cabal a "regime," which is more appropriate than "administration." Our one-party rule is becoming increasingly similar to those of other totalitarian regimes, which seems to suit the ruling party just fine. They see no disconnect between "democracy" and one-party rule. If Stalin had "state-capitalism," what do we have when the state funnels money from the people to well-connected corporations? Has such a monster been named yet?

I lost hope years ago that Bush et al would suddenly reform and see the light on any issue, let alone the important ones. He "took responsibility" for the government's negligent response to Katrina by acccepting Brownie's resignation then quickly turning a blind eye to Chertoff's hiring of Brownie as a consultant. Apparently Bush knows we are fools. A few mentions in a column or two, and then we're on to the next photo-op. He can do this without worry of ramifications because we are living in a state not so different from other totalitarian regimes where there are no real checks and balances. Last night MSNBC was back on Aruba. You'd have thought we'd left Iraq months ago and all was peaceful around the world, not that there had been more killed in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday, or that tens of thousands had been killed in an earthquake in Pakistan.

I'll say I was suckered the past couple of weeks into thinking our national attention had changed, that maybe, just maybe, enough people had woken up to the truth to force our news agencies and politicians to start talking about what's important. But perhaps optimism is an American trait, something given to me simply by this accident of birth. Clearly it is irrational in the face of this one-party rule.

I'm in the middle of kitchen redo preparations, which has left me with less time to write. I''ve posted an ad for the cabinets and I've cleaned out half of them. Today I clean out the rest. My cousin Bobby and his wife are coming up tomorrow evening and we get to work on Saturday. I'll post before and after pictures. We don't have all of the wall cabinets in yet (two are missing -- good for me, one of them wasn't in our plan, and since it was the designer's oversight, we don't have to pay for it!), but we have all of the floor cabinets, so I ought to have a working kitchen within a week or so. What an adventure.

I've already got another home improvement project in my sights. I have a new neighbor upstairs and she has no carpets. She gets up about 6 every morning, so now I do too. The sound is unbelievable. I hear the clickety-clack of her heels, of course, but also the opening and closing of drawers, the hyper patter of her yellow lab, the low murmur of her morning television fix. This place has very thin ceilings. I don't know how I'm going to fix it (or how we're going to afford it), but I'm going to start asking around seriously and see if I can get some material prices. Perhaps S and I can do it together next year when he's home. Right now he's at Camp Julien in Kabul which is being torn down now that the Canadians are moving out. He's living in a deconstructed base just as I'm living with a deconstructed kitchen! Soon he'll be returning to his fire base near the border and then it will be time to worry again...