Karl Rove Is Slated to Head the Reconstruction Effort - Feel Better Already?

[eleanorigby]

@rjung

How will New Orleans be rebuilt by having Rove start anonymous smear campaigns? “Hey, contractors, come build in New Orleans because Chicago residents secretly eat boiled puppies”?

You know about the puppies?

Damn.

[RickJay]

@PunditLisa

Say what you want about him, the dude is extremely effective in getting the job done against seemingly insurmountable odds. After all, he has been credited for spearheading the campaign which brought us G.W. Bush.

And Michael Brown knew a lot about road apples.

Being good at negative campaigning doesn’t make Rove skilled at running a reconstruction effort any more than being a good basketball player made Michael Jordan a good hockey player.

[Orbifold]

[minor digression]
When I was a kid I read a lot of Tom Clancy novels. (I like to think I have better taste now.) I remember various disdainful descriptions of how the Soviet Union used “political reliability” as a substitute for experience and competence, and how this was a sign of how backwards their political system was.

We can only hope Tom Clancy appreciates irony, I suppose.
[/minor digression]

[MovieMogul]

Word is Rove’s been suffering from kidney stones for the last several weeks.

Maybe Bush thought that something even more painful might prove the right distraction…

[Spavined_Gelding]

I can only hope that this does not represent the beginning of Mr. Rove’s leadership of the recovery-reconstruction effort.

Of course it would be of a pattern with the programs that gentleman has run in the past. It is almost as if Boss Tweed is rebuilding the court house in Manhattan.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Spavined Gelding

I can only hope that this does not represent the beginning of Mr. Rove’s leadership of the recovery-reconstruction effort.

I guess that means that it is finally okay to play the blame game and point fingers (not that the Bush administration wasn’t already doing so).

[PunditLisa]

@RickJay

Being good at negative campaigning doesn’t make Rove skilled at running a reconstruction effort any more than being a good basketball player made Michael Jordan a good hockey player.

I really must turn on my sarcasm sign more often.

[plnnr]

http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050916/NEWSREC0101/50916016

Now THAT’S dedication to the reconstruction effort.

[Apos]

Wow, I’m glad he’s in charge of the reconstruction effort. As the article makes clear, his first major concern seems to be making sure a particular side of the story about the disaster gets heard. That’s definately a great important first step towards… er… what was he supposed to be in charge of again?

[Frank]

Kindley said Rove reassured the crowd that the full story of the disaster would be told.

“He told us to hang in there,” Kindley said.

Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe it is a political job.

[ShibbOleth]

@Spavined Gelding

I can only hope that this does not represent the beginning of Mr. Rove’s leadership of the recovery-reconstruction effort.

So, the administration that has, AFAIK, never, ever heeded an environmental group is trying to blame the destruction of the levees on environmental efforts? Amazing. Most of what I’ve heard from an environmental standpoint are suspicions that the destruction of southern wetlands was a key to lack of impedence in hurricanes proceeding and that global warming (Hello, Kyoto) is an ingredient on bigger, more destructive hurricanes.

[Little_Nemo]

Say what you want about him, the dude is extremely effective in getting the job done against seemingly insurmountable odds. After all, he has been credited for spearheading the campaign which brought us G.W. Bush.

So in two years New Orleans will be exactly like it is now but Karl Rove will have convinced 51% of the people in this country that the city’s been fully restored.

So the levee will be repaired, but it’ll still leak.

Now, now, we’re not supposed to be playing the plame game.

[Marley23]

@ArchiveGuy

If it means Rove spends 12-15 hours a day for the next several years wading through toxic muck, acting as a guide for bulldozers and sandbag-dropping helicoptors, and personally hosing out the interior of the Superdome, keeping him free from any Beltway commitments, then Yes, I do feel much better.

Only if he doesn’t get a biosuit, and only if it can be conclusively shown that exposure to the much won’t give him superpowers.

@Ravenman

Oh, I just can’t get riled up over this. If Rove is at all successful, it’ll be the first good thing he’s done for the country in a decade.

That’s exactly why this makes me want to find something 80 proof and chug away. I can’t picture Rove doing something altruistic, and I can’t picture him being any good at it.

[TVeblen]

@Marley23

That’s exactly why this makes me want to find something 80 proof and chug away. I can’t picture Rove doing something altruistic, and I can’t picture him being any good at it.

He probably thinks his career rip-out-the-juglar politics was altruistic, serving a higher good and all that.

You know things are really, really bad when you can’t think of a worse parody. Rove is the James Carville of the Right. He’s a gray eminence of insular scorched earth politics. Period. Sadly, he and his creature Dubya apparently can’t even see anything beyond their self-imposed blinkers.

Way too little, way too late and way too transparently self-serving.

Just what New Orleans needs: corruption and hot air.

[Marley23]

@TVeblen

He probably thinks his career rip-out-the-juglar politics was altruistic, serving a higher good and all that.

That’s probably true, at least in part.

Sadly, he and his creature Dubya apparently can’t even see anything beyond their self-imposed blinkers.

Heh. Somehow this makes me think of Frankenstein.

[elucidator]

@Little Nemo

…Now, now, we’re not supposed to be playing the plame game.

Sooner or later, you will suffer for that one.

[Little_Nemo]

You know things are really, really bad when you can’t think of a worse parody. Rove is the James Carville of the Right. He’s a gray eminence of insular scorched earth politics. Period. Sadly, he and his creature Dubya apparently can’t even see anything beyond their self-imposed blinkers.

The difference is that after the election, they told James Carville and Lee Atwater, “Thanks for getting me elected. I’ll take it from here.” and sent them home. With the Bush administration we’re still waiting for them to stop running for office and start running the country.

[mack]

@plnnr

You mean his #1 priority isn’t damage control?

Maybe he got confused about which damage he’s trying to control.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@ShibbOleth

So, the administration that has, AFAIK, never, ever heeded an environmental group is trying to blame the destruction of the levees on environmental efforts? Amazing. Most of what I’ve heard from an environmental standpoint are suspicions that the destruction of southern wetlands was a key to lack of impedence in hurricanes proceeding and that global warming (Hello, Kyoto) is an ingredient on bigger, more destructive hurricanes.

Here’s a report on a recent study looking at the possible role of global warming in increasing, not the number, but the severity of hurricanes:

Powerful hurricanes like Katrina, the most destructive such storm ever to hit the United States, are becoming more common, according to a new study sure to fuel debate over whether global warming is to blame.

In the 1970s there were about 11 storms on average of the powerful category 4 and 5 range. Since 1990 that has climbed to 18 per year on average worldwide, researchers led by Peter J. Webster at the Georgia Institute of Technology report in today’s issue of the journal Science.

[snip]

The increase in powerful hurricanes coincides with a rise of nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit in the tropical sea surface temperature around the world.

It’s the warm water vapor from the oceans that drives tropical storms, and as the water gets warmer the amount of evaporation increases, providing more fuel for the tempests.

[snip]

There was no increase in the total number of tropical storms worldwide; the change was in how many of them grew into the most dangerous categories.

[ShibbOleth]

That’s probably just coincidence.