The Day Karl Rove Dies...

I will smoke a very expensive cigar and drink my best scotch and think about how the world is a better place without him. All are welcome to free drinks at the Homan house that day. I would never celebrate death lightly, and for me, this is very personal, as if he had raped my best friend to death and then denied it forever. And I should add, if you read any New Orleans blogs, you've already seen the article I'm about to reference, but I feel obliged to put it here, mostly because it disturbs me so damn much. As Greg Peters at Suspect Device said, "This really is the most vile thing you will read this year."

Salon.com recently published an excerpt from Paul Alexander's new book Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove. The chapter published on Salon is about the Bush administration's abysmal response to Katrina and specifically about Rove's intense partisan spin in handling the flooded New Orleans. Alexander writes about how upon Rove's instruction Blanco was lied to and crucified in the media by talking heads staying on the admin's point, about how if you say things enough they become reality, about the former Republican mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin was manipulated with the big show (how hard is that?), how dump trucks and cranes at the 17th street canal were just props for a Bush photo-op, and when Senator Landrieu flew over the next day, they were gone.

I didn't see any of the talking heads or partisan politics until about 10 days after the levees failed, because I was here during the flood. I can tell you nobody here and suffering was thinking about republican or democrat, they just needed some help and government attention. But I did see many of the people who died because of people like Rove, and I certainly have seen the struggles of thousands in the aftermath. Of course Rove wasn't solely to blame, nor were the feds, and Blanco and certainly Nagin could have done a better job. But the thought of Bush giving speeches the day AFTER Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans about his Iraq policy show just how detached he was. And Rove calling Nagin?!?

Now Republicans like Bobby Jindal says let's move forward and not play the blame game. So do many democrats, not from here, but nationally. How could anyone from Louisiana not be calling for people like Karl Rove to be in prison?