Round 2

The strategy is working.

First time out, name someone whose opinions and whose votes you are certain of, but not someone likely to stirs things up too much. Someone charming but not too much on the record. Then wait. Be patient. You can afford to because you know it won’t take too long before you can move into the second phase.

It didn’t.

Now that Rehnquist is dead the President gets to do it a second time. And the person he names is going to be the Big Payoff, the Reason We Voted For The Guy In The Second Place. Our Conservative brethren are already falling to their knees in gratitude.

AMERICA...

When is enough, enough?

I don’t recall exactly when this happened, how long after, but I remember feeling that if I saw those planes smash into the World Trade Center one more time--- saw the second jet move into slow motion, witnessed the flames, the bodies hurtling to earth, the grey ash covering the terrified people racing from the scene --- that if I was shown that one more time, I would jump from a nearby window myself.

And then came the numbness. What moved me before only made me glance up now, like watching an old movie. I didn’t need to see it anymore to know it always came out the same. What was once shock and disbelief became curiosity and recollection. I'm not certain how long that took, but it was relatively soon.

It is that way for me now with Katrina.

First the pounding of the relentless storm, and then the pounding of the relentless images, repeated over and over so that the actual day and time they occurred became a blur. I am having trouble even a after only a week recalling the exact details of when things happened, and I am watching less and less,

Of course, in the beginning when it was new and riveting, when the images were fresh and most horrifying, none of us could control our needing to know, our appetite for the latest information, It was then that our President could not be bothered. And when he finally responded so very late and under pressure, all he could do was deepen his southern accent and make feeble jokes at the airport about how much fun he had growing up in Houston. But could never bring himself to experience the stink of the Super Dome or the Convention Center or to admit he hadn’t done what he should for his people. I will remember that.

I will remember our FEMA director, a man fired from his biggest previous job because he could not work with horses, saying on Thursday that he was not aware of what was going on in the Convention Center and calling eyewitness news reports “rumors.” Michael Brown, who proudly declared a day later, "We have had no shootings at anyone in the last 48 hours.”

I will remember Michael Chertoff our head of the oxymoronic Homeland Security saying today, Sunday, "I think when we go back and look at it a lot of things worked well and some things didn't work well.” That’s as close to recognition or an apology as he could get. I will remember that.

And now the next wait begins as the waters go down and the dead rise to the surface. Thousands of our neighbors lost to us right here, in America.