"The Hammer" hammers his own thumb....

The answer turns out to be simple: Tom DeLay is simply stupid. Kevin Drum tells the tale.

Shrub does something right for a change

Shrub met the Dalai Lama at the White House today to talk about human rights violations in Tibet and explore ways to achieve progress in the Dalai Lama's efforts to advance the cause of Tibetan autonomy.

China invaded and annexed its peaceful neighbor Tibet in 1951, under the pretext of "peaceful liberation" (liberation from whom or what was never made clear). Since then, Tibet has endured human suffering and cultural destruction on a massive scale. The Chinese "big lie" (that Tibet has always been a part of China) has been told so stridently and so often in the half century since then that a whole generation of Americans probably assume it is the simple truth. Which it simply is not.

The Mandarin, who also knows Tibetan, spent some time on the ground in Tibet in the 1980s and could literally go on for hours about the brutality and senselessness of what he saw and heard there, but will save that rant for another day.

Anyway, if Shrub keeps up this kind of good work, the Mandarin may have to promote him to "Sapling."

Original photo caption: In this photograph provided by the White House, President Bush, right, wearing a scarf presented to him by the Dalai Lama, meets with the Buddhist spiritual leader Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2005, in the private residence of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/The White House, Paul Morse)

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore

Shrub has just announced he will hold his breath until he turns blue unless reporters stop asking him about allegations of torture in US-run detention facilities.

Original photo caption: US President George W. Bush responds to a question during a joint press conference with Panamanian President Martin Torrijos 07 November 2005 at the Casa Amarilla in Panama City. Bush declined to comment on reports of secret US prisons for terrorism suspects but defended US interrogation tactics, declaring: 'We do not torture.'(AFP/Paul J. Richards)

Would you buy a used car from this man?

Senator McCain is thinking to himself: "You want to talk about torture? Sitting next to this nitwit is cruel and unusual punishment all by itself."

Original photo caption: US President George W. Bush (L) and Senator John McCain, R-AZ, pictured March 2005. McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, said he would keep up his campaign for legislation banning the torture of prisoners, despite a veto threat from Bush.(AFP/File/Tim Sloan)

Testing, one... two... three....

Speaking into a tiny microphone hidden in the palm of her hand, her lips hardly moving after so many years of practice, Condi begins to put Shrub through his paces.

Original photo caption: U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (R) listen to a speech at the second plenary session of Fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, November 5, 2005. (Pilar Olivares/Reuters)

Connect the dots

Shrub's popularity versus Reagan, Clinton and Nixon, month-by-month.


For a larger version and the accompanying article, go here.

And head-to-head against Tricky, Shrub looks like he is right on schedule for.... what?



Graph source and explanation here.

Three more years?

This poor guy looks terrible. Even though the Mandarin believes Shrub ("El Arbusto" for all those demonstators in Mar del Plata) suffers mainly from self-inflicted wounds, ya gotta wonder how much fun he's having these days.

Original picture caption: U.S. President Bush pauses as he speaks to White House reporters on the sidelines of the fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Friday, Nov. 4, 2005. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Does Shrub just not get it, or what?

Newsweek reports:

"President Bush last week appointed nine campaign contributors, including three longtime fund-raisers, to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a 16-member panel of individuals from the private sector who advise the president on the quality and effectiveness of U.S. intelligence efforts. After watching the fate of Michael Brown as head of FEMA and Harriet Miers as Supreme Court nominee, you might think the president would be wary about the appearance of cronyism—especially with a critical national-security issue such as intelligence. Instead, Bush reappointed William DeWitt, an Ohio businessman who has raised more than $300,000 for the president’s campaigns, for a third two-year term on the panel. Originally appointed in 2001, just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, DeWitt, who was also a top fund-raiser for Bush’s 2004 Inaugural committee, was a partner with Bush in the Texas Rangers baseball team."

What is this Board, anyway? From the White House web site:

"The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) provides advice to the President concerning the quality and adequacy of intelligence collection, of analysis and estimates, of counterintelligence, and of other intelligence activities. The PFIAB, through its Intelligence Oversight Board, also advises the President on the legality of foreign intelligence activities. The PFIAB currently has 16 members selected from among distinguished citizens outside the government who are qualified on the basis of achievement, experience, independence, and integrity."

Do you understand it now? Well, the Mandarin is still missing something.

Déjà vu all over again as another of the "finest civil servants" bites the dust

Vice President Cheney's Statement on Libby Resignation - October 28, 2005

Mr. Libby has informed me that he is resigning to fight the charges brought against him. I have accepted his decision with deep regret.

Scooter Libby is one of the most capable and talented individuals I have ever known. He has given many years of his life to public service and has served our nation tirelessly and with great distinction.

In our system of government an accused person is presumed innocent until a contrary finding is made by a jury after an opportunity to answer the charges and a full airing of the facts. Mr. Libby is entitled to that opportunity.

President Bush's Statement on Libby Resignation - October 28, 2005

Today I accepted the resignation of Scooter Libby. Scooter has worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people and sacrificed much in the service to this country. He served the Vice President and me through extraordinary times in our nation's history.

Special Counsel Fitzgerald's investigation and ongoing legal proceedings are serious, and now the proceedings -- the process moves into a new phase. In our system, each individual is presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial.

President Nixon's Statement on Haldeman and Erlichman Resignation - June 20, 1973

Today, in one of the most difficult decisions of my presidency, I accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates in the White House -- Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman -- two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know.

I want to stress that in accepting these resignations, I mean to leave no implication whatever of personal wrongdoing on their part, and I leave no implication tonight of implication on the part of others who have been charged in this matter. But in matters as sensitive as guarding the integrity of our democratic process, it is essential not only that rigorous legal and ethical standards be observed but also that the public, you, have total confidence that they are both being observed and enforced by those in authority and particularly by the president of the United States. They agreed with me that this move was necessary in order to restore that confidence

"Intelligent" design?

Texas Pastor Electrocuted During Baptism

WACO, Texas (AP)- A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning after grabbing a microphone while partially submerged, a church employee said.

The Rev. Kyle Lake, 33, was standing in water up to his shoulder in a baptismal at University Baptist Church when he was electrocuted, said Jamie Dudley, a church business administrator and wife of another pastor there.

Doctors in the congregation performed chest compressions, she said. Lake was taken by ambulance to Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, where nursing supervisor Pat Mahl said he was pronounced dead.

The woman Lake was baptizing was not injured, Dudley said.

Pastors at University Baptist Church routinely use a microphone during baptisms, Dudley said.

"He was grabbing the microphone so everyone could hear," Dudley said. "It's the only way you can be loud enough."

About 800 people attended the morning service, which was larger than normal because it was homecoming weekend at nearby Baylor University, Dudley said.

Lake, who had a wife and three children, had been at the church for nine years, the last seven as pastor, Dudley said.

[The Mandarin points out that no Republicans were knowingly made fun of in this post.]

Original photo caption: University Baptist Church pastors lead worship, (left to right), Kyle Lake, senior pastor; Ben Dudley, community pastor, and David Crowder, music and arts pastor. (Photo by Duane A. Laverty/Waco Tribune-Herald)

Still photo from Rocky VII?

Nothing the Mandarin could write would do this photo justice, as Patrick Fitzgerald shuffles his Iraqi Freedom-style 52-card deck of high-value targets and prepares the body blow to the Shrub inner circle. One can almost see the glove in the air, the spiral spray of sweat from the face, a millisecond after the punch lands.

Original photo caption: US President George W. Bush gestures as he addresses the Economic Club of Washingon, DC.(AFP/Jim Watson)

I think we could see a bit less of one of those letters ourselves

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - A Turkish court fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law banning characters not used in the Turkish alphabet, rights campaigners said Tuesday.

The Mandarin has never had anything against the letter Q. In fact, when the Mandarin's sons were young and we watched Sesame Street, the shows brought to us by the letter Q were among our very favorites.

How do you say “Geisha” in Chinese?

The Mandarin was at the movies recently and saw a short trailer for the upcoming film, “Memoirs of a Geisha.” In one scene, three geisha are talking in a luxurious teahouse, and the Mandarin turned to Ms. Mandarin and whispered, “What geisha? That’s Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh and Gong Li!?” After living most of the 1980s and 90s in China, more or less, the Mandarin family recognizes three A-list Chinese actresses dressed up in Japanese drag when we see them.

Courtesy of the IMBD, the Mandarin tallied the presumed cultural groupings (based on their names) among the cast members playing Japanese parts, and came up with this breakdown:

39% Chinese
32% Japanese
17% Non-Asian
4% Korean
8% Other Asian

It turned out that many of the Asian faces in the preview were unambiguously Chinese, with a few Koreans thrown in for variety. Kind of a jarring note. Japanese actors are a minority in their own movie! I know this isn’t news. After all, Chuck Norris has always been partial to having Filipinos play the Viet Cong. But, in this big budget tent-pole picture, seeing more than half the incomparable geisha of Kyoto’s Gion district and their patrons played by Chinese, gaijin 外人 (non-Asians), and a few other miscellaneous Asians, is really going to take some of the magic out of it for the Mandarin and anyone else who likes Japanese characters to look and sound Japanese. Good thing they didn’t film any of it at the Yasukuni shrine!

Whose brilliant casting idea was this? Soon Teck Oh (Korean), where are you? At least the Japanese-American actor Mako, who sometimes plays Chinese characters (like Po-han in "The Sand Pebbles") is playing a Japanese, although his Mandarin is pretty good....

Oh, by the way, the Mandarin has to admit that the question in the title was a trick: geisha 芸者 (literally “artist”) actually is Chinese (the original characters are 藝者). The Japanese borrowed thousands of Chinese words a more than a millennium ago, and their present-day Japanese pronunciation is actually a relic of the Chinese pronunciation of that era, ngiai-chya, which became gei-sha in Japanese, ngai-jeh in Cantonese and now yi-zhe in, what else…Mandarin.

Photo from http://michelleyeoh.info/Movie/Mg/Prom/mgprom2.jpg

First the 1928 Prayer Book, now this!?

The Mandarin was raised Episcopalian, but lapsed back in the 1970s, around the time they replaced the 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer with the "new liturgy," kind of a nice gender-free Methodist-style service to replace the majestic language of Thomas Cranmer's 1548 original. So the Mandarin hasn't been too close to the Church since then.

Imagine the Mandarin's surprise then, amid all the Religious Right hoo-hah about Harriet "You're doin' a great job" Miers being an acceptable pig-in-a-poke nominee because she's a dyed-in-the-wool Evangelical Christian, to read the caption from the photo to the left.

An Evangelical Episcopalian? The Mandarin's head is throbbing now. And Thomas Cranmer is spinning in his grave.

Original photo caption: Supreme Court Justice nominee Harriet Miers arrives for church services at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers looked close to home, or the office, in choosing the free legal cases to take on as a private lawyer. No sweeping constitutional matters for her, or even terribly contentious ones. 'She handled small matters,' said lawyer Jerry Clements, who has worked with Miers. 'Somebody needed a divorce, somebody needed an adoption.' (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Good old-fashioned scholarship

Juan Cole demonstrates here that some simple scholarship can expose a fake:

The Arabic text of the recently released letter alleged to be by Zawahiri (al-Qaeda's number two man) to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq raises questions for me as to its authenticity.

And the Mandarin means simple:

Adding to the salutation "the peace and blessings of God be upon him [Muhammad]" the phrase "and his family" would be an insult to Zarqawi and to the hardline Sunnis in Iraq.

If "our guys" faked it, are we really that ignorant of the differences between Sunnis and Shiites? Given what passes for knowledge of China and Tibet in our government circles these days, the Mandarin is not optimistic.

Shrub wants us to save gas by doing what?

Cutting down on unnecessary trips?

Is this trip really necessary? A press report yesterday said, "[Shrub]... on his eighth trip to the Gulf Coast since it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, was to meet the mayor for dinner in New Orleans on Monday."

Eighth!?

The Mandarin drives a middle-aged Saab that gets about 30mpg on the highway. That means the Mandarin could do eight round trips to NOLA and back for about $3,000. Shrub's personal 747, "Shrub Force One," will fly about thirty minutes on $3,000 - just for jet fuel, forget overhead for pilots, flight attendants, Secret Service pensions, souvenir logo playing cards and cufflinks for privileged fly-along guests, etc.

Even assuming that Shrub Force One gets a straight-in approach and doesn't have to circle waiting for a gate, what are we talking about, thirty grand a trip? Times eight: say $250,000 just for jet fuel?

Imagine each time Shrub pops down to NOLA and back, instead of flying Shrub Force One, he drove it in a convoy of 70 or 80 Hummer H2s? Same fuel cost.

What is the Mandarin missing?

One, two, three, many Brownies....

The Mandarin was tempted to say that in this picture, Shrub is pointing at the masthead of this blog and saying to Harriet, "This guy is so dumb, he named his blog after an orange!" But that would have been untrue.

He's really saying, "Way to go! You're number one! And, by the way, Hattie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Yes, Harriet Miers holds place of honor, the number one spot in a list of the top fifteen hacks appointed by Shrub to positions of responsibility in his administration, according to an excellent article in the New Republic entitled "Welcome to the Hackocracy."

An excerpt:

In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton warned that, in presenting nominations to the Senate, a president "would be both ashamed and afraid" to nominate cronies--or, as Hamilton called them, "obsequious instruments of his pleasure." Maybe politics was different back in the 1780s, but we have watched Bush appoint many obsequious instruments of his pleasure. It may be his legacy: George W. Bush--he took the shame and fear out of cronyism.

It reminds the Mandarin of a legendary comment by crooked Chicago alderman Fred Roti. Supposedly, someone asked him if it was true that he had put dozens of political hacks, personal cronies, and even many of his relatives on the city payroll. He answered, "Yes, I did. And every one of them is doing a terrific job." A heck of a job, in fact.


Original photo caption from White House web site: President George W. Bush tours a canyon with White House Staff Secretary Harriet Miers at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Friday, Aug. 9, 2002.

God? I can't quite hear ya. Are ya there? I did what you told me to do, but I things are gettin' bad, so need to know what to do now....

Original Photo Caption: U.S. President George W. Bush cups his ear as reporters in the distance shout to him as he leaves St. John's Episcopal Church in Washintgon, DC, in 2003. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details.(AFP/File/Paul J. Richards)

Cheney Channels Ralph Kramden

"One of these days, one of these days. Bang! Zoom! To the moon, Alice, to the moon! Do you want to go to the moon!? A trip to the moon, Alice! Would you like to go to the moon!?"

Original picture caption: US Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House said it was cooperating with a spy probe into a former US Marine who allegedly provided the Philippines with classified documents stolen from Vice President Dick Cheney's office(AFP/Getty Images/Joe Raedle)

Shrub Channels Travis Bickle

"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who do the f**k do you think you're talking to? Oh, yeah? OK. [pulls gun out of sleeve]

Original photo caption: President Bush fields a question during a news conference in the Rose Garden Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2005. White House photo by Paul Morse.

"Brownie Moment"

A right-wing, right-thinking blogger has coined a marvelous term: Brownie Moment. His definition:

A Brownie moment can be defined simply as the moment when a supporter of President Bush is smacked in the head by reality and loses any and all faith in the president from that moment forward. As you may have surmised the term comes from Bush’s recent comment regarding former FEMA head Michael Brown’s leadership in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

This was my Brownie moment. I understand that in the world of politics leaders often have to say things they don’t mean, or shake hands with dictators and scumbags, and do a lot of morally repugnant stuff. But when Bush said that I realized that after surveying the impotent, incompetent response of the federal government he truly, honestly believed that Brownie was doing a heck of a job. That sealed it for me. I’d been turning sour on Bush for a while, but I was still generally supportive of him. When I heard him make that remark, however, that was it. That was my Brownie moment.

I bring this up in light of the Miers nomination. There are a whole lot of head-scratching Republicans gazing at each other wondering what the hell just happened. Could Bush really have nominated this woman to the Supreme Court? Yes, my friends, he just did. I imagine there are a whole lot of conservatives out there today who have just had their very own Brownie moment.

This is not to say that having had a Brownie moment the lack of faith in Bush is irreversible. Far from it. If Bush were to straighten up, get his act together, and really make an effort at becoming the president he was in the first three years of his first term then I would in all likelihood get firmly behind him again. But in the wake of the deteriorating situation in Iraq, his political impotence at implementing his agenda, the profligate expansion of government under his watch, and his failure to veto a single bill during five years in office, the Brownie comment was just too much.

That was my Brownie moment. And there’s a whole country full of gobsmacked Republicans who just had theirs this morning.

The Mandarin says, "Join the club, boys and girls, join the club."

This one is worth a thousand words

Shrub isn't just being overtaken by events, he is being left behind. Katrina, Browniegate, DeLaygate, Fristgate (here the Mandarin believes it is all smoke, no fire), the hits keep coming. And especially Plamegate - key advisors of both Shrub and Big Dick are implicated, and this morning, on ABC's "This Week," George Stephanopoulos lobbed this little shell over the White House fence:

Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it’s a manageable one for the White House, especially if we don’t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments. But if he is able to show -- as a source close to this told me this week -- that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions....

As the Mandarin's mother likes to say, the thot plickens.

Original photo caption: US President George W. Bush delivers remarks on the anniversary of the 'No Child Left Behind Act' to teachers, parents, and students 05 January 2004. Bush's administration broke the law as it resorted to illegal 'covert propaganda' in trying to sell its key education initiative to the public, US congressional investigators have found. (AFP/File/Paul Richards)

Dear Captain Fishback

Capt. Ian Fishback, a young Army officer and West Point graduate who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, is risking (and probably sacrificing) his career in an attempt to clarify from the military chain of command (which stops, like "the buck," on Shrub's desk) whether the US military in Iraq is required to treat prisoners and detainees in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. His whistle-blowing recently became public, and the Army is now interrogating him! Andrew Sullivan has established a direct line of communication to Capt. Fishback for people who wish to offer their support to him in this time of great stress for both him and for our country. Here is the link to Andrew's site and the special e-mail address.

This is a lightly edited version of what one supporter wrote to him yesterday:

Dear Captain Fishback:

I was an ROTC officer, commissioned 2LT Field Artillery in 1970. I volunteered, but had been politicized against the war by the time I entered active duty. I was scared, but I decided it was a point of honor to do what I had sworn an oath to do and go where I was sent. I ended up as an instructor at a service school instead of being sent to Vietnam. The irony was that I became a Stability Operations instructor teaching lessons the Army ignores daily in Iraq 35 years later. My commanding officer told me that if I didn't stop talking against the war, and if I didn't take the anti-war decals off my car, I would be reduced to private and sent to prison at Leavenworth. I caved and kept my mouth shut. I eventually got out early and never looked back.

I can't tell you how much I admire your fidelity to the ideals of the officer corps and the Constitution. Remember 2 Tim 4:7-8.

Bonum certamen certavi, cursum consummavi, fidem servavi. Quod superest, reposita est mihi justitiæ corona, quam reddet mihi Dominus in illa die justus judex....

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day...."

I hope you do not have to wait that long for the honor you have earned.

At least Mrs. Shrub stayed long enough to get sweaty

The Mandarin made a little fun of Laura yesterday, but I have to give her a lot more credit than her husband. Photo op though it was, she stayed long enough to get sweaty and see people face to face in their distress. And the Mandarin suspects it was much less scripted and stage-managed than her husband's recent attempts to recapture the 9/11 "megaphone moment."

Laura vs. Hillary in 2008? Hmmm....

Original photo caption: First Lady Laura Bush hands out lunches at a Salvation Army hurricane relief distribution site Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2005, in Biloxi, Miss. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Murdley Gurdson to head FEMA?

Mike Brown is now blaming everyone but himself for FEMA's problems during Hurricane Katrina. While there is plenty of blame to go around, Brownie's protestations of innocence remind the Mandarin of the lovely children's book It Wasn't My Fault by Helen Lester.

When the Mandarin's two sons were little, this was one of their favorite bedtime books. It should be required reading for every senior political appointee in the Shrub Administration.

Lester's main character, Murdley Gurdson, is a kind of Brownie-esque hard luck kid. The book begins: "Things did not always go well for Murdley Gurdson. He couldn't control the toothpaste. He fell into wastebaskets. And he dropped only valuable vases. Whatever happened, it was usually his fault." Whenever something bad happens to Murdley, like a bird laying an egg on his head, Murdley always manages to trace a wildly improbable sequence of events that leads right back to something, however innocent it seemed at the time, that Murdley himself had done.

Murdley, you're doin' a heck of a job.

I was thinking of something a little more extreme...

Mrs. Shrub has arranged a photo op on a reality TV show to be taped in the Katrina-ravaged coastal area of Mississippi: Laura Bush will travel to storm-damaged Biloxi, Miss., to film a spot on the feel-good, wish-granting hit "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." Mrs. Bush sought to be on the program because she shares the "same principles" that the producers hold, her press secretary said.

In its standard format, the popular ABC series finds hard-pressed but deserving families, sends them away for short vacations and then, in a whirlwind of carpentry and appliance-shopping, gives them new homes. This time, though, the show will broadcast from an underserved shelter near Biloxi, where a convoy of trucks stocked with everything from mattresses to pants will arrive, courtesy of Sears, one of the show's sponsors.

It's not clear exactly what Mrs. Bush will do, but Tom Forman, executive producer and creator, said he is hoping that she'll just pitch in and help unload.

What principles does she share with the producers, the Mandarin wonders? The Mandarin also wonders if the usual format of building them new houses would somehow be more appropriate. But when they are eventually moved instead into a FEMA trailer ghetto somewhere, at least they'll have new jeans and mattresses.

Storms Prove It: The Bush Dynasty has Lost the Mandate of Heaven

Trust the Mandarin on this one - he is on the firm ground of his scholarly specialty: Heaven has withdrawn its mandate from the Bush Dynasty and another dynasty must rise to take its place.

In the classic Chinese worldview, well established for three thousand years, the legitimacy of rulers derives from the Mandate of Heaven, or 天命 (tian ming - literally "Heaven’s Decree"). Within limits, ruling families were free to govern as they chose. If they governed benevolently and wisely, their dynasties could last for centuries. If they governed badly and offended Heaven by their mistreatment of the people under their care, eventually Heaven would withdraw its Mandate, the dynasty would fall, and another family would found a new dynasty.

How did the average Chinese peasant in the street know that Heaven’s mandate had been withdrawn? Heaven would send natural disasters such as rainstorms, floods, typhoons, fires, or earthquakes.

In this way, the Chinese people knew in 1976 that the 27-year revolutionary Mao Zedong Dynasty was ending when a massive earthquake leveled the city of Tangshan and killed or injured literally millions of people. Mao soon died, and after a brief interregnum under Hua Guofeng, the pragmatic Deng Xiaoping Dynasty received the Mandate of Heaven in 1978. The first Emperor Deng's successors are still ruling China today.

Now, Hurricane Rita is intensifying and heading for the Bush heartland - Texas. The current Emperor Bush's detached palace at Crawford is the red dot on the map shown above. The memorial temple and library of the first Emperor Bush at College Station is also in the storm’s direct path. Hurricanes are fickle, so Rita may weaken or change her course before landfall and in the end may not uproot the Bush trees or flood the Bush bike paths or ruin the Emperor's regalia: the pickup truck and the chainsaw. But, by aiming this storm, for now a potentially catastrophic Category Five hurricane, directly at the current Emperor Bush's home, Heaven is sending the Bush clan a clear sign of its displeasure -- in case the Emperor's Grand Councilors Rove and Cheney missed the message of Katrina.

The Bush Dynasty is finished. They have governed badly, brought misery to their subjects, and lost the Mandate of Heaven. On whom will Heaven next bestow its mandate? Heaven only knows.

[Source of map: http://hurricane.terrapin.com/ATL-18A/ctrack.html as of 5:00am 9/21/2005 - red dot added]

Happy belated birthday, Katrina, wherever you are....

The Mandarin's birthday is September 11, and he occasionally regrets that date has become so infamous, a verbal icon of so many bad memories for our nation. Yesterday, the Mandarin read Senator Kerry's indictment of the Shrub regime in his speech at Brown University, labeling it the "Katrina Administration." There is overwhelming merit to his argument that the shamefully bungled Federal response to Katrina by Georgie, Brownie, FEMA, et. al., is an emblem of a much more pervasive incompetence in the Executive Branch. Anyway, reading that, and pondering the name Katrina becoming another verbal icon like "9/11," it occurred to the Mandarin that women and girls named Katrina might be feeling the way the Mandarin does about his infamous birthday. They aren't just Katrina any more, they share the name of a national tragedy and a national disgrace at the same time. And, among those women and girls, somewhere, is a Katrina born on September 11th. So, to that Katrina, the Mandarin says: "Happy belated birthday, Katrina, wherever you are...."

I think a "Clintonian response" to Hurricane Katrina would have been very different

But we are all entitled to our own opinions. Here is an ingenious use of "Clintonian" from the distinguished conservative rag American Spectator:

Publicly, the White House will tell you that it intends to push ahead with two of its big legislative issues throughout the fall: making permanent the first term tax cuts and Social Security reform.

Even privately, with the political and policy debacle that the White House created with its Clintonian response to Hurricane Katrina, policy and political types at 1600 Pennsylvania insist what's left of an agenda is still viable.

But at this stage of the game, barring some imaginative political moves that bear some resemblance to the Bush Administration circa 2002, Republicans on Capitol Hill and even some longtime Bush team members in various Cabinet level departments say this Administration is done for.

"You run down the list of things we thought we could accomplish and you have to wonder what we thought we were thinking," says a Bush Administration member who joined on in 2001. "You get the impression that we're more than listless. We're sunk."

There's more, worth a read for a taste of creeping Republican despair.

"Let your light so shine before men....

that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father, which is in Heaven." (Matthew 5:16)

Well, for an hour or so anyway. NBC's Brian Williams reports the following about Shrub's stand-up in Jackson Square last night:

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

Like, maybe the conclusion that someone could just switch the power back on if they really wanted to?