Gemini Blue

NEW YORK (CNN) — President Bush says that the installation of the new Iraqi government was a “watershed event,” but at the same time warns Americans of the challenges and loss as we continue to prosecute the war against Iraqi insurgents. Sen. Harry Reid declares that legislation that would render English the national language is racist.

Thirty-seven Democrats vote for full amnesty for all illegal aliens in this country, even though nobody really knows whether the number is 11 million, 12 million or 20 million. The Senate Republican leadership demands that a “comprehensive immigration reform” plan must be passed before this Memorial Day weekend. And the president signs into law a tax cut that raises taxes on the educational funds of teenagers saving for college.

Never before in our country’s history have both the president and Congress been so out of touch with most Americans. Never before have so few of our elected officials and corporate leaders been less willing to commit to the national interest. And never before has our nation’s largest constituent group — some 200 million middle-class Americans — been without representation in our nation’s capital.

George W. Bush’s approval ratings have slumped to the lowest of his presidency. The approval rating for Congress is even lower, and nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

But what is our government doing about that? The president is staying the course in Iraq and apparently demanding little of his generals to create a new, far more effective strategy for urgent success. Of course, he also wants a guest-worker program and amnesty of millions of illegal aliens. And Congress, faced with midterm elections in just over five months, is intent on giving the president what he wants and telling working men and women and their families, American citizens all, to go to hell.

Illegal aliens are more important to this Congress than securing our borders and our ports, more important than those legal immigrants who have waited in line and who follow the law. The Senate has added to the litany of lunacy that makes up what it calls reform: Illegal aliens would only have to pay back taxes on three of the past five years, they will not be prosecuted for felonies such as identity theft or purchasing or using fraudulent Social Security cards, and unlike millions of visa holders who have to leave the country to have them renewed, they may simply remain in the United States while this Congress and this president give away all the benefits and privileges of American citizenship.

This is an outright assault in the elitist war on the middle class. And working men and women who’ve already borne the pain of losing good-paying manufacturing jobs and having middle-class jobs outsourced to cheap foreign labor markets are faced with the onslaught of more illegal immigration and cheap labor into the American economy. This president and Congress talk about bringing illegal aliens out of the shadows while they turn out the lights on our middle class.

President Bush and his most trusted advisers tell us how well our economy is doing, how many jobs have been created and how so-called free trade will enrich the lives of the same people whose livelihoods these policies are destroying.

It’s hard not to think of the trusted adviser to Catherine the Great who sought to hide from her the embarrassing and shoddy condition of Ukrainian and Crimean villages by having elaborate facades built to divert her attention and to mask an uncomfortable reality. I don’t know whether Karl Rove is President Bush’s Grigori Potemkin or whether George Bush has created Potemkin villages all by himself. But the facades are cracking, and phony fronts of failed policies are quickly crumbling.

Six thousand unarmed National Guardsmen working as adjunct rear support to our undermanned, under-equipped Border Patrol is not border security. Three million illegal aliens continue to cross our borders and depress wages by hundreds of billions of dollars every year. The millions of manufacturing and middle-class jobs lost over the last five years have been replaced by lower-wage employment.

The president’s faith-based commitment to so-called free trade will likely lead to a $1 trillion U.S. current account deficit this year and a trade debt of $4.5 trillion after 30 years of trade deficits. And while the president and Congress point to No Child Left Behind as a solution to our educational crisis, we’re failing an entire generation of Americans whose test scores continue to fall and whose high school dropout rates would be embarrassing to a third-world country.

And a third-world country is what we will be if our elected officials don’t soon come to their senses.

Editor’s note: Lou Dobbs’ commentary appears every Wednesday on CNN.com.

A Question of Honour seems to be showing promise as a new blog. So go and check him out. Besides, his name is Danny as well!

A very important question (Not safe for work or prudes)

There was this guy sitting on a park bench muttering to himself and spitting. He would mutter, then spit, mutter, then spit, he would say, “Damn, that sonofabitch can drive”, then spit, “Damn, that sonofabitch can drive”, then spit, “Damn that sonofabitch can drive”… then spit.

 A man sits down next to him and asks him, “What’s going on here? You keep saying, “Damn that sonofabitch can drive, then you spit.”

“Well,” says the guy, “my friend just got a brand new sports car, so he calls me and asks me if I want to go for a ride. So, I say sure, why not? He picks me up and we drive up to the mountains. After we have lunch, we start back down the mountain and his brakes go out!! He’s pumping the pedal, and nothing!! So now we’re picking up speed and the road is all twisty and curvy. We’re going faster and faster, and it’s hard to stay on the road. I’ve got my fingers embedded in the dashboard, and I’m pleading with him to do something!! We’re going about 90 mph now, with a sheer cliff on our right, a 500 foot drop on the other side, an 18 wheeler truck right on our butts, and an overturned motor home right in front of us. Well, I figure this is it! I just knew we were gonna die! So I turned to him and said, “Buddy, if you can get us outta this, I’ll give you the best damn blow job you’ve ever had!”

He paused … then spit. “DAMN, THAT SON OF A BITCH CAN DRIVE!!!”

Things don’t get better as you get older do they? Still the same number of people looking to scheme, to screw someone over, to beat the odds.

Tired of playing the game, but not willing to concede defeat.

Sooner or later my ship will come in and I will be on the dock cheering louder than anyone. You just wait and see!

I’ve been busier than hell. Still am, actually. But here, have a laugh on me.

In a biology class, the professor was discussing the high glucose levels found in semen.

A young female (FRESHMAN) raised her hand and asked ‘If I understand, you’re saying there is a lot of glucose, as in sugar in male semen?’

‘That’s correct’, responded the professor, going on to add statistical info.

Raising her hand again, the girl asked, ‘Then why doesn’t it taste sweet?’

After a stunned silence, the whole class burst out laughing, the poor girl’s face turned bright red, and as she realized exactly what she had inadvertently said (or rather implied), she picked up her books without a word and walked out of class… and never returned.

However, as she was going out the door, the Professor’s reply was classic…Totally straight-faced he answered her question, ‘It doesn’t taste sweet because the taste-buds for sweetness are on the tip of your tongue and not the back of your throat.

I have a friend who evacuated from New Orleans; he and his family are safe. He mentioned something to me on the phone Monday that ended up being in someone’s script:

Louisana Senator Mary Landrieu faulted Bush for failing to recognize the severity of the situation when the levees broke, noting that public service announcements featuring the Mr. Bill clay animation character have been warning about such a scenario for two years.

“We know the president said ‘I don’t think anyone anticipated the break of the levee.’ Everybody anticipated the break of the levee, Mr. President,” she said. “How can it be that Mr. Bill was better informed than Mr. Bush?”

That’s simply because Mr. Bill is less of a puppet than Mr. Bush. Of course, all you lefties are going to latch on to this as gospel, and all you righties are going to claim it’s unfair to (1) bash a republican because democrats do that all the time and (2) Bush and his administration are in no way responsible for any of this; it had to be the fault of those who are in the state and city.

Get over yourselves. It was a massive break down from the bottom to the top. You all are culpable.

For one thing, after hearing the same story over and over and over it tends to bore the shit out of me.

I was reading the online version of the Virginian Pilot today, however, and came across something that those who are pointing fingers in the wake of Katrina need to pay attention to:

Perspective on Isabel arrives, two years later
By KERRY DOUGHERTY, The Virginian-Pilot
© September 8, 2005

Embarrassing, isn’t it?

All the kvetching we did a couple of years ago after Hurricane Isabel.

Woe was us.

Most of us didn’t have power. For about a week!

There were hardships, too: No hot showers. No cold beers. No air conditioning.

Trees were down. Houses hit. Streets flooded. But people weren’t stranded on their rooftops waiting for rescue.

Katrina puts it all in perspective.

If anything good can come out of this miserable storm, maybe the next few times authorities order evacuations, people may actually leave.

Then again, maybe not.

With time, even the chaos of Katrina will fade away. And we’ll be back to the fiction that government can take care of everything.

Nothing could be further from fact.

Hurricane Katrina wasn’t just the perfect storm. It was the perfect storm, accompanied by a harmonic convergence of governmental ineptitude.

At every level.

Let’s start with the city of New Orleans, shall we?

It’s unfathomable that officials in a city with the topography of a salad bowl – and more than 77,000 households without cars – would make virtually no effort to drive people out of town as a Category 5 storm was buzz-sawing up the gulf.

Instead, the city invited those who couldn’t flee to walk to the Superdome. Apparently they were supposed to bring their own provisions.

Do you suppose any of these municipal Mensa members ever walked a mile lugging a gallon of water? Do you think they’d ever done it while carrying babies and hanging onto toddlers and dragging all their worldly possessions with them?

That decision was beyond stupid. It was deadly.

It’s inexplicable now that we’ve seen aerial shots of hundreds of swamped New Orleans buses neatly parked in rows.

NBC estimates that those school and city buses could have shuttled 13,000 to safety before the storm struck.

Somebody someday is going to have to explain why that didn’t happen.

Things were no better at the state level.

No one seems to know why the governor of Louisiana didn’t activate the National Guard days before the hurricane hit. Maybe she hoped some kind of voodoo magic might keep her state safe.

Then there is the embarrassing Federal Emergency Management Agency. Headed – surely not for long – by Michael Brown.

As the storm chewed up the Gulf Coast, “Brownie” was a busy man. You couldn’t turn on the television news without seeing FEMA’s chief giving reassuring interviews.

By nightfall Brown looked appropriately concerned and bedraggled.

All that nose powdering. Those studio lights. It can wear a man down.

The hero of the hurricane? Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore. Every time you see his beret with those three gold stars, you know there is at least one person with a brain – and a heart and common sense – in charge in New Orleans.

Maybe he’ll run for vice president in 2008. On a “Take Charge” ticket with Rudy Giuliani.

Not likely, though.

So there are only a couple things we can do: Give generously to charities helping hurricane victims. Prepare thoroughly for our next storm.

And if authorities say it’s time to leave, get to high ground and take someone who doesn’t have a car with you.

Even if you aren’t in line for a direct hit. Let’s not forget that this hurricane ravaged Mississippi and parts of Alabama as well as New Orleans.

Come to think of it, those were Mississippi linemen who got the power back to my neighborhood after that squall called Isabel.

Oh, how we complained. Oh, how lucky we were.

Reach Kerry at (757) 446-2306 or kerry.dougherty@cox.net.

Hurricane report from Foamy the squirrel. (Language warning)