And So It Begins...

as it always does, with a little seed. With care and nuturing it becomes a hearty plant. Or, in this age of conservative spin control, it becomes the truth. They're also tossing about the casual notion that Governor Kathleen Blanco should bear culpability for not federalizing the Louisiana Guard after the levee broke and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin for allowing a welfare culture to fester in his city making the poor too lazy to leave. But, as the President said, "No one knew the levee was gonna break." I mean, criticizing Kanye West for criticizing Our Holy Leader on national television can only get you so far before people remember what we were talking about before.

Meanwhile in Texas a woman who was wife of one President and mother of another says something that is so shocking you have to listen to it again in order to make sure you heard it right, lest you be lumped in with the nutcases, feminazis, communists, terrorist sympathizers, supporters of the welfare state, and general cowards. But I'm assuming that since you're reading this you already are lumped in that corner, the young Republicans at the Reagan Review excepted. And I'm holding out hope that you meet some people in college who show you can convert you to good old Marxism

I was inclined to give Barbara Bush the benefit of the doubt when I heard the sound bite, thinking that maybe she misspoke and was comparing the situation of the Katrina refugees to the squalor they found themselves in last week. I even went so far as to comment about it on Scott Smith's Chicagoist post this afternoon. Then I remembered who we were dealing with. She might as well have quoted Marie Antoinette: "Let them eat cake!"

I remembered that for all of Dubya's bluster about following in his father's footsteps, at least George Herbert Walker Bush knew to keep people like Cheney and Rumsfeld on a short leash. If anything he's his mother's son- a true momma's boy. Barbara Bush is a woman who Richard Nixon admired because she "knew how to hate." She nurses a grudge against her son like she does a vodka tonic- long after the ice has melted.

In his book Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair And Balanced Look At The Right Al Franken writes of a chance encounter with Mrs. Bush that goes horribly wrong after Franken points out some physical quirks of her son, then made a not-so-subtle reference for her son's defeat:

"A scowl flashed over her face. And, dismissing me with an imperious wave of her hand, she issued a stern 'Well, I'm through with you!'

"It was so over the top, I was convinced she was kidding.

"'Oh, c'mon, I'm a Democrat,' I said, in all good fun

'"'I gathered that. And I'm through with you!' Another wave of the hand."

Later at a bat mitzvah in Washington Franken relayed the story to a growing list of Beltway insiders:

"...(W)hat everyone who knew Barbara Bush thought was funniest- by far- was that I kept thinking that she had been kidding.

"I kept hearing things like: 'Oh, no, she's a horrible bitch.' 'Omigod, she's the worst bitch on earth. 'She can be very charming, but Barbara Bush is the Queen Bitch.'"

So knowing that, are we really surprised that she even said that now?