Yes, I know it is really Hurricane Katrina but this hurricane illustrates exactly the price we are paying for having the bush administration in charge. Right now we have 3 major, and who knows how many minor, catastrophic and potentially catastrophic events happening in this country. The first is fuel prices. I heard one of MSNBC’s resident conservative talking bimbos make the snide comment the other day that this actually disproves the claims of ant-bush and anti-war protestors because, so she claims, “they” are all saying bush invaded Iraq for oil. In her well-programmed mind the increase in fuel costs in this country proves that bush in fact didn’t do that because if he had our gas prices would still be low.

That position, of course, is utter bullshit for a few reasons. Iraq is in turmoil so even if bush invaded to get the oil and keep gas prices low it couldn’t have happened yet anyway because those pesky “insurgents” keep blowing up the pipelines and cutting production. Also it ignores the reality that if bush did invade Iraq for the oil he didn’t do it so she could fill up her Hummer on cheap petrol. He would have done it to make his friends in oil bidness huge profits, regardless of what it did to the price at the pump. You get one guess as to oil company profits these days.

The high price of oil is going to exact a huge economic toll, one that thanks to bush and his tax cuts to his rich friends (a pattern is developing here folks) will manage to be something our economy cannot absorb easily, if at all. Without those tax cuts and the incredibly high expenditures for a war of adventure for the bushies, the increase in oil costs would still have an affect but it would be one we could absorb.

Same thing for crisis number two, the machinists strike at Northwest. But it’s just one airline, you say. Ah, but it is a major airline being hit with a strike it could likely have weathered except for the massive increase in fuel costs (see above) coupled with the reduced travel and heavy competition from other airlines desperately trying to get themselves out of bankruptcy or keep from going into it, by offering fares as low as they can while also trying to afford fuel to keep the planes in the air. Look for United and Delta to start crumbling around their foundations very soon.

And then there is Hurricane Katrina, a potentially (as I write this) devastating blow not only to major cities and wide areas of the Gulf Coast but also to, you guessed it, the oil bidness and their vast array of drilling platforms dotting the very Gulf that Katrina is currently churning to a froth. I fear what I will wake up to discover tomorrow morning. If Katrina really is the killer blow to New Orleans it could be the equivalent of a nuke on a major city, destroying nearly the entire infrastructure, collapsing or breaching levees that protect the city and flooding vast areas that are currently below sea level, driving over a million people from their homes to which there is no guarantee they can return, killing thousands and injuring thousands more.

The relief effort for New Orleans alone could be impossible to mount in time, especially with bush having committed National Guard resources to Iraq that would be gearing up right now to take care of evacuation and rescue. The needs of communities all along the Gulf coast east of New Orleans may be impossible to meet. The personal devastation will be incalculable but the economic destruction will not. Again, this would be something that with a healthy economy, no huge tax cuts and no ridiculous invasion/occupation force to support, we could weather as a nation. But all these events together, plus who knows how many other lesser impacts we don’t see on the nightly news, could amount to a “perfect storm” that further weakens us and leaves us vulnerable economically, militarily and politically.

Remember, it was not a military victory (or Ronald Reagan) that brought the fall of the other world Superpower, it was their own imminent economic collapse.

And it could happen here next.