Bend the rules so secretly

A couple of days after Hurricane Katrina mercilessly barged through New Orleans, as the consequences of FEMA's catastrophically inept response were becoming critically apparent to a stunned nation, George Bush scouted the destruction through a foot-long window in Air Force One.

Legend has it that, much like George Bush's 20,000 foot tour of post-Katrina New Orleans, Nero fiddled as Rome burned. Like many legends, the Nero story appears to be more myth than history. For instance, the burning of Rome predated the invention of the fiddle by at least a millennium. Instead, Tacitus said that, unlike his modern counterparts George Bush and Michael Brown, Nero actually rushed back to Rome upon learning of the fires, organized a relief effort, paid the costs out of his own pocket, sheltered and fed the homeless, and redeveloped the area in a safer manner.

But the Nero-Bush comparison is largely unfair. Neither legend nor history will be as kind to George W. Bush.

Bush is not content to simply stand by and watch the catastophic blaze of his failed presidency engulf what he viewed as his personal empire. The idea, encouraged by the imagery from Katrina and Bush's verbal gaffery, that Bush is either aloof or simply a fool or an amiable dunce give Bush much too much credit. These concepts - that Bush is a victim or circumstance or incompetent - seek to absolve him of the criminal state of mind necessary for the level of corruption and systematic abandonment of legal and ethical standards that have characterized the Bush Administration.

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

The common narrative is that George Bush is now standing outside of Rome, fiddle or harp in hand; or is the benched quarterback, content to earn his paycheck while looking on to see if the rookie can bring the team back from an eight touchdown deficit - in the fourth quarter.

George Bush, however, is not a passive observer to the destruction, he's an active participant. He seeks no absolution. He doesn't fiddle; he clears brush. And the environment is just more brush, to be cleared away while he still can.

So in the waning hours of our national nightmare, among the final acts of the Bush presidency will be the elimination of water regulations for the toxin percholorate, a chemical found in jet fuel that, among other things, can pass to infants through breast milk and retard neurological development; opening up of public lands for dirty oil shale development; allowing power plants to operate next to national parks; eliminating the scrubbing requirements that clean emissions from coal-fired power plants; and compounding the damage from mountain-top removal mining operations by permitting dumping into streams and rivers.

And then there's this new report from the Government Accounting Office exposing much of the fraud and waste from the Bush Administration that President-elect Obama will have to contend with upon taking office.

And when President Bush has contented himself with the fiddle, the consequences have been equally dreadful, because all of this happens to be going on at the same time that, following years of neglect and denial, the consequences of global climate change appear to be accelerating faster than even the most pessimistic models predicted, from rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers to Arctic ice retreating 100 years ahead of predictions.

To paraphrase from another fiddler (on the roof):

Rabbi, is there a proper blessing for George W. Bush?

A blessing for George Bush? Of course! May God bless and keep George Bush ... far away from us!