She Coulda Been A Contendah

Pugilistic buffoon Senator Mary "Rocky" Landrieu is still standing by her threat to punch President Bush:

Senator Mary Landrieu refused on Friday to withdraw or apologize for her threat to punch President Bush if he criticized Louisiana officials - despite Bush's magnanimous speech Thursday night and a federal downpayment of more than $60 billion dollars to rebuild her state.

"I do not take it back, I don't apologize for it. I said I would punch anybody, including the President," she told the Chicago Tribune.

"Though threatening the President is a crime," the Tribune noted - "the Secret Service took it as a joke and the White House brushed off her remarks."

No, the Secret Service took Senator Landrieu as a joke. And I guess I can't totally blame them at this point, given that in the same statement she also stood by her idiotic insistence that the bumbling, incompetent, criminally negligent state and local officials in Louisiana who were by far primarily responsible for the greater-than-necessary loss of life were "heroes."

In this sense the Bayou Beeyatch is emblematic of her party as a whole:

Governor Blanco (whose indecision that first weekend was...responsible for delays in federal action) now describes President Bush as "a friend and partner." Mayor Nagin, riding side-by-side with the President on two truck tours of New Orleans, has made similar positive comments. Jesse Jackson and his friends, who enjoyed 48 hours of race-mongering last week, have fallen silent.

That leaves Democratic Party operatives with a diminishing issue. A week ago, they sensed they had Bush and the Republicans on the ropes in the 2006 Congressional elections. On Capitol Hill, where Democrats of the 109th Congress have once again failed to put forward a single policy idea (and "no" is not a policy idea), there was much harrumphing about the Administration's manifest and manifold failures with regard to Hurricane Katrina. Senator Hillary Clinton had high visibility on what her colleagues sensed was a sure-fire political issue. Then came this week's CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Fifty-eight percent of Americans approve of the way Bush has been handling the aftermath of Katrina....

Pfft goes the issue for the Democrats, who have once again "misunderestimated" their foe.

Do you realize that Senator Landrieu has so debased herself with her idiocy of the past fortnight that she practically has to take a swing at Dubya in order to regain credibility?

I guess, in the meantime, I'll have to content myself with the observation that the senior senator from Louisiana values African-American votes more than she does African-American lives. It isn't the jail cell she deserves, but given who and what she is, that fate may yet be a matter of time.