It’s hard not to be thinking about Katrina, the flooding, and the breach of the neglected levees, with the Republicans doing their lying jiving schtick in Minnesota this week and the Louisiana gulf coast being evacuated ahead of flooding rains. It’s not easy to forget the outpouring of support and help, the way people across the country opened their homes to refugees, some of my neighbors among them, and others traveled to the region to help clean up and begin to rebuild, some of my students among them. It’s also not easy to forget the ensuing messes such as the toxic FEMA trailers and the embezzlement of funds from the Red Cross.

Not that we should be forgetting this stuff. We absolutely should not, and further, we should apply these lessons to the future. This was not an anomaly. This is the way Republicans run things in the new world order. This is the kind of thing John McCain will do, because this is what John McCain did do. Don’t be fooled by the appearance of a person with a uterus — but not one who believes in exercising her legally protected right to make her own choices about what to do with it — on the ticket or a former Democrat — but not one who is willing to take the career-ending step of becoming an actual Republican — at the convention. What we saw three years ago was the real deal, and to all of us who said on the morning of November 8th, 2000 — right after ‘dude, wtf happened while I was asleep?!’ — oh, how bad can it actually be, I want to say: a whole lot worse than it is already.

This wasn’t meant to be a political post per se. It was just to say, lest we forget: you can’t polish a turd. I know that, the Legendary K.O. knows that, and I hope that you all know that, too.