To Those Who Voted for Bush: Do You Get It Now?

Here's something I don't understand. The Golden Goose was about to lay another 9/11-type Golden Egg for Bush&Co. to pick up. And they didn't.

Surely, Karl Rove, who had seen Bush's approval ratings drop to all-time lows, knew days ahead that a Category 5 Hurricane was bearing down on New Orleans and a calamitous disaster was likely to unfold there if and when the levees were unable to hold back the water. What better way to improve those ratings than for Bush to be photographed the day after the disaster struck, standing on top of debris, bullhorn in hand, vowing that the government would help Gulf Coast states rebuild from the Katrina catastrophe?

But none of that happened. They bungled their own political resurrection! Nearly a full week went by, while thousands were dying and starving or were kenneled in unbelievable filth in New Orleans. Nobody seemed to be in charge. Bush remained "on vacation" in Crawford, and traveled around to fundraisers, played golf, etc.; Condi was theatergoing and buying thousand-dollar shoes on Fifth Avenue. What was going on? Did Karl Rove not understand the significance of what was happening? Was Bush...uh..."incapacitated"? What about Cheney, "on vacation" in Wyoming; was he "incapacitated," too? Are the Bush people really that politically obtuse?

So here's the question I have for those of you who voted for Bush in 2004: Do you get it now?

For the past four years, progressives and moderate-conservatives have been pointing out how incompetent this Administration is. Many Bush Republicans accused us of making up such accusations for purely political reasons. Now you yourself can see what we have seen: These guys are way over their heads and haven't got a clue; they're constantly having to come back at a problem in hopes of getting it right the second or third time around. Of course, that means they're always playing catch-up, which means they're always too late. (Such as this Alice-in-Wonderland comment by Bush a week after he went AWOL -- again -- when his country needed him: "In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need.")

Those at the royal Bush court lead such isolated, circumscribed lives that when a disaster strikes, they are so far removed from the circumstances in which regular people find themselves that they simply don't understand the magnitude of what's happening out there in the real-world. You may remember that Bush's first response to the Asian tsunami was silence, and then a grudging piddling amount of aid offered; it took the international community shaming him for his unfeeling miserliness before his handlers began to change Bush's tune and he finally pledged genuine aid commensurate with the enormity of the catastrophe.

Our earlier assessment of the Administration as bumblers was made mainly on the disaster that Bush&Co. made, and are still making, in the Persian Gulf. But now the whole world gets to see, up close and personal, the thorough botch they made, and are still making, in the other Gulf, in New Orleans and environs.

In Iraq, they launched a war based on lies and deceptions, and had no plan for what should happen after the major military fighting ceased.

They turned away Iraqis from participating in the reconstruction of their own society, preferring to award the multi-billion-dollar contracts to huge American firms like Halliburton and Bechtel. They disbanded the Iraqi army, leaving hundreds of thousands of young Iraqi men unemployed and angry. They insultingly refused aid and advice from the United Nations and their former allies, wanting nobody to interfere with their Occupation. They didn't have enough troops, and the correct troops, in place to police the "post-war" phase. They didn't guard the abandoned ammo dumps, and then were surprised when those munitions were used to blow up U.S. soldiers.

They finally, a year or two late, realized that the U.S. was engaged in a guerrilla-style war against nationalist insurgents, along with some foreign jihadists, and started to change their military strategy. But it was too late, and insufficient, to make much of a dent. Now the U.S. is involved in a stalemated, Vietnam-like quagmire, and steady streams of flag-draped caskets make their way back to the U.S., and thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians continue dying as well.

And still Bush cannot bring himself to answer Cindy Sheehan's simple question: "For what noble cause did my son have to die?"

Now in 2005, a natural disaster occurred that everyone predicted -- including the government's own emergency-response specialists. Specifically, Homeland Security Department chief Michael Chertoff and FEMA's head Michael Brown were briefed on the consequences of the levees breaking days before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. But the Administration's response was non-existent. Or completely beyond belief: Bush actually told Diane Sawyer "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." Read your experts' frickin reports, man!

FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- which Bush turned into a stripped-down, underfunded subgroup buried in the Homeland Security Department, focusing on anti-terrorism measures rather than on emergency-management -- is led by an bumbling political appointee, Brown, someone with no experience in this field, and it showed; for example, neither he nor Chertoff were aware there were thousands of refugees in the city's Convention Center until Day 5. We ordinary citizens, paying attention to the news reports, knew that three days before they did.

Brown was a buddy of one of Bush's Texas pals, with a history in show-horses. That's the man in charge of FEMA. And, believe it or not, Bush the other day thanked him publicly for doing such a "heck of a job." Oh, by the way, guess which company has been awarded the contract for reconstructing New Orleans? Yep, Cheney's Halliburton.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin hit the nail on the head about Bush's belated promise to send 40,000 troops into his city. "Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something."

Tens of thousands of New Orleans residents -- those mostly too poor to have been able to evacuate the city -- were herded into mass structures like the Superdome and Convention Center, locked inside, and then no government agency provided food, water, medicine, sanitation care, removal of the dead, etc. Those who wanted to leave those horrific shelters and cross over a bridge to dry land were prohibited by armed troops from doing so.

Many of those residents complained that the thousands of citizens there were treated worse than dogs in a kennel. It was a circle out of Dante's Inferno. Indeed, so atrociously were the victims treated in those facilities that even right-wing Fox News reporters Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera were appalled on the air, just trying to get viewers to understand the enormity of the hell-on-earth scenes they were witnessing. Rivera was crying and screaming to "let these people walk out of here...just let them leave." (You've got to see this powerful video of Shepard and Rivera live on air -- reality-TV at its best.)

The fact that the great majority of those seeking refuge and rescue were African-American, and that no help came in the first five or six days, spoke volumes about the "compassionate conservatism" supposedly animating Bush's administration. Try to imagine how fast the federal government would have mobilized to reach an upper-class compound filled with thousands of well-do-do white people, with access and influence. You get the picture.

1. Bush flew into New Orleans to have his picture taken for public-relations purposes. At one location, he spoke at a "food-distribution" point, which disappeared shortly after the photo-op. It was a set! Various other photo ops likewise were organized that were equally as unreal. For more, see "The Potemkin Photo Op".

2. No doubt you've seen the way two virtually identical photos of hurricane survivors were captioned in local newspapers. In one, a white man, up to his chest in water, with some groceries in his hands: "...found food at a local market." In another, same scenario, but a young black man: "...looted food from a supermarket." Both were trying to survive and bring some form of sustenance back to their children and families. One "found" food, the other "looted" food.

Interestingly, when after Baghdad fell, we saw the video pictures of Iraqis looting stores and museums and such, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said: "Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things". . . Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. "Stuff happens."

Now the governor of Louisiana is talking about "shoot-to-kill" orders against those who, facing starvation from a non-caring government, are taking food from abandoned, flooded-out grocery stores. And right-wing, let-them-eat-cake pundits blame the mostly black, poverty-stricken residents for "choosing" not to evacuate New Orleans, as if these cashless folks should just have jumped in their non-existent cars or boats and headed out of town. Of course, FEMA or the military could have supplied the buses and trucks and trains to take out the trapped, but apparently there were no such contingency plans and/or nobody with any brains was in charge to get the mass evacuation organized.

But let's move on from America's perennial, always-just-below-the-surface racism and hits-on-the-poor. The point here is that George W. Bush has a reverse Midas touch. Whatever he involves himself in as a leader winds up in FUBAR land. (If you don't know what those letters stand for, ask someone in the military: ---- Up Beyond All Recognition.)

It happened with his botched oil-company ventures at Arbusto and Harken Energy in Texas; it happened, and is happening in Iraq; and now it's happening with regard to the Katrina disaster in Louisiana.

Except this time there's no wealthy family friend, or Saudi prince, or British prime minister, to bail Bush out of his difficulties. He's out there all by his lonesome, exposed for all the world to see as the emperor with no clothes, a figurehead leader with no emotional or intellectual wherewithal to deal efficiently and correctly with anything beyond the most simple scenarios. Introduce complexity into the equation, and he's a deer in the highlights of reality.

So...what to do? While Rove&Co. ratchet up the ol' spin machine -- and try to find others to blame for their own gross delays and mistakes -- Bush's normal allies are abandoning him, right and left and right. Business Week, Washington Times, newspapers around the country, conservative pundits David Brooks and Newt Gingrich, retired military officers, and so on -- they all can't believe the idiocy and deadly cluelessness of their GOP hero.

They all realize that this incompetent, way-over-his-head guy has three more years on his contract, and he's likely to take down the economy, political structure, and everything else with him as his administration self-destructs in an unholy mess. In short, the Bush Administration is not good for business, which CEOs and others are finally starting to realize.

Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice and Chertoff and the others simply have got to go, along with the other fools and criminals down there in his bunker. Bush and Cheney either must be encouraged by GOP powerbrokers to resign, or they must be impeached.

They each took a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution and all American citizens. They have shredded the Constitution -- in the name of "anti-terrorism," they have denuded the Bill of Rights -- and they have clearly demonstrated that they are incapable of protecting the citizenry, either in Iraq or here at home. Clear dereliction of duty.

Indeed, they have, for their own partisan purposes, revealed the identity of a covert CIA agent -- a crime that according to President George H. W. Bush is "traitorous"; indictments are expected shortly against key Bush Administration officials involved in this case. In addition, the Administration has "disappeared" American citizens into the military gulag, away from contact with lawyers or their families. This is the behavior of dictators; when it happens in African or Latin American countries, we are outraged. Folks, it's happening right here.

You and I, no matter for whom we voted in 2004, need to stop these incompetent fools from doing even more damage, and get this country back on its moral track, run by leaders who have something else on their minds other than power-hunger and take-the-money-and-run.

Bush and Cheney should resign voluntarily right now, in the best interests of the country. If they don't choose to go, it's long past time for impeachment hearings to begin and for local prosecutors and grand juries (perhaps in New Orleans parishes) to start their own investigations and indictments, and not depend solely on Congress for accountability-reckoning. That's the message that needs to go out from all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to our legislators.

I can't express it any better than Aaron Broussard, the president of New Orleans' Jefferson Parish. Here is what he had to say on Meet the Press.

"We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast. But the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history. ? Whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chainsawed off and we've got to start with some new leadership. It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now."

Perhaps it is just that the good Dr. Whiner has a faulty fact checker? Oops! make that "Dr. Weiner has a bad fact checker."

On that assumption here is the email I addressed to him moments before:

Dr. Weiner,

Having read your article, I was unable to answer the following questions and therefore find myself having to address them to you.

1. Were you aware of the calls from Washington to both the Mayor of New Orleans AND the Governor of Louisiana placed well before the storm, and that these calls emphatically requested immediate evacuations be started according to the existing evacuation plans?

2. Were you aware that, in clear disobedience to the Louisiana evacuation plan calling for the use of school buses, the only school bus to escape being flooded with four feet of water was the one that was commandeered by a student and used to drive some 70 people to Houston?

3. Were you aware of the Governor's stubborn refusal to authorize federal help/imposition of martial law?

4. If you were not aware of the above issues, when might one expect a correction to be published, and where might it be published?

I am asking about these issues because I plan to make this article a recommended reading for my students and am trying to arrange,in advance, for answers to the questions which I am sure they will raise.

Sincerely,

Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to when the answer will arrive?

"The day after the 12th of Never" has already been suggested.

OK FOLKS, we need to put a stop to this and there is only one way...PRAYER! I don't care what anyone says, BUT we need to start a PRAYER CHAIN again! We need to cover our president in prayer 24hrs/7days a week. I'll start by taking the 5am slot starting tomorrow...WE DONE THIS BEFORE AND conquered mountains, it's time for it again! I'll take the 5am slot..any takers?

no help came in the first five or six days

on CNN Jack Cafferty was pulling the same crap. On Thurs he said it had been 5 days. Either these idiots can't count or they think we can't.

I guess now it's been 10 days. What the heck, let's round it off to a month!

All Nagin had to do was:

1) Listen up when the head of the National Weather Service called him Friday night at home and begged him to order a mandatory evacuation.

2) Follow his OWN evacuation plan.

3) Included in that plan were clear guidelines to use city, commercial and school buses to help the disabled and those without resources.

4) Make sure the designated shelters had adequate food/water.

That's all he had to do. I certainly do expect mayors of all cities to follow The Plan.

What I don't expect is for them to have to write the plan because I have a full understanding that most of them are too stupid to write a plan on how to take out the garbage.

What I don't expect is for mayors to ignore warnings, ignore their own plan, and ignore the poor.

Of course he is a liar. These people on the Left are now involved in the world's largest Progressive circle-jerk, hypering themselves into a barking frenzy and becoming increasingly divorced from reality in the process. Hell, many of these pseudo-intellectual types explicitly reject the entire concept of "reality". Heaping rumor upon hysterical charge upon cockamamie theory upon venomous contempt for the normal and the decent, they have created an Alternate Universe where a greedy, bloodthirsty BUSHCO conspires with HALLIBURTON and the RELIGIOUS RIGHT and the RIGHT-WING MEDIA and.... insanity will soon follow.

"The left is more interested in rebuilding the Democrat Party than they are in rebuilding NOLA and they will stoop to any level. It's beginning to feel like a game of limbo, "How low can you go?"

Never misunderestimate how low the Democratic Party or the lamestream media is willing to stoop. When a Democratic President is willing to lie under oath to a federal judge and federal grand jury and the party and the media are willing to defend him, no bar will ever be set too low.

When Kennedy crossed his bridge, and the party and the media defended him, no bar will be set too low.

When Hillary survived Whitewater, the Rose Law Firm Billing Records, Fort Marcey Park, Craig Livingstone and Filegate, Ron Brown's 'accidental death' and her health care fiasco, no bar will be set too low.

Democrats are living proof that you can fool some of the people all of the time.

"Who was running against George W. Bush in 2004? Has anyone done any sort of profile HOW the events would have played out if Bush were not in charge?

Never mind Kerry, try to picture what things might have been like if the networks had called the 2000 election for that halfwit fruitcake 30 minutes earlier than they did. The bar will never be set too low.

Democrats are living proof that you can fool some of the people all of the time.

I didn't say, or imply, anything about race. I was responding directly to the statement that those who 'do the job right' don't get any attention.

But if you want to do the 9-11/Katrina compare and contrast, the NYPD and NYFD had a 98% intact city from which to respond, with electricity and communications and all of the other basic amenities of modern life. In addition, they were able to actually move around the city.

Rudy would've had a far more significant task in NOLA last week than he had on 9/11.

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