Get Off His Back

1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.

2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.

3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.

4.) There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people. If global warming is a real phenomenon, which it may well be, it started long before George Bush was inaugurated, and would not have been affected at all by the Kyoto treaty, considering that Kyoto does not cover the world's worst polluters -- China, India, and Brazil. In a word, George Bush had zero to do with causing this hurricane. To speculate otherwise is belief in sorcery.

6.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.

7.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.

8.) George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue.

9.) George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive. That they get in at all considering the lawlessness of the city is a miracle of bravery and organization.

10.) There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency. To say otherwise is pure slander.

11.) If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God worsened by stupendous incompetence by the New Orleans city authorities and the malevolence of the criminals of the city were directed to helping the morale of the nation, we would all be a lot better off.

12.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.

13.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.

God bless all of those dear people who are suffering so much, and God bless those helping them, starting with George Bush.

Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He also writes "Ben Stein's Diary" in every issue of The American Spectator.

"It's not that George W. Bush should be hated... rather, he's a man who is not trustworthy and competent, especially with the highest office in the land.

The only reason he got this far is because of his family connections, and because he happened to be affiliated with a powerful political party. There was nothing about his personal character that merited being given this kind of responsibility. He was practically *picked* by the party bosses to be their nominee, set against whoever the Democrats picked. None of them were all that really attractive so far as leadership qualities go.

But like good little sheep, enough American people did not think for themselves about who they were electing, they had become so used to a political party thinking for them. They elected who they were expected to elect, nothing more. That's what our political system has become. Gone are the days when any kid could grow up believing he (or she) could be President of the United States. Sorry kid, but unless you have the right family connections and are willing to be a tool of the party, you won't be allowed to go that far.

George W. Bush just happened to have been a kid born with all the right assets already in place: he didn't bring anything of his own to the table, except a lot of character flaws: he's a compulsive liar. He's a liar who has no desire to repent of his lying. Why should I believe he's really a fellow Christian then? Why at all? He used falsehoods to get us into the war with Iraq and now he cannot decide what the reason was that we went in to begin with (in case nobody got the memo, he's now saying it was to secure Iraqi oil fields). He uses people: he literally made sure he was facing the cameras with those kids in Mississippi yesterday. A lot of people I know saw that, thought it was pretty obvious he was posing for the cameras. He tries to destroy people who disagree with him. He doesn't apologize, has even said he never has to apologize... well then, has he ever apologized to God for anything? If he can't apologize to his fellow man, why should we believe he can apologize to God? He's made out to be the paragon of Christian virtue... but he doesn't worship with his fellow Christians, something the apostle Paul told us not to forsake. Why, are we beneath his dignity to worship God alongside of? He associated himself with people who could only be described as wicked and iniquitous: Karl Rove, for one. Why would any good Christian actively have anything to do with someone who's entire life has been spent destroying others for something so meaningless as political power? Karl Rove may be the most evil "political consultant" in history... what is Christian about having hired him? Bush is a scoundrel when it comes to the public treasury that's been entrusted to him: he doesn't see the money we give government as a sacred trust, but rather his personal hoard to be raided for whatever crosses his mind. He does not admit his mistakes, and he does not show sympathy for those who have suffered and even died for his mistakes. Not *once* has he visited the graveside of one who has died in Iraq. He asks the young people of America to sacrifice their time for a "noble cause" but does not ask the same of his own children. He has been shown to use some of the worst language and obscene hand gestures without shame. He is a narcissist who believes that everything in the universe exists for sake of himself...

...and yet for all of this he is supposed to be a great Christian leader.

Why should I believe that he is a great Christian man? What virtues does he have that anyone could point to and convince me that he's worth believing this of? Why should I give him any special consideration in my prayers, when I cannot but believe that he is not even really President at all, but was put there by the schemes of others? Why, indeed?

I am expecting the only answers that will be given to this are "What would you have expected of Kerry?" or "At least he's not Clinton" or somesuch. We aren't talking about Clinton, or Kerry. We are discussing the man who is in the Oval Office now, and whether or not he is indeed a great man.

Twenty years from now, Bush will be regarded as the worst President in American history. Those who supported him, will be seen as fools. Why should I not beleive this to be true?"
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I want to get comments on this quote before I reveal it's source.

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