Forgive me for this, but I must
Warning: This post features very strong, adult language brought on by incredible sadness and anger.
I usually try to intelligently complain, but I'm so pissed that intelligence will likely not be present today.
It's okay to disrupt emergency operations after 9/11 to make an inpromptu speech (which, to Dubya's credit, was good), but not okay to interrupt operations in New Orleans to survey the damage.
It's okay to interrupt Thanksgiving to have a photo op for an upcoming election with soldiers and a fake turkey in Iraq, but it's not okay to disrupt his 45-fucking-day vacation and his unimportant goddamned Medicare speech in Rancho fucking Cucomonga here in California to rush back to the White House and get relief efforts moving. Bush says he's upset with finger-pointing and warns that people shouldn't try "playing politics" with this. Let me ask him this: If you don't want people "playing politics" with this, then what the hell were you doing "playing politics" by giving a goddamn Medicare speech when you could've spent Monday getting this thing under control and maybe saving thousands of people from a horrible fate?!
And why in the hell is your Secretary of State shopping for shoes and having a person who questioned that ejected from the store? Where's your vice-president? Is Dick having too much heart trouble to go down there right away? Funny, his office didn't mind announcing the fundraisers he'll be attending soon. How about all of you in Washington put down the political bullshit for a couple of months so we can all save a major part of America? How about those fundraisers send all their money to the Gulf Coast? Why do we have to be campaigning 15 months before a fucking election when thousands are dying in our own fucking country?!
It's okay to send billions of dollars to Iraq, but not okay to send mere millions to New Orleans to fix levees that he's had four fucking years of warning about. FEMA said before 9/11 that they'd fail under a Category 5 storm, probably, and he cuts funding 80 fucking percent for the levee systems. Sen. Mary Landrieu (unfortunately for Louisiana, a Democrat) said in March they badly needed money for repairs, and had been begging for more funding, and got shut down. Last year, the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $22 million for the levees, Bush responded with $3 million, Congress eventually gave $5 million. Bush apparently thinks he knows more than the Army when it comes to Iraq (hi, Eric Shinseki!) and knows more than trained fucking engineers when it comes to levees that need upgrading so we don't doom a city.
It's okay to screw around with warnings about a terrorist attack by al Qaida....and it's okay to ignore warnings about a disastrous hurricane.
It's okay to have National Guardsmen fighting in Iraq, but we take three days to get their asses to New Orleans.
Bush delayed in his response efforts for the tsunami, and after having had a lesson in what not to do, he's doing this shit again!
We might as well write off the Gulf Coast, because we have fucked this one up good. I've been to New Orleans, and I know it'll never look the same again. The only amazing thing is that the place people come for most, the French Quarter, 300 years old, survived without flooding. I'm stunned by that, and maybe they can get that going quick enough to bring in commerce by Mardi Gras time, bring in much-needed money, but I doubt it. A nuclear bomb couldn't have done much more damage than this. Typhoid fever, cholera, West Nile virus, dysentery, diseases of a hundred years ago all coming back. Looting, rapes, shooting at the Army, beatings, dead bodies floating away or lying in streets. How in the hell could we let Americans die in the streets like THIS?
New Orleans is becoming Baghdad, and if you don't believe me, then just think. When in American history have people shot at rescue helicopters flown by the goddamn Army in an American city?!
And as an added thought, Dr. Franklin Graham is no man of God, because a true man of God would be down there right now working with people instead of going on with dipshit Hannity and talking about how this is our punishment for taking God out of schools and we need more God in every facet of our public lives. WTF?!?!?! No one, except those asshole gay-hating idiots in Kansas blamed the people in Southeast Asia for the tsunami, but a bunch of poor black people get fucked up by a hurricane and somehow it's our fault for taking prayer out of public schools?
Again, I've been to New Orleans, and those churches are packed on Sundays. It is a place full of Catholics and Baptists who are religious and do have God in their lives. Graham's problem is that they vote Democratic, I guess, and I guess poor black people who vote that way aren't worthy of one hell of a quick response in the world of Bush. ON MONDAY, we should've had C-130 Hercules' and hell, even C-5 Galaxies bringing in supplies. There's some dry freeway there, get some bulldozers, clear it up, and let them land on the freeway. Military planes can handle rough airstrips, and if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. Instead, a Medicare speech was more important to Bush. The hell with all of them. They couldn't run a drugstore if you spotted them 30 trained employees and a million dollar profit. This is a disgrace that Iraq got quicker help than millions of AMERICAN CITIZENS, the people George W. Bush was elected to LEAD.
Forgive me for the length of this, but it was necessary. There's been a lot of talk for impeachment from the left over Iraq, and from Pat Buchanan over illegal aliens, but if I were to impeach the President, it would be for the criminally fucked-up, shitty-ass response to this hurricane. Hundreds of thousands could've been saved, but once again, he didn't listen to experts. Congratulations, Dubya. I hope when you go talk to St. Peter that you've got a good explaination for your horrible leadership.
Late addition: We need to give the reporters there a big thanks for their aggressive interviewing of these hapless officials, and Ray Nagin gave the most emotional response I've seen in a government official.
I usually try to intelligently complain, but I'm so pissed that intelligence will likely not be present today.
It's okay to disrupt emergency operations after 9/11 to make an inpromptu speech (which, to Dubya's credit, was good), but not okay to interrupt operations in New Orleans to survey the damage.
It's okay to interrupt Thanksgiving to have a photo op for an upcoming election with soldiers and a fake turkey in Iraq, but it's not okay to disrupt his 45-fucking-day vacation and his unimportant goddamned Medicare speech in Rancho fucking Cucomonga here in California to rush back to the White House and get relief efforts moving. Bush says he's upset with finger-pointing and warns that people shouldn't try "playing politics" with this. Let me ask him this: If you don't want people "playing politics" with this, then what the hell were you doing "playing politics" by giving a goddamn Medicare speech when you could've spent Monday getting this thing under control and maybe saving thousands of people from a horrible fate?!
And why in the hell is your Secretary of State shopping for shoes and having a person who questioned that ejected from the store? Where's your vice-president? Is Dick having too much heart trouble to go down there right away? Funny, his office didn't mind announcing the fundraisers he'll be attending soon. How about all of you in Washington put down the political bullshit for a couple of months so we can all save a major part of America? How about those fundraisers send all their money to the Gulf Coast? Why do we have to be campaigning 15 months before a fucking election when thousands are dying in our own fucking country?!
It's okay to send billions of dollars to Iraq, but not okay to send mere millions to New Orleans to fix levees that he's had four fucking years of warning about. FEMA said before 9/11 that they'd fail under a Category 5 storm, probably, and he cuts funding 80 fucking percent for the levee systems. Sen. Mary Landrieu (unfortunately for Louisiana, a Democrat) said in March they badly needed money for repairs, and had been begging for more funding, and got shut down. Last year, the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $22 million for the levees, Bush responded with $3 million, Congress eventually gave $5 million. Bush apparently thinks he knows more than the Army when it comes to Iraq (hi, Eric Shinseki!) and knows more than trained fucking engineers when it comes to levees that need upgrading so we don't doom a city.
It's okay to screw around with warnings about a terrorist attack by al Qaida....and it's okay to ignore warnings about a disastrous hurricane.
It's okay to have National Guardsmen fighting in Iraq, but we take three days to get their asses to New Orleans.
Bush delayed in his response efforts for the tsunami, and after having had a lesson in what not to do, he's doing this shit again!
We might as well write off the Gulf Coast, because we have fucked this one up good. I've been to New Orleans, and I know it'll never look the same again. The only amazing thing is that the place people come for most, the French Quarter, 300 years old, survived without flooding. I'm stunned by that, and maybe they can get that going quick enough to bring in commerce by Mardi Gras time, bring in much-needed money, but I doubt it. A nuclear bomb couldn't have done much more damage than this. Typhoid fever, cholera, West Nile virus, dysentery, diseases of a hundred years ago all coming back. Looting, rapes, shooting at the Army, beatings, dead bodies floating away or lying in streets. How in the hell could we let Americans die in the streets like THIS?
New Orleans is becoming Baghdad, and if you don't believe me, then just think. When in American history have people shot at rescue helicopters flown by the goddamn Army in an American city?!
And as an added thought, Dr. Franklin Graham is no man of God, because a true man of God would be down there right now working with people instead of going on with dipshit Hannity and talking about how this is our punishment for taking God out of schools and we need more God in every facet of our public lives. WTF?!?!?! No one, except those asshole gay-hating idiots in Kansas blamed the people in Southeast Asia for the tsunami, but a bunch of poor black people get fucked up by a hurricane and somehow it's our fault for taking prayer out of public schools?
Again, I've been to New Orleans, and those churches are packed on Sundays. It is a place full of Catholics and Baptists who are religious and do have God in their lives. Graham's problem is that they vote Democratic, I guess, and I guess poor black people who vote that way aren't worthy of one hell of a quick response in the world of Bush. ON MONDAY, we should've had C-130 Hercules' and hell, even C-5 Galaxies bringing in supplies. There's some dry freeway there, get some bulldozers, clear it up, and let them land on the freeway. Military planes can handle rough airstrips, and if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. Instead, a Medicare speech was more important to Bush. The hell with all of them. They couldn't run a drugstore if you spotted them 30 trained employees and a million dollar profit. This is a disgrace that Iraq got quicker help than millions of AMERICAN CITIZENS, the people George W. Bush was elected to LEAD.
Forgive me for the length of this, but it was necessary. There's been a lot of talk for impeachment from the left over Iraq, and from Pat Buchanan over illegal aliens, but if I were to impeach the President, it would be for the criminally fucked-up, shitty-ass response to this hurricane. Hundreds of thousands could've been saved, but once again, he didn't listen to experts. Congratulations, Dubya. I hope when you go talk to St. Peter that you've got a good explaination for your horrible leadership.
Late addition: We need to give the reporters there a big thanks for their aggressive interviewing of these hapless officials, and Ray Nagin gave the most emotional response I've seen in a government official.
posted by Thad at 12:27 PM
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