. Anyway, I'm sure everyone has heard of this by now. This is probably the worst natural disaster to hit the US. I was wondering what everyone is thinking about it. This is a pretty emotional and political situation, so I hope everyone won't get too carried away even if they disagree. Anyway, its kind of sad how polarized everyone has become over this. This political partisanship is kinda getting out of hand. I agree with Bush that everyone should at least get everyone out of New Orleans before finger pointing. That being said, there is plenty of blame to go around. The mayor should have gotten buses around to take the elderly and the poor out, and the governor should have sent in the National Gurad to help with the evacuation and airlift the hospital patients out. The federal government should have sent personel and supplies in faster. I mean, it took 4 days for the first federal supplies to get to New Orleans, while it took 1 day for Israel to sent supplies here.
President Bush has been taking a lot of heat lately, and for good reason. He built his whole presidency on making the US safer and the government more responsive, and when he faces the first real test with 5 days of warning, he and the agencies his built screws up royal. You know the leadership he showed during 9/11? There was none of that here. It was hard picking what was his worst moment. Was it when he decided to finally address the disaster a full day after it struck and called it a "minor economic disturbance?" Was it when he said that he didn't "think anybody expected" the levees to break, when experts had predicted it for years? Was it when he said Micheal Brown, the man in charge of the federal relief effort, was "doing one heck of a job?" Or was it when he talked about the time he "enjoyed himself too much" when he was in New Orleans and talked about how he was "looking forward to sitting on the porch" of Trent Lott's house when he was visiting the homeless victims of New Orleans? Now he's saying how he want's to lead a federal investigation on what went wrong with the federal response.
Uh... can you say "coverup" people?The Bush administration is saying that all of this criticism is just to make them look bad, but its not like they are making it difficult. Here's a gem from Barbara Bush, which she uttered while visiting the thousands of refugees camping in the Astrodome.
"Everyone here is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the area, you know, were underpriviliged anyway, so this, this is working out very well for them."
Yeah, they just lost their homes, their jobs, all their possessions, and a loved one or two, but hey they were poor anyway so its not like they were worth much anyhow. Yup, this is the face of "compassionate conservatism" here.
Un-fucking-believable.