This screen capture is taken from an episode last week on the best late night show on television, Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. It might not be as funny on the Internet as it was on TV, but damn it was hilarious when the reporter (I think it was Colbert, but I can't remember for sure) just blithely put up this graphic saying that Katrina was "no big deal, it's just the latest in the alphabetical list of Major Disasters of the Bush Administration". I was almost in tears with laughter when he said something to the effect of "that Yam shortage will look like nothing compared to when Zero people are left on the Earth." And that was before I could read the details with the Osama/Jenna jokes. Hilarious. What a great television program, consistently providing topical and politically incorrect humor at whichever bungling idiots are in the news. And sadly, at the very least for all of 2005, those bungling idiots have been running our country.
Caution: Political diatribe ahead... regularly scheduled analysis of reality programming and music no one's heard of will resume tomorrow.
Katrina has officially put me over the edge. I'm done with the Bush administration. There is nothing they could do or say over the next 3 years that will restore my faith in them as leaders, as intelligent human beings, or even as human beings who give a shit about anyone or anything but their own grasp of power. And I say this as someone who once had a lot of faith in the administration, and in Bush himself. I actually voted for the guy - twice - dismissing Democratic complaints of his stupidity or lack of foreign affairs experience or shirking of duties during Vietnam or even having basically failed at every position he'd ever had in his life until he became governor of Texas. But then when I saw him on that Wednesday two weeks ago when the true horror of the aftermath of Katrina had become known, with that horrible smirk on his face, I realized how badly things had turned out. He didn't know or couldn't grasp or just flat-out didn't care about the gravity of the situation, and handled it with all the aplomb of someone way over his head and completely unable to help. The fact that two days later, when things had gone from horribly bad to "oh my God what is taking them so long to save these people!" certainly didn't help. The government failed these Americans, at a time of their greatest need, at a time when a leader - a Guiliani or a McCain or even Bill Clinton - would have stopped their fucking vacation and flown into Louisiana and summoned every resource available to save lives and possibly save a city. But that didn't happen. And Bush has to pay for that. His approval rating in the latest Newsweek poll puts him down to 38% - his lowest ever - and the lowest for any president since Nixon during Watergate, and that is what he deserves. The people of New Orleans deserved much, much more.
Some people - especially those on Fox News given talking points by the administration - have pointed fingers at the local and state governments (mostly run by Democrats) as the ones bearing the most responsibility for the tragedy. And you know what, they are probably very culpable - there's plenty of blame to go around. But I'm not a Democrat so I don't care if they are blamed. I just care that the government failed these people. But if you're expecting the mayor of New Orleans - who looked completely shaken, lost, and overwhelmed by Tuesday morning in the week of the tragedy - to save them, you really are delusional. The buck stops at the President. Unless you are a complete liar or an idiot, you cannot place more blame on anyone than him. And speaking of liars and idiots, Rush Limbaugh has basically blamed the victims in this disaster for not getting out of town before the storm hit. Nevermind those that were too poor to have any place to go besides their homes, and those that actually went to the shelter designated by the city - the Superdome - but is he actually suggesting that - no matter whether these people should have been there or not - that it isn't the President's job - hell his #1 job - to save Americans from dying by getting them out safely? Without spending a week standing on their roofs without food or water. Or trapped in the Convention Center. Is that what Bush apologists are down to? There is no doubt in my mind after this incident, that Bush is in the running - if not in the lead- for the worst presidency in history.
An exaggeration? I don't think so. Look at that joking list above. This administration has seen some pretty major disasters in its time. On his watch, after 8 years of tremendous economic growth and at a time of relative world peace, we've:
(1) suffered through the greatest terrorist attack in our history, and the greatest attack on our soil since World War II
(2) responded to that attack by attacking a sovereign nation that it turns out had no involvement whatsoever with 9/11, had no weapons of mass destruction, had no terrorist network waiting to attack us, and basically, while housing an evil government that certainly hurt its citizens, posed no threat to us
(3) botched an initially victorious war in Iraq that has now seen us lose almost as many soldiers as citizens that were lost on 9/11, created a terrorist breeding ground in the wreckage of that country, and instead of creating a democracy, turned one of the least religious middle Eastern states into a theocratic Islamic government
(4) never captured Osama bin Laden - the guy who actually attacked us - or dismantled al Qaeda
(5) lost every one of a world union of allies that had supported us in the aftermath of 9/11 - except for basically Britain and Poland
(6) suffered through a recession (after 8 years of boom)
(7) suffered through a stock market collapse (after 8 years of boom)
(8) rolled back civil liberties in the name of more security
(9) had as many or more border control troubles as before 9/11
(10) seen a near tripling of gas prices that are barely better than the highest in our history
(11) seen the President set an all-time record for most vacation days by a president less than 1 year into his second term, and
(12) botched the response to the first serious emergency since 9/11, losing possibly tens of thousands of citizens thanks to a hurricane.
I'd say that's a pretty damning record. I'd even say it's wretched. And if it is debatable whether or not he is responsible for some of the things on the list (the recession did begin right after he took office), it's pretty hard to argue that these last four years have been anything but bad for our country.
On the positive side, he got a huge tax cut passed through Congress (which may have helped or may have hurt the economic recovery, but mostly just helped the richest among us), and we haven't been hit by another terrorist attack on our soil. I think you have to give him credit for that - and that's a huge thing, and really the only reason I voted for him last year (fearing that Kerry would botch our national defense even worse). But a year later - after seeing the Iraq war continue to dissolve into an absolute quagmire of mounting American soldier deaths with no apparent plan for how to end the carnage and get out of there; after seeing much of the year spent trying to cater to the wacko God fanatics with Schiavo and Stern and "intelligent design" and stem-cell research and extremists on the court; after seeing him try to push the most unqualified and belligerent personality to the U.N. ambassadorship; and after seeing what happened with Katrina and learning how poorly qualified the FEMA director that he appointed was, I'm through with him. I'm through with the spinning and the lies and the Fox News and all of it. To see Fred Barnes - who I used to often agree with - sit on Brit Hume's panel and relentlessly attack Bush's attackers for daring to question his God-given right to botch the hurricane relief effort - it's just disgusting. Not to mention Mr. Hannity. I am someone who has voted Republican in every election that I can remember. But I'm not doing it again.
If a McCain or a Guiliani gets the bid in 2008, my mind may change. And if an extremely partisan Democrat is running (like Jon Corzine this year in NJ), I will have difficulty voting for them. But President Bush has lost the GOP a life-long Republican, and I would greatly hope that I am not alone in that sentiment. In fact, in the same Newsweek poll that found his approval at 38%, there was also this frightening bit of information: nearly half of all Republicans surveyed said the federal government did a "good" or "excellent" job responding to the hurricane. Are you fucking kidding me? 11% said Excellent. Excellent! A less than excellent job would have killed - what - 50,000 people? Un-fucking-believable. If things continue like this, I may have to vote for Hillary. And that's not something I ever would have imagined saying. But at least the biggest disaster to happen during her husband's presidency was sex with a chubby intern. I can name at least a dozen things that would have been much, much worse. And in fact, I did above. I'm just hoping the "Locusts" in Jon Stewart's report avoid New Jersey.
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