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Katrina
Katrina Thursday
25Jan
Jerk
Thursday, January 25, 2007 at 01:16PM
I am gratified to see that someone else noticed that our dear President did not stoop to mention the Katrina recovery in his recent State of the Union address. A few minutes devoted to former basketball player Dikembe Mutombo, sure. Katrina, nothing.
I guess Mr. Bush figures he has paid his Katrina dues. After all, he spent a day in Louisiana in August. My heavens, what more can a man be expected to do? There is so much brush to be cleared on the ranch in Crawford, and with the press around, he can’t hire illegal immigrants to cut it like he used to.
For those of you reading this from distant parts of America who wonder how this matters to you, consider this: FEMA did a horrible job in the aftermath of the storm, is doing a horrible job now with the recovery, and yet the President has done absolutely nothing to correct these problems and improve disaster preparedness in this country. If you live near a coast, or a fault line, a nuclear power plant, or a volcano, you should be afraid.
I didn’t expect G.W. Bush to say, “We’re sending another $100 billion to New Orleans.” We got money last year. There are a number of things I still think could be addressed with further funding (namely, much better levee construction), but the federal government has committed a substantial amount of money already. But I do expect him to say, “Disaster preparedness is a very important part of our national security. We need to make wholesale changes to FEMA to make certain Katrina never happens again.” He is not doing this. He don’t seem to care. And many people could die very soon because he doesn't.
My understanding is that we are fighting the Iraqi war because 9/11 happened. If we accept this argument, then this implies that it is proper for the U.S. government to spend hundreds of billions to protect its citizens from harm. Disaster preparedness is certainly an important part of national security too, and a person would have to be a fool to continue, even after Katrina, to aggressively pursue anti-terrorism to the near-exclusion of disaster preparedness.
I live in a small town in Mississippi. The chances that my town will ever be a terrorist target is almost nil. The chances that I could lose my home in a flood or tornado or hurricane is much higher. So why is all my tax money going to support the war against terrorism, and nothing to disaster preparedness?
Katrina was a mess. But I’ll admit it; people can screw up. I have seen many terrible screw-ups, and been the author of a few myself. What counts most is not the screw-up, but what you do after the screw-up to make sure it never happens again. I’ll leave it to the reader. Do you think the government has taken enough steps to make sure that Katrina never happens again, to us Gulf Coasters or to anybody else? If you think it has, go back and read the State of the Union address and show me where you are finding evidence for this belief.
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Reader Comments (7)
Katrina is just one of so many examples in which he has failed or broken his oath of office (failing to protect the American people during the aftermath of Katrina - there were a lot of preventable deaths that he could have intevened upon and eventually those e-mails between him and Brownie will be reviewed by the congress to show that he did nothing). The man is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors in spades. Peroid.
I have a jpeg you can copy and add to your site if you want it (Bloggers for impeachment).
Besides, there is a little solace to be had, you must admit, in watching GW slowly twist in the wind. He has bet everything he has left on this stupid escalation in Iraq. If it doesn't work, he is beyond finished. Not lame duck, dead duck. I find it just one more astonishing thing about the GWB administration that it would peg everything on increasing forces by 20,000. How could this help anything? Even the Iraqis are against it. If it weren't for the lives of the 20,000 soldiers, I would be all for it, because the failure of this initiative will shatter the adminstration and could bring down the GOP with it.
It's funny, but when Bush beat Kerry in '04 I was disappointed, but I also knew that in riding the Iraqi war to re-election that Bush and the Republicans were betting everything on a war I did not think would succeed. His fingerprints are all over Iraq and he has absolutely no one else to blame it on. If Kerry had won, no doubt the Bush loyalists would be arguing that Iraq is failing now because the Democrats are weak leaders.
Bush should be forced to suffer horrible political humiliation over what he has done. He will. I worry a little that impeachment could make a martyr of him.
What I really hope happens is that a real Bush-hater gets into the White House in 2008 an starts going through all of the old files, finding out what these creeps really did, and releases it to the public.
Here's a thought to chew on. If Bush is impeached, Cheney pardons him for whatever might be pending against him. If Bush rides it out, I am certain PODUS #44 writes no pardons. I would not be surprised if Bush and pals end up on trial one day. I hope so.
But hey, if he is impeached, I'm good with that too. What did Clinton do that compares with Iraq, with suspending habeus corpus, with Katrina, with the obsene billions going to Halliburton.
I'll think about the jpeg. Thanks, as always, for commenting.
You have some good points except that all of the impeachment movements I know of name Cheney and Rice as well in simultaneous actions (they used to name Rumsfeld as well but I think he got a get out of jail free pass with the elections). Honestly, as much as I despise Bush and company, it's not about revenge. It's about integrity. We owe it to ourselves, to our progeny, and the world to do this right. He should be impeached because it's the only way to protect the constitution from future tyrants. It's also the only way to restore impeachment powers to their former (pre-Clinton) status. We need to do this for the good of country on a multitude of levels.
Haven't gotten around to reading your Katrina Blog Project yet, but I fully intend to; it's been recommended highly.
Dr. Scott: Thanks for the comments. I am working on a "State of the Gulf Coast" post about what the government is not doing post-Katrina. I hope to have it up in the next day or two.
I say send Bush to Afghanistan with his family for a vacation and let them have him and send our troops home.
But look where his family got the money and funding for the oil business Bin Laden family.
I bet that is why Bin Laden has not been found yet.