I Don't Know What to Say

By DHinMI

This just makes me want to puke:

                                                 
Bush hasn't even done a damn thing, and they've already got a logo?  Where is that photo from, and who is it in the photo with Bush?  It sure as hell isn't someone whose home and community was just devastated by Katrina, because Bush didn't even bother to leave his fake ranch in Crawford until long after it became clear that Katrina might be the most deadly natural disaster in U.S. history, and he still hasn't bothered to travel to Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama.

After four and a half years in office, the Bush administration has to work hard to surprise me.  But this is just obscene. 

Comments

[Mike S]

The picture looks like Bush let one loose to me.

[Jerri]

What PR company produces this stuff?

[emptypockets]

For whatever it's worth, I just posted a fairly long summary of the Galveston storm of 1900 -- previously the worst hurricane to hit the US -- and the relief efforts there (led by Clara Barton) over here.

Wonderful scans of original documents all free & on-line, but haven't run across McKinley's photo-op logo yet.

[donna]

It's all just one long marketing campaign to them, Karl Rove, world's best marketing director....

[Kagro X]

~bzzt!~ Thank you for flying with us today on Air Force One. We're proud to serve you! Those of you on the right hand side of the aircraft will be able to catch a glimpse out of your windows of the disaster our passengers are flying back to Washington to pretend they're handling. Have a nice flight! ~bzzt!~

[Sven]

No kidding, Kagro.

[cb parrish]

What purpose really would be served by Bush, the idiot who is president, visiting the disaster site while it is still in progress? And, couldn't the filthy "picture" with Bush and disaster victim be as easily put together by someone wanting to make Dubya seem worse than he is (and this effort doesn't even come close)? Isn't everybody here just trying to ease their frustration by saying awful stuff about an awful man, ignoring what is even feasible for him, or any president? I went to a local tv station website and it looks as if there are plans for him to visit, and I am sorry to sound dumb, but I can't tell from all the hyperbolic stuff on both sides whether his administration has been helping or not, if they even COULD do more than what's being done. It's maybe the biggest natural disaster we've had in modern times. Isn't it more incumbent on the city and state to have had plans in place for such a disaster than for the White House? If y'all could stop having cows in cyberspace long enough, maybe we could start brainstorming on effective ways to get this filthy moron and his crowd OUT of the White House.

[Plutonium Page]

Wow. Just... wow.

Seeing this while in Europe makes it seem all the more surreal. I wonder what other major countries' leaders would do if there was such a disaster?

Oh yeah, they'd care.

[Kagro X]

Well, I've had my cow, cb. I'm free to play now. You start. Open mike.

[DHinMI]

...couldn't the filthy "picture" with Bush and disaster victim be as easily put together by someone wanting to make Dubya seem worse than he is...

Have you heard of hyperlinks? You know, like the first word in the post, "This," that's blue and turns red when you move your cursor over it, and if you click on it takes you to the White House's website?

Or are you saying somebody hacked the White House website and put this fake picture up there?

[Jim Brodhead]

It's about leadership. In a time like this the leader, the commander in chief, needs to be in Washington doing his job from there even if he can do it from any place else. It may be only symbolic but it';s a lot better symbol than being on vacation. He should have been back in DC a week ago and the prepositioning of resources could have begun then as well.

[rj]

cb parrish: First, please click on DH's link, and you'll see that this was the White House's own creation.

It's a really hard time to be political; but it's also a really hard time to see a unique, legendary city vanish from the face of the earth (not to mention so many unique human beings therein) knowing the funds necessary to avert this very catastrophe were diverted to a vanity war and unconscionable tax cuts. Yes, the Army Corps of Engineers has long known what they needed to reinforce the levees to keep New Orleans from becoming a bowl of human chowder, but their budget has been decimated under this administration. And lest you think I’m just being bovine, please check out this excerpt from a notorious lefty rag (with link; luckily I’m new to the posting thing, so it’ll be hard for you to miss this one):

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_20050207/ai_n10176537
(from New Orleans CityBusiness, Feb 7, 2005)
>>The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has identified millions of dollars in flood and hurricane protection projects in the New Orleans district.
Chances are, though, most projects will not be funded in the president's 2006 fiscal year budget to be released today.
In general, funding for construction has been on a downward trend for the past several years, said Marcia Demma, chief of the New Orleans Corps' programs management branch.
In 2001, the New Orleans district spent $147 million on construction projects. When fiscal year 2005 wraps up Sept. 30, the Corps expects to have spent $82 million, a 44.2 percent reduction from 2001 expenditures.
Demma said NOC expects its construction budget to be slashed again this year, which means local construction companies won't receive work from the Corps and residents won't see any new hurricane protection projects...<<

Not to mention, of course, the gaping hole in the ranks of the affected states’ National Guard...But all’s well: they’ve already figured out how to package the thing! Governing, shmoverning -- this baby’ll SELL...curse them for all eternity. And give to the Red Cross.

[ng]

I Don't Know What to Say

Can anyone doubt that the standard of living of a majority of Americans is in rapid decline. Does anyone even remember pre-2000 life and moods of Americans?????? What might be the common thread to tie all this decline together since 2000. What might have happened in 2000 to open this negative floodgate.

When you ask any (still) Bush supporters these above questions, do you wonder how isolated, from what seems obvious to me anyway, these folks can possibly be? How many missteps and misfortunes happening to Americans can these supporters continue to blame on chance or other non-Bush things?? How stupid can poeple be?

I am strongly beginning to believe that America may not be able to tolerate 2.5 more years of George W. Bush!

[Alan Charles]

I surely hope each of us on this site will take the time to write our elected representatives in Washington and urge them to take the steps necessary to ensure a transparent vote count in the next election. We simply MUST rid ourselves of those evoting machines that leave no paper trail and can be so easily hacked or all our keyboard-pounding and hand-wringing will have been for naught. Remember, it's who COUNTS our votes that count!

With each click to a link, one can EASILY see the difference between Democrats and Republicans, so let's work to ensure a CHANGE in the way things are done in this country in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Let's write our representatives today!

[Hprof]

Maybe they just photoshopped out the guitar he was presented yesterday, and stuck in an American flag?

[cb parrish]

okay guys, i did NOT click the "this" link, and am NOT a computer wiz, and so i guess it really was the filthy creeps in the white house doing this making themselves look worse this time, but my point is still that all the smartypants blogging we do is relieving the pressure to be out in the streets protesting this stuff. the web is not the streets. if the indignant hoards on the internet would get off their butts in front of their computers and go out hollering this stuff at the top of their lungs in the streets, like they do in italy when dubya comes to town, maybe we'd get somewhere besides DOWN.

[janinsanfran]

Disasters, and their aftermath, can bring down governments. In "natural" disasters, everyone, even small government conservatives, expect the ruling authorities to save their bacon. If it looks like this is getting done, much is forgiven. If it looks like the rescue is bumbling or especially corrupt, there is hell to pay. Think the horrible mess in the Mexico City earthquake which helped end the rule of the PRI, in contrast to Fidel Castro's Cuba which is actually very good at minimizing loss of life in these periodic storms.

From the little it I can gather about Louisiana at the moment, the Republicans in charge may be in trouble.

[Fritz]

http://blog.fritzliess.com/archives/hoofin_it.jpg

[rj]

Um, cb, I don’t know them from Adam, but from what I gather of the folks who run this blog, they actually do more for the cause in the "real" world than most of us. (And as for me, if I spent that much time on my butt in front of my computer, I wouldn’t have had to use the stone-age format for my link...) I use my "smartypants blogging" time to get an arsenal of irrefutable evidence of the damage done by the Bush regime and its cronies that I then spread far and wide, and to get information on what I can actually do, in the streets or elsewhere, to make real change. I hope you do the same.

And give to the Red Cross.

[Kagro X]

Is there anything more compelling than being told on a blog -- twice in the same day, by the same person -- that spending time on a blog is stupid?

[DHinMI]

It's definitely not a no irony zone, that's for sure.

[rj]

I love you guys...

[jmmyk]

typical of this administration, the dude works for halliburton and the prez has his back to the eye of the storm ignoring it.

[Joey]

Propaganda, ahoy!

[cynical ex-hippie]

Clearly this storm is no match for George W Bush standing tall with the Common American. A wave of the flag puts another disaster safely behind him.

Okay guys, we have our fun, but some white house intern put a lot of work into learning photoshop, probably real proud of the way you can hardly see the cut lines. You know the story. The boss drops a new assignment on your desk, "Put something hurricane-ish on the web site. Make it look hopeful, to comfort America."

Expect to see more current-event themes on whitehouse.gov, to show what the President is "concerned" about each week. Perhaps a montage of progress in Iraq. An office grandma-photo contest to highlight social security. Dollar signs to celebrate the new tax cuts. Asian factories reminding everyone to enjoy low low prices. Rising ticker tape graphic for a rising stock market. Happy families in SUVs. Oil gushing like there's no tomorrow.

[bartonizer]

To be fair, I believe that the picture was from Hurricane Ivan's photo-op last year, when the smirking chimp handed out water bottles to pacify the masses before re-election. I think that W is cowardly towards the Katrina situation, as he should be. Handing out snacks and water bottles won't cut it, this time. The man won't visit anywhere that is not in 100% support of his administration. He wouldn't last 10 minutes if he spoke in front of the people of NOLA. There is a big difference between talking to people who lost their vacation homes and people that have lost everything and have no hope. Desperate people will demand more than a chuckle and someone telling them "it's going to be ok". He's in over his head, and he knows it. Hopefully people around the country will wise up to the fact that "Homeland Security" is a sham, and that our "leader" has SIGNIFICANTLY weakened our own safety. This SHOULD bring the misallocation of resources directly into the public eye.

[littlesky]

Curiosity got the better of me, so I went looking for the photo which I found in this blog entry.

Also note the differences between the 2004 WH graphic and the 2005 graphic.

[DHinMI]

Good pickup littlesky. While the photo may have been "real" (or may not have been), it's clear this was a new graphic since the graphic for Ivan last year.

[InterestedBystander]

It's the President's job to focus national attention on this disaster and encourage Americans to give to their fellow citizens? I'd hazard a guess if there were nothing on the White House website about Katrina, you'd all be bashing Bush just as hard. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

It isn't the President's job to micromanage governmental agencies. The Federal bureaucrats, many of them with protected job status ought to have been doing so. In addition State and local governments ought to have planned for this eventuality. If your city is built like a soup bowl then you'd better figure out how you're going to get people out when the water comes. NOLA has known since the 60's that those levees wouldn't hold. That was forty whole years before GWB took office, wasn't it? And if less of our tax dollars went to Washington and more stayed at home, NOLA wouldn't have to depend quite so much on federal money.

Any President in office would visit the disaster zone, and rightfully so.

Geeze people, maybe you should pour some of your vitriole into helping somebody. It'll make you feel better.

[DHinMI]

Any President in office would visit the disaster zone, and rightfully so.

Um, thanks for completely missing the point: the reality is that Bush hasn't visited the place, but this think makes it look like he has.

But hey, why should we expect you to actually understand what we're saying; you're too busy spewing Grover Norquist's talking points.