This is not hard: George Bush did not do his job

I know the Governor of Louisiana tried.  I know the Mayor of New Orleans tried.

They didn't try hard enough.

They knew that if and when they ordered citizens to evacuate the city, tens of thousands of people would have no way to get it.  They didn't have cars, they didn't have the money.  There were thousands and thousands of school buses all over the country sitting idle last week.  Every school district in the country would have sent buses, if they'd been asked.

The Governor and the Mayor knew that the Superdome was going to be the biggest storm shelter in town.  They didn't have it ready.

They failed their citizens.  They tried, but they did not try hard enough.

But this is the key point.  Local officials failed to prepare adequately for Katrina.

George Bush failed to save the city after the storm hit!

Heroes come to the rescue.

They don't show up five days later to have their pictures taken, pretending to come to the rescue, while thousands of people still need to be saved!

George Bush is not a hero.

But we didn't need him to be a hero.

We just needed him to be President.

Comments

[denisdekat]

People are not a priority for these guys. They are corporate owned tools meant to give handouts to their corporate masters so that the corporate masters can give themselves multi million dollar bonuses and stock options...

Check out what Barbara had to say about these "underpriviledged people"

http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/52995.htm

"So many of the people here . . . were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

So out of touch, they don't give a damn about people.

[mrs. norman maine]

The first big uh-oh moment from last week, for my money, came during the copter fly-over, when Bush was heard to remark that as bad as it looked from the air, "It must be doubly worse on the ground!"

Doubly! The people's suffering approximated the flinch-inducing task of flying over the area in a luxury copter....by roughly twice as much?

It was a sign of compassionate insights to come from our President, e.g. the dream of sitting on Trent Lott's porch again.

[Donna Dallas]

That is indeed the point, isn't it? Whatever screwups occurred before the storm hit do not excuse Bush from his failure to act quickly and aggressively when the magnitude of the disaster became apparent.

[Kevin Wolf]

I guess the idea is that the President, as understood, is the leader of the US - he sets the tone, uses his bully pulpit, and goads others into acting rather than simply reacting. He has federal resources at his command and can basically tell any number of people, units, troops, whoever, to do this or that.

Iraq: Can't wait - absolutely quivering - to mobilize scads of resources to wage war and obtain resources for corporate backers using young American lives (and damn any Iraqi caught in the crossfire).

US Gulf Coast: Waits 4-5 days (and squeezes in some golf) before deciding the reaction of authorities is "unacceptable" then tours the region for photo ops (avoiding the worst hit areas with angry citizens still stranded).

Nope. Bush is not presidential material.

[Exiled in NJ]

I've been trying to pin down in my mind what our leader's response has resembled and then it hit me. He is like the man who has been told that Christmas is coming long about the end of October, but as the frenzy has mounted he has put his head under the covers and hid. Then today he realizes it is December 24th and he has now hit the streets, running, grabbing any solution in sight all the while blaming anyone he can for not telling him.

[Paul the Spud]

Doing anything Presidential is beyond Bush's abilities. He has had no enthusiasm for the job since day one, and has to be dragged away from vacation or more pleasant activities like fund raisers and photo ops in order to get any work out of the guy.

Bush is many things, but he is no President.