It's 1993. Your city, and huge areas around it in several states, has been destroyed by [insert geographically appropriate natural disaster here]. Thousands are dead, hundreds of thousands are homeless, and your city is gone.
Bill Clinton is in Vail skiing with Robert Redford, and only returns to Washington after being shamed by members of his own party. He surveys the damage on the way back to D.C. by tipping the wing of Air Force One slightly. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is on vacation in Boston, shopping and going to the theater. Speaker of the House Tom Foley gets on TV to say that maybe your city isn't worth rebuilding. When Clinton gets back to Washington, he's interviewed by Jane Pauley, and he says that, well, no one could have anticipated this disaster - even though it's common for the area, and he recently cut funding that could have helped. Clinton's FEMA director gets interviewed on the morning shows, and insists that "everything is fine," despite constant images and reports of the devastation and massive refugee movements.
Your reaction?
BONUS QUESTION: Remember your outrage - OUTRAGE - when Bill Clinton got his $200 haircut on Air Force One? Yeah.
9 comments:
I don't think they'd get it!
Yes, by all means, let's politicize this terrible tragedy. Just another opportunity for everybody to spew hate. Carry on.
When people die because of this administration's incompetence and slow response, you better bet I'm going to point it out. And when right wingers say this is just another example of what Bush *isn't* responsible for, you better bet I'm going to be angry and write about that.
When a terrorist attack comes, certainly with less warning than a hurricane, and little is done and people die because of it, will Bush and the Republicans in Congress get a pass on that, too? Because, after all, no one could have anticipated a terrorist attack, huh?
Just one more factual nugget: the current head of FEMA, an agency removed as a cabinet-level post and put under the Dept. of Homeland Security, was previously director of the International Arabian Horse Association. I'm not making that up. (And he was fired.)
Oh and let's not forget Bush's quote: "No one could have predicted that the levees would break."
People's lives are on the line in this country every day. Do you trust this administration?
More factual nuggets:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=17345_Hurricane_Katrina-_Open_Thread_15&only
This is all so predictable as to be ridiculous.
http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2005/09/hurricane-exploitation-quotes.html
Partisan link exchange? OK.
http://tinyurl.com/dnfkj
As I said in another post, I wish someone would explain to me exactly what the President *is* responsible for. He's apparently not responsible for anything in Iraq, or anything at home. So I think he should just go back to Crawford permanently - he's made himself redundant, as they say in Britain.
I thought you liked posts from LGF.
It's the immediate fingerpointing before the dust settles, or the water recedes, that I don't like here. No word of concern for the folks affected, no links your readers can go to to find out how to help. Just hate towards the evil chimp and his flying monkeys. That seems to be all you've got, and that's too bad.
Do I have to specifically say that I'm concerned about the thousands dead and dying and homeless, or is nothing implied under "basic humanity"?
I've already blasted people like O'Reilly for being more interested in looters than dead and homeless people.
As for how to help, there's tons of information out there, and no one reads this site anyway.
As for blame, like so many others I want to have a full accounting of what happened and didn't happen, and I don't care if they are Democrat or Republican - if they screwed up and people died because of it, they should face consequences. What I don't like is the pre-emptive attempt by the right to make sure that GWB has no responsibility whatsoever. And the idea that the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA have no culpability in a massive multi-state disaster is insulting.
Plus, I think my original post stands as an important message to right-wingers who dismiss any criticism of Bush over this crisis as empty symbolism.
It's like how they so often say, he's not on "vacation." He can work just as well in Crawford! Then why does he go to Washington at all?
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