Earthside Comments: After you witnessed George W. Bush and Karl Rove slime and smear a Gold Star Mother because she asked uncomfortable questions about the war in Iraq, you might have thought that these thugs couldn't really sink any lower. But, of course, that was before the hurricane. Bush and his high and mighty elite dropped the ball big time -- they could not perform once again the preeminent national government duty of ensuring the safety and security of the American public. So, once again they do whatever it takes to avoid accountability for their irresponsibility and carelessness -- they blame someone else. While a million-plus people maybe homeless, while thousands may be dead, Bush and Rove (and probably Cheney if he's back from his vacation yet) decide to blame the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans ... once again, how low can you go? The whole concept behind a republic is that the government is accountable to the people -- always accountable. We are not supposed to have an elected dictatorship. But that is exactly what we are going to have if the answer from those in power is that the election is over and they don't pay attention to the polls and they don't have to meet with critics and anything that goes wrong is someone else's fault. Read the commentaries and analysis linked to here ... if we let Bush and his gang get away once again with sliming and smearing and blaming others for their mistakes, then this grand adventure in democracy and republicanism is just about over. If after this hurricane debacle Bush still gets his permanent tax cuts and his picks for the Supreme Court and a free hand in Iraq ... then America as we once knew it is over -- we will have become the 'People's Republic of America' ... a another version of tyranny.
Link: Memo to the Media: Stop Enabling the White House Blame Game | Arianna Huffington
When it comes to managing political crises (as opposed to national ones), the Bush White House has earned a reputation as masters of damage control. And rightly so -- let's see you get reelected after Abu Ghraib, the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" memo, no WMD, no bin Laden (dead or alive), and "Mission (Most Definitely Not) Accomplished". Well, according to the New York Times, Rove, Bartlett and the damage control boys are at it again, rolling out a plan to hang the post-Katrina debacle around the necks of Louisiana state and local officials… and, in the process, erase the image of a crassly incompetent administration too busy vacationing to worry about the dying in New Orleans. ... Look, as much as I despise the way they go about it, I get it: trying to save face by deflecting blame and sliming your enemies may be ugly but it’s straight out of the Rove playbook and has proven highly effective. What I don’t understand is why the media continue to be star players on the Bush damage control team. Take the way that both the Washington Post and Newsweek obediently, and ineptly, passed on -- and thus gave credence to -- the Bush party line that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s hesitancy to declare a state of emergency had prevented the feds from responding to the crisis more rapidly. The Post, citing an anonymous “senior Bush official”, reported on Sunday that, as of Saturday, Sept. 3, Blanco “still had not declared a state of emergency”… when, in fact, the declaration had been made on Friday, August 26 -- over 2 days BEFORE Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. This claim was so demonstrably false that the paper was forced to issue a correction just hours after the original story appeared. ... It’s time for the media to get back to doing their job and stop being the principal weapon in Team Bush’s damage control arsenal.
Link: While Bush Fiddles, New Orleans Dies | Jimmy Breslin/Newsday
This is a review of the performance of George W. Bush in tight times in this nation. It might explain the single solitary most catastrophic collapse of American government in all of our times. Mark ye well. This was the week when we turned a major American city into Haiti, and racism put its hand out and started to choke a nation, and it may not let go. With the water coming from the sky and the bottom of the sea, driving with such ferocity that a major American city, New Orleans, followed its face into the water, George W. Bush was at North Island in Coronado, Calif., speaking to a blindingly white audience of 9,000 sailors in uniform. ... or the first three days. He was in Coronado, outside San Diego, and in his speech, he managed to mention New Orleans, by saying that people should not return to their homes until rescue crews could do their work. Nobody had to be told not to return to their homes because they don't have homes to return to, and no bus fare to go anywhere.
Link: The 'City' of Louisiana | Keith Olbermann/MSNBC
The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay. ... But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…” ... But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
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