Author: Thomas More

Bush to Investigate Self
from Opinions You Should Have

The Do-It-Yourself Emergency Management Guide
from Fafblog!

Other suggestions? Let me know in the comments.

Being a die-hard Bush supporter (and let’s face it – is there any other kind?) is much like joining a fraternity. You go through Hell Week (9/11), and after that, it’s just too difficult to break away. You’ve already defended the frat when that pledge died of alcohol poisoning, and during that massive cheating scandal. Then there was the bonfire that burned down the dorm – I mean, who could have predicted that would happen? Nothing will shake your faith in your brothers – nothing. So when two girls are raped after a keg party, no matter how much evidence piles up against the frat President and his roommate, you deflect. And defend. And never admit so much as a speck of culpability for the Prez, or anyone in the fraternity. If you did, your whole world would crumble around your feet. And nothing – nothing – will make you turn against this organization you’ve staked so much on.

Which explains why, if President Bush slit their grandmother’s throat on national television, people like Dean Esmay would clutch her gurgling body and declare, for the cameras, that she had it coming.

Your city is hit by a massive terrorist attack, nuclear or biological in nature. Thousands are dead and many thousands more are homeless. You won’t be able to return to the home you and your family have known your whole life – for months, maybe years. President Bush spends the first two days after the attack playing guitar and having cake.

That’s OK, right? Anything else would just be stupid symbolism. After all, what can *he* do, right?

Run that one up the flagpole.

According to the right-wing media on TV, radio and on the web, the President isn’t responsible for anything that happens in Iraq. And now with the hurricane, we learn that nothing here at home, even disaster planning by his shiny new Department of Homeland Security (I get a little shiver every time I hear that name), is his responsibility. What do we want him to do, build a levee or something? I mean, a giant multi-state disaster has nothing to do with the federal government, right? Nope.

So according to this, the President has no responsibilities. He’s done the impossible – made himself redundant, as they say in Britain. So I guess he can just go back to Crawford permanently and not bother us any further.

Whew. I feel better already!

UPDATE: Steve Gilliard has some great righteous anger to share. (Personally I loved the “live-action Chauncey Gardiner” line, which is spot-on.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY: From a wire story on tragically-unqualified FEMA head Michael Brown…

In Mobile, Ala., on Friday, Bush said the response to Katrina was unsatisfactory. But he had nothing but praise for his FEMA director. “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” the president said.

Hooray for the Accountability Administration!

“A lot of the people — a lot of the people who stayed wanted to do this destruction. They figured it out. And that’s — I’m not surprised.”

-Bill O’Reilly last night, explaining that “a lot” of the people who remained in New Orleans did so because they were looking forward to looting

To Bill O’Reilly, John Gibson, Bill Whittle, and all the right-wing crapweasels who want to make this tragic story about the looting instead of about how thousands of people lay drowned in their ruined homes, and thousands more are stranded; to those who want to place the blame on the poor of New Orleans instead of the people who were supposed to save them:

Fuck you. Fuck you very much. Double-fuck you. Fuck you times infinity.

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.

Condi goes shoe shopping.

Wow. Just wow. Funny how it took this story to make my anger explode, where it was just simmering before.

And I’ll echo Gawker, and say: Angry Lady, whoever you are, I love you.

Apparently we need to add something else to the list of things that President George W. Bush cannot be held accountable for*: inadequate federal disaster planning, and not leaving his Crawford ranch during one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

*(9/11, response to 9/11, gas prices, the economy, job losses, corporate scandals, planning for the war in Iraq, selling the war in Iraq, intelligence gathering in his administration, violence in Iraq, war profiteering in Iraq, unprepared military in Iraq, $9 billion lost in Iraq, U.S. treatment of WOT prisoners, world opinion of the U.S., treasonous actions of his staff, the federal deficit, federal spending overall, environmental damage from corporate greed, the health insurance crisis, etc.)

Remind me – exactly what *is* the President responsible for?

UPDATE: August Pollak on the partisanship of the Weather Channel. And from This Modern World, New Orleans as a casualty.

Funny stuff over at Poor Man Institute about Michael Moore’s stay at a fat farm. Great parodies of LGF-level screaming about Moore’s fatness.

“Iraq, it turns out, is the one branch of American government that the Republicans don’t control.”

–Maureen Dowd, The New York Times