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Saturday, September 10 To Point a Finger Towards the Bush Means to Burn
I’m trying very hard to post-pone joining the blame game right now while the aftermath of Katrina seems to be just as bad if not worse then Katrina itself, but with the Bush camp going back to their tried and true methods of avoiding any blame by making us feel like creeps if we ask the hard questions it’s getting harder and harder to keep my yap shut. This tactic that has from day one worked fabulously well for the Bush camp is the “If you don’t support the president you are part of the crises," method. It got him re-elected after there were no weapons of mass destruction. It deflected the nay-sayers of Donald Rumsfeld too. This is how it works...if we dare to engage in pointing fingers at the Bush camp and how they have handled the Katrina crises we are taking away from the rescue effort of Katrina. To question the decisions the white house has made right now means we are taking food out of the fingers of starving infants. I resent this tactic but hey why shouldn't the Bushies use it. I certainly have witnessed how flawlessly well it has worked for the Bushies in the past. When we questioned Iraq we were told we were not supporting our troops. When we questioned Bush’s war on terror we were told that we were dishonoring all those who died on September 11th. Now if we question the Bush camp’s errors in the Katrina crises we are told that we are pretty much stamping on the recovery effort. I know full well that if a Democratic president sat in office right now and exactly the same things had gone on, the Republicans would have called for a nation-wife lynch mob. You know it too. I’m still trying to post-pone the blame game a little longer and concentrate my energies on doing what little I can to help, but being told that if I do point my finger towards the white house, I’m no better then another broken levee certainly isn’t sitting well with me. From Arianna Huffington I have this on the subject As if those seeking answers will have blood on their hands. That's certainly the ominous rhetorical tack being taken by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. He's all about moving forward, and not looking back (which isn't surprising given how many corpses he'd see in his personal rear-view mirror). "What would be a horrible tragedy," he said, "would be to distract ourselves from avoiding further problems because we're spending time talking about problems that have already occurred." Gee, Mr. Secretary, I thought that was called 'learning from your mistakes.' So the White House is for time management and against "finger-pointing" -- a two-talking-points-for-the-price-of-one Chertoff scored when he asked, "What do you want to have us spend our time on now? Do we want to make sure we are feeding, sheltering, housing, and educating those who are distressed, or do we want to begin the process of finger- pointing…. 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. Hence, Monday's Presidential Visit, Take Two. Can't you just see Rove yelling "Cut!", hopping out of his director's chair, pulling Bush aside, and whispering in his ear: "Okay, Mr. President, this isn't Armageddon meets The Wedding Crashers . So this time 86 the stories about how you used to party in New Orleans, and, for heaven's sake, do not focus on the suffering of Trent Lott. And no more hugging only freshly-showered black people who look like Halle Berry -- this time you gotta get a little closer to the living-in-their-own-feces crowd. Alright.... action!" Anyway, here we are the anniversary of 911 is tomorrow and certainly all the New Yorkers I know myself included are finding the feelings coming up around Katrina are eerily similar to those that came up around 911 only this time, we’re the out-of-towners looking at the disaster from many safe miles away feeling helpless and frustrated at the site of so much death, loss and sorrow. And here we are again watching the death, loss and sorrow of innocents be used as political pawns in another mass wave of propaganda. The thing that has pissed me off perhaps more then anything else these last few years is the baby Bush lassoing “911” for his own political purposes, much of which had NADA to do with "911" and telling us that if we don’t support him we are spitting on the graves of those nearly three thousand lost lives. If he does that now with Katrina I swear I’ll just drive out to the white house and take a poop on the sidewalk.
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