Epiphany while writing my "Bush resign now" blog article

[stevietheman]

I'm in the process of writing an article laying out the case why Bush should resign. I should be finished within 24 hours. It's going to be a long article.

I realized that it's not why the levee break occurred that should concern us most now, but rather the general Bush administration response to the tragedy, whether or not they could foresee the levee actually becoming breached.

I say this for two reasons:

1) The process for determining what money is spent on what project is such a complex political process, and while it might seem obvious now that the dollars should have been spent on shoring up the levee system, in politics, priorities are decided, and for whatever reason, the levees were prioritized downward. And even though many foresaw this tragedy, it is hard for many people to see something as real before it actually happens. Of course, this will be investigated, questions will be asked (and hopefully answered), and maybe even responsibility taken or heads rolled. But for now, this aspect calls for a delayed response. Politicizing this would be murky at best, and possibly could even backfire. Of course, this does not excuse the Bush administration from knowing that the levee system was vulnerable and thus should have been prepared to deal with a breach... see #2.

2) The real problem is with the actual response, basically broken down into three areas: a) Inexplicable delayed reaction due to Bush disinterest, incompetence, FEMA "surprised" by the levee break (even though they had no excuse), or something more sinister; b) Extremely bad treatment of our fellow citizens; and c) Bush's odd behavior during this tragedy. I don't have to tell anyone here that the federal response was MISERABLE. And I have (and you have) come across enough evidence where the Bush administration simply cannot spin themselves out of this. They had plenty of time to respond. No matter how it's cut, Bush screwed up, and he screwed up to a degree that calls into question his real national security credentials. This is the politics of NATIONAL SURVIVAL, and we had better dare not wait until some unspecified time to start making hay about this. THE TIME IS NOW.

So basically, what I'm saying is, yes, politicize the heck out of this, but politicize mostly what television viewers witnessed with their own eyes, rather than the pre-disaster politicking that apportioned budgets. That's my take, anyway.

[Democrats_win]

1. Looking forward to you article. He can no longer be president.

Making the right choices has always been a conservative slogan. Seems to me that the wrong choices were made on the levees. I guess it would be a mistake to assume that people remember that conservatives have been lying for 25 years.

[Nite Owl]

2. Yes, this certainly is all politics

The politics of the right that says smaller government, privitize everything and low taxation. It doesn't work. Taxes are for a reason, it is the shared responsibility of civilized society. How many more disasters are waiting to happen due our underfunded infrastuction? How many more unfortunate Americans will lose what little they have when those in power become more and more wealthy beyond any need.