black…MYstory

First of all, congratulations Mr. President.  You earned your victory in glorious fashion.  It was a day when hope won and inspiration was felt across the country and throughout the world.  It was no small feat and you deserve the accolades you are receiving.

So, I am sorry to interrupt your honeymoon period but, we have some people who have been waiting since 2005 for their president to act on their behalf.  You might remember them?  They were the people whose hopes were all but washed away when the levees broke.

No, I see that in the stimulus, there seems to be no money to specifically address the Gulf Region.  Maybe Democratic politicians can be gracious and patient about it but, I can’t.

You see, there are still people living in FEMA trailers in Louisiana and, though the amenities aren’t great, they’re better than the alternative.  But, as you already know, FEMA is taking back those trailers so, some people will be on the outs.

So, Mr. Obama, your in the big chair, now.  There was a promise made to the people of New Orleans.  You spoke of it in your campaign.  Today, you’re in a position to do something about it.  For the sake of your credibility on this matter, please get to it soon.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Despite our new President’s first day of celebration, there were apparently some on his team who are already at work laying out priorities and initiatives.  One that I just found out about appears on WhiteHouse.gov and gives a slap to the  recently-departed Bush administration.  In a section title “The Agenda”, it states the following regarding Hurricane Katrina:

President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.

President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush Administration’s “unconscionable ineptitude” in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims. Obama visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region. He worked with members of the Congressional Black Caucus to introduce legislation to address the immediate income, employment, business, and housing needs of Gulf Coast communities.

President Barack Obama will partner with the people of the Gulf Coast to rebuild now, stronger than ever.

Let’s hope that, at last, real help is coming to the Gulf Coast.

Popularity: 11% [?]

When I listen to President Bush speak, I don’t know who I believe to be less intelligent, him or the people that (s)elected him to the presidency, twice.  He speaks with a sort of detachment that co-mingles diminished mental capacity with depraved indifference.  Nothing illustrated this more than his final press conference yesterday.  I was nearly horrified to hear his answers regarding his and the government’s response to Katrina.  First, when asked what he should have done differently, his response was that he should have landed the plane he was one in a nearby city instead of doing his fly-over photo-op.  Then, I guess, he immediately absolves himself from that by saying that, if he had done so, it would have pulled police away from helping in New Orleans.  Next, he offers the following gem:

You know people say the federal response was slow—don’t tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs—30,000 people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. It’s a pretty quick response. Could things have been done better? Absolutely. Absolutely. But when I hear people say, ‘The federal response was slow’—what are they going to say to those chopper drivers, or the 30,000 that got pulled off the roofs?

Never mind that Bush stayed on vacation while people died in the streets of a major American city.  Never mind that some 25,000 had to stay in the deplorable conditions of the Superdome (Of course, after hearing what George Bush’s mother, Barbara, had to say about it, I can see where he inherited his depraved indifference).  Let’s not forget that, over 3 years later, New Orleans is still a mess.

Needless to say, listening to this man is a jaw-dropping experience.  I’m not a country music fan but, I think, on Tuesday, I’ll have to crank up some Roy Clark and sing “Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone!”

Rachel Maddow offered some brilliant insight on this very topic.  The video of this is below (thanks to RawStory.com).  Click on the video to play:

 

 Maddow - Bush's Response to Katrina Questions: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 13% [?]

Honestly, I was fed up with President Bush long before that fateful week in Late August/Early September 2005 but, this was the week that I knew that he went too far with the American people.

It was on this week that we watched our televisions in horror as we saw people dying in the streets of an American city as the President sat idly by, not even willing to cut his vacation short to address it.

This was the moment that the rest of America saw just how incompetent a leader he was and how he, himself, valued loyalty over competency based on the people he put in charge of the agencies who managed the response to this disaster.

Bush showed up 4 days and many deaths later with a promise to rebuild the Gulf Coast.  Over 3 years later, that promise remains unfulfilled.

However, this moment was not just pivotal in my eyes, it also made the same impression on former Bush aides.  In a piece in Vanity Fair regarding the Bush legacy, two of them offer comment:

“Katrina to me was the tipping point,” said Matthew Dowd, Bush’s pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. “The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn’t matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn’t matter. P.R.? It didn’t matter. Travel? It didn’t matter.”

Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: “Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin.”

No matter what spin came out, America had already seen the truth.  As Dowd stated, “(t)he president broke his bond with the public.”

So, as his presidency winds down, the Bush years will leave a legacy of disasters in their wake and their crescendo was a Hurricane named Katrina.

Popularity: 9% [?]