regarding this disaster and others are nervous about it, and i think i know why some arent sure about getting into it.

because at some point the blame is going to be directed at those who really deserve it.

ourselves.

its not really Bush’s fault, entirely, that he didnt feel it necessary to go to new orleans earlier, or stay longer, or get more done while he was there. sure hes a dipshit, but he’s been supported by a majority of the american public for the last five years with nary a bullshit yelled from the crowd.

abu ghraib happened, you let it slide. no wmds were found, you let it go. obl is flipping through his tivo – youre all, no big deal. theres a reporter Still in jail over RoveGate and you’ve totally forgotten it.

gas is over $3, youre like, thats not bush’s fault. theres a civil war happening in iraq right now, but you’ll swear thats not george’s fault. reporters are paid off by the white house, and a gay hooker is discovered getting a day pass into the west wing for a year and youre all whatev.

so yes, many of you have enabled this bush behavoir of incompentence.

which means, i hate to say it, America, that destruction, that death, that misery, that bullshit that went down in New Orleans, thats not

just

Brownie’s fault, FEMAs fault, the dipshits at the Department of Homeland Securty’s fault

its youre fault.

you voted for Bush.

twice!

Bush was the one who sent our troops AND our national guardsmen to Iraq for a war based on lies and phantom wmds.

Bush was the one who slashed the budgets of the levee funding and the flood control funding so the rich could retain their tax cuts and so the war in iraq could continue.

Bush was the one who undid Clinton’s plan of having FEMA be a cabinet level department. Bush demoted it so it could fit underneath the DHS.

Bush invented the DHS and sold it to us under the terms that in times of crisis there would be Less red tape so that if there was a terror attack or a disaster the DHS could oversee and manage all the aspects of saving lives and protecting the citizens.

in fact we gave up huge chunks of personal liberties so that the DHS could better serve us. ask those getting searched in subways. ask those taking off their shoes at airports.

sadly this storm has shown us that we are not safer or being any better served.

yes its Bush’s fault, in part, but Bush wouldnt have ever had a chance to hire Brownie, or demote FEMA, or create the DHS, or invade Iraq, or still be in Iraq if the majority of US voters hadnt voted for this genius.

if you have a Bush/Cheeney sticker on your SUV, the blood of New Orleans is on your hands.

straight up.

go ahead and try to blame the mayor of new orleans. go ahead and keep showing us those school busses in that flooded parking lot and you try and pretend that that one lot could have solved all the problems of the broken levee.

go ahead and try to pretend that those school busses were the reason for the panic and chaos and dumbfuckery and mahem and rape and murder and cops quitting on the job and help not arriving for nearly a week.

i’ll meet you half way right now and say, fine, fire the mayor. will you say fire the president?

the first term of the Bush administration was one of the biggest jokes of all time. the economy tanked in that he took the biggest surplus ever and dumbfucked it into the biggest deficit ever. he took the biggest outpouring of international support after 9/11 and turned it into worldwide hatred after we invaded iraq. and he refused to persue the real terrorist center, saudi arabia, home of 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in 9/11 and osama bin ladin, who was still on the loose. and to cap off that spectacular run, he took part in a video where he jokingly looked for wmds under a couch in the white house.

he ran against a 20yr senator who was a decorated war hero who swore to be fiscially responsible, enviornmentally concious, and true to the ideal of the seperation of church and state.

but you, america, voted to give your dumbass a second shot at cowboy quartback.

mostly because he promised to keep gay people from being married.

as a matter of fact, you came out in droves to make sure that gay people wouldnt be allowed to be married.

do you have the courage to admit that we dont have a leader, and youre to blame?

or will you continue to pass the buck and point elsewhere.

just like the mayor of new orleans, you didnt prepare properly for disaster, you didnt make the right call, and your representative has continued to drop the ball just like he fumbled for the last five years.

this president has often been criticized as not being able to admit when he’s wrong. even during the debates he was asked to talk about any mistake that he had made during his first term and he couldnt do it.

are you, america, ready to admit you made a mistake, or will you continue to mimic your boy and pretend that youre blameless – that its not your fault or his fault, its the fault of the person he hired.

you hired the president and he hired everyone on his team pre 9/11. nobody was fired post 9/11. and then you didnt fire him.

you rehired the president and he hired everyone on his team pre katrina

just like post 9/11 there should have been wholesale terminations, starting at the top, begining with those who got the PDB titled “bin laden determined to strike in the us” who then ignored it.

therefore post katrina there should be wholesale terminations, starting at the top, begining with those who knew of the likihood of this devistation in the wake of the hurricane, including those who refused to take charge of the multi-state national disaster, including those who let school busses get parked in unusable lots

and including those who played his lyre and ate cake as a goodly portion of his nation drowned.

katrina is simply just one more notch on the bush bedpost of failure

how many more will you allow until you

yes, you,

stop it.

you are not powerless on a roof unable to make change

you are the people of the united states of america

the greatest country in the world

you deserve better.

but before you will get it, you need to do what your president refuses to do

you need to start firing people.

and you know where you need to start.

jack bog + sean bonner + fil + krista

i have said a lot over the last few days.
some of which i even regret: when i lashed out at Robert, below.
(since then we have patched things up.)
but one thing i havent done is allow you, the readers,
to just say whatever it is you want.
so i’ll just give you a chance to link to
or say whatever you want.
all i ask is you be respectful of each other.

listening to npr, or reading all those confounded books, my pals sk smith and dan are… whats this… volunteering?!?!

apparently busloads of evacuees from the gulf coast made it to Austin on Saturday night and sk and her man were not only nice enough to be there but good enough to write a few paragraphs about it

yes it was just a little thing, but every little bit counts. im sure that there are thousands of little stories like this, if not tens of thousands, but heres one.

a portion:

On Saturday night Dan and I were watching a horrible rerun of Saturday Night Live and mostly falling asleep on the couch when an emergency message scrawled across the bottom of the television screen. A hundred volunteers were urgently needed at the Convention Center downtown—evacuees were coming in by the busload and a large number were expected around 5am, and the Red Cross needed people to set up cots. I mentioned this to Dan, who wasn’t really paying attention, in the hopes that he would let us both off the hook by saying “Enh, let’s just go tomorrow.” But no, he is a Boy Scout, and so we put on our shoes and hoofed it down to the Convention Center.

When we got there, the line at the volunteer sign-in was maybe 10 people deep. By the time we were signed in, the line stretched all the way outside, and the Statesman later reported that over 400 people showed up. As a Red Cross coordinator led away my little group of volunteers, we walked past this incredible line, and it was a lovely thing indeed to see that the only thing these people had in common was that they were all homebodies who’d been spending their Saturday night watching television. Collegiate Asian hipsters, middle-aged Hispanic women, young black couples…I was relieved to see it wasn’t just a bunch of bleeding-heart KLRU subscribers ministering to the poor and disenfranchised.

as the good professor says, read the whole thing

buzznet and the mississip sun-hearld have teamed up + blog of the year + destroying FEMA

ladies ringer (pictured) + men’s baseball shirt + mug + t-shirt

all profits will go to the Red Cross

to read the latest on the busblog click here