The Fleecing of America

Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly constructs (and reposts) this highly upsetting sequence of incompetence and bad decisions at the Dubya and FEMA levels which make the dismal relief efforts resulting from Hurricane Katrina so not a surprise anymore. For example, the budget for levee construction in Louisiana was slashed a little over a year ago. Funding for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project was also cut in June of this year. All of these cuts were made in order to fund that fat, bloated, maniacal war in Iraq.

All of this was done even though FEMA declared back in 2001 that a hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."

Stuff the "hindsight is 20/20" bullshit that I've been hearing. Give it a rest already. It's obvious that Bush's "leadership" has been incompetent from day one. Bush has managed to milk the sympathy angle for all that its worth post-9/11. But now, there are no excuses. His abilities as a leader are as fake and distorted as his face-to-face encounters with his constituency. Did you know that the Bush disaster area visits are, in reality, just modern-day Potemkin villages? No joke. Laura Rosen of War and Piece brings to our attention a German newscast of a Bush visit:

Clean-up operation only for Bush?

Where the US President visited the disaster area, aid units cleaned up the area. But only there. Reporting from Biloxi, ZDF correspondent Claudia Rueggeberg cited desperate inhabitants [of Biloxi telling her] Bush should have transported aid materials inside his limousines instead of a bunch of body guards and media correspondents.

Along his [Bush] travel route aid units removed debris and recovered corpses. Then Bush left and along with him, all aid troops left too. The situation in Biloxi remains unchanged, nothing has arrived, everything is still needed.

Can we impeach him now? What else do we need, seriously.

(Thanks to Gothamimage for the inspiration.)