by Freida Marie Crump
This website brought to you in part by the following sponsor:
Find out how to advertise here - Email us! [email protected]
Greetings from the Ridge.
A wise man relies upon the advice of good friends. Maybe George W. simply had none last week.
His chief of staff Andy Card was on vacation in Maine, Condoleezza Rice was shopping for shoes in Manhattan, Dick Cheney was in Wyoming, his media advisor Mark McKinnon was in Greece watching communications director Nicolle Devenish get married.
It really wasn’t George’s fault. His friends had failed to read the same forecasts that we did, and simply left town.
And this whole flap about poor Michael Brown as head of FEMA. How could George know that being head of the International Arabian Horse Association wouldn’t be good training to handle national disasters? Who would have known that being the college buddy of one of the President’s supporters didn’t qualify "Brownie" as an expert in crisis management.
It really wasn’t George’s fault.
When the President said that he didn’t "think anybody expected" the New Orleans levees to collapse, he had just been given bad advice. So what if this very thing had been predicted for years? After all, everyone but his dog Barney had left him and gone on vacation.
And the poor guy’s reactions to the hurricane and its aftermath can be forgiven as simply lapses of good judgment. Okay, he smiled and did his gung-ho swagger when he first landed in New Orleans four days late.
After all, he had a conference to attend in California. A man’s got to keep his appointment, right? It really wasn’t George’s fault.
He was saying really important things. When it became obvious that fuel shortages would be a major problem in the storm’s aftermath, when southern governors were screaming to folks about the impending crisis, George announced simply, "We really ought to conserve more." See? He really was trying.
Some have accused our President of being less than compassionate.
Nothing could be further from the truth. After all, he reads the bible. He’s told us that.
When tens of thousands of already poverty-entrenched refugees were trying to find their mothers’ bodies in the fetid waters of the gulf, George told us that Trent Lott’s mansion had been destroyed and that he looked forward to somebody sitting on the senator’s new porch. I can’t believe that anyone would accuse the President of being cold-hearted when he showed that much compassion for a poor, displaced millionaire.
When Christ spoke of being compassionate to the poor, he meant to include millionaires. In the thousands of years of retranslating the bible, a lot has been lost.
And poor George’s administration claims that they couldn’t get food and water to the folks in the New Orleans convention center because they didn’t know they were there. Okay, the entire population of America had been watching the victims of the storm pile up in the center for days, but you see we weren’t on vacation. We were home watching the news.
Surely you can’t blame George for missing little details like this.
So George comes to New Orleans, and as was his habit in his election campaign, he came to a safe part of the city, carefully distancing himself from his detractors. Let’s give the man a break. Who wants to hold a news conference to tell us how much progress he’s making when surrounded by the results of that "progress?" Besides, the growling stomachs would have ruined the audio portion of the tape. And don’t criticize the man for not allowing any questions from the press. After all, these were the people who caused the hurricane by their incessant weather reporting.
Get off George’s back! He knows what’s going on! Four days after the hurricane hit, he flew over it!
And just in case anyone thinks that there might have been a teeny-little mistake made here or there, George wants an investigation to be held to see who’s to blame. And the man is even so gracious as to volunteer his own time to head up this investigation. What more could we want?
Okay, Teddy Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan would probably have shown up the next day, stood among the mourners, and admitted that his response was inadequate, then rolled up his sleeves and gone to work. But those guys are dead, right?
Let’s face it, we reelected Bush (barely) because he was a strong decision maker. And last week while his advisors were on vacation, he made a few. We should be happy… right?
You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.