Friday, September 09, 2005

 

Let's point fingers!

Who's up for playing the blame game? (Remember, demanding accountability is a game! Like tiddlywinks or beer pong! Fun fun, a major city is devastated, it's time for charades!!!!!)

Okay, so who to blame for the two snafus (preparedness & response) in Louisiana? FEMA head Michael Brown? Nah, he's an unqualified chump, it would be like appointing me starting point guard for the Nuggets and then blaming me because we didn't make the playoffs (except, you know, with far, far, far more death, destruction, and misery). Obviously he needs to be fired, but it doesn't make what happened his fault. He was set up to fail, and lying about shit afterwards is just par for the course for this administration. No fingers.

Michael Chertoff? Well, yeah, a finger or two. But hell, it's not even clear that the Dept. of Homeland Security has been given enough resources to properly handle it's main anti-terror job, let alone natural disasters that don't occur in swing states in an election year.

State & local officials? No fingers. I am over-the-top-SICK of people saying "well, look what a great job Giuliani did in New York." The situations are completely not analogous. He was pleasing on the teevee to many, but (and please correct me if I'm wrong) by the time Rudy started being calm, the actual crisis phase of September 11 was over.

I'm not even going to point fingers at Condi, for whom shoe shopping, Spamalot, and hitting with Monica Seles were more important that coordinating offers of help from around the globe because ... hello! Monica Seles!

No, it's the three-headed dragon of Bush, Cheney, and Rove for whom almost all fingers, toes, and other appendages are reserved. Those three have been in charge from the beginning. Those three made the decision -- the affirmative decision -- to lollygag as long as possible before responding to Katrina. Those three are currently in charge of the propaganda campaign posing as disaster management (and of course, attempting to evade any sense of responsibility by planting lies all over the place about how Gov. Blanco didn't ask for a state of emergency declaration).

And whatever shameful behavior they have engaged in since the disaster struck, it's nothing compared to this article (which Atrios pointed me to but gives short shrift, in my opinion) about the inexplicable gutting of FEMA.

Disaster in the Making

In case Congress hasn't gotten the message, former FEMA director James Lee Witt recently restated it in strong terms. "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded," he testified at a March 24, 2004, hearing on Capitol Hill. "I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me, 'It is like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management.'"


And then read the followup.

It's all you need to know about this mother loving administration. Read the first article, especially. Your digits will be pointing, too.

Any fingers that remain go to the voters & Congress for enabling the miserable, miserable failures "in charge."

UPDATE: Looks like I'm not the only one who is in favor of the pointing of the fingers...

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