Keystone Government
Oh, dear. I haven’t been to Michael Bérubé’s place in awhile – not on purpose, just because I haven’t gotten around to it. He was off on a vacation for awhile, I think, and I got out of the habit. Anyway I’m reading it now, and I keep bursting into laughter, so I thought I might as well share one or two of the shots. To set the scene for you – they have to do with Katrina and ass-covering. A major rescue operation:
“Operation Cover Our Asses was carried out with a combination of precision, speed and boldness the American people did not expect,” Bush told a select group of Gannons standing on the flight deck. “We set up an array of emergency photo ops and Potemkin villages with a can-do spirit that dazzled the world. I personally have hugged black people in the Gulf Coast, and the photos are now available on the White House website.”
Some comments on FEMA then and now:
Writing in Slate, Bruce Reed reminds us that thanks to Clinton and Gore’s wonky, do-good “reinventing government” initiative, FEMA was transformed from “a dumping ground for political hacks” to a competent, responsive agency.
But Bush had other ideas. He
appoints a campaign contributor/ horse whisperer to manage FEMA, thereby restoring to the agency the corruption and cronyism of his father’s era. (And not just any horse whisperer, mind you! An incompetent horse whisperer who was pushed out of his horse-whispering job because he was a “total disaster.” Give that guy a disaster-management position!)
Maybe that was it. Maybe the word ‘disaster’ gave someone the idea. I’m not sure I don’t believe it.
The question of which candidate would do a better job with FEMA just wasn’t important enough for most of our press to cover.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur. Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both lightning and thunder in the extreme weather that devastated the Gulf Coast over the past week…“We knew about the lightning,” Chertoff insisted. “We had all gathered to watch the lightning, which was really awesome. But then came the thunder, and before we knew it, most of us had dived under tables, chairs, desks, anything—anything to get away from the horrible booming noise no one could possibly have expected.”
Read the rest. Read the whole dang page.
Also
BLAME GAME TIED
“Federal, Local Governments Deadlocked in Finger-pointing Contest”
The ongoing blame game that began in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is officially tied, as Federal and local governments have each dished out identical amounts of blame, the official scorekeeper of the blame game said today.
The scorekeeper, Karl Chanswood, is president of the National Blame Game Association, an organization that for the past forty years has promoted the blame game as a professional sport and hopes to see it included someday in the Olympics.
Mr. Chanswood said that in the current blame game, state and local governments pulled out to an early lead over the Federal government.
“Based on the early going, I would have guessed that the state and local governments had this particular blame game in the bag,” Mr. Chanswood said.
But after initially stumbling, he said, the Federal government stepped up their finger-pointing and pulled into a dead heat with their state and local rivals.
“I have to hand it to the White House,” Mr. Chanswood said. “They were way behind in this finger-pointing contest, but then they really brought their ‘A’ game.”
At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan brushed aside criticism that the White House responded too slowly to being blamed by state and local governments and should have started returning the blame much sooner.
Mr. McClellan pointed out that President Bush had recently authorized the release of the Strategic Blame Reserves, an emergency supply of blame that is used only in times of national crisis: “That’s a sign of how seriously we take winning this blame game.”
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1210&srch=
Tangential, but see here:
http://www.counterbias.com/399.html
Apparently God and Allah got together to drown New Orleans because of Mardi Gras, organised sodomy and the invasion of Iraq. So lucky they could agree an agenda for cooperation…..
Note how ‘a select group of Gannons’ … so its stereotyping and ‘othering’ from the get-go. Don’t you think we are getting an echo in here?
It’s satire, ChrisP, obviously it’s stereotyping and ‘othering’ from the get-go. Echo in here? You mean broad agreement that Bush is a bad president? Yes – there’s an echo in here. It is nevertheless possible that Bush is in fact a bad president.