Priorities

Ever wonder what George Bush's priorities really are? Let's try to find out, by taking a quick look at some recent events:


It took President Bush four days to respond to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The storm hit on a Monday, and Bush didn't visit the affected areas until the following Friday.

It took President Bush less than twelve hours to respond to the death of Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist. Rehnquist passed away on a Sunday evening, and Bush nominated John Roberts to replace him on Monday morning.


The day after Katrina hit, Bush gave a speech in San Diego, and spent 42 paragraphs talking about terrorism and the war in Iraq.

During the same speech, he spent two paragraphs talking about the Hurricane Katrina disaster.


Earlier in 2005, when the courts ruled to take Terri Schiavo off life support, Bush rushed from his estate in Crawford, Texas back to Washington to sign legislation regarding her case.

For two days following the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Bush remained on vacation and traveling elsewhere in the country. He didn't return to Washington to monitor the situation until the third day after the storm hit.


During his visit to Mississippi four days after the disaster, Bush met with two sisters left homeless by the storm. When they told him they had lost everything they owned and needed basic clothing, he told them to go to the Salvation Army for help.

During the same visit, Bush made particular mention that Republican Senator Trent Lott lost his house in the storm, and promised that Lott's residence would be rebuilt: ". . . there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."


So what exactly are Bush's priorities -- and might they be a tad misplaced? You tell me.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

We lost New Orleans

The disaster that was Hurricane Katrina has brought out the best and the worst in our society. Actually, I’m not totally sure of that; it may have just brought out the worst.

Here are the worst culprits in the post-storm tragedy:

• The New Orleans city government and police force (and, complicitly, the government of Louisiana). It’s easy to see this now, but the mayor should have taken the initiative and started busing people out of town before the hurricane hit. He didn’t, but did at least offer the use of the Superdome and the Convention Center to house those who couldn’t leave on their own. Unfortunately, there was no forethought as to providing any necessities to these facilities post-hurricane, nor was there any order or anyone put in charge after the storm. Tens of thousands of residents were left to fend for themselves in these facilities, with no food, water, or leadership. The local police force, by all accounts fairly corrupt to begin with, proved totally ineffectual if not complicit in the aftermath of the disaster. The entire local government is to blame for doing little to plan for the storm, and for being rudderless afterwards.

• The United States government, in particularly FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, and the entire Bush administration. Long before the storm hit, the Bush administration had drained the coffers of the Army Corps of Engineers, which resulted in necessary levy repairs and construction to be delayed. More important, Bush’s war in Iraq depleted the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guards by at least a third, and also deprived the Guard of many of the vehicles necessary to handle a disaster of this sort. And that’s just before the storm hit; afterwards, Bush’s callous indifference and inept leadership resulted in little or no Federal aid to New Orleans until four days after the hurricane. Four days. Third-world countries responded much quicker in the aftermath of the recent tsunami. When aid did arrive, the coordination and management was comically incompetent, resulting in even longer delays and, inevitably, more deaths.

• Those people of New Orleans who took advantage of the situation to engage in predatory behavior against their fellow citizens. I’m not blaming those who scavenged for food and necessities (in my books that’s survival, not looting), but rather those gangs with guns who spread more fear and terror than there would have been otherwise.

When the extent of the disaster first became apparent, I was appalled by the media coverage of the so-called looters. It seemed… well, it seemed unnecessarily mean-spirited, in a conservative property-owning kind of way, and at least a little racist. I mean, if I were in a situation where there was no electricity or running water, where vehicular transportation was futile, where the supplies of food were dwindling and hope for assistance was days if not weeks away, you betcha I’d be trundling down to my local grocery stores, restaurants, and even office buildings (with lots of nice vending machines) to stock up on necessities. That’s what survivors do, and calling it looting reveals the unfeeling, uncomprehending, elitist viewpoint of the upper class. Hell, if I was a storeowner in New Orleans, I’d throw open my doors so my neighbors could get what they needed, financial considerations be damned. (Virtually everything being taken by the “looters” would soon be spoiled or ruined by the flooding, anyway.)

But then the situation just kept getting worse. You could see that the looting went far beyond simple scavenging for food and supplies; the very fabric of society was breaking down. One could blame the lack of a proper police presence, and that certainly was a contributing factor, but there was something more at play here. As many have pointed out, in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami, in areas more poor than downtown New Orleans, civilized behavior still reigned; the people of the poorest nations came together to help each other, while the people of the richest nation turned on each other. The fact that for a few days, in a few places, American civilization reverted to a barbaric state, is at best a major embarassment, at worst an indictment of what our society is really like under its genteel surface.

The barbarism we’ve seen in Louisiana raises lingering questions about the problems of race and class in America. John Edwards was right; there are two Americas, and we just saw the ugly face of the second America in New Orleans. Middle- and upper-class residents were able to flee the hurricane; lower-class residents were forced to bear the brunt of the storm and the resulting calamity. The face of this disaster, the face of the second America, was black and poor.

I’ve heard some conservative commentators – and even President Bush, in an early statement – say that these people made a choice to stay behind, and now they’re paying the price for that choice. This attitude is blind to the facts, and symptomatic of much of what’s wrong with our country. Anyone with a car and a credit card was able to leave the scene beforehand. Those left behind didn’t choose to stay; their choice was made by the fact that they had neither the means nor the financial wherewithal to leave. These poor, mostly black, residents were forced to ride out the storm either in their homes or at the Superdome, trusting in the government to take care of them in their time of need.

Unfortunately, the government failed them. It failed them before the storm by not making their city safer and by not offering public transportation out of the city in the face of pending disaster; it failed them after the storm by abrogating its responsibility to protect and house and feed those who needed the help.

Hurricane Katrina was not racist; storms don’t discriminate based on color or income. Our society, however, does discriminate, if not officially then in the way in which it reacts in times of distress. Was the slow government response due to the fact that the victims were poor and black? Maybe not explicitly, but it’s hard to imagine a similar slow reaction if the disaster had occurred in an affluent suburb of Atlanta or Virginia. Can you picture the government response if the faces of the survivors were those of white soccer moms? Yes, race was a factor, in one way or another.

A bigger factor, of course, was government incompetence and indifference. Incompetence because the Bush administration put its cronies in charge of FEMA and Homeland Security; Michael Brown and his cohorts had no experience in managing disasters of this or any scale, which contributed significantly to the inability to respond in an adequate fashion. (Brown's prior management experience was as director of the International Arabian Horse Association, hardly a similar enterprise.) Indifference because the Bushies and their ilk simply don’t think that government should be responsible for the welfare of its people.

This last point is the one that enrages me the most, and the one that will ultimately result in defeat of many in the current Republican leadership. Instead of believing that government exists to care for the general public, Bush and his co-conspirators believe that government exists to enrich the upper class, the powerful, and the corporate elite. Everyone else, from the middle class on down, is left to fend for themselves. When a disaster occurs, it’s somebody else’s problem; that’s why we have charities, after all. This was best seen when Bush was touring Biloxi and met with two black sisters, victims of the storm; he asked them what they needed, they said clothing, and he told them to visit the nearest Salvation Army location. He didn’t say, “we’ll take of that for you.” He didn’t say, “the government has a relief center for you.” He said, in effect, don’t bother me with your problems, let somebody handle it. As much as I respect the Salvation Army, it’s not a substitute for the U.S. Army.

The repercussions from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath will be significant and long-lasting. This is, after all, a disaster several orders of magnitude greater than that of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The administration’s response was criminally inadequate, and everyone noticed. The media, forced to deal with the catastrophe head on, with no government handlers to provide the approved spin, has been aggressively attacking administration officials for their incompetence, not letting them slide by on the normal platitudes and propaganda. At the very least, expect to see the 2006 congressional elections go heavily anti-incumbent (which means a big win for the Democrats), with similar results in the 2008 general election. In fact, if the 2006 elections end up being significantly lopsided, look for some very embarrassing congressional investigations into the executive branch’s actions in this and other recent events, perhaps even leading to impeachment proceedings. Do not underestimate the wrath of a public scorned.

I hope that something positive comes out of this disaster. It is long past time for this country to address its simmering racial, class, and economic tensions. Some foreign commentators noted that the scenes from New Orleans looked like something from a Third World country; the reality is that too many citizens of our First World nation live in Third World conditions every day. It’s time for us to deal with this, and to start bridging the gap between our two Americas.

But that’s just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Why I hate George

I've never understood the ferocity with which some conservatives despise Bill Clinton. It's natural for certain Republicans to dislike certain Democrats, and vice versa, but the hatred that many in the conservative cartel feel towards Clinton is personal. Their venom goes beyond politics; it is visceral.

Some, such as noted curmudgeon Christopher Hitchens, explain this hatred as a reaction to Clinton's lying ways. Yeah, Clinton can talk his way out of any situation, is every bit as deceptive as his detractors describe, and is an ardent practitioner of situational ethics (and policies and beliefs -- whatever it takes for him to be liked), but so is virtually every other politician who makes it to the national level. Besides, when it comes to lying, Clinton is a piker compared to our current propagandist-in-chief.

Others propose that this seething hatred for Clinton is really all about the 1960s. To some arch conservatives, Clinton represents everything that was wrong about that tumultuous decade -- he is anti-war, pro-feminist, all long hair and rock and roll and the very antithesis of the conservative ethos that all but evaporated during the Vietnam War era. There's probably something to this analysis; fighting Clinton during his presidency let the conservatives refight the 1960s' cultural wars all over again. (And if this analysis is sound, then it's quite ironic that the conservatives' current standard bearer has essentially recreated the Vietnam War cultural conflict via his so-similar-it's-eerie invasion of Iraq.)

It's more apparent why many liberals today feel a similar visceral hatred of George W. Bush. I won't speak for anyone else, but my dislike for Bush predates his post-9/11 empire building and Orwellian takeover of the public debate. No, I hate Bush more for what he is than for what he's done -- although what he's done is deplorable enough.

In my mind, George Jr. is the perfect poster child for everything I hate about class and privilege. Throughout his life Bush has felt entitled to success and approval. He comes from a rich and powerful family, so he's never known what it's like to achieve anything on his own merits. It's not that he's dumb (and he's not as dumb as he seems), and it's not even that he appears to be intellectually incurious. It's that he's lazy, and he still expects good things to come to him.

In Bush's world, someone is always there to bail him out. If he gets arrested for drunk driving, one of daddy's lawyers is there to take care of things. If he thinks he might get drafted, one of daddy's friends is there to make sure he gets a cushy position in the National Guard. If his business is on the verge of going under, another one of daddy's friends is there to buy it off him for significantly more than it's worth. And on and on and on.

You can see this sense of entitlement in the way Bush runs his administration. Opposing views aren't allowed to be heard in this White House; problems aren't even acknowledged, let alone dealt with. All is as the emperor says it is.

And the emperor, privileged as he is, doesn't have to work hard for his success. Unlike past presidents who routinely put in 12-14 hour days, Bush takes a long lunch, sets aside a few hours in the afternoon for a bike ride and a nap, and then retires early. Like others in his privileged class, he spends more time on vacations and long weekends in a year than the typical American worker gets in a decade. The privileged class doesn't have to work; they're entitled to success without effort.

This is why I hate George W. Bush. He's a wealthy, protected fratboy who's never worked a hard day in his life. Everything comes easy to him because of his family and class. He is not a typical working-class American; he is everything that working-class Americans despise. He is the kind of person the masses will put up against the wall, should the revolution ever come.

And yet Bush projects an aura of everyday American. His public persona is that of the guy next door, an average guy with average tastes (and average intellect). Bush's handlers are masters of perception to pull this deception over on the press and the public. George W. Bush is no more an average American than Marie Antoinette was an average Frenchwoman. He is not us, no matter what he pretends.

While I'm comfortable in my disdain for Bush and all that he represents, there's one thing that bothers me. I recently read a scholarly analysis of Ross Macdonald's novels, The Novels of Ross Macdonald, by Michael Kreyling. (I'm a huge Macdonald fan; he was the first -- if not the only -- author to merge genre fiction with the literary novel.) In the book, Kreyling reveals an episode during the 2000 presidential campaign where a reporter was comparing summer reads with then-candidate Bush. The reporter recommended Michael Connelly's The Concrete Blonde; Bush came back with Macdonald's The Zebra-Striped Hearse.

Hence a conflict. How can someone I hate so much for who he is and what he thinks also be a fan of such a great and thoughtful novelist such as Ross Macdonald? In other words, can I continue to hate someone who likes the same books I do? (Forget, for the moment, the additional surprise that Bush even reads -- let alone what he reads.)

I think this is where I have to reluctantly pull out a Hitler analogy. As evil as Hitler was (and I'm not comparing Bush to him in that manner), Hitler liked dogs. Can a man be pure evil if he likes dogs? Can Bush be all bad if he likes Ross Macdonald? I don't know. All I know is that someone of Bush's nature doesn't deserve to be leader of our country, and shouldn't be held as an example of all things American. Despite his reading habits, George W. Bush is everything that America is not. And that's why I hate him.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

No problem

In spite of my general churlishness and almost-total disdain for the human race, I try to be polite. It's a generational thing, I think; I was raised to say "please" and "thank you" and to hold doors open for other people, so that's what I do -- even if the dimbulb counterhelp is too busy chatting with their cohorts to turn around and take my money in a prompt fashion.

So here's the deal. When you're a worker in the retail service industry, you're supposed to say "thank you" to your customers. You make a sale, you take an order, you take their money, you say "thank you." Except that today's service help seem not to know this. More often than not, when a counterperson takes my money and gives me change he or she doesn't say anything. If any words dribble from their mouths, it's the phrase "here you go." Sorry, folks, "here you go" is not the same as "thank you." Not that I view myself as all that special, but all retail help should treat their customers as if they were. Hence the "thank you," now missing from our collective retail vocabulary.

So what do I do when a mentally suspect counterperson attempts to take my order, or when a perpetually disinterested cashier hands me my change, or when a distracted waitperson slides my plate down the table? Why, I say "thank you." Forget that that's what the retail help should be saying. I'm polite. When someone hands me something, I say "thank you."

And what does that retail worker say in response to my "thank you"? They say "no problem." Not "you're welcome," which should be the proper response. No, they say "no problem." As if they wanted to reassure me that I wasn't really bothering them by giving them my order or my money. "Hey, man, it's no problem, I didn't have anything better to do than to wait on you." No problem, my ass.

Here's the problem. American society in the 21st century has lost all civility. When a retail worker responds "no problem" to what should be a privilege to serve the public, all perspective has fled. I don't know whether it's a sign of poor breeding, poor schooling, or the heathen influence of MTV, but it's not right and I don't have to like it. We need a return to common etiquette, and a dismissal of this casual indifference. And people wonder why I've become so curmudgeonly...

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree, no problem.

9/11, Iraq, and the war on terrorism: Stop the lying

On Saturday, President Bush once again pulled out the old chestnut about how the Iraq war is linked to the so-called war on terrorism. It's about time, however, that the old chestnut be revealed for what it is. It's not justification, it's not spin, it's not even a shading of the truth. It's bullshit, pure and simple. Once again, Bush is lying to us -- and we shouldn't put up with it any longer.

Let's look at what Bush said in his radio address. First, he made this statement:

"Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy."

There is no reason to accept this statement at face value. I would wager that the typical new recruit knows nothing at all about who or what he'll be fighting, beyond what the recruiter told him. (And, if recent reports are to believed, the average recruiter is lying out of his ass in a futile attempt to meet his unachievable recruitment numbers.) Even if our soldiers think they're fighting for some higher cause when they first enroll, they're disabused of that notion once they get on the ground in Iraq and find themselves knee-deep in a messy civil war where the only factor unifying the different factions is their hatred for their American occupiers. The "savage enemy" that Bush talks about isn't some terrorist group, it's a variety of "freedom fighters" battling guerilla-style to take back their homeland. To them, we're the savage enemy.

Next, Bush had the gall to say this:

"[Our troops] know that if we do not fight these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war, and they know we will prevail."

Lies, nothing but lies. But let's take them one at a time.

The statement starts with the well-practiced line that we're fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here in America. This implies, at the very least, that Iraq is full of terrorists who are just itchin' to travel across the Atlantic to do damage here in the U.S. Nothing could be further from the truth. The so-called terrorists in Iraq are a rag-tag bunch of stone throwers and car bombers, nothing much organized about them at all. They certainly don't have the financial wherewithal to purchase a plane ticket to New York and fund a terrorist campaign here in the States. We have to fight them there because they couldn't get to the U.S. if they wanted to. These militants are not, nor have they ever been, a threat to the American homeland.

Bush then goes on to claim that "the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war." Now, this is just total bullshit. If we lose in Iraq, which we probably will, no American (save for our troops in Iraq, of course) will be put at risk. The rag-tag Iraqis will not follow our retreating troops across the Atlantic to attack our major cities. No American will be less safe when we abandon the fight. It's not a war that endangers Americans -- again, save for those poor souls we're sending there to do our fighting for us. The notion of this being the kind of war that that is necessary for our national safety, or that even requires national sacrifice, is laughable.

Bush ends that little statement with the phrase, "and they know we will prevail." If they (our troops) know this, they know more than I do, and more than our military leaders, as well. Iraq is a quagmire, an unwinnable situation similar to what we faced in Vietnam. It's not a matter of if we're going to pull out, it's a matter of when and how. And, yes, we'll leave that country in worse shape than it was before we got involved; a bloody civil war is most definitely in the cards, and there's not much we can do about it. (Though it does make one marvel at the effectiveness of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in keeping warring factions at bay; dictatorships aren't always all bad.)

Bush wasn't done talking, however. Our so-called elected leader had the audacity to draw a direct relationship between 9/11 and the Iraqi conflict:

"In a few weeks, our country will mark the four-year anniversary of the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. On that day, we learned that vast oceans and friendly neighbors no longer protect us from those who wish to harm our people. And since that day, we have taken the fight to the enemy."

In other words, we're in Iraq because of 9/11.

Once and for all, let's put an end to this lie. There is no -- absolutely zero -- connection between Sadaam Hussein, Iraq, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The 9/11 attackers had no ties to Iraq. Hussein had no connection to Al Queda. Hussein was not involved in the planning or the funding of the 9/11 attacks. There is no there there. Iraq was no more involved in 9/11 than Canada or Switzerland were.

Bush didn't attack Iraq because of 9/11, or because of terrorism in any way, shape, or form. Maybe he attacked it for the oil, maybe he did it in the name of some neo-con plan for world domination, maybe it had something to do with his daddy. I don't know. The only thing I do know is that saying the war in Iraq is somehow justified as revenge for 9/11, or to prevent some vague future terrorist attack, is pure bullshit. Let's call it that and treat it as such.

But there's more. The President had one last statement to make:

"We're fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world, striking them in foreign lands before they can attack us here at home."

What a whopper. Again, there weren't any terrorists in Iraq, so there goes the initial justification. Of course, there are terrorists in Iraq now -- but only because our troops are there provoking things. In other words, we have made Iraq a haven for terrorists. Thanks, George.

Then there's the notion that if we fight them there, they won't attack us here. The recent bombings in London put lie to that theory. Fighting Islamic terrorism isn't like fighting a country, with physical boundaries and organized troops. Terrorists are everywhere and nowhere. Attacking them in one country with conventional armies doesn't affect their ability to strike at will anyplace else in the world. We're not tying them down; we're only pissing them off.

If we truly want to minimize the danger from Islamic terrorism, we'd call off the troops and sic the CIA on them. Terrorist groups are small and shadowy, best fought with subterfuge and counterintelligence. That's what's worked in the past (against all manner of Middle Eastern terrorist groups from the 1970s and on), and the only thing that will work in the future. Fighting a virtual enemy with hundreds of thousands of physical troops in a single location is pure folly.

It's also pure folly to imagine that we're really in Iraq to fight a terrorist threat. That's not why we invaded, and it's not why we're still fighting today. It may be what Bush and his cohorts would like us to believe, because "fighting terrorism" plays well in the polls. But it's a sham justification, a lie so enormous and so criminal as to warrant prosecution in international courts. Why anyone ever believed this -- and why anyone might still believe it -- is testament to the power of propaganda.

Here is my request of our so-called leader: Mr. President, quit lying to us -- and bring our boys home now.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.