Tag: Hurricane Katrina

God Sent Katrina to Punish Republicans, Bush Voters and White People

Jon Ponder

God smacked: A Texas preacher has been telling his followers that God sent Hurricane Katrina to purge the sinners in New Orleans:

The Rev. Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, has asked if God sent the hurricane “to purify our nation.” He said, “I’m raising the question. At some point, God will hold us accountable for our sins … [New Orleanians] have devil worship. They advertise ‘Sin City’ tours. They celebrate Southern decadence. Girls go wild in New Orleans. Sometimes God does not speak through natural phenomena. This may have nothing to do with God being offended by homosexuality. But possibly it does.”

Possibly – but maybe God was sending another message. Statistically, the majority of folks who felt God’s wrath through Katrina include these groups: […]

An Open Letter to Everyone Who Voted for George W. Bush

Jon Ponder

To All My Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:

On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I’m just curious, how does it feel?

How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows?

That’s right. Horse shows…

[On] this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain?

Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do can’t string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can’t pay the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health coverage whatsoever.

Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you’ve sown will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution. Do you really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the problem will somehow go away?

I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who wasn’t up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren’t up for the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and safety and security, this has to be fixed. What do you propose?

I have an idea, and it isn’t a horse show.

— Michael Moore

Bush Feared Visit Among Black Hurricane Victims

Jon Ponder
“If I’m Karl, do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we’re living in Rawanda?”

He’s not their president: How can any African-Americans still support this president:

One prominent African-American supporter of Mr. Bush who is close to Karl Rove, the White House political chief, said the president did not go into the heart of New Orleans and meet with black victims on his first trip there, last Friday, because he knew that White House officials were “scared to death” of the reaction.

“If I’m Karl, do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we’re living in Rwanda?” said the supporter, who spoke only anonymously because he did not want to antagonize Mr. Rove.

Maher: The First American President to Lose an Entire City

Jon Ponder

“Come on, Mr. President, this can’t be fun for you anymore.

“You can’t spend any of our money because you used it all up. And you can’t start another war because you’ve used up the troops. And when it come to reacting to hurricanes, you made your old man look like St. Francis of Assisi.

“Your job has turned into the Bush Family nightmare: helping poor black people.

“The cupboard’s bare, the credit card’s maxed out and no one’s speaking to you — mission accomplished!

“Now it’s time to do what you do best: lose interest and walk away, like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team.

“Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or spaceman? […]

“Because you’re the first American president to lose a whole city. Jimmy Carter never lost a city. Herbert Hoover was a lousy president, but he didn’t concede an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes.

“You’ve performed so poorly you should give yourself a medal.”

— Bill Maher, Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2005

Bush Record Shows It Really Is About Race

Trish

Some people disagree with Colin Powell that the failure of the federal emergency response in New Orleans “wasn’t a racial thing.” If it were really about poverty, as Bush defenders claim, then his administration wouldn’t spend so much time cleaning up his record on blacks, says the Palm Beach Post.

Poverty doesn’t polarize in the same vocal, fearful manner that race does…

If you were offended by Kanye West’s comments, you should be more offended by President Bush’s record.

The unending cluelessness in this administration is getting old.

President Bush so wanted minority voters to believe that his administration “is working very well for them” that a report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality was changed last year to downplay that ethnic and racial “disparities are pervasive in our health-care system.”

Because a racial profiling report by the Justice Department demonstrated that, in traffic stops, things too often are not “working very well for them,” the report was ordered to be whitewashed. A supervisor who objected recently was fired.

President Bush’s meddling with the Head Start preschool program threatens to leave thousands of poor, black children struggling to catch up. No Child Left Behind, his underfinanced genius of a PR scheme, annually leaves thousands of black children behind academically.

He so values the equity the Voting Rights Act of 1965 offered African-Americans and others that he’s made no commitment to extend and strengthen the provisions that expire in 2007. Even though unemployment rates for African-Americans are consistently almost double the rates for white Americans, and black households had the lowest median income in 2004 ($30,134) among all race groups, and 72 percent of white Americans own homes vs. only 48 percent of African-Americans, President Bush believes that the work force and the educational system are working so well that they don’t need affirmative action.

Bush is not only predisposed to racism but his policies reflect the qualities we have seen over and over this summer, from the famous, “I have to get on with my life” line regarding Cindy Sheehan to the classic, “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job” in New Orleans.

This guy doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get anything outside of his privileged circumstances and narrow life perspective (uncluttered as it is with insights from newspapers or books). He chooses faith over facts, unshakably certain that his view is the only view. Who knew levees could break? Who knew wetlands matter? Who thought terrorists could fly planes as weapons? Who thought anyone would object to leaving thousands of poor blacks treading water with nothing for three or four days? The unending cluelessness in this administration is getting old.

Good Job, Brownie! You’re Demoted

Jon Ponder

Associated Press:

Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being removed from his role managing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, The Associated Press has learned.

Brown is being sent back to Washington from Baton Rouge, where he was the primary official overseeing the federal government’s response to the disaster, according to two federal officials who declined to be identified before the announcement.

Brown will be replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, who was overseeing New Orleans relief and rescue efforts.

FEMA Fiction: Brownie’s Padded Resume

Jon Ponder

In over his head: Time Magazine has looked into the resume of FEMA Director Michael Brown, and has found some, er, irregularities.

By now, everybody knows that he was the general counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association before he went to work for his college roommate, Joe Allbaugh, the director of FEMA. (Allbaugh got the FEMA job because he was a camapaign operative for Bush/Cheney in 2000.)

But the one position prior to his stint at FEMA that seemed to have had anything to do with disaster preparedness was “serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight” for a small town in Oklahoma in the 1970’s.

Wrong. Brownie, who was in his twenties, was actually an “assistant to the city manager” of Edmond, OK. In other words, he was the city manager’s administrative assistant, or secretary.

Brown also apparently lied about receiving the “Outstanding Political Science Professor” award at an Oklahoma university. In fact, he was a student, not a professor, at the school.

He also claimed to be a director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, but a spokesperson for the home said Brown “was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here.”

A former boss remembers Brown this way: “He did mainly transactional work, not litigation,” says Jones. “There was a feeling that he was not serious and somewhat shallow.”

A D.C. Kool Kid Seems to Have Awakened, Is Shocked to Discover The President Is Callous and Inept

Jon Ponder

But it’s too late now: The Hurricane Katrina disaster has awakened Margaret Carlson, one of the cadre of “liberal” D.C. Kool Kids whose laser focus on the Clintons’ personal lives in the 1990’s gave aid and comfort to the enemy, thus helping to deliver the White House to the Republicans in 2000.

That was then. This is Margaret now:

The Bushes have always made fun of Bill Clinton’s lip-biting, hands-on governing, but who wouldn’t prefer it to this president’s upbeat platitudes.

Who, indeed – but it wasn’t just the Bushes who derided President Clinton, Margaret. It was you, too.

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