Daddy, make a picture

Is there any doubt now that GWB is the worst President of modern times if not ever?

The New York Times puts forth the indictment in its lead editorial this morning:

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

and goes on to say:

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast’s most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans’s levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane’s surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area’s flood protection?

As I pointed out yesterday, while the flood waters were rising and the full magnitude of the disaster was beginning to be known, our miserable failure of a leader was goofing off with a second-rate country star.

Unfortunately, it’s not as if we weren’t warned again and again that New Orleans was a sitting duck. But apparently the administration was so unprepared for even the slightest of responses that the Department of Homeland (In)Security held up a Canadian search and rescue team that offered help.

The hurricane was a natural disaster. What happened afterwards - the flooding, the lawlessness, the human suffering - was entirely avoidable. And the blame belongs squarely with our failure and embarrassment of a president.

/rant off

Please give and give often to the Red Cross disaster relief fund.

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