Well, I was feeling good today, until the foul stench of the latest White House spin (lies) started to drift in from the east. Again, why can’t the Bush people just keep their mouth shut and wait for it to blow over? Are they just digging themselves in deeper, or will their mindless followers accept what they say without question, as usual?
This post on Daily Kos has the amusing title “Where Turd Blossom Goes, A Talking Point Blooms.”
There’s one particular conservative talking point that made the blastfax today that’s been absolutely omnipresent: the entirely false premise that George W. Bush, man of the people, begged and pleaded with reluctant state officials to evacuate in front of the coming storm.
One of the more spectacular results of this administration’s insistence on lying about everything, all the time is that they never go to much trouble to make sure each lie matches the next. This is because, to use a scientific explanation, they are unrepentant syphilitic dog whores.
Following the lie, however, we see that in order to even argue the point, you have to agree with a whole litany of other points:
- That President Bush himself, as well as presumably his entire team, knew full well that Katrina was a devastating storm requiring mass evacuations in front of it, and one which would wreak catastrophic damage.
- And yet President Bush, and the rest of his cabinet, remained on vacation while they knew that.
- And yet FEMA was utterly unprepared, apparently, to offer assistance for it.
- And yet Homeland Security did, apparently, nothing to ensure FEMA was prepared to offer assistance for it.
- And yet in spite of apparently knowing the danger to New Orleans in specific, both the President and the administrator of FEMA were completely unaware that anyone had “foreseen” that the levees would fail — and apparently was only monitoring the levee condition via newspaper headlines.
- And yet, in the days following the storm, the FEMA director insisted that he wasn’t even aware 15,000 evacuees had fled to the New Orleans convention center, a designated shelter area, until he was told by reporters.
- And yet, FEMA continued to reject assistance and turn rescuers away during the most critical days after the storm.
So for the sake of argument, fine: let’s grant the central premise the White House was following the dangerous progress of Katrina well in advance, and urged evacuations. Let’s grant the premise that they were “ready” for this storm, according to the standards that Bush set for himself. On vacation. While receiving ceremonial guitars.
Does that make the now-universally-recognized-as-inadequate administration response better? Or spectacularly worse?
