Bush, Katrina and revisionist history

Yesterday in the current occupants final presser he said something in defense of the federal response in the aftermath of Katrina that set me off. Getting defensive, he said "Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed."

What. The. Fuck?

Never mind the warnings before the storm that were ignored. Never mind that hurricanes don't materialize out of nowhere like earthquakes, or even tornadoes and an evacuation could have and should have been mounted before the storm made landfall.

I am trained in mass casualty response. I sat in Kansas City watching that storm move toward New Orleans and got more and more apprehensive about what was about to happen. I remember looking at my husband and saying "Holy shit. That storm has latched onto the loop current and it isn't going to track away. NOLA is fucked. It's below sea level, and I'm afraid the levies won't hold. They haven't been properly maintained for years."

I watched. I waited. Nothing happened. The storm bore down. The storm made landfall. Still...nothing. Then my worst fears came to pass. The levies failed.

And still there was no response.

That stuff, I have been in a slow boil over since late August 2005. No new outrages there.

What pisses me off is the revisionist nature of the quote I cited.

Does he really think that we didn't read the Conyers report? Does he think we won't remember that the Coast Guard never got the orders to mount the rescue efforts? Those people were rescued because one man, Vice Admiral Thad Allen, commander of the Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans, put his ass and his career - and potentially his liberty - on the line and sent his people in without orders.

Those people were not rescued because of anything Chertoff or Bush or Brownie did. They were rescued in spite of those useless fools because one honorable man lived up to his oath of service, even though doing so put him in personal jeopardy. He committed an act of insubordination and could have been busted out of service and lost everything - but he did the right thing anyway.

Remember his name.

Remember what he did.

And when they trot out their revisionist crap, remind them what really happened.

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Oh my God! I finally get it!

Remember when aWol, a while back, sparked outrage by comparing himself to Truman?

People, he was right and we were wrong. We just had the wrong Truman in mind.

He is this Truman.

It hit me like a ton of bricks when I checked in on my friend Steve Benen this morning and read this...

It’s been more than seven years, but I still laugh when I look back at this classic satirical item from The Onion, in which George W. Bush assured the nation that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.”

“My fellow Americans,” Bush said (in this fake-news item), “at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us.”

Of course, this piece, written four days before Bush’s first inaugural, proved to be rather prophetic. But in the meantime, whenever I see or hear references to “peace and prosperity,” I think of The Onion, and the strength and success Bush squandered.

I was reminded of it again this morning, listening to Bush’s speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

“My energy is up, my spirit is high, and I will finish strong. And in the meantime, we will elect a new President. We’ve had good debates and soon we’ll have a nominee who will carry a conservative banner into this election and beyond. Listen, the stakes in November are high. This is an important election. Prosperity and peace are in the balance.”

Really? Does George W. Bush seriously want to argue that the nation should follow his direction in order to maintain “prosperity and peace”?

Where is this elusive “prosperity and peace”? And why is it hiding so well?

There is only one explanation - the bubble is opaque, and soundproof. It is a controlled and scripted environment and he is cluelessly performing for an audience, oblivious to the outside world.

Just like Truman.

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Fact-challeged Rudy Pinocchio

Ah, impudent Pinocchio. Rudy can't help if he's so full of himself that he's bursting with false bravado. He's a self-aggrandizing Republican. And that's what wingnuts do -- mislead to glorify themselves, to make themselves bigger than life.

Today, Michael Cooper at NYTimes bluntly reports: Citing Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again (with emphasis)

In almost every appearance as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, Rudolph W. Giuliani cites a fusillade of statistics and facts to make his arguments about his successes in running New York City and the merits of his views.

Discussing his crime-fighting success as mayor, Mr. Giuliani told a television interviewer that New York was “the only city in America that has reduced crime every single year since 1994.” In New Hampshire this week, he told a public forum that when he became mayor in 1994, New York “had been averaging like 1,800, 1,900 murders for almost 30 years.” When a recent Republican debate turned to the question of fiscal responsibility, he boasted that “under me, spending went down by 7 percent.”

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong. And while, to be sure, all candidates use misleading statistics from time to time, Mr. Giuliani has made statistics a central part of his candidacy as he campaigns on his record.

For instance, another major American city claims to have reduced crime every year since 1994: Chicago. New York averaged 1,514 murders a year during the three decades before Mr. Giuliani took office; it did not record more than 1,800 homicides until 1980. And Mr. Giuliani’s own memoir states that spending grew an average of 3.7 percent for most of his tenure; an aide said Mr. Giuliani had meant to say that he had proposed a 7 percent reduction in per capita spending during his time as mayor.

Facts and figures are often the striking centerpieces of Mr. Giuliani’s arguments. He has always had a penchant for statistics — his anticrime strategy as mayor was built around a system known as Compstat that closely tracked crimes to focus law enforcement efforts. On the campaign trail he often wields data, without notes, with prosecutorial zeal to hammer home his points.

[Keep reading...]

Reality and facts aren't Rudy's forte but he sure likes to paint himself as a hero even if he must -- and he must -- bend the truth:

An examination of many of his statements by The New York Times, other news organizations and independent groups have turned up a variety of misstatements, virtually all of which cast Mr. Giuliani or his arguments in a better light. “He’s given us a lot of work up until now,” said Brooks Jackson, the director of Annenberg Political Fact Check, which is part of Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania that has corrected statements by candidates in both parties.

But, of course, Rudy can't be blamed for polishing his mayoral performance into a shining presidential facsimile if you believe his cheerleading squad. After all, that's what an ambitious Pinocchio does. Oh, Rudy so wants to grow up to be a real president! He's so desperate to come to life in the Oval Office that he'll say anything even if it's untrue.

On cue, Rudy's Geppettos defended his hyperbolic tendency:

Aides to Mr. Giuliani dismiss questions about his use of statistics as nitpicking, arguing that no one can dispute the big points he makes by using the statistics: that crime dropped significantly during his tenure, say, or that he worked to restrain spending in New York.

Au contraire! First, crime was already dropping significantly long before Rudy took office as Greg Sargent illustrated in a handy chart covering 1994--2004. Harper's quoting criminologist Franklin Zimring found:

...Giuliani’s claims to be self-serving. First, [Zimring] said, during Giuliani’s time as mayor criminal activity was declining nationwide. Homicide, rape, burglary and automobile theft all dropped between 37 and 41 percent in the 1990s, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports—all the result of social and policy changes that were taking place in New York and in the nation at large. Thus, according to Zimring, at least half—and as much as three-quarters—of that drop in New York crime “would have happened if Rudy Giuliani had never been born.”

And why, if Rudy was so fiscally responsible, did Mayor Bloomberg inherit a $4 billion deficit?

Will Giuliani repent his fuzzy math and serial exaggerations?

I doubt it. John W. Dean wrote in Conservatives Without Conscience (p. 26):

A close study of conservatives reveals an interesting trait: These people do not see themselves as they actually are, but rather as something very different. In short, they seem to have little facility for self-analysis.

Rudy has too much invested in his towering image and friends in high places who pull strings to fashion him into a leading GOP presidential contender.

Furthermore, the Beltway press loves to perpetuate myths during their cocktail weenie parties where they can sample hot hors d'oeuvres: "WMDs anyone?" They love dramatic story lines regardless whether they're true or not. Just like Rudy.

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Six hours later, and I'm still in shock

It is six hours later, and I am still trying to make sense of that speech Resident Evil gave at the VFW convention, just a few blocks from my home...I'm still waiting for the lotus-like sluggishness of intellect to lift from my zipcode. We are deep blue here in the MO 05, and we were just inundated by more republicans downtown than Kansas City has seen since the convention in 1976.

But I was ranting about Resident Evil. Where was I?

Oh, yes....

Holy Chocolate Covered Christ, aren't we well into "fitness to serve" territory yet?!?!?!?

He just stood in front of the VFW and did a backflip with a 180 and stuck the landing - and nobody noticed! I actually think he freakin' believes his own bullshit!

After rejecting parallels with Vietnam, he is suddenly stripping to his skivvies and ready to climb into the sack with those very comparisons, albeit with a kinky twist. Now it seems he thinks that we should have stayed in Vietnam - you remember Vietnam - that was the war that he, draft-dodging, war-mongering, chickenhawk that he is - refused to fight, the draft he dodged - you remember Vietnam. I certainly do, and so do my aunt and uncle who lost their oldest son....And Veterans of that conflict embarrassed me today by clapping for that sonofabitch who so spectacularly failed the test back then.

"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left," Mr. Bush said. "Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields."'

And the idiots who voted for this clown called Kerry a flip-flopper. None of you should EVER call a Democrat a flip-flopper in my presence again. Not with this fucking political gymnast representin' y'all.

Well - I am not the only one who was stunned speechless by the "say anything, what do I have to lose?" resident's speech. Noted UCLA historian Robert Dallek, who has written extensively about the conflict in Iraq as compared to Vietnam, accused Bush of playing fast and loose with history.

"It just boggles my mind, the distortions I feel are perpetrated here by the president," he said in a telephone interview.

"We were in Vietnam for 10 years. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did in all of World War II in every theater. We lost 58,700 American lives, the second-greatest loss of lives in a foreign conflict. And we couldn't work our will," he said.

"What is Bush suggesting? That we didn't fight hard enough, stay long enough? That's nonsense. It's a distortion," he continued. "We've been in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. It's a disaster, and this is a political attempt to lay the blame for the disaster on his opponents. But the disaster is the consequence of going in, not getting out."

So - will the mainstream media give him a[nother] pass, or will they finally call him on his delusional bullshit? What will you bet he gets a pass? But I think I have maybe figured out why...it is that he is just so fucking wrong, wronger than anyone has ever been, so wrong that in the history of incompetence and failure he gets a special category...That there is just an air of "Holy shit. Where do I even start???"

Well - enough already with the feeling overwhelmed. Pick a point and start making sense, and don't stop.

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