Wow...

[per_solo]

I don't care WHAT side of the fence you are on...whether you think Bush is a saint, or whether you think that he is the devil...go watch this file. Preferably, all the way through.

http://media.putfile.com/OlbermannSwings

Comments

[echoweaver.livejournal.com]

Looks like it's Windows Media Player. Sorry :-p.

[confusedjew.livejournal.com]

*jess bangs her head into the wall* motherfuckers! *she now goes to hide in shame at the very thought of her government*

[per_solo]

The following is the transcription of the video newscast.

________________________________________________________________________

Also on this point this is not typically a new cast of commentary, I can recall only twice previously offering such perspectives, but something Homeland Security Secretary Chernoff said at his new conference Saturday made this necessary.

“Louisiana is a city that is largely under water.”

Well, there is your problem right there, if ever a slip of the tongue defined a government’s response to a crisis, forget the history of slashed federal budgets for projects that might have saved the levees, drop the imagery of the government watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus while New Orleans drowned, ignore the symbol of bureaucrats like Mr. Chernoff using only the future tense in terms of relief that they could have supplied last Monday and Tuesday, we no longer need the president sounding like he’s on some sort 5 day tape delay to summarize this debacle. We now have Mr. Chernoff indelible announcement that Louisiana is a city.

Politician after Politician, Republican and Democrat alike has paraded before us unwilling or unable to shut off the “I/Me” switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or devastated they were, congenitally incapable of telling the difference of the destruction of the city and the opening of a new supermarket somewhere. And as that sorry recycle of self absorption dragged on , I have resisted and editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded; even television’s meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters. Natural and Government made.

But now at last it has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi, Alabama, New Orleans and Louisiana, the state not the city, and having given our leaders what we now know is the week or so they need to get their acts together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned should come to an end.

No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows that no one is suggesting we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below sea level city ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska. But nationally these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping this country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the new media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq and which regularly defies it’s citizens to not stand up and cheer when something like that is accomplished. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans. Even thought eh government had heard all the chatter from scientist and city planners and some group whose purposes the government couldn’t quite discern, a group called the US Army Core of Engineers.

Most chillingly of all this is the law and order and terror government. It promised protection or at least amelioration against all threats. Conventional, radiological, or even biological. It has just proven it cannot protect its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water. Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that quote “We are not satisfied” unquote. Was the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which “we” he thinks he is speaking for ob this point. Perhaps it’s the administration, although we still don’t know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was “I’ll protect you, the other guy might let you die”. I don’t know which we Mr. Bush meant.

[per_solo]

For many of this country’s citizens the mantra has been as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be, rather or not I voted for this president, he is still my president. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect also that his supporters looking ahead to 08 are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words that will define his government, our government, New Orleans.

For him it is a shame in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there and he might not have looked so much like a 21st century Mary Antoinette. All it needed was a quick “I’m not satisfied with my government’s response” instead of hiding behind phrases like “No one could have foreseen” Had he only remembered Churchill’s quote from the 1930s. “The responsibility of government for the public safety,” Churchill said, “is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact the prime object for which governments come into existence.”

In forgetting that the current administration did not merely damage itself, it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on who ever is in the White House. As we emphasized here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, when the last artifact of the levee break dug up. Could be next march, could be year 2100. By then in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans they may even find our government’s credibility, somewhere in the city of Louisiana

[indyellen.livejournal.com]

Olbermann keeps a "blog" of sorts on the msnbc website; this was his most recent entry. I read it, but it's SO much more effective to hear him SAY it.

Idiots. If this were Law & Order, we'd be talking about negligent homicide.

*sigh*