Former Aides: Bush never recovered from Katrina
By SilentPatriot Tuesday Dec 30, 2008 12:00pm
Former Bush aides go on record saying that Hurricane Katrina was the "tipping point" of George Bush's presidency and that, after the federal government's pathetic response, he couldn't recover. Unfortunately for the residents of the gulf coast, President Bush wasn't the only one.
AP:
Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.
"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."
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guess the clocksucker ate to much of mccains birthday cake in calif while people were drowning in new orleans!
Neither did New Orleans !!!
Neither did we or the rest of the world.
n/t
If NO recovered, then how was the gentrification supposed to go according to plan?
what a coincidence,neither did most of the poor population of NO,dislocated disenfranchised and dismissed from our collective media driven consciousness.
As my Spanish teacher used to tell us: "Aw, Pobrecito!"
He broke it because he didn't care. Just like right now, Israel and Gaza going at it and he doesn't even leave his vacation. Just shows his reaction to Katria is his real feeling about the world. Doesn't affect me and my rich and powerful friends, who cares?
Please. As we speak, President Bush is trying to commute the life sentence of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard without anyone noticing. Only something "oops" just happened:
"Court documents show the defendant, Ben-Ami Kadish, reported to the same handler as Jonathan Pollard, an American who spied for Israel in the 1980s and triggered a scandal that rocked U.S.-Israeli relations.
Kadish's plea indicates the Israeli spy network that obtained U.S. nuclear secrets through Pollard spread further than previously acknowledged.
It comes as the Bush administration considers a new request by Pollard for a commutation of his life sentence."
...worthless piece of shit. And, once again, he didn't care.
I think he is counting the days just as much aas everyone else at this point.
I wonder how long it will take for Laura to leave him.
Just think if the prick would of been a man of honor and resigned after realizing he couldn't recover. hahahahha I crack myself up.
And the attack on the characters of Matthew Dowd and Dan Bartlett will commence in 3...2...1....
Breaking laws, it didn't matter. He kept right on breaking them.
He must be indicted for FISA and war crimes.
Indicted? By who, the blogosphere? Don't expect anything from the dems.
Another decision by a drunken Bush:
http://www.ronnierayjenkins.com/topics/deathi...
attack...
That's what he needed, after katrina: Something to put a little bounce back in his step, the gleam back in his eye.
Another attack would have been just the thing: Mebbe this time from Venezuela or Bolivia.
If this sick, rotten murderer had done anything positive that would have constituted a "recovery". My mother's church did more for those American citizens than this piece of shit could ever wish to.
Write a bunch of Bush Failures on pieces of paper and then draw one out of a hat? Sounds suspiciously random to me.
Katrina pissed off most of the country. It was the one time the media turned on the camera, pointed it at one of Bush's atrocities and left it on. For days.
Had they done the same for all of his other wrong doings or acts of neglect he would have been gone years ago.
It just shows you why the media is so powerful and why THEIR neglect (not shown on TV) is just as horrendous.
Because the bully pulpit Bush lost is soooooo much more important than the homes, health, and lives of residents of the Gulf Coast.
W just needs a hug! My heart is breaking! The legacy campaign is melting my cold, hardened, cynical heart !
Oh, no .. wait. Sorry..just a little gas. 21 days and counting til this insane nightmare is over!!
There's corruption enough to occupy us for a LONG time.
Here's a huggin' machine just right for the job.
program? Who gives a FUCK what HE thinks or feels???
But it didn't stop the fu*ker from continuing to destroy everything we hold sacred. He then became a rabid bull in our china shop. President Obama is going to have a lot of broken glass to sweep up.
You sure wouldn't know it from listening to our "liberal" mainstream press after New Orleans went underwater.
Remember when the press got all indignant after Katrina and vowed to start doing some real journalism?
That didn't last long, did it?
I forget, was that before or after the MSM got all indignant over being lied to about Iraq and vowed to start doing some real journalism?
This is more bullcrap seeping out of his own staff to try to humanize his legacy.
His regret, his history will show, came from his inability to conquer an Act of God, and not from his numerous direct actions that destroyed our standing with the world, and destroyed the government's standing with the people.
I reckon not, after all. Nope. It's clear now.
You people are completely wrong. Katrina exactly as planned. It was an opportunity for rich people to become very rich and very rich people to become very very rich. Everything the Bush and the Republicans have done over the last 8 years has at it heart this goal. Bush has been unbelievably successful at his primary job. Income redistribution from the lower and middle classes to the top 5%.
energy. You just get frustrated at their lack of gratitude and they just think they got one up on you. Lose-lose.
The bond between the twisted (bush) and the bent (grass) never stays broken forever...
Chris Matthews did a pretty good wrap up of bush's eight years last night reminding everyone that one thing bush was successful doing was loading the courts, including the Supreme Court, with very conservative judges. Wouldn't you know it? His only success was leaving our court system in the control of these backward looking, narrow minded idiots.
If anyone missed the Blago press conference a bit ago, they missed a total dog fu*k.
he took the oath of an office he did not win Full stop
Sack up dudes and claim it. Oh yeah. That's right. No sacks.
People will be hard pressed to find any person, past or present,living or dead, rich or poor, to match the crimes of bush and this congress. Just name one thing that he has done that helped somebody, besides the richest dickhead criminals in the country. Name one thing that has not hurt some one in some form or another. All you people who own company's that are going under, who voted GOP, fuck you, did you think you were part of the ruling class? stupid clowns. All you people who were to lazy or "busy living your lives", to learn the truth, fuck you as well. You are traitors to your country, your family and friends, the human race, and most of all to yourselves. Bush was born a coward, he will die a coward along with everyone who supported him and his crime family. Re-writing history with bullshit will not bring his victims back to life or restore our country, bush was just the path, the people were the pushers, and to you, I hope you get whats coming to you, and you will. Somehow, someway, sometime, by somebody, in the mean time, lift your glasses high and toast this " man of courage", I hope your kids are just like him, spoiled, greedy,lying,murdering thieves, with the courage of a bowl of day old shit! Do you love it, do you hate it, there it is the way you made it,( F Zappa) Will I be forgiving towards you just to "get along"? fuck you! No excuse will or can excuse you! CEO,citizens,eyes,open
Yes!
This is funny!
Bush was a Lame Duck within months after the 2004 Election and well before Katrina hit the Northern Gulf Coast and buried New Orleans and Rita took out most Southern Louisiana.
Let em eat cake! http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/24/flashback...
Too bad no Palin to jump out of Johnny's cake...
There's always 2012. She can jump out of a cake with a semi-automatic in hand then.
Someday the truth will come out about this. Bush and Condi had college football viewing 'dates' at Camp David in the fall of 2001, leading up to the 'pretzel' incident. Was that Bush briefly falling off the wagon?
And with Katrina - some blame has to be laid at the feet of the aides like Mr. Dowd, who compiled news footage on a DVD to show the President as a kind of Hurricane SportsCenter / highlight reel. Now did they do that because they were afraid of what he'd do if they simply asked him to come to a conference room and watch live TV, or did he culture them to be just as distant from live events? We will find out.
Caption: "Did I really have to go down there and pretend I give a shit about those black and poor white folks?"
it's very evident in Bush's "rise to the top", isn't it?
Boy, is Bush a glaring example!
Those presidents who don't rise to their level of incompetence in the WH go on to great accomplishments in other arenas, often becoming statesmen or eminently-successful goodwill ambassadors for the US. We sure can't expect THAT of GW.
well beyond his level of incompetence!
...what do those turkeys think he successes were?
He was successful in being the most hated US president ever both at home and a broad. That was quiet a feat to accomplish....or should I say quite a mission accomplished.
Funny, but the tipping point for me came earlier when we learned Bush had lied about Iraq having WMDs, illegally invaded anyway, and authorized the torture of innocent detainees. By the time the Katrina disaster happened, I wasn't surprised at all, though it was infuriating to know that people were dying as Bush's Department of Homeland Security/FEMA paid no attention to what was happening to the people on the Gulf Coast.
Dowd, sorry, but don't you think that reaching your "tipping point" only when the Katrina disaster struck was a bit late? Bush broke his "bond with the public" long before then, you idiot.
The tipping point for me was when the rightful victor of the 2000 presidential election was cheated by 5 republican appointed conservative activist judges. May those 5 spend an eternity in the hell their decision has created for so many others here on earth.
but that terrible decision for me remains still in a cloud of "we don't know what would have happened" if the recount had been completed. God, I wish it had! I hope someday a retired Justice will write a tell-all book and reveal the names of the jerks who voted to stop the recount and declare the winner. They should be impeached, tarred, feathered, and run out of Washington.
"(Victor) Bugliosi presents himself as a hero of democracy, a moderate with both liberal and conservative friends, a critic whose sole concern is with "justice and fair play" and who simply wanted all votes to be counted, a lonely commentator prepared to speak the truth and declare that the "shameless and shameful felonious five" conservative justices who voted for Bush v. Gore are "criminals" who "committed one of the biggest and most serious crimes this nation has ever seen — pure and simple, the theft of the presidency.".... http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment...
That Bush cared before???
That's funny.
but boo fucking hoo to Bush, et. al.
We saw his priority was eating cake with McCrazy on the tarmac.
"clean coal" is that like "fiscal conservative"?
Thousands of Americans begging for help and some dying live on TV. I guess that's just something we can move on from. Bush had 1 million Iraq men/woman/children killed and never blinked an eye. Now as Israel will wipe the Palestine people of the face of the earth while it's no problem. The World saw how the US Govenment acted when the American people needed help. Bush waited 5 days so as many poor minorities could die. Cheney came back from vacation when he heard Congress had given money for the recovery. Yes Cheney got his millions and went back to working for Halliburton. Some Katrina victims are still being found as the clean up continues. That is one example why God does not bless America.
This is a rather interesting about-face from all of the other mouthpieces saying that history will show Bush to have been a President of Achievement™.
While there are far more egregious things for which this man should be eternally and criminally condemned, it is a particularly embarrassing legacy for the man who presided over the creation of the Department of Homeland Security - the largest restructuring of government since WW II - to lose his bully pulpit by failing so wretchedly in the mission of preparedness and security.
A president's political clout never recovered from losing a city?!??! Who'd have thought! Wonders never cease! Americans are soooo harsh on their political leaders.
Bush would run the economy into the ground since before he got elected. I'm no Political Scholar or anything just a student of human nature as it were. Bush was a complete failure at everything he ever did. I talked to people who remembered his tenure as governor of Texas and everyone knows his record with the Rangers. Bush never ran for the Presidency of the nation; he ran to win only enough Electoral College votes to win the election and even then, he needed help from his daddy's Supreme Court picks. How sad that more people didn't see this chump for the chimp he was! Hindsight is 20/20 and all we can do is say: "Never again!".
and here they go again, rewriting reality
bush is an egocentric asshole. he did and does
not care for the American people or America,
except for raping All of us.
he can only destroy whatever he touches.
He was sent to Washington, like presidents before him, to enlarge the wallets of the rich and corporate. For that, he was more successful than any other leader in history. Wait until all the corporate "bailouts" are done.
and yet from a Republican viewpoint his presidency must be considered a resounding success. His truly creative incompetence has so bankrupted the US that he may have staved off health care reform, educational reform and every other social improvement for a generation. Recessions, indeed depressions, are the best of times to the moneyed classes. This is when they consolidate their wealth by buying distressed assets for pennies on the dollar, break unions and as Naomi Klein so beautifully demonstrates use the Shock Doctrine to further otherwise unattainable economic and social goals. I hesitate to attribute his success to any sort of brilliant plan on his part but the party that nominated this incredible intellectual lightweight surely recognized that there was no downside to handing the reins of power to a spoiled frat boy.
Are Chimpya's Legacy Commandoes trying to insinuate that this filthy, murdering blackguard has a conscience?!
Just stop it.
We'll remember the prick, all right.
What a waste of a human being.
It wasn't just Katrina for me...
The year 2005 started with Bush's failure to pass "Social Security Reform" his first major legislative failure. Seniors refused to believe that investing Social Security in Wall Street was a good idea---guess they were sure right about that.
The next Bush failure that year was the Terry Schiavo fiasco, which revealed Bush's political gamesmanship over any other consideration. Bush cut his Texas vacation short to rush back to Washington to make a photo-op with Republicans signing the bill to "protect" Ms. Schiavo from the evil liberals who wouldn't give her a drink of water. Bush didn't cut his vacation short when he read a memo in August 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US."
Following that was the revelation that the White House was indeed involved in the Valerie Plame leak. Bush failed to follow up on his promise to fire anyone involved in the leak, and it only further showed his cynicism.
Then it was the Jeff Gannon scandal. A male prostitute, with a picture of his private parts available for downloading on the Internet, and with no journalistic experience, working for a republican shell outfit, and using a pseudonym, was allowed regular access to the White House press room and permitted to ask ridiculously biased questions of Bush. The media blackout regarding this incident (the Washington Post only covered it in the Style Section) showed me how biased and crooked the mainstream media had become regarding this administration.
The Katrina disaster was only the final straw in a tragic year.
He was born with a silver spoon up his ass and his Daddy and Cheney used it to make him dance to their tune just like the puppet he is.
If he hadn't participated in causing so much murder and mayhem around the globe, I could almost feel sorry for his demented, abused, used self. Buh-bye!
that actually intends to help America, rather than seeing how much he can steal and destroy.
The AP should be concerned more about the medias "lack of creditability" Tipping point than Bushes. Their failure to report the Bush's incompetence allowed Bush to get a second term. All the shit that has happened since 2004, they are in partnership with Bush.
The real US disaster is that the media has carried water and made excuses for this sorry bunch of bastards for the past 8 years. If the AP thinks Bush will never recovery from his mistakes, does the media think history will judge them any better???
By the AP stating the obvious now, who's ass is this article really trying to cover??
It was the turning point for all the flag-wavers that blindly adored his administration. (Of course we had all turned long before.) It was right there, on every channel, in technicolour: HE DOESN'T CARE. And those were Americans: there was no hiding it. Big mistake, (but good for us.)
To hell with his aide's feelings and Bush's legacy, he will be a shit stain on the history of America for eternity. The recovery of America and that of the world will take years to repair. Everyone who supported him are compicit in his and their crimes and the only way to remedy the situation is to bring them to justice and the sooner the better.
Dowd and that other chump who are trying to humanize Bush are just as bad or worse than Bush is. All we've got to go on is his decisions from the last eight years.
You jokers need to admit that Bush fucked up, you'll feel a lot better for it.
basically, this guy couldnt deal with crisis
he never shouldve been prez
he needs to go back to texas and put a 45 to his head and put us all out of his misery
I agree that Katrina was the last straw. I am certain many other Americans were as appalled as I was by the images on my TV that Labor Day weekend and beyond. When I saw the first pictures, I thought they were from some Third World country. I saw my fellow Americans (skin color and financial status were irrelevant) being abandoned by their govenment and left to suffer and die in a natural disaster of Biblical proportions. I wanted to go to New Orleans to help them. I kept thinking that help would arrive from Ft. Polk and the other military installations that are prevalent in that area. But no help came from Ft. Polk or any other military base.
In time, I realized our entire nation had fallen apart. Bush's presidency has been filled with failures, but he will always be remembered for his inhumane inaction in the face of a catastrophic hurricane. For this failure, he should burn in hell for all eternity.
But there never was any bond with anyone else. Not Americans who are not neocons, not anyone from any other nation.
There simply is no bonding with this guy. What happened with Katrina was that some of his "base" woke up to see what a failure he was at running the government. And they "woke up" to the fact that a monster was running the government: Cheeeeny, who shoots his only friend in the face.
Katrina was what separated all but the most adamant capital gains tax cut cheerleaders from the ranks of Bush supporters.
I was fed up with Bush well before Katrina. Bush had plenty of blunders following Katrina, including our current economic meltdown. Therefore, even without Katrina, he would have been a failure. As far as I'm concerned, the Katrina response didn't just reflect the ineptitude of the Bush administration, it reflected the mindset of the Republican Party, which is don't expect the govt to help out during times of crisis. In other words, "your on your own jack, no matter what".
So exactly how could he move on? Idiot
Last night, BillO the Clown O'Really raised the question of Bush bashing in these final weeks of his Presidency. BillO thought that the Bush bashing still going on was a bit too much....after all, he only has 3 more weeks in office. BillO said that for "humanitarian" reasons, people should stop bashing Bush.
Well, BillO got an earful from me through an email to him. Bush has so screwed up this country and the world that he deserves to be bashed. And what's even worse, Bush continues to cause damage to this country, even in his last days. He's lowering standards on environmental protections. Just yesterday, I saw that the state of California is suing the federal government because of the Bush administration trying to reduce protections on endangered species.
If you couple Bush's godawful record with what he continues to do apparently until his last day, and if you couple all of this with the fact that Bush's minions like Rove are trying to publicly boost his legacy, then damn it, BillO, Bush deserves every bashing that comes his way! And, for a person who holds the title of "most powerful man in the world," the idiot chimp should be able to take whatever criticism comes his way, and he doesn't need "protection" from the likes of BillO the Clown!
A failure abroad, a failure at home, and a failure in his own rational mind (when he is sober enough to be rational).
A president is elected to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States', first and foremost.
His failure to do that was bush's largest and most egregious failure, and the way he did it amounts to TREASON, which is punishable by execution. He did everything in his power to destroy the "god-damned piece of paper", and he did it openly, and with calculated actions.
Illegal war - treasonous
Illegal spying - treasonous
Almost complete disregard of domestic laws - treasonous
Outing covert intelligence agents - treasonous
etc., etc., etc.
His calculated destruction of the middle class, his theft of at least 2 elections, his murder of up to a million innocent muslims, his use of torture, his wanton disregard for New Orleans during Katrina - criminal acts and crimes against humanity.
This poor excuse for a man deserves nothing less than life in prison, and he should be joined by the hundreds in his administration who aided and abetted him in his crimes.
Those who, with a modicum of intelligence, voted for these scum, deserve the same scorn. Those who, for religious reasons, voted for these scum (and there are many), deserve to live in their own mythical hells for all of eternity.
George Bush has never recovered from being born George Bush.
You stole my comment! Well said though.
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