Dunno whether I should be surprised or not, but 17 months after it happend, President George W. Bush still doesn’t have time to talk about or help New Orleans (via Yahoo! News):
In the president’s State of the Union speech last year, delivered just five months after the disaster, the devastation merited only 156 words out of more than 5,400.
On Tuesday night, the president spoke for almost exactly as long before a joint session of Congress. But Katrina received not a single mention.
By contrast, in the days ahead of the president’s address, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia compared the U.S. money being spent on Iraqi reconstruction with the fraction committed to the Gulf Coast rebuilding. And, chosen to give the Democratic response to Bush on Tuesday, Webb brought up the continuing struggle of Katrina victims right away, listing “restoring the vitality of New Orleans” just behind education and health care among his party’s most pressing priorities, according to the text of his speech distributed in advance.
I don’t know if Bush is hoping that everyone will forget about things if he doesn’t mention them, or if he just doesn’t care what’s happening among the non-rich citizens of New Orleans. But it is obvious that he doesn’t spend any time thinking about New Orleans nor its citizens anymore. And it is also obvious that he isn’t going to send any large amounts of federal aid money to help rebuild the city nor the surrounding area. For whatever reason, Bush has turned his back on the city he allowed to be destroyed.
History is not going to look kindly on this Bush administration. And it shouldn’t. Between the massive failure in Iraq, and the massive failure in New Orleans, everything else doesn’t mean very much.
I am a 40-ish uber-geek, Daoist and family man. Blessed to have one incredible wife and three wonderful kiddos. Dao has been kind to me.