AFP photo
Stepford wife Laura Bush is disgusted -- disgusted! -- that anyone would impugn the obviously pure intent of her husband "because," she claimed, "of course President Bush cares about everyone in our country." Of course he does! (Oh, by the way, Dick Cheney's Halliburton, which has made more than $9 billion in Iraq -- so far -- already has snagged almost $30 million in Pentagon contracts to begin rebuilding Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi that were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. And Halliburton and another corporation that will profit from Hurricane Katrina are represented by lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, who just coinky-dinkily used to be George W. Bush's campaign manager and was the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency before current embattled FEMA head Michael Brown took over the post. Are those real pearls, Laura? Nevermind -- of course they are...)
Reason for slow response to Katrina
appears to be even worse than racism
Stepford wife Laura Bush this past week called "disgusting" charges that the Bush regime dragged its feet in helping New Orleans -- there had been plenty of warning that Hurricane Katrina was going to strike the Gulf Coast states, but the National Guard didn't arrive until four days after Katrina had struck -- because a majority of New Orleans residents are poor blacks.
The charges are disgusting, of course, because they're fucking true:
Note that whenever Gov. Jeb Bush's Florida is hit by a large hurricane, Gee Dubya can't get his ass down to the swing state fast enough to appear at his brother Jeb's side, promising the hurricane victims help -- help that would be good for Jeb's political future.
Gee Dubya had little to nothing to gain, however, from the Gulf Coast states that were hit by Hurricane Katrina.
Further, do you think for one second that if, say, oh, I don't know, Dick Cheney's mostly white Wyoming or, oh, say, Dubya's Texas were facing a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, the federal government's response time would have been so slow as it was with Hurricane Katrina? Oh, hell no.
So of course the feds dragged their feet where New Orleans and the other areas hit by Katrina are concerned -- because those Americans hit by Katrina are considered by the members of the Bush regime to be pretty fucking expendable.
Oh, no, it's not because they're black that Katrina's victims were fucked, said Uncle Tom Colin Powell and the Stepford wife. It's because they're poor.
"I don't think it's racism, I think it's economic," remarked Powell. "But poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor."
Oh, gee, that's so much fucking better, isn't it? We let them die because they're poor, not because they're black.
But race and class are so intertwined -- "Black people comprise about two-thirds of the population of New Orleans, and many lived below the poverty line," notes CNN.com -- that you can't separate the two for political purposes, no matter how much you'd like to try to save Gee Dubya's political ass.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean was right on, as usual, when he remarked, "We have to come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not. And this question, 40 and 50 years after Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] and the civil rights movement, is, 'How could this still be happening in America?'"
And rapper Kanye West was quite correct when he remarked during an NBC telethon for the victims of Katrina that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and that the United States is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow[ly] as possible."
But the reality appears to be even worse, even more sinister, than Dean and West and others have stated.
Choke on this, Laura Bush:
It appears as though the Bush regime did little to nothing in advance to mitigate the effects of Hurricane Katrina because -- as it has been the case in the wholly fabricated war on Iraq -- in the Gulf Coast states stricken by Katrina there has been a big opportunity for Dick Cheney's Halliburton and other subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp to profit from death and destruction and from the pain and suffering of others.
Reports Reuters today (my comments are in [brackets] and what is in bold is my emphasis):
Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.
One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.
Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Experts say it has been common practice in both Republican and Democratic administrations for policy makers to take lobbying jobs once they leave office, and many of the same companies seeking contracts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have already received billions of dollars for work in Iraq.
[Is what is "common practice" -- is what is "business as usual" -- morally acceptable? I don't care what's fucking common. I care what's fucking right. This blatant conflict-of-interest bullshit needs to fucking stop immediately.]
Halliburton alone has earned more than $9 billion [in Iraq]. Pentagon audits released by Democrats in June showed $1.03 billion in "questioned" costs and $422 million in "unsupported" costs for Halliburton's work in Iraq.
But the web of Bush administration connections is attracting renewed attention from watchdog groups in the post-Katrina reconstruction rush. Congress has already appropriated more than $60 billion in emergency funding as a down payment on recovery efforts projected to cost well over $100 billion.
"The government has got to stop stacking senior positions with people who are repeatedly cashing in on the public trust in order to further private commercial interests," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.
Allbaugh formally registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root in February.
In lobbying disclosure forms filed with the Senate, Allbaugh said his goal was to "educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues affecting Kellogg Brown and Root." [If he were so interested in education, Allbaugh should have become a teacher in one of our inner cities and made sure that no child were left behind.]
Melissa Norcross, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said Allbaugh has not, since he was hired, "consulted on any specific contracts that the company is considering pursuing, nor has he been tasked by the company with any lobbying responsibilities." [Oh, fucking please. Even if that were true, and I doubt that it is, it's still a huge fucking conflict of interest for the former head of FEMA to now be lobbying for corporations that profit from natural disasters.]
Allbaugh is also a friend of Michael Brown, director of FEMA who was removed as head of Katrina disaster relief and sent back to Washington amid allegations he had padded his resume. [Funny; they're all friends -- awfully small world, isn't it?]
...[Yesterday] Kellogg Brown & Root received $29.8 million in Pentagon contracts to begin rebuilding Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi. Norcross said the work was covered under a contract that the company negotiated before Allbaugh was hired.
Halliburton continues to be a source of income for Cheney, who served as its chief executive officer from 1995 until 2000 when he joined the Republican ticket for the White House. According to tax filings released in April, Cheney's income included $194,852 in deferred pay from the company, which has also won billion-dollar government contracts in Iraq.
Cheney's office said the amount of deferred compensation is fixed and is not affected by Halliburton's current economic performance or earnings.
Allbaugh's other major client, Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group, has updated its Web site to say: "Hurricane Recovery Projects -- Apply Here!"
Shaw said on Thursday it has received a $100 million emergency FEMA contract for housing management and construction. Shaw also clinched a $100 million order [yesterday] from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Shaw Group spokesman Chris Sammons said Allbaugh was providing the company with "general consulting on business matters," and would not say whether he played a direct role in any of the Katrina deals. "We don't comment on specific consulting activities," he said. ["No comment" -- what a shock.]
Yes, it appears to be much worse than racism -- it appears that the members of the Bush regime, once again, have quite literally sold out the American people for the profits of Cheney's Halliburton and other subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp.
Apparently, there was a helluva lot more money to be made in allowing Hurricane Katrina to make an unmitigated strike on the Gulf Coast states than there was in trying to do anything substantial to mitigate Katrina's effects.
Why we, the American people, are allowing ourselves to be sold out -- and why, in the case of the dogged pro-Bush efforts of the wingnuts, some Americans are actually helping the overlords of BushCheneyCorp to sell us out -- eludes me.
First lady photo fun!
Which of these two photos is of Violet Beauregarde and her mother from the movie "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and which photo is of Laura Bush with some poor hapless fifth-grader in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday?
Associated Press photo
Yeah, I know, that was unfair. They're pretty indisfuckingtinguishable.
11:34:54 AM 
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