It seems like good news: after a shamelessly slow start, George W. Bush snaps into action today to help those affected by the devastation of Hurricane Katrine.
But wait! This is George W. Bush, and it's never safe to assume that he's acting with any sense of humanity, morality, or true compassion. Because his first thought is to help...THE OIL REFINERS.
Yes, true to form, Bush has once again placed his corporate cronies first. Even in the face of this horrible disaster, the only sympathy he can muster is for his pals in the oil industry. Read here, from CNN.com:
WHITE HOUSE TO TAP RESERVES
Energy Secretary Bodman says U.S. will lend oil to refiners hurt by Hurricane Katrina.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Wednesday that the White House plans on tapping the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help refiners hurt by Hurricane Katrina.
Bodman said in interviews televised on CNN and other networks that officials have not determined the amount of crude oil that will be drawn from stockpiles, but that it would be a loan to refiners.
"The SPR was put in place specifically for this kind of an event," Bodman said in one interview. "We now have, in some instances, problems with getting crude to some refineries."
The reserve is the government's emergency stockpile of crude oil, which is overseen by the Energy Department. The oil reserves are estimated at more than 700 million barrels stored in underground caverns in Louisiana and Texas.
U.S. crude oil prices were 21 cents lower at $69.60 in electronic trading following Bodman's comments. Crude prices had risen over $70 a barrel Tuesday before settling up $2.61 at $69.81 a barrel in New York.
Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday, halting crude oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for roughly a quarter of U.S. oil output.
Nine refineries were also closed along the coast due to the storm, Reuters reported Tuesday.
An official announcement on the reserve release is expected later this afternoon, Bodman said.
As per Red Dan's excellent takedown of the neo-Stalinist Bushies at Red State currently on the Recommended list -- you KNOW that the Freepers, the Fox-ers, the doughy pantloads at National Review Online, and the rest of the Bush cult will laud this as a decisive move by a resolute leader in a time of....blah blah blah, etc. We've heard this idiotic spin before. War Preznit, firm resolve, the whole P.R. schmear.
But let's call it for what it really is:
It's a big FUCK YOU to the average citizens suffering terribly, and dying, because of this hurricane.
Bush has stripped them of all defenses against this disaster, looting their money for his tragic war, based on lies. Then when all hell breaks loose, his first empathetic thought on the golf course is for his buddies in the boardroom -- those same oil barons whose interests Bush is now serving by wasting American lives in Iraq.
(Please note that the article above is from CNN.com's "Money" page, and it's the main headline today about what Bush is doing vis-a-vis Katrina.)
It's been said plenty of times here on dKos and elsewhere that Bush is the worst President this country has ever had, especially over the last few days. But it has now reached epic criminal proportions.
The moral blankness, the EVIL of this Bush administration has now cost many, many thousands of innocent lives. And yet Bush, like an oil-besotted Nero, continues to act as if these lives are acceptable losses to his uber-corporate agenda.
If there is a Hell, like his Dominionist allies insist, may George W. Bush spend eterninty there. And may it be him whisked back and forth in turn between flooded New Orleans, and somewhere far outside the Green Zone in Iraq, over and over again.