If you havent read his post from the American Spectator, read it on his blog. Ben Stein is supposed to be so smart, but he sounds like a fucking 6 year old trying to defend Bush.
Mr. Stein
Stop making up excuses for George W. Bush, people have done that his entire life. This is exactly why he has failed at just about everything he has done yet he is so detached from reality he doesn't even realize how much of a failure he is. Your whining is not going to change that and it's pretty fucking pathetic to be making up excuses for a 59 year old man. This is not a pep rally, this is real, this is life and death and the time for the lies and talking points is over. Nobody in their right mind has said that the Bush administration is responsible for the hurricane, but he is responsible for the flooding (through budget cuts to infrastructure) and the late response to the event. There is documented proof that the governor and local officials went to the administration as early as the 26th of August seeking help before the disaster occurred. So you trying to help him worm his way out of this is not going to cut it. And about those criminals, no I'm not speaking of the Nazi's that allowed thousands of US Citizens to die from starvation in New Orleans. No I'm talking about the handful of crackheads and thugs that were taking advantage of the chaos, kind of like the contractors in Iraq. Dont get me wrong the few criminals in New Orleans are malicious. Almost as malicious as the kind of people, (your kind of people), that would punish an entire city for 5 days precisely because they aren't your kind.
I have watched the events in New Orleans and quite honestly I cannot sleep at night. I have never felt this sick about a political issue in this country in my lifetime. Let me be clear, the idea that these people are somehow to blame for their fate is absolutely absurd. As a matter of fact I can completely understand how all of these people were still in New Orleans when the levees broke. I am a police officer in a large urban city. I work with citizens who have lived their entire lives with no license and no car. I meet these people every day and the only mode of transportation that they have is either to walk, catch a taxi, or take the public bus or rail system. They have lived this same way, on the same street, in the same neighborhood for generations. I would bet that this is identical to every large city in America. You could pick out any large urban population of any ethnic composition and if you were to go there and tell everyone that they had 24 hours to evacuate, it is not only possible, it is probable that the vast majority of those people would not be able to do so without heavy involvement from the government. As a first responder working in an inner city who has actually had to evacuate people for various reasons, I can personally attest to the difficulty and necessity for total logistic commitment by the local government. That's just to evacuate a few apartment complexes, much less an entire city. To try to imply that there is an "intellectual" component as to why the citizens of New Orleans did not leave and why they are responsible for their own suffering completely misses the reality of the issue. If you were to take any group of people of any race and deprived them of food and water, had them walk through waste deep water filled with feces and urine, and then made them have to watch their sick loved ones die slowly before their eyes the situation will very quickly descend into anarchy.
For the past week as people are dying by the thousands I have listened to commentators like Michael Barone and Charles Krauthammer casually discuss how the tax payers should not subsidize the poor judgment of the citizens of New Orleans because they were "told to leave." My emotions have run the gamut from being stunned to seething with anger. But Friday when I heard the White house press secretary, the director of Homeland Security, and the director of FEMA all using this same "it's their own fault" logic the real dread set in and I finally understood. This is nothing less than ethnic cleansing. The Administration has so little regard for the people of New Orleans they dont even bother to hide it, THEY ALL USED THE SAME GODDAMN TALKING POINTS!! The lack of response, the diversion of responsibility, the indifference all point in the same direction and that direction is going to end up looking like Rwanda. I can't help but think that somewhere in the halls of power the brokers are quietly calculating the bottom line. It's social Darwinism on steroids. I am starting to believe that they looked at all those black faces and maybe deep down inside they are not only thinking that the people of New Orleans deserved this fate, maybe they are thinking that this thinning of the herd is best for the country in the long term. This isn't new it's just an extension of the same logic used in the past. Remember the common quip "if they didn't have the sense to vote the right way then they don't deserve the right to vote"? Now it seems that this logic has morphed into something far more sinister. Instead of those citizens not deserving the right to vote it has become those people don't deserve to be a part of our society, they don't deserve to live.
The worst part of your article "God bless all of those dear people who are suffering so much, and God bless those helping them, starting with George Bush." is one of the most phony, disgusting pieces of horse shit dribble that I have ever read. I'm not kidding, it literally made me nauseous. Do you really think that you can pull that off? When did they go from being stupid to dear people? Trust me, I like it better when you just remain your usual smug self. To do otherwise is just insulting.
