I'm reposting this:
Before the pictures of the president leading an emergency White House task force hit the wire and before CNN plays footage of him in Air Force One viewing the destruction (he's waiting until Friday to go to New Orleans by the way), the questions must be asked:
Why didn't George do more when he clearly could have and should have?
Why was he literally eating cake in Arizona while people in New Orleans were sitting on their rooftops waiting for rescue helicopters?
Why did he chose to attend TWO staged Medicare events while citizens in Mississippi were searching through their communities for remaining signs of life?
Why was he on vacation while a category four hurricane was about to hit the worst possible place it could?
If we overwhelm the papers, airwaves and congressional offices with our comments, we'll develop a climate for our reporters and political leaders to feel secure criticizing the president's decisions these last few days. The sooner this occurs the better for the victims of this horrible tragedy, as it will force George to respond more quickly and substantially.
The media has already began reporting that the president has cut his vacation short and is headed back to D.C. to chair a task force. It's already began. Reporters are already neglecting to mention how slow the president has been to respond and his inappropriate political events. Instead they allow GOP and government agency spokesmen to go on the air and applaud the president's leadership! Would the media applaud the police for finally getting to scene of a major shoot-out a few hours late after running a few personal errands and stopping at a bar to catch the second-half of the Knicks game?
So write your letters and call-in to the shows.
To find a comprehensive list of the papers in your area use the GOP's letter to the editor tool, input your zip code, paste your message and send away. Additionally, here's a link with tips for writing letters to the editor (courtesy cyrilb)
Also on the GOP website is a list of local and national call-in radio shows. (I don't know about you I get a certain level of satisfaction using the GOP's resources against them).
In your statements I suggest making as many references to the already established narratives that this president is out-of-touch, delusional, indifferent, lazy and lacks essential leadership abilities.
Any attempts to relate his budget cuts and reckless war in Iraq to the conditions that increased the destruction and limited the emergency response are cherries on top of the sundae.
If you'd like to refer to the lack of resources available for the Katrina response, due to the War in Iraq, the comments from the New Orleans mayor regarding the failure of National Guard helicopters to show up to transport sand bags to patch a major levee may be useful.
Josh Marshall provides the full 2004 Times-Picayune article outlining how budget cuts essentially stopped the New Orleans east bank levee project for the first time in 37 years.
And today's New York Times article, mentions how necessary federal money to maintain the back-up generators that power the water pumps just isn't available.
Here's the guitar lesson.
Here are some great references to the Medicare events in El Mirage, AZ and the transcript of the Rancho Cucamonga, CA event are on the White House website.
Please post your experiences and letters to the editor in the comments or post your own diary. Mine is below:
I am a passionate political activist, but I've never been incensed enough to write a letter to the editor. I write today because news segments about a category four hurricane approaching the jewel of the South were followed by reports of the president's record-breaking 5-week vacation. I write because as I watched the reports of the aftermath of this foreseeable massive crisis, the president was at his Crawford ranch preparing for a few purely political events half a country away from the disaster area.
The president's dereliction and inertness and its substantial impact on the hundreds of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims boils my blood, and it should infuriate the American citizenry, our political leaders, the nation's newsroom managers and this editorial board. The only possible explanation for why it hasn't thus far is that we have universally accepted three things: that Mr. Bush's leadership ability is so limited that his presence is not even necessary when the largest natural disaster in our country's history unfolds, this president is indifferent to any crisis that doesn't negatively impact him politically, and as his inaction to the now famous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing showed, the president's vacation should not be interrupted, not even to address imminent catastrophes.
I pray that others in our government and disaster relief industry are capable of compensating for the president's many shortcomings.
