[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

This is the tw take on it, then, and it's quite familiar because it's been the same refrain for years:

1. Bush had his magic make-everything-better wand, and callously refused to wave it because the people he'd wave it at were black.

No, but he did have a responsibility to appoint people to head agencies to protect the most vulnerable. FEMA and Homeland Security appointees should be selected based on skill, not political expediency.

There appear to be three classes of people in his cabinet. The first are competent people that he knows personally and listens to. The second are incompetent people that he knows personally and listens to. The third are competent people that he does not listen to.

The FEMA director sounds like #2. Homeland Security head Chertoff makes me miss Ridge, who as a former governor would have known what was needed. Of course one reason Ridge might have left the job was that he realized that he could not get things done there.

Bush seems very reluctant to fire his friends, no matter how incompetent. it will be interesting to see how he can save Brown and Chertoff from what even he has acknowledged was an 'unsatisfactory' performance.

This really is a 'barn door' administration. They are completely reactive to all threats, from terrorism to infrastructure. Doesn't anyone there practice 'hope for the best, plan for the worst'?

Maybe if someone had mentioned the freezer full of dying embryos somewhere downtown we would have had a faster response. Since each one is a 'life', does that mean we should add 500,000 to the death toll?