"Being There"

Remember that great movie about how Chauncey Gardiner, that simple minded fellow who through a hilarious series of events found himself next in line to be President of the United States? Watch it again and you begin to get an idea how the federal government, with all the resources at its command, could have been so incompetent in dealing with the disaster on the gulf coast. We have known for a while now that FEMA has been used as a Chicago-style patronage dumping ground for presidential buddies, bozos and Florida officials who helped "count" the votes in 2000. The fact that "Brownie" didn't bother to ask for aid until five hours after the hurricane passed is about right for an administration led by a dolt who sat there doing nothing for seven agonizing minutes after he was told that America was under attack on 9-11. We now find out from the latest Newsweek that the sycophants and yes-men that Cheney has chosen to baby-sit Bush are so afraid of giving him bad news that they fight about who will have to do it. When they finally get around to it, they then have to spend an inordinate amount of time explaining to him what the problem is. Remember this is the guy who proudly stated that he doesn't read newspapers (this explains how he could say "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." when there had only been a nine part Times-Picayune series on just that exact scenario). Now we find out that outside of a little ESPN, this Chauncey doesn't even watch TV news. Who doesn't switch on CNN when there is a national disaster? OK, I can understand his reluctance to watch CNN, but couldn't someone have turned on FOX news for him. In between their reading of press releases written by the RNC, they actually report on some news. Incredibly, an aide had to create a tape of news clips from TV reports so Chauncey could watch it during his flight to the gulf coast last Thursday. Could it be that he was petulantly ignoring the hurricane because it caused him to miss the last two days of his five week vacation or could he (or ANYONE) be that clueless?