It's a grey day in Hollywood, California, Bush. Looking down from our perch on a hill to the east of the city, the city itself and the hills beyond are shrouded in a light drizzle--what we used to call, in England, a "Scotch mist." Not what you'd expect on a spring day hereabouts. It has been a strange winter altogether, the storms arriving later than usual and lingering longer. From our personal, admittedly anecdotal point of view, it seems to have been considerably colder, too. Poor us, shivering in our boots with the overnight lows plummeting down into the low fifties, sometimes even the forties! We're not used to this severity of climate, Bush. And of course, as with all bad things, we're happy to lay the blame right where it belongs: at your doorstep.
No, all joking aside, I read in the paper this morning that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has determined that your FEMA is still far from being prepared for the next disaster and ought to be scrapped in favor of some more effective agency. With hurricane season a month away and Saharan Africa cooking up the climatic ingredients for our next series of storms, it seems a bit late to be arriving at that stunning conclusion. It's one that most of us suspected anyway, without an eight-month investigation.
So, Bush, I'm wondering what plans you have in place in preparation for the disaster that might hit us prior to the next election? You must have something up your sleeve, I suppose. If all else fails, at least you have a genial new spokesman in Fox news man Tony Snow, to put a good face on things for those of us who sit here on the sidelines and gape at the mess this country's in. With bad news in the polls again today, you're going to need whatever you can scrape together by way of help in buffing up that poor old image, Bush. Let's hope your new man is up to the task.
About Me
- Peter Clothier
- Born and raised in the UK, lives in Los Angeles, California. A writer about art and artists, essayist, social observer, daily meditator and student of the Buddhist dharma.. and a long-time recovering academic. Happily out of a "job" since 1986--but "works" every day. Father to three great kids (why don't we have a proper word for, um, middle-aged "children"?) and grandfather to four wonderful grandchildren. Even after all these years in America, he still speaks English.
2 comments:
Peter: Day after day all arrows of blame point directly to one man. example: the last line of this AOL Sago Mine story:
At least two miners who escaped the blast said they, too, struggled with their air pack. Arnett Roger Perry told state and federal investigators he could not initially activate his.
"They're not worth a damn," co-worker Harley Joe Ryan, 60, told investigators.
The Bush administration is reviewing air packs and other safety equipment used in the nation's mines after previously scrapping similar initiatives started by the Clinton administration.
The only thing I can see up his sleeve is to screw the American people as bad as he can, then hand the mess over to the next guy/gal who comes to office! In the mean time, all his cronies with appointments are making money, and those in oil are making so much they are wallowing in it! At this point that's all he seems to care about. That, and the new money pit in Iraq he's having built at the expense of the Iraqi people.
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