God, I do enjoy a thorough Bush-bashing, and here's a good one for ya

George is Worst Natural Disaster to Hit Country--by Beth Quinn

Well, folks, the only thing left up in the air now is whether George Bush is the worst president ever. Herbert Hoover has held the title since 1933.

It's been neck and neck for a while, but I think Bush pulled ahead with his spectacular failure in handling Katrina.

George Bush is a walking catastrophe. Far more than even Katrina, he is one of the worst disasters to ever hit America. His performance these past two weeks seemed a showcase for his utter stupidity and indifference, complete with flood, fire and floating bodies.

It was an epic performance that, more than anything else thus far, has revealed his true, craven self.

And now he wants to lay it on us. Soon we'll be seeing bumper stickers that say, "Buy gasoline or the hurricane will have won."

Somehow, all Americans are now "in this together" and we have to make up for his bumbling incompetence, beginning with picking up the tab for rebuilding the Gulf states.

To paraphrase the words of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, "Holy bullcrap!"

I've got to tell you, I get a lot of e-mails from folks who claim they're offended when I criticize this guy. But now I'm the one who's offended. Really.

I'm offended that Bush has only just now discovered that there are poor, black people in America.

I'm offended by the entire Bush family, who have established a culture of greed in this country and have been unable to disguise their contempt for the poor – an attitude evidenced in all its wild glory by George's mama when she said a week after Katrina hit:

"So many of the people in the (Houston) arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this – this (she chuckled slightly) is working very well for them."

Oh those greedy poor people who just want to take advantage of living like cattle in an arena.

I'm offended that Bush, upon his return to the White House – finally! – two days after Katrina hit, spent his first few hours back making yet another recess appointment of a federal judge, one whom the Senate had already rejected as too weird.

I'm offended that, when Bush finally realized he should at least pretend some concern for the dead and dying in the Gulf states, he carefully rolled up his sleeves for his photo op as though he were going to be fishing dead bodies out of the water his very own self.

I'm offended that, somehow, Halliburton won again when one of its subsidiaries was automatically granted a $29.8 million government contract to clean up New Orleans. Don't we have a bidding process in this country anymore? Everything has to go to Cheney's cheating company?

I'm offended by Bush's unwillingness to name a bipartisan panel to investigate just what – what! – the hell went wrong in our hurricane response.

I'm offended that those who lost everything in Katrina will be unable to declare bankruptcy because they can't possibly gather up all their drowned and burned paperwork to prove they've got nothing left.

I'm offended that Bush went on television to lay out a $200 billion rebuilding plan without saying a single word about how that might get paid for – just as the No Child Left Behind Act is unfunded; just as the Medicare prescription plan is unfunded; just as his insane war in Iraq is unfunded and raising our deficit to dizzying heights.

I'm offended that Bush has bankrupt our nation of money, goodwill and morality.

I'm offended that no one in Congress has yet called for his impeachment.

Most of all, I'm offended by those Americans who still insist that this sociopath is a swell guy, a terrific leader, a fine thinker. What is wrong with you people?!

And if this column offends you, I don't care. Anyone offended by the truth is living in a bubble world, kind of like the Superdome. And we all know what happens when the roof gets blown off a bubble world.

Reality. Yuck. How offensive.

FOR TRUE VENOM, read British pol George Galloway's take:

"The scenes from the stricken city almost defy belief. Many, many thousands of people left to die in what is the richest, most powerful country on Earth. This obscenity is as far from a natural disaster as George Bush and the U.S. elite are from the suffering masses of New Orleans. The images of Bush luxuriating at his ranch and of his secretary of state shopping for $7,000 shoes while disaster swamped the U.S. Gulf Coast will haunt this administration.

"In the most terrible way imaginable they show to the whole world that it is not only the lives of people in Baghdad, Fallujah and Palestine that Bush holds cheap. It is also his own citizens - the black and poor people left behind with no food, water or shelter. This is not simply manslaughter through incompetence, though the White House's incompetence abounds. It is murder - for Bush was warned four years ago of the threat to New Orleans, as surely as he was warned of the disaster that would come of his war on Iraq.

"His is the America of Halliburton, the M-16 rifle, the cluster bomb, the gated communities of the rich and of the billionaires he grew up with in Texas. There is another America. It is the land of the poor of Louisiana, it is the land of the young men and women economically conscripted into the military. It is the land of the glorious multiethnic mix that was New Orleans, it is the land of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and of great struggles for justice."

DAMN good rhetoric for a pol, ain't it? Bush could've done with a speechwriter like that. But then, don't expect the Incompetent Chimp to get hisself a competent speechwriter either. The only competent chap in his employ is Karl Rove. And that says something about his priorities, doesn't it?