Still a boneless chickenhawk

AND WORST! PRESIDENT! EVER!

What an absolutely pathetic boneless bucket of sh*t for a president.

How could any human being visit New Orleans and not recognize that, notwithstanding the challenges, the city is one of the most unique in the world. How could anyone come to our city and not commit to restoring the coastal wetlands destroyed by dredged oil company shipping lanes and by the Mississippi River channeled to accomodate shipping. These factors are largely responsible for the subsidence of the coast and saltwater intrusion which made New Orleans vulnerable to Hurricane Katrina. A Hurricane Katrina sized storm 50 years ago wouldn’t have caused as much destruction as we saw in 2005 because the coastal wetlands have been shredded.

How could any human being witness the misery caused by the failure of the shoddily-constructed federal levee system, and not commit to raising them to a sturdy Category 5 level.

All we heard from our pathetic president was some off-the-cuff trite remark about how, like The Saints, New Orleans residents are fighters. Hey asshole — some of us are losing the fight! Some of us have seen our insurance rates triple or quadruple by gouging private insurers who shouldn’t be allowed to sell policies in any state if they don’t fairly treat policyholders in Louisiana. Hey asshole, some of us, a year and a half later, still don’t have enough money to rebuild our homes! You quip that $110 billion ought to be enough. Well, hey asshole — it ain’t enough! After your Shaw Group, Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons Brinkerhoff buddies ran their little plantation scheme to siphon billions in taxpayer dollars for themselves while paying immigrants to do all the work for pennies on the dollar, there wasn’t much left for rebuilding.

The Times-Picayune:

The $110 billion in federal assistance for the Gulf Coast is widely misinterpreted. First, the money was divided among the five Gulf Coast states and covers damage from Katrina, Rita and Wilma, which hit south Florida. The LRA figures that Louisiana’s share of that was about $59 billion, but even that is misleading.

About $18 billion came in the form of disaster relief, which includes the kind of post-crisis assistance — health care, evacuee assistance, business loans — the federal government routinely extends in a major crisis. An additional $14.7 billion was in payouts from the National Flood Insurance Program, for which Louisiana policyholders had paid premiums.

By the LRA’s calculations, the state has received $26.4 billion in genuine federal help, including money to rebuild levees, homes, schools and community infrastructure.

“A lot has been said about the $110 billion,” said Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge. “We just haven’t seen it.”

That leaves $26 billion remaining for Louisiana for all of its financial needs, which include far more than the $7 billion allocated for housing rebuilding grants, far more than the tens of billions to rebuild the levees to Category 5 strength, far more than the $14 billion needed to start a vigorous coastal restoration plan, and far, far more to rebuild the shattered sewerage and water system which pumps twice water as goes to the tap thanks to subsidence breaks throughout the city.

There are so many needs unmet by your pathetic leadership, Mr. President, that the imagination staggers to comprehend how you couldn’t see them, or how you could ignore them. Of course, it would help if you actually left the Isle of Denial and visited the remaining 80 percent of the city devastated by flooding to see what the hell is going on there. Maybe you ought to stand with a megaphone on top of the breach in the 17th Street Canal (which still doesn’t have a working pumping facility at the canal gates), as you did in that photo op on the rubble of the World Trade Center towers, and announce that you will do whatever it takes to rebuild this city. Your message would echo across vacant neighborhoods — bouncing back-and-forth against a bleak landscape of still-shattered homes.

It’s no use for you to declare — as you should — that you will work to “break through” the bureaucratic “logjams” to get the money flowing. Thank you, but we’ve heard those platitudes before, as when you stood in Jackson Square and announced you would do whatever it takes for New Orleans to rise again. That was a year and a half ago. Tell us HOW. Tell us what your PLAN is to break through the bureaucratic logjams. Tell us you will waive the 10 percent local share for federal recovery grants as has been done for every other federal disaster in the last quarter century. Give us the details of a specific plan to address our needs.

Since you didn’t have anything new to offer, it was probably a relief for you to be able to mention the proposed $450 million in federal money to help the devastated schools of New Orleans, but … er … that’s a proposal being offered by the Democratic Congress. Oops!

Mr. Bush, don’t you dare return ever again to New Orleans until you have an adequate response to ALL of our needs.