It sounds like Rice is taking after her boss. Give her a little criticism and the truth and she get defensive, just like Georgie. As a matter of fact, all Repooplicans are like this. They can't handle the truth or criticism.

Just like Bush said in a 2000 debate, natural disasters give you a chance to show your mettle.

Well we've all seen this "mettle" now, haven't we?

People like that. The people don't care as long as it is someone else that is suffering. They like for our Royalty to appear pampered. They sure don't want THE CABINET acting like ordinary working people. Remember Jimmy Carter, how they didn't appreciate him economising instead of taking his place among the Royal USA Family? Do you remember how they made fun of Clinton because he sympathised with the poor, terminally ill people by saying I feel your pain? The GOP nearly laughed themselves to death. The GOP has NEVER been able to put themselves in someone else's place, mentally. They just don't get it, so God said don't CAST your pearls of wisdom on SWINE.

Ruthless people have no compassion. That is why they can shop or play guitar at a barbeque or go bike riding while a disaster is going on. They only have one person in their lives that matter - themselves! Puts one in mind of Marie Antoinette.

After traveling to New Orleans recently, my wife and I can't believe that the Bush administration has completely abandoned the people there. We can "liberate" the people of Iraq, spending countless millions on the fight against "terrorism", but we can't offer help to our own people who are suffering through one of the worst disasters in our history. We need a leader who has his priorities straight - not an mouthpiece of the ignorant! God help us............

So sad to watch the little babies, the children with out food or water. Where is this governments compassion. I just remembered they were playing golf and shoe shopping. As these people sit in the hot sun with no water or food, believe me the anger of people around the world will rear an angry head! I can't even say it is embarassing, to watch our own government let it's own people suffer, that is the wrong word it is a moral act of inhumanity directed towards our own people. This president is not only immoral he is heartless!

Oh give her a break. Why are Democrats so eager to critisize Bush or anyone in his staff over every single little thing. No wonder why Democrats lost the 04 election. They complain about every single little thing and people dont' want to hear it.

Hey David- I "dont'" (don't) think it is only Democrats who are criticizing the Bush administration,it should be all Americans. THEY are supposed to be leaders for ALL of us. You and the rest of the sore-winner Republicans should scrape off your "W" and "Bush/Cheney" stickers and come to reality. American people are suffering-right here at home-help them out!
SAXDAD

Biblicly, it says that you should pray for your leaders...complaining about them won't get you anywhere...maybe it's time that we humble ourselves and get on our knees and ask God to be with our leaders so that they might make the right decisions. But I guess we've become a country who has taken God out of the country...

Maybe we should pray for the people who are suffering TOO. This administration was supposedly elected by upright, moral people. Quit handing the American people this rhetoric and start acting. I'm speaking as an AMERICAN-not a Democrat, Republican, or whatever. Thre is anarchy taking place right here in our own country. It is the responsibility of our leaders to LEAD - quit making excuses and passing the buck and help!

Prayers for Bush? I'll save them for those suffering because of him and his lack of leadership. Besides, it would seem that our fearless, supreme leader is getting enough help from the bottle and the drugs they are giving him.

Did you hear him say that he was glad he was getting to visit and comfort people "in this part of the world"? He doesn't even know what country he's in.

None of these people understand what public service is about. If you accept a cabinet post, you are on call at all times. If there is a crisis, you get yourself back to work. Most professionals carry around pagers and are on call 24/7. Doesn't Queen Condi realize people are dying?

What's with these people? Do they think this is a play? Today Bush sounded like a bad actor who was having a hard time delivering his lines. What is he going to do when he gets to New Orleans? Pull out is guitar and stum the blues?

The Mayor of New Orleans just issued another SOS. He says they are all hanging on by a thread. Where is the relief operation? How hard is it to drop food and water from airplanes? Doesn't the Guard learn to parachute into out of the way areas?

If only our military were here to help. They are the best in the world and could have made a real difference early on with a mission this dire and desperate. The remaining top commanders (those who didn't quit or were forced to retire because they wouldn't go along with the Iraqi invasion) could have coordinated the effort.

But where are they? Half way around the world wondering is their loved ones made it out alive.

I never said that I agreed with everything that Bush does. Read American Dynasty if you ever get a chance too. Great Book on the deceitfulness of the Bushes going down from 4 generation. What I am saying is that you still ought to pray for your leaders regardless. Bush is going to still be in office for the next 31/2 years if you like it or not. Whining and complaining doesn't do a thing. But prayer always leaves you some hope. And if it was Kerry who was in office instead of Bush I would be saying the same thing.

Look at what is happening. The government and the nation are prepared and taking swift action TO FUND PROJECTS AND MAINTAIN AUTHORITY. Our leaders are experts at dealing with money. They are out of touch with assessing basic human needs and mobilizing useful assets, such as wheels, gasoline, information technology and good will that is so abundant in our nation.

Our government has failed its people in a time of dire need. But it is doing what it was designed to do, to support business and maintain authority.

If you find fault with sending troops to stop looting rather than to transport refugees, if you find fault with mobilizing bucks before buses, if you find fault with the president saying that his operations are successful, you are finding fault with the intention of our government.

The president is not blind or misinformed when he says that the relief effort is a success. He simply has different priorities.

So the question is how to infuse the mechanisms of government with specific committments to the basic needs of of the citizens.

And in the mean time, how do we suucceed as indivduals in meeting the needs that the government is not addressing?

Excuse me msimmons but enough of your myopia regarding the ettiquitte of bureaucratic protocol and your sterile poli sci style of lofty rhetoric, as a social and psychological theorist I must advise you that it is a tertiary and superfluous concern that flies in the face of a philosophical premise that is called the primary reality of Now when people are dying in squalor and fecal matter. It is now known to the People through the news that this is what is called ironically a precipitating event, an accident of compounded problems that has been happening over a period of neglect and mistakes that has led to something massive. In this case it was the combination of Mother Nature whalloping the little guy and his friends on the hill bickering over a polished table in their shiny suits about how to part with their profits and their neglect of paying the People's money to fix an ecological problem for years.
Did you see the pictures down there for four days and then a tiny impotent trickle of busses and a single pathetic little crane sitting on the side of an abandoned levee? So this is this administration's version of the century 21 bridge across troubled waters and FEMA? Where were they on Sunday, Monday? Did you realize that the whole world is watching this pathetic scene?
The Clinton/Cisneros team was there promptly after the massive Southern California Quake in '93 standing in an auditorium that shook with aftershocks. The help was already there and more on the way.
What The Citizens of the United States are asking their civil servants is what happened to the Public taxpayer's money for repair of the levee long ago? After all it was Our money that was paid to you to work for Us. Taxpayers and homeowners and private middle class citizens, not some lumpen proletariat but still, it is now understood that over fifty percent of the children in New Orleans were living below the poverty line and many families without the means to drive their own cars out. Why? Because they were too poor to own one!!! Why? Because they were unemployed!!! This is the reality of the buried underground of the increasing class polarization created since 2000. Soon you will have no consumers. Take a good look and put two and two together and go figure that no one will be able to shop in your little boutiques if we all get too poor in the near future.
Have you ever gone through four days without a porta potty, having to deficate in front of people on cement without a Bush to even squat behind? NO. Have you heard of post traumatic syndrome? Have you ever read a book by Victor Hugo called Les Miserables? How coincidental that New Orleans has the building that Napolean stayed in for awhile. Humilitee said Gwenivere to Lancelot. Perhaps you should start to change YOUR priorities.
I am so sick of seeing pretty pampered princesses selling cream and dye and sitcoms that are filled with jealousy and insecurity and don't you wish you were beautiful like me. Many of us do not play that game, We are already good enough. Did you see the woman holding the poor orphaned infant in the Dome of Doom or the one washing out mud from shoes in front of what was once her house? The one man sitting on a stairway to nowhere? The little old dead person in the chair? They really put on a show for you didn't they.
They are real. They are the heros today and the elite bourgoise pirates with off-shore treasure chests and the little shoe shoppers are looking like clowns and traitors to the ones they call refugees and to all the unemployed across this country who are watching this between hair dye commercials wondering how they will stay warm this winter watching these idiots request that the refugees make way for the fans of football teams at the Astrodome in Texas - (oh so sorry to squat on your precious clean front porch while this inconvenience is going on while you sit inside petting your poodle). "Gag me with a spoon." (Zappa).
The Citizens of the United States, born on United States soil, are wishing this cast of schizoid failed leaders would just go away on a very long vacation so they can take over, and it is the donations that are coming again out of THEIR pockets that is the answer to you as to what individuals are doing quite well to help at this late date after a non response to the point of shouting matches and cussing to get your little cowboy off his butt! You see, you may be up there on that pyramid, but just a few pennies by the many adds up to a lot, and it happens that way with votes too. You may have your treasure chests, just do not ever forget the numbers that you are standing upon. It is they who you work for and who pay you, not the other way around.
And yes, we pray, but it seems that the Goddess herself as Katrina had to intervene this time to poke a hole in your holy veil of hypocracy. Some mis-managers have got to answer for this preventable blunder Enron style over the last few years.
You would not listen to the scientists - the geologists, meteorologists, ecologists that warned you. You had your own bubble of propaganda that mystified you when you started to believe your own lies as you lived on easy street. Indeed you little dilittantes, like Marie Antionette, did not want to be bothered by the underlings and untouchables. It was too expensive to preserve and nurture the wetlands or change the man made cannals for the fancy boats, the rich newsman said on TV that it was too expensive because of the needs of "natural" development in the area. NATURAL??? What a forked tongue! A city was sinking under concrete. What is natural about a concrete jungle. Did you ever hear about or see a green belt? Funny how a little island called the U.K. could find the time and moneys to set aside such things for their subjects. Still, a city was drowning while this administration dallied, not just for four days, but for more than four years. Nothing was done with our money, and furthermore, we have just been watching on c-span the response to the findings of the 9/11 commission and nothing was done about all the warnings then...Mohammad Sheik Said, the guy who funded Atta, was a triple agent???? It is really beginning to make a lot of folks down here wonder about the Bush Administration's strangely twisted priorities. This circle is going to be closing in on the Condi clique soon like that hurricane and they don't even know the half of it. They have just created a real crisis of credibility and legitimation that cannot be undone by the buddy club of what looks to Us like debonaire used car salesmen on their little life boat. They can no longer pull off the same modus operendis, strike below belts for the hundredth time with pointy fingers, or bank on bluffing the American People.
Yes, God help "Miss Condi". She has the false smile and beady eyes like someone I met long ago. I looked up into those slit brown eyes and my soul told me in that instant as a nine year old child that he was a bad man. His name was Nixon and he proved me right in time. That's all I can say in response to the snobbery above. Perhaps our truant employee should RESIGN while she is a head. So much for cake. I'm sick.
Go for the fifty state plan quick.

Photos!

condi at spamalot

condi NOT AT THE cabinet meeting

davidhammond sounds like a typical Republican -- doubt that he is even capable of rethinking his stupid position.

As a healthcare worker I am very disappointed, once again, with the politicians and black leaders response to the disaster in, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. All of this finger pointing for the purpose of dividing the nation politically and racially demeans the work being done by all of the volunteers in those areas. This situation requires unity of spirit.
I am embarrassed to see my politicians behaving this way for all the world to see.
Living just outside NYC I was so proud of my country, including members of congress, after 9/11.
The Democrats have become so concerned about regaining the White House they are abusing their media time and abusing our trust.
The black leaders in this country wouldn't be getting face time in front of the camera if they can't continue to divide the races.
How many volunteers are white and for how many blacks are they working tirelessly. It just seems that these media addicts are taking advantage of this disaster when regular Americans, black, white,etc. are making it through day by day helping one another.
MEDIA - please focus on the voluteers and our wonderful Military personel.
I'll bet that Usama Bin Laden is in his cave laughing at us. He doesn't have to do a thing because we will destroy ourselves.

bobkat11 - oh yes, your typical hateful idiot.