Bush: The Only President to Lose an American City

Remember when no WMDs were found in Iraq and Bush responded with some stupid clowning by looking behind his chair, etc? This time, he's lost an American city but doesn't seem to remember. There's no bad joke looking behind his chair this time. There's just dead silence. It took Democrat Jim Webb to remember New Oreans the night Bush gave his State of the Union. New Orleans is the state of the union, a staggering symbol and reality of Republican indifference.

Here's Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post:

More infuriating than anything George W. Bush said in his State of the Union address was what he didn't say. Congress and the nation heard nothing, zilch, nada, not a single, solitary word about New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and the devastation that remains from the worst natural disaster in United States history.

A disaster that happened on his watch. How nice that the White House has been able to move beyond the trauma of September 2005 -- wind and water, death and destruction, poverty and race, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Too bad the people of New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish, Pass Christian, Biloxi and the rest of the coast will never have the luxury of forgetting.

(snip)

What kind of president can see one of the nation's greatest, most historic cities ruined and not make its rebirth his highest priority? What kind of president gives a State of the Union and doesn't even mention New Orleans?

I've known decent Republicans all my life but I don't know these Republicans that run things in Washington who can't be bothered to lift a hand for their fellow Americans. What they did to New Orleans, they can do to any American city. If they can be that indifferent to New Orleans and a good part of the Gulf, it doesn't take much for them to be indifferent to tens of millions of Americans. There's something wrong in America and it begins in the offices in the West Wing of the White House where power counts more than the voice of the American people.