"I made some mistakes in appointing people" -G.W. Bush

He told us this would happen! He told us. For all the people out there who were on the fence about Bush-Kerry, here is something to think about. Michael Brown was a bad appointee. He fudged his resume so that he would seem like a good choice for FEMA director, but he wasn't. He had absolutely no experience in emergency management. NONE. So for all of the people who thought that gay marriage was a 'hot' issue in the last election, look where we are now: over 500 dead because Bush gave a friend of his a job. Now I know some of them would have died anyway, but if you look at the way things were handled, you have to know that the number could have been a two didget one if buses were used to evacuate and food and water was air-dropped in. Brown actually started air-dropping food, but only after he got the idea while being berated by an interviewer. He got his best informaton from the news media, and admited to not knowing that the superdome had been used as a refugee center for over two days! I KNEW IT WAS BEING USED AS A REFUGEE CENTER! I DID! To close, here are some qoutes gathered by Roeper, of Ebert and Roeper. I have edited his comments to be a little less partisan and a little more factual. I also left out some quotes by celebrities that I felt were not very important. I am sad that this is how I start up again with my blog, but I had to say something. On a closing note; how many people would die if a lifeguard lied about his qualifications to get his job, and then kept his job for 4 years? 20 people? Maybe? He would be charged and put in jail if he was found out. Brown should be tried for about 500 counts of manslaughter.

*"I wasn't going to let a little thing like a hurricane keep me from wearing my bathing suit." -- Eva Longoria on the Video Music Awards, Aug. 28.

*"The looting is out of control. The French Quarter has been attacked." -- New Orleans councilwoman Jackie Carlson, Aug. 30. Meanwhile, President Bush was playing guitar with country singer Mark Willis in San Diego. Bush would return to Crawford, Texas, that night, for one more night before cutting his vacation short.

*"I must say, this storm is much bigger than anyone expected." -- FEMA Director Michael Brown, on CNN, Aug. 31.

*"Excuse me, senator, I'm sorry for interrupting . . . for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people out here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated . . . And when they hear politicians . . . you know, thanking one another, it just . . . cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body in the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the streets for 48 hours . . ." -- CNN's Anderson Cooper, Sept. 1, directed at Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who had been complimenting fellow politicians before Cooper cut her off.

*"George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual for this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed." -- New York Times lead editorial, Sept. 1.

*"It was chaos. There was nobody there, nobody in charge. And there was nobody giving even water. The children . . . they're all just in tears. There are sick people. We saw . . . people who are dying in front of you." -- CNN producer Kim Segal, describing conditions in the New Orleans Convention Center, Sept. 1.

*"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well." -- FEMA chief Brown, Sept. 1.

*"From here and from talking to police officers, they're losing control of the city . . ." -- CNN's Chris Lawrence, Sept. 1.

*"We just learned of the convention center, we being the federal government, today." -- Brown
"Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today." -- Ted Koppel , Sept. 2.

*"Many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black . . . " -- CNN's Wolf Blitzer's unfortunate description of the evacuees, Sept. 1.

*"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job." -- President Bush, Sept. 2.

*"I'm satisfied with the response. I am not satisfied with the results." -- President Bush, later that day.

*"Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." -- President Bush in Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2.

*"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in a St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' [starting to cry] And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night." -- Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard, Sept. 4, on NBC's "Meet the Press"

*"We lost everything. Katrina didn't care if you were poor or rich; all the houses look the same now." -- Mississippi resident Penny Dean, quoted in People magazine.

*"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them." -- Former First Lady Barbara Bush, in the Houston Astrodome, Sept. 5.

*"Go f-- yourself, Mr. Cheney. Go f-- yourself." -- Off-camera citizen heckling the vice president during a live interview that aired on CNN and MSNBC, Sept. 8.
"First time I've heard it. Must be a friend of John, er, uh, never mind." -- Cheney's response when a reporter asked if he'd been hearing a lot of that sort of thing.

*"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." -- Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.), Sept. 8, quoted by the Wall Street Journal. Baker is denying the quote; the reporter stands by his story.