Uncle Bush: Just Trust Me

I watched the 22 minute speech by Uncle Bush last night.

I noticed just a few itty-bitty things about content and tenor of the speech.

Not once could Uncle Bush bring to his lips "I'm sorry what my government didn't do, and we will try to fix it". Instead, he extended the American people's sympathy.

He interjected the neocon's dreaded P word, "poverty" 4 times. He had some practice on saying that word as he used it in his speech to the UN 10 times. That is 14 times more than he's said it in 5 years.

In watching the speech, I was trying to figure out who the speech writer was. At first, it sounded very Karen Hughes-like, taking ideas that JRE had lined out somewhat in his New America Initiative, and putting them into Bush-speak. Then when I read NYT columnist Paul Krugman's piece that most of it was shaped already by the Heritage Foundation, such as Ed Meese and that ilk, I thought to myself "another shock and awe"; the de-democratization of the Gulf Coast region. Just trust Uncle Bush, and the Crescent City will rise again.

Yep, put people back to work for less than fair wages to rebuild the region.

Yep, give them 5K for retraining, child care, etc. My sense is that welfare pays better than that.

No mention that the region's bridges and other infrastructure could be bid on and redone by companies besides Halliburton.

No mention that things were bad before Katrina hit. Period.

and as John Kerry responded last night "leadership is not giving out an 800 number".

But in all honesty, Bush has always responded too little too late. And if you read the CNN polls, it's evenly decided three ways between too much, not enough, and just right.

To be continued..