VirusHead

Dear President Clinton,

I have always respected you, but I am disappointed with you today. Please stop ministering to King George. This country needs you in a completely different way. You can still be a leader. By the way, this buddying up isn’t helping Hillary’s chances for a presidential run, believe me. You can’t be all things to all people, and it’s time for our leaders to start showing some spine.

This administration has undone all the good you did – how can you be so complicit and supportive? Jimmy Carter is diplomatic about it, but it’s clear that he is opposed to what this administration has been doing. Where is our guy? Where is the guy who feels our pain?

What is happening in New Orleans and other places should be a wakeup call, no – a wakeup alarm. It’s past the point of a “call.” I saw a black woman on the news pointing to the corpse of a white man, saying “See? He’s white! It’s not all black people dying – please help us.” I saw triage. I saw overwhelmed nurses and doctors working in the dark. I saw officers walk past hundreds of Americans to get some diplomat’s relative out first. The news is starting to actually do a bit a real reporting for a change, but our administration is chillingly unempathetic and distant.

Couldn’t we have dropped supplies and water from the air? Isn’t anyone going to mention that FEMA has been dismantled by this administration, and competent people everywhere replaced by yes-men? How about the cuts to our domestic security? Our domestic protectors, the national guard has 30% of their men and women from that area overseas -not to mention 50% of their equipment. How is it that funding for New Orleans – a security concern that was indeed foreseen – was cut so much, while the porkish highway bill included $231 million for a bridge to an small uninhabited Alaskan island? Why is there more concern about people stealing supplies to save their lives than on getting them out of there? What has been planned for the risk of disease? How do they plan to restore the wetlands, the marshes and swamps that act as natural water barriers? You have not addressed any of this as you stand there in the “Bushes.”

However, if you do intend to go around with a stricken-looking senior Bush to raise money on the “Katrina” tour, why not start with what money Halliburton is planning to give back to us? Why not ask the corporations, whose infinite grasping greed controls many of our policities, for some of our stolen money back? I’m sure it’s deductible.