pinions of buddy don: makin shore gummint is the problem

ronald raygun lacked to say gummin aint the solushun; tiz the problem. corse, that aint a verr honest assessment since it dont make no differnts twixt good gummint n bad. far as i kin tell, them publicans lacks to proov gummint is the problem by runnin it so badly that ye gut this kinda thang a'goin on:

• Millions for bridges, not a penny for defense: President Bush signed the $286.5 billion transportation bill this week and critics were horrified by the number of pork-laden local road projects. The two most notable bacon-soaked items are $223 million for the Gravina Island bridge and another $229 million for the Knik Arm Bridge. Both projects are in the Alaska district of Don Young, the chairman of the House Transportation Infrastructure Committee. The Gravina Island project will link the 8,000 residents of the city of Ketchikan with the 50 people on Gravina Island. Also on Gravina Island: Ketchikan Airport, which offers a dozen scheduled flights a day and is currently linked to the city by a 7-minute ferry ride. As currently planned, the 2-mile-long Gravina span will be nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and higher than the Brooklyn Bridge. The Knik Arm Bridge would link Anchorage with Port MacKenzie, which has just one tenant. In contrast to Young's $452 million bridges, the nation has spent a total of $115 million on mass-transit security since 9/11. Mass-transit systems in the United States carry an estimated 14 million riders a day.
• The authorities in Louisiana, including the military, pleaded long ago with Washington to reinforce the levees. The Army Corps of Engineers asked for $US105 million ($A137 million): the White House gave them $US40 million.
• Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told the Times-Picayune Sunday afternoon that officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, including FEMA Director Mike Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, listened in on electronic briefings given by his staff in advance of Hurricane Katrina slamming Louisiana and Mississippi--and were advised of the storm’s potential deadly effects.
  
  "Mayfield said the strength of the storm and the potential disaster it could bring were made clear during both the briefings and in formal advisories, which warned of a storm surge capable of overtopping levees in New Orleans and winds strong enough to blow out windows of high-rise buildings," the paper reported. "He said the briefings included information on expected wind speed, storm surge, rainfall and the potential for tornados to accompany the storm as it came ashore.
  
  "We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield said. "It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped."
• The vast scope of the calamity triggered by the storm was still emerging. officials estimated that more than 1 million people -- many of whom fled with only the clothes on their back and a few prized possessions stuffed in a bag -- have been forced from their homes, most likely for many months.

lease they gut em a scapegoat, michael d. brown:

Michael D. Brown has been called the accidental director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, caricatured as the failed head of an Arabian horse sporting group who was plucked from obscurity to become President Bush's point man for the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Amid the swirl of human misery along the Gulf Coast, Brown admitted initially underestimating the impact of Hurricane Katrina, whose winds and water swamped the agency's preparations. As the nation reeled at images of the calamity, he appeared to blame storm victims by noting that the crisis was worsened by New Orleans residents who did not comply with a mandatory evacuation order.

By last weekend, facing mounting calls for his resignation, he told reporters: "People want to lash out at me, lash out at FEMA. I think that's fine. Just lash out, because my job is to continue to save lives." More broadly, the 50-year-old Oklahoma lawyer and the agency he leads have become the focus of a broad reappraisal of U.S. homeland security efforts four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In recent days, politicians and officials in both parties have derided Brown's qualifications to head the nation's chief disaster-response agency -- as well as the performance of the agency and its federal, state and local partners.

At a time when homeland security experts called for greater domestic focus on preparing for calamity, Brown faced years of funding cuts, personnel departures and FEMA's downgrading from an independent, Cabinet-level agency.

As recently as three weeks ago, state emergency managers urged Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his deputy, Michael P. Jackson, to ease the department's focus on terrorism, warning that the shift away from traditional disaster management left FEMA a bureaucratic backwater less able to respond to natural events such as hurricanes and earthquakes.

taint gummint thats the problem. tiz badly run gummint, gummint that hasnt gut the imaginayshun to unnerstnad whut is meant by wurds lack

• 'osama bin laden determined to strike in the united states'
• or that the levees they wuz tole wuz a'gone brake wood brake
• or that sumbidy mite take a airplane n crash it into a bildin

taint gummint, but gummint run badly thats the problem, gummint that has piss poor execushun, whuther in iraq or the gulf states.

as fer dealin with pallticks, them that runs the gummint is verr good at imaginayshun n eggsecushun. they imagined that rehnquist wood die n could reack in much less time than it takes fer a baby to deehydrate. they imagined that folks wuz a'gone ast em hard questchuns bout why nobidy wuz reddy fer the damage a hurricane dun perdickted everwhar to do horrbull damage n they wuz reddy to eggsecute: everbidy in the addministrayshun sez the same thang evertime the questchun is ast: 'now is not the time to look for blame but the time to get the job done.'

corse by sayin that, it begs the questchun bout why twuznt time to evacuate folks befor the hurricane struck or to git em good n water befor five days had dun passed. when will it be time fer them questchuns to be anserd?

till then, barbara bush putts it all into perspecktiv fer us:

"Almost everyone I have talked to says, `We're going to move to Houston,'" she said in remarks to National Public Radio's "Marketplace."

"What I'm hearing is they all want to stay in Texas," she said. "Everyone 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."

i reckun gittin stuck in that hurricane musta been lack winnin the lotto! them lucky duckies!"