It isn't playing politics to demand action when lives are at stake and call out the fuckers who are fucking things up.

James Wollcott gives
a much needed rebuke to those folks calling for us all not to play politics right now or point fingers and blame the assholes who fucked up all the emergency preparedness and are responsible for this stinking mess, but I think there is one point missing from his rationale:

"No, this is the time for politics, none better, because I can tell you just from being out of NY a few days that a lot of people in this country are shocked and sobered by New Orleans, but they're also worried and pissed off. They're making the connection between the money, manpower, and resources expended in Iraq and how raggedy-ass the rescue effort has been in the Gulf. If you don't say it now when people's nerves are raw and they're paying full attention, it'll be too late once the waters receded and the media-emoting 'healing process' begins. "

The point of us screaming bloody murder right now isn't that the disaster will be forgotten or smoothed over with talking points but that it isn't just the preparation that was fucked, the rescue mission is being fucked up royally right now and people are dying as I type as a DIRECT result of these idiots' actions (or lack there of). This could be different and it hasn't gotten as bad as it could and every sentient person in the country should be yelling at the top of their lungs at these bastards who are fucking up yet another part of their goddamned jobs and killing people in the process!!! The only way to get that lazy idiot to do any damn thing other than his stupid projects is if he thinks there is going to be a political price. Trying to exact a political price right now for this bungle isn't just a matter of taking political advantage of a bad situation, it is necessary to get this fortunate son to actually try to pull things together and save what lives are left.

Like the idiots who say that liberals want the war effort to fail because we hate bush so much, I am sure that in the coming weeks there will be those who say that we are happy that New Orleans/lower Mississippi was destroyed just so we can get some political milage. I like to think that any callous asshole who can even entertain such thoughts in his mind need not be responded to because surely no one could believe such drivel, but the last few years have sadly taught me different. I wish more than anything bush had had real plans in place for this disaster, that he had learned from his father's mistakes after Andrew, that he had responded quickly and saved as many lives as possible and that he were shining like a hero right now and that his poll numbers were soaring. I would happily give him all the political credit in the world if it meant lives were being saved and those people weren't going to die and suffer like they are, but I can't make that trade, and he did fuck this up and there was every warning in the world that this was going to happen and there were people trying to prepare for this and he pulled the rug out from under them. And it is only getting worse. How many thousands of people are still in New Orleans? How many days in a toxic, sewage-filled, subtropical lake of a city can you have thousands of people before dysentary sets in?

He has failed at the first part of this disaster but it isn't even close to over and we need to be demanding he either start acting fast and getting people who know what the hell to do in there or we need to run him out of town on a rail.

I humbly remind that hurricane season is only just starting.