Bush avoided the World Trade Center and Katrina as long as possible, only using them to stage photo-ops. Obama has done the same thing when tragedy strikes, in W. Virginia, and now in the Gulf of Mexico.

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By James Ridgeway
(from: Unsilent Generation)

During the blitz of World War II, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchillwent intothe streets of London to stand with his people against the Nazis.But nowadays, our leaders are mostly absent in times of travail. After 9/11, George W. Bush took three full days to make it to New York, waiting until the coast was clear before claiming his photo-op with the firefighters and cops and rescue workers at Ground Zero. And when Katrinadevastated New Orleans, Bush opted for his famous flyover,viewing the suffering from a the comfort of Airforce One at 2,500 feet.

When it came to the Louisiana oil spill,Obama didn't do any better, waiting nearly two weeks before making a literally meaningless photo op tothe Louisiana waterfront,where he stood on a dock in front of a Coast Guard boat. As we now know, the federal government did not monitor,let alone regulate, its own leases in the Gulf. It let BP runout one horror show after another--with leaks,fires,improper and dangerous industrial behavior. while it literally twiddled its thumbs. (The Obama administration even let BP's Deep Horizon start drilling without requiring any emergency plan in the event of a spill.)



And even now,with the situation in the Gulf completely out of control, all the liberals can do is vent their spleen against Glenn Beck and the other right wing talk show hosts, whilst waiting for a shift in the wind.

You might have thought Obama would have learned something after the Appalachian coal disaster, just weeks earlier. There, it seemed the president just couldn't find the time to take puddle jumper down to Massey Coal's Upper Big Branch minein West Virginia to comfort the families of those who died in the worst coal mine disaster in 40 years. Nor did Michelle Obama or even Joe Biden, who is talked about as the the administration's liaison to working-class whites, make that trip...

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Submitter: Dave Lindorff

Submitters Website: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net

Submitters Bio:

Dave Lindorff, winner of a 2019 "Izzy" Award for Outstanding Independent Journalism from the Park Center for Independent Media in Ithaca, is a founding member of the collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper www.thiscantbehappening.net. He is a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006).