Milwaukee burned. President Obama was on vacation, golfing
at Martha’s Vineyard.
Much of
Louisiana is under water, caskets are floating down the streets in some
locales, already more than 70,000 people have registered for assistance under
the federal disaster declaration, at least 13 are dead, 8,400 in shelters. Most
of Louisiana has gotten at least a foot of rain in the past week, some areas as
much as 30 inches. There are over
40,000 homes damaged. Thirty thousand people have been rescued so far. Where is
the President?
Golfing
at Martha’s Vineyard (with Larry David!). He’s on vacation, you know.
The
state has been declared a major disaster zone by the United States Government.
Anna Johnson lives near the state’s capital city of Baton Rouge. She told
reporters: “We’ve never seen anything like this. It’s worse than Hurricane
Katrina. My husband is on rescue missions right now. He has a boat and he’s
helping local sheriff’s departments.”
You may
remember how Obama savaged then president Bush 11 years ago, characterizing him
as incompetent, uncaring, disengaged and slow to react to the crisis brought on
by Katrina. Campaigning for president just a few years later he ridiculed Bush
for flying over the floods in Air Force One, stating: “We can talk about what
happened for two days in 2005 and we should. We can talk about the levees that
couldn’t hold, a FEMA that seemed not just incompetent but paralyzed and
powerless, about a president who only saw the people from the window of an
airplane instead of down here on the ground.”
Several
days have gone by and Obama hasn’t even flown over Louisiana to get a
first-hand look at the damage. Maybe if someone could drive him there in a golf
cart he’d agree to make the trek. But don’t worry, the president has been briefed
on the catastrophe and has sent Homeland
Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to survey the area! (He couldn’t even spare Biden?).
The
mass media has, for the most part, shown no interest whatsoever in comparing
president Obama’s actions- or lack thereof- to president Bush’s eleven years
ago. Irony and fairness are concepts with which they appear to be entirely
unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
That
said, the Baton Rouge Advocate- a newspaper based at the epicenter of this
calamity- echoed the desperate cries and pleas of many Louisiana residents. It
opined: “Now that the flood waters ravaging Louisiana are receding, it’s time
for President Barack Obama to visit the most anguished state in the union. Last
week, as torrential rains brought death, destruction and misery to Louisiana,
the president continued his vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, a playground for the
posh and well-connected. And if the president can interrupt his vacation for a
swanky fundraiser for fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, as he did on Monday,
then surely he can make time to show up for a catastrophe that’s displaced
thousands.”
Donald
Trump will visit the flood-stricken areas tomorrow.
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