Dubya, You're Doing A Heckuva Job

I pick on President Bush a lot, and, well, he deserves most of the time. But in the interest of journalistic fairness, I am also fully prepared to congratulate him when he receives a prestigious honor.

This is one of those times.

A group known as the Global Language Monitor, a nonprofit group that monitors language use, has selected Bush's "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" as the top quote by anyone in 2006. You may recall that Bush uttered those now famous words in support of then FEMA Director Michael Brown even as citizens of one of America's greatest cities were wading through chest high water, pushing floating dead bodies out of their way, in a desperate bid to get to the so-called "safety" of the Superdome.

Yes, our government's response--and our President's assessment of the situation--was something our nation can be proud of for years to come. Granted, some people were critical of the Federal government's allegedly slow response, but what else were they supposed to do? Turn on the Weather Channel two days before Katrina hit to see what was about to happen? Or turn on virtually any broadcast or cable news channel in the days immediately after to see what was happening in the streets of New Orleans?

No, of course not. Bush was much too busy protecting Americans against the scourge of terrorism to worry about protecting us against a natural disaster that had been warned about for years. So what if citizens of one of the richest countries on Earth were reduced to drowning like rats in the streets of some third world city? It is much more important to conduct domestic surveillance without the approval of Congress or the courts in an effort to protect our liberties than it is to actually save lives by immediately getting every helicopter within a thousand miles of New Orleans in the air and enroute to a drowning city.

Yes, I'm damn proud to have George W. Bush as my leader.