Help with ammunition, please.....

[teenagebambam]

....in responding to this email from my sister (who really isn't a thug, I think she just delights in vexing me). But I'm shaking right now with seething rage, need some perspective and, unabashedly, could use some talking points! Here's her email (in reponse to me saying that I found *'s admission of guilt too little too late...)

"I remember last week when you said "All I want is for him to take responsibilty". Then he does it, and I KNEW he would, and I also KNEW that you'd SOMEHOW find fault in that too. *sigh*

Just admit that you just want to hate him and make fun of him, no matter what he does, cause that's what you liberals do. You don't really care about dealing with the problem and moving forward, you just want SOMEONE, anyone to blame blame blame.
I don't think he's the best president ever, in fact I don't really think he's a good president. But he IS our president, and unitl he's not anymore, I will make the best of the situation. It does NO good to sit around and talk about what a dumbass he is- he's not going anywhere. And remember, SOMEONE voted for him, or he wouldn't be there.

"

[daninthemoon]

1. I feel your pain. I have a sister & brother in law like that, too. Nothing

in the real world gets through to them. Only things they can say is whatever big fat idiot limbaugh tells them to repeat. Wish I could help, but...

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. WAIT A MINUTE

we have the same sister!

Seriously, when it hits this level you just have to back off. Try and find your common demonimator. Like you can agree he is a mammal. Then work from there.

When you hit your difference, the statement "well, then, we will have to agree to disagree" has always worked for me.

[moc]

3. Taking responsibility without taking action is hollow.

You know, even when you were little, your mom told you it's not enough to say "I'm sorry". You have to back up those words with actions. If * was a man of integrity, he would have fired Brownie and Chertoff for their incompetence. He didn't. Therefore, his "apology" holds little currency for me.

[PsN2Wind]

4. Certainly "Someone voted for him"

The US Supreme Court, led by that states rights advocate Rehnquist, who voted to overrule the Florida State Supreme Court. Most of those voting to stop the vote count should have recused themselves as,I believe, 4 of the five were placed on the court while the father of the beneficiary to their ruling was part of this countries administration.

[calimary]

5. Frankly, dear sister, it's YOU who refuses to deal with the problem and

move forward. If YOU had someone managing your office or running your company - or maybe watching your children - and they were derelict on their duties, like maybe a crisis erupts and they're AWOL for several days, while everybody else in the neighborhood/the office building is fully aware and busily trying to cope - and they're gone and there's no leadership and they're supposed to be in charge, but they're off wining and dining somewhere and having their pictures taken, and then when they finally do show up, all they choose to talk about, regarding the burnt-out office building or your evacuated home, was what fun they used to have getting drunk there...

And when perhaps they put the family cat in charge of the kids while they ran off to some spa, or maybe they called one of their frat buddies who happened to be "at liberty" to come and babysit the store/office, and this person didn't know his ass from grass and was NO good on this watch, would you be all that happy with him? Would you want to keep such an employee on your payroll?

Or, look at it this way - what if it was YOU who had botched this? What if it was on YOUR watch, and you were off relaxing somewhere when all hell broke loose, and then you resolutely remained "out of it" for days afterwards, while EVERYONE ELSE AROUND YOU was painfully aware of the catastrophe?

If YOU performed so poorly, do you think YOU would still be working? If you'd just cost the company millions of dollars and maybe one of its key buildings, do you honestly think that your boss would just shrug it off and give you credit just because you FINALLY and reluctantly concede that you MIGHT have SOME responsibility for it?

And if you're that mindful of numbers of people who allegedly supported him in the last election (which can be argued, by the way, considering how much voter fraud there was), perhaps you'll notice that there are substantial numbers of people, now, and yes, people who evidently DID support him, who have good enough horse sense to recognize a dismal job performance when they see one. Why can't you?

[bluedawg12]

6. "All I want " is a figure of speech not a manifesto

So, your sis is latching onto a colloquial phrase you used rather than the spirit of the phrase, which is:

All I want him to do is admit responsibility for all of the things that happened because of his inappropriate choice in federal appointees and disengaged behavior during the time of national crisis.

Beyond that, of course there is a next step.

Making sure that we elect national and local leaders who represent the people of the United States, and not multi-national corporations.

[whatever4]

7. If his most basic truths are questionable

As "SOMEONE voted for him, or he wouldn't be there" is most certainly suspect in looking at all the voter fraud, and as his reasons for handling the hurricane disaster so badly are ridiculous, and as the war in Iraq is an attrocity...while he yet denies it and says we need to stay in it. There have been far too many lies from this admin, and at this point we are realizing they've all been to cover-up. Not to protect us at all.

He seemed to admit responsibility, but so grudgingly, it was the worst apology I'VE ever seen, and for all that, he still had to be shamed into it. Had my child given me an apology in that manner, I would have had stern words for him, because he didn't look "sorry" at all. He looked "in trouble", which is an UNACCEPTABLE attitude from one who should feel much pain and sorrow for what has happened.

There should have been tears. There were none, and to me, that is incomprehensible, because any one of us would have been heartbroken and would NOT have been able to hide the sadness. His sadness was affected.

Fact is, only fools trust a liar, and this mans lies have cost lives. There is very little in life that is worse. Intentional loss of life is a hateful thing, and deserves ALL our hatred.

But still, you might say we don't hate him, as much as we hate what he's done and what he stands for, which is greed and lies. And, we don't so much want to hurt him, as to see him rightfully tried, imprisoned and finally executed, as that is the ONLY thing that will heal our nation; to enact justice upon our most horrible of treasonous traitors. To regain our humanity.

It's not personal, it's just our job. As Americans.

[klook]

8. If he actually took responsibility...

that would help. But all he's done is to say he's taking responsibility. He hasn't actually done much.

"To the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush told a White House news conference at which he openly questioned U.S. preparedness for another storm or a "severe attack." (Reuters)

He's obviously so insincere about it, like a kid who gets busted for drinking beer when his parents are out of town, and then fakes remorse and reformation just to get out of trouble. If Bush actually took responsibility, wouldn't he have gotten down to New Orleans immediately? Wouldn't he have cut his vacation short? Wouldn't he have demanded accountability and results from his subordinates? Wouldn't he have been trying to help his subjects his fellow Americans instead of cutting birthday cakes and strumming guitars at fundraisers?

For some transgressions, really no apology is good enough. Look at how much Republicans pounded on Bill Clinton, no matter how many times he apologized, for his private sexual conduct, for cryin' out loud!! And nobody died as a result!!! Bush's foot-dragging, and his administration's incompetence--a direct result of his own cronyism and lack of managerial oversight--has resulted in avoidable deaths.

For Bush to reverse the damage to his reputation at this point, he's going to have to have a transformation that rivals that of Scrooge on Christmas morning. Instead, he will do what he always does--weasel out of it by prevarication and pretense, and go back to creating more children of ignorance and want.

[Bob3]

9. there was an e-mail that somebody posted that summed it up

pretty damn well.

In short it said "I wanted to see him react like a human being to the disaster, I wanted him to be ripping an aide a new one when he was told the super dome wasn't getting water or food. I wanted to read about his frustration with FEMA's sluggish response. I wanted to see some shock. Say what you will about The Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana these were people in pain pleading for help. " something like that - I tried to look it up but I'm not very good at that.

And I'd refuse to make the best of a situation that can have no best - the man has been tested more than once and he has failed, failed utterly - there are bodies from New Orleans to baghdad of those who have paid the price for his failures . That is simply the truth. An ugly truth, a nasty truth but the truth. To pretend otherwise is to have to lie to oneself. None of our problems are going to be solved if we pretend he isn't one of them. As for the people who voted for him - well one, to be generous they were sold a pack of bull - that he was strong decisive leader - which we all know he is not. To be ungenerous they decided not to look at the truth and 'make the best of it' and hope for the best - which ended up with us pulling dead people out of old age homes in a flooded city.

But your sister is right in one way he is our president. That is one of our shames that we will have to work off - along with pretending for years that the poor don't exist in this country and their lives are a unending misery. There is enough blame to go around for all of us. But since he is the president - he does deserve the president's share of the blame for this.

Sorry to rant but dead bodies set me off.

edited to add a word.

[klook]

10. "pretending for years that the poor don't exist...."

Good post. Just curious, when you wrote "That is one of our shames that we will have to work off - along with pretending for years that the poor don't exist in this country and their lives are an unending misery" -- does that last part mean mean "pretending for years that their lives are an unending misery"? Or that the unending misery of the poor is one of the shames that we will have to work off?

The reason I ask is that I think it's inaccurate to say poor people have lives of "unending misery." Millions of poor people have birthdays, they fall in love, they enjoy a good laugh, they're proud of their kids, etc. Obviously, some people get very little pleasure out of life, but I think it's a weird kind of stigmatization to view poverty as unrelenting despair.

This is one of the points Jane Jacobs makes in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She advocates planning that encourages mixed-class / mixed-use neighborhoods, and notes that "poor, down-trodden" neighborhoods are often more vibrant and fun than affluent ones.

On the flip side, I don't want to romanticize poverty, just to point out that it's not necessarily the living hell that we sometimes suppose.