**BREAKING: WHITE HOUSE SAYS BUSH UNLIKELY TO SPEAK AT GOP CONV. ON MONDAY**

[NorthAmerican]

LOL!!!

[d_b]

1. I love the cnn banner

as if he's sitting in the white house looking at his hurricane watcher machine thingy.

[bulloney]

8. Bush is busy scoping the hurricane meter to see if Gustav becomes a big threat.

The Republicans have been looking for an excuse to minimize Bush's profile in this convention. Good lord, they scheduled a SITTING PRESIDENT on the FIRST DAY of the event, which happens to be LABOR DAY, like, that's going to draw a lot of attention. What does that tell you about what they really think of the Bush/Cheney administration?

Gustav is the excuse they're looking for. Bush can make up the excuse that he can't attend because he has to look presidential staring at the pretty colors on the weather radar map as Gustav approaches the U.S. mainland.

[Motown_Johnny]

2. Ah yes.. this is beautiful.... So when he fucks this one up too there can be no excuse

[Lasher]

3. It's a little late for Junior to pretend he cares.

Bush tore down the FEMA that Clinton built up

Of all the sad tales of cronyism and ineptitude emerging out of the Katrina catastrophe, probably none is more telling than the history of FEMA under the oversight and management of President Bush.

So let’s review the outlines of the story, beginning with the president’s inauguration in January 2001. Like everything in the second Bush White House, the surest clue to how the administration would proceed was to find what the Clinton White House had done and then expect the opposite.

President Clinton had appointed the first FEMA director with actual emergency-management experience, James Lee Witt. And Witt had gone on to reshape the organization into what was considered a model government agency. Clinton even gave FEMA Cabinet-level status.

Bush demoted the agency’s status and put it in the hands of his chief political fixer, Joe Allbaugh, who went about dismantling much of what Witt had built. As he told Congress in May 2001: “Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management. Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.”

Tapping Allbaugh, a political operative with no clear experience for the job, was the first clear sign of the importance the new administration attached to the agency’s responsibilities. And that attitude suffused hiring pretty much down the line. As his general counsel, Allbaugh picked his old college roommate Michael D. Brown, another political hire with no emergency-management experience whatsoever.

http://thehill.com/josh-marshall/bush-tore-down-the-fema-that-clinton-built-up-2005-09-08.html

[Lyric]

6. "An oversized entitlement program"

Ahhh. I get it. FEMA under Clinton helped poor brown people too, and we just can't have that.

Asshole.

[sharp_stick]

4. Is he having another cake baked

for mccain? Now he's got to get Jorge the White House taco chef to add Palin's name to it. No time to go to a convention.

[HughMoran]

5. They were going to let the troll speak at the convention?

Yikes!

[HughBeaumont]

7. The fortunate son is POISON!

I mean, this ticket is going down faster than Fannie Mae's stock value over the past year; why would they want to add more stigma?