Bush Is Working for His People As He Was Hired To Do

George W. Bush Still Rocks!/Stop criticizing! The rich man's CEO president is executing his job requirements perfectlyBy Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Everyone is slamming poor Dubya. Everyone is saying, oh my God, he's moreinept than we ever imagined, he has no idea what's really going on, he'soblivious and in denial and he pretty much let all those poor black peopledie in filth and misery, and he basically ignored the massive Katrinadisaster for days before finally being pressured into cutting hisumpteenth vacation short and actually taking action. This is what they're saying. Kanye West was right, Bush doesn't care aboutblack people, or the poor, or anything that doesn't directly serve hishandlers' agenda or flatter his monochromatic ego or anything that isn'tspelled out for him in nice simplistic pie charts and reassuring matronlytones. And lo, the darts are slinging in from around the world, according to SFGate's own World Views column: "Maddening incompetence ... reminiscent ofa drought-stricken African state," says Britain's Daily Mail. "Can't getit together," says a major paper in Italy. "A plethora of grim tales ofdisaster," says the Scotsman. "Superpower or Third World?" asks theSpanish daily Noticias de Acutelava. Why did BushCo fail its firstgreat national-security test since Sept. 11, despite having two days'advance notice of Katrina's wrath? asks Le Monde. And on it goes, theworld's powers looking on in one part shock and one part disgust and allparts repugnance for Bush's rampant ineptitude and America's apparentinability to take care of its own. But it's so unfair, isn't it, to attack poor Dubya like this? Just alittle misplaced? After all, Bush has always been the rich white man'spresident. He is the CEO president, the megacorporate businessman'sfriend, the thug of the religious right, a big reservoir-tipped condom forall energy magnates, protecting against the nasty STDs of humanitarianismand progress and social responsibility. He has always been merely an entirely selective figurehead, out of touchand eternally dumbfounded, a hand puppet of the neoconservative machinebuilt and fluffed up and carefully placed for the very specific job ofprotecting their interests, no matter what. Repeat: No. Matter. What.Flood hurricane disaster war social breakdown economic collapse? Doesn'tmatter. Corporate interests uber alles, baby. Protect the core,reassure the base, screw everyone else unless it begins to affect the pollnumbers and then finger-point, deflect, prevaricate. All of a piece,really. Because Bush, he was never actually meant to, you know, lead. So maybe it's time to stop with the savaging of poor Dubya. He is, afterall, doing a simply beautiful job of kowtowing to his wealthiestsupporters while slamming the poor and running the nation into a deep holeand creating the largest deficit in American history, all while hiscronies in oil and industry and military supply and Big Energy gainimmense and staggering wealth and pay less and less tax on it. This iswhat he was hired to do. This is why he is in office. Hell, the day afterKatrina, Bush flew right by Louisiana and headed straight to San Diego toparty with his Greatest Generation cronies. Reassure the masters, firstand foremost, eh Shrub? Understood. Is this not what we all expected? Can you reasonably say you thought itwould be different? Just look. All major social services are being gutted.The Federal Emergency Management Agency is a joke, second in line only tothe ungodly useless Homeland Security Department, which has become aboutas reassuring and trustworthy and humane an organization as a prison inGuantanamo. The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for$105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans just lastyear. The White House hacked that down to about $40 million, even as itpassed the most bloated and nauseatingly pork-filled $12.3 billion energybill in recent history, one that guaranteed we'd be sucking at the tit offoreign oil and kneeling before Bush's pals in Big Energy for decades tocome, even as more and more teenagers die in Iraq for Bush's inept andfailed war. Yay politics. Why didn't National Guardsmen from Louisiana and Mississippi march intoNew Orleans immediately after Katrina exited to take charge and keep thepeace? Why, because most of them are serving in that same violent andbrutally costly war in Iraq, silly. Fully 30 percent of the guard is stuckover there, along with 50 percent of their equipment. Yay Vietnam 2.0. Why did FEMA chief Michael Brown wait hours after Katrina struck totimidly plead with his parent company, Homeland Security, for some backup,not to actually get their hands dirty but rather to help "convey apositive image" about the government's response to the victims? Why,because he's an incompetent lackey Bush appointee who was fired from hisformer job as head of something called the International Arabian HorseAssociation. Yay pathetic nepotism. Just look. Senate majority leader Sen. Bill Frist, icon of hollowself-righteousness and the energy magnate's friend, has already leveragedthe Katrina nightmare to argue for more drilling in Alaska, much in theway BushCo whored Sept. 11 to cram the Patriot Act down the nation'sthroat and make fear and xenophobia a national pastime. And let's notforget trusty profit-sucking sidekick Halliburton, which has alreadyscored a sweet deal to help repair Katrina damage, thanks to the fact thatthe former director of FEMA is now a Halliburton lobbyist. Ah, war anddeath and tragedy. They are just so goddamn profitable, right, Dubya? And then, the kicker. Then you read that Bush has actually ordered anofficial probe into the botched Katrina relief efforts, a formal federalinvestigation into what went wrong, which is a bit like a shark orderingan investigation into what happened to all the fish. Unless this probestarts and ends in the White House, unless it hangs Bush himself up by hismonkey ears and dangles him over a river of toxic Louisiana sewage, it'smerely useless and insulting and more than a little sad. Let's say it outright. The truest measure of any president, of any leader,is how well he takes care of his own people. And Bush, well, Bush has donea simply spectacular job of taking care of exactly his own people -- thewealthy, the corporate, the extreme religious right, his core base ofsupporters -- while happily and fiercely ignoring, restricting,condemning, destroying the rest. Are you educated or progressive orliberal or alternative-minded or sexually open or homosexual or anti-war?This means you. Are you dirt poor and belong to a minority and don't drivean SUV and contribute six figures per annum to the RNC and maybe live in aflooded swamp in the Louisiana bayou? This means you, squared. Sucker. Here, then, is the new American motto, as reimagined by BushCo: Give usyour tired, your poor, your huddled masses, and we'll let them die in afilthy and decrepit storm-ravaged American football stadium while ourpresident languishes on vacation and ponders his oil futures and fondlyremembers his good ol' days of getting drunk at Mardi Gras before goingAWOL from the military. God bless America.