LEAD, FOLLOW AND GET OUT OF THE WAY

To quote from the day's reading of "Our Daily Bread" - "...Leaders must know where they are going. As go the leaders, so go the followers..."

For those of you who gave into your fear of terrorism and believed George Bush would keep you safe, how are you feeling? Did you see how he handled the natural disaster called Hurricane Katrina? His slow response resulted in thousands of people dying. Tell me how does that make you feel safe? The next natural disaster, especially if you're a person of color, could be YOU, and knowing how GeeDubya really feels about people of color, you can't be feeling safe. In fact, you should be downright scared out of your wits, espeically if you thought his proclaiming to be a Christian was going to play a role in keeping you safe.

Of course, Jesus can keep you safer than GeeDubya - but if He came on the Scene right now, I bet Karl Rove would have him shot and killed because it's not time for His return (according to Tim LaHaye, Jim Dobson and Pat "the Assassin" Robertson).

Or that his incompetent former head of FEMA, Michael Brown, had the audacity to climb up on Capitol Hill yesterday and basically cuss out lawmakers who wanted to know what the hell happened, and why didn't he do his job. Well, in order to perform required job duties, it goes without saying that one must have job qualifications, doesn't it. And yet, through his testimony, Brown continues to demonstrate that breathless degree of incompetency. He even got awarded a consultant contract to tell us how he jacked up the job he was charged to do, and get a fat check for his trouble.

As Don King would say "ONLY IN AMERICA". God, what a country!

Oh, I'm sorry; I confused common sense and its application with the Clinton Administration. Common sense has no role in the Bush Administration; and job qualifications is an anathema to those in charge in this neck of the woods. My bad.

Additionally, Brown stated that the slow response to Katrina victims wasn't his fault - that damned Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco should have had their act together. Well, they did, but they were waiting for the government to get off the pot. And if there were conflicts between Nagin and Blanco, Brown represented the friggin' GOVERNMENT and by virtue of that authority, he could supercede and intervene in the turf war going on! In other words, Brown had the authority to knock Nagin and Blanco's heads together and tell them "Pull your crap together so we can get about the business of evacuating people and saving their lives!"

I so hate to play the race/class/status cards here, but play them I must; I can't help but believe that since the media is so drunk to the point of willing conspirators in the dealings of the Bush Administration, that the government's foot-dragging was deliberate. I can't help but believe that some in the Administration were hoping that the poor, African-American, elderly, would just friggin' drown and that it would go unnoticed. What the government was NOT counting on was the very essence of humanity and human response to the suffering of other human beings. That human response transcended race, class and status. It was something that cannot be spun for a good sound bite, or a good photo-op. Katrina tore the sheets off of the cover up and the government was shown in all of it's naked embarrassment. And the subsequent response to Hurricane Rita further highlighted that your race/class/status is going to determine how fast the government responds to your plight - so a quick response to Rita merely exacerbated what happened to victims of Katrina on a higher scale.

Those of you in the DLC; you aspire to be like this bunch? You still want to dance with them, knowing their leadership ability is non-existant, less than ZERO? You still want to play "bi-partisanship" with them, knowing that they will stomp you into the ground each and every chance they get? If so, you deserve to go down on that sinking ship which they command at this very moment. You know who you are, so stop trying to hide behind real Democrats because they are so few in number that you can't hide, even though you are doing your level best to run away from your collaboration with the spawns of Satan.

As go the leaders, so go the followers. Is it any wonder that America has become a laughing stock on a global scale and since the President has nowhere to hide, and no one to blame his own incompetence on, he's taken up the bottle again? Is it a coincidence that Cheney hid out in a hospital while the response to Rita was underway?

As go the Leaders, so goes the followers. But since we see how the Government is leading America, it's time for them to stop leading; for us to quit following their incompetent behinds and get them out of the way so real competency can be placed in leadership positions where they are needed. The cronyism and incompetency of the government leaders will be the death of us all if we don't.