"Contingency?" What's a "contingency?"

As much as I tried (and, yes, seriously, I did give it my best shot), I can't resist commenting on this stupidity. And it's not like I'm picking on Jason or anything -- it's just that there's so much right-wing stupidity out there but it's kind of convenient to not have to go looking for it when you know you can find all of it in one place. One-stop shopping, as it were.

Apparently, the new dumbfuck wanker talking point is that there's no way President Top Gun CrotchBulge McFlightSuit should have anticipated the "breach" of the New Orleans levees by Hurricane Katrina since it's possible no one actually used the word "breach" in his presence.

Apparently, all of the President's advisors and consultants and emergency preparedness teams completely forgot that, when dealing with the mentally retarded, you have to sit them down, and get their attention, and speak slowly and enunciate to make sure they're following you so that they might, perhaps, God help us all, consider what you're saying and perhaps consider unexplored eventualities.

See, it wasn't enough that there were numerous warnings about the levees being "topped." It wasn't enough that countless articles pointed out that that "the current levee system around the city was designed to withstand the equivalent of a Category 3 storm," and everyone knew that Katrina was a monster of a Cat 4/5 heading for the coast.

It wasn't enough that, months before, people like Chris Mooney had already written that:

In the event of a slow-moving Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane (with winds up to or exceeding 155 miles per hour), it's possible that only those crow's nests would remain above the water level. Such a storm, plowing over the lake, could generate a 20-foot surge that would easily overwhelm the levees of New Orleans, which only protect against a hybrid Category 2 or Category 3 storm (with winds up to about 110 miles per hour and a storm surge up to 12 feet).

No, apparently, countless articles and news pieces and warnings about the levees "failing," or "being topped," or being "overwhelmed" or possibly "unable to withstand" a Cat 4/5 hurricane don't count since, well, the word "breach" allegedly didn't come up and that's the magic word and unless you say the magic word, it doesn't count, does it?

This week's Associated Press reporting on the leaked Katrina briefing tapes contains a seemingly minor but actually quite significant factual error and subsequent hit job on President Bush. The reporting buried among sturdier assertions the claim that Mr. Bush was warned about possible breaches of the levees on Aug. 28-29, right before and during Hurricane Katrina's onslaught on the Gulf Coast. In reality, he was warned about many potential problems on these tapes -- but levee breaches weren't among them. The AP reported this as though it were fact, and then uncritically quoted Democratic partisans who were only too happy to parrot it.

So ... Bush was aware of "many potential problems" but the concept of levees that had been designed to handle no more than a Cat 3 storm actually, you know, failing in some way under the onslaught of a monster like Katrina ... well, that would have required, you know, thinking ahead and connecting the dots. And, as we've all seen, the Bush administration doesn't do dots. Dots are for pussies.

AND THE BEST PART: I almost forgot this gem:

Official: Even new Gulf levees could fail

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal coordinator for Gulf Coast recovery efforts said Monday he will focus on ensuring the region's levees are stronger than they were before Hurricane Katrina — but can't offer assurances that they could withstand another storm of that size.

Read that again to make sure you appreciate what it means. All this time, the talking point has been that no one could have appreciated the breach of the New Orleans levees as they existed at the time. And yet administration officials are openly admitting that, even if the levees were rebuilt to be stronger than before, there would be no guarantee they would withstand another Katrina.

So, I ask you, how can one make that admission and, in the same breath, take the position that no one should have at least considered the failures of the original, weaker levees?

But perhaps I'm being unfair since, if you read that article carefully, it never actually, technically uses the word "breach," per se. So I guess we're good here. Sorry. My bad. Carry on.

FLOG THAT BABY: It's not like I need to beat this horse any deader than it is, but there's one more point that I think needs airing. As we all know, in once again passing the buck, President Dumbfuck claimed that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Let's make sure we understand what he's saying here.

Bush is not simply saying that he didn't anticipate that possibility. All of the idiotic defenses springing up to defend Bush are based on the claim that no one actually used the word "breach" in his presence so, therefore, everything's cool and he's off the hook.

But in saying the above, Bush is not simply claiming that he's an ignorant dumbfuck, oh no. He's not simply saying, "Well, no one warned me so I had no way of knowing." No, what he's saying above is that every other person involved in emergency preparedness was equally moronic. He's not simply saying that he's an idiot. Rather, he's accusing every other person that was involved in emergency preparedness for Katrina of being just as much of a dumbfuck as he is.

Now, if I was one of those people, and I had been pondering whether the levees might actually fail and trying to warn people, I'd be pretty fucking pissed. If I was one of those people, I'd be all over the airwaves making it clear that I wasn't as big an idiot as President Pretzel. I would be contacting every media outlet on the planet, explaining that, if Bush wanted to admit to being a complete retard, that was his choice, but he wasn't going to besmirch my good name and reputation.

So all of these defenses of "Well, no one used the word 'breach' in his presence" are missing the bigger point by a country mile. We all know the man's an idiot. We've all accepted that. But when he goes on national TV and accuses everyone else of being just as much of an idiot, then it's time for those folks to step up and correct the record.