Bashing Bush over the Tsunami

The growing concensus is that George W. Bush doesn't care about the poor, dark-skinned peoples who were devastated by the tsumani. For one thing, he went on vacation. Second, even though we pledged more money than any other country and hundreds of times more than France, we are miserly with our wealth, which reflects the greed that Bush epitomizes. Third, Bush is spending $40 million on his inauguration (most of it from private sources). If he cared, he would chuck it all and get a bag of pork rinds and a six-pack of Coke and give all the money to relief efforts.

So basically, Bush would personally make the lives of the afflicted better by not taking a vacation. I suppose that if I cared, I should cancel my vacation as well. Then again, so should all the people who are home this week with nothing better to do than opine on this topic.

As far as the money goes, we will probably wind up sending around a billion dollars, not counting the private donations that we are already sending.

Finally, if Bush were to cancel the inauguration at this point, the very same people who are criticizing him for holding it would then criticize him for how he is ruining all the small businesses that will wind up without the work they thought they would have. Exposes would run discussing how Bush could have pumped $40 million into the DC economy, which is incidentally, dominated by African-Americans, but he chose not to, primarily so he could make a pittance of a donation. The donation would be little more than a publicity stunt anyway, especially when compared to the amount of money being spent on the war in Iraq.

Overall, this is little more than sour grapes from people for whom this is a giant chess game. No matter what Bush does, he should have done something different. Once senses disappointment that there's no way to blame him for the tsunamis themselves.

The only thing more absurd would be the lament that Pedro Martinez's salary should also go over there. After all, he shouldn't make $53 million and the people over there really need it...