Tuesday, May 08, 2007

You're to blame! No, you are!

After the tornado that ripped through Kansas last week, one could assume that it was a time for healing. A time for support. A time where the last thing on the minds of our elected officials would be to point fingers and level blame at each other.

And yet, this is exactly what Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius and the White House did, with regards to National Guard support for the recovery effort. Sebelius stated that the war in Iraq has stretched the Guard so thin that any recovery would undoubtedly take longer, simply because of the lack of supplies. Meanwhile, the White House decided that the reason for any delay was caused by Sebelius not properly requesting everything that she would have needed to help expedite things. WH Press Sec'y Tony Snow even went so far as to say that Kansas had merely requested FM radios, a far cry from the full list of supplies that the state had asked for.

Of course, even in a heated political climate, it should surprise no one that, a day after the accusations were first fired, both sides had backed down. The White House admitted to the full list of requests from Sebelius, and the governor's spokeswoman stated that the implied message was that there would potentially be problems down the road. Nevermind that Sebelius has long believed that the use of the National Guard in the war has led to a lesser state of disaster preparedness, while the White House has continuously stood by the standard that, yes, there are fewer troops, but there are still plenty to fulfill every need.

So now we can all rest easy, knowing that, should a disaster hit our homes as well, the odds are good that our elected officials will start working to repair the damage, and then quickly de-evolve into grade school children on the playground, fighting over whether to play four-square or kickball. It makes us realize that American politics needs something more, something outside of the norm. We need someone that we can look to, who can keep the petty childishness that's popped up over the last few years and still bring the bad guys to justice.

We need some sort of Kindergarten Cop.

Whoa, there, California. We don't want your current incarnation of Arnie. We don't want the politician, deftly moving through the legislative machine. We want the machine itself. And we won't rest until you return to us mid-1980's Schwarzenegger. True, he's just as likely to kill us as to defend us, but we're willing to take that risk.

After all, it'd keep us from having to deal with 4 years of either McCain or Hillary. And maybe, this time, it will be a tumor.

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