Quotes of the Morning: What, Me Worry?

“What happened was, I said to the president, Mr. President, we can begin to help these victims of Katrina become whole again. First thing you can do is to replace Michael Brown as the head of FEMA. To which the president said, ‘Why would I do that?’ And I said, ‘Because of what happened last week and the failure of FEMA to be the real link between the federal government and the people in need in our country, the social compact’. To which the president said, ‘What didn't go right last week?’”
-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, September 8, 2005

“President Bush, under fire about whether he acted aggressively to help tens of thousands of desperate people left homeless, destitute, and starving by Hurricane Katrina, promised yesterday that he would lead an investigation into ‘what went wrong’ with the government's response and will dispatch Vice President Dick Cheney to 'assess our recovery efforts’ in the region.
But two hours later, Scott McClellan, Bush's press secretary, told reporters the president would simply ‘lead an effort’ in the escalating catastrophe. McClellan was unclear about whether Bush would look into his own actions and vague about when and how the investigation would start, and rejected questions about whether the president should fire anyone responsible for the problems.”
-Boston Globe, September 7, 2005

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, September 13, 2005

“Now, to tie it all together, let’s look at the picture. He doesn’t think that anything really went wrong, but is willing to investigate himself to find out if he’s to blame, and, should he find out that he did something wrong, he’ll take responsibility for it. This is an odd kind of responsibility though, as it comes with no consequences. I somehow don’t think that Bush will step down from the Presidency if he finds profound failure at the federal level. And since he accepts responsibility, no one under him should, and thus no one needs to be worried about being fired for all of this..”
-Skippy

"I understand there are 10,000 people dead. It's terrible. It's tragic. But in a democracy of 300 million people, over years and years and years, these things happen."
-Jack Burkman, Republican Strategist, on ‘Connected’, MSNBC, September 6, 2005