National Guard Equipment: Not Available For the Nation:
Oh, man, now this is fuckin' high-larious. The National Guard equipment needed to help out with the recovery of Greensburg, Kansas - you know, that sinful town of 1500 on the decadent plains of America that God so despised he saw fit to wipe it out completely with his great and mighty smite-twister - is mostly unavailable because, well, fuck, George W. Bush needed it in Iraq. Wonder if when he visits Greensburg today he'll bring that up as he picks up a couple of bits of rubble, hugs a farmer or two, and gets back in his helicopter?

Even awesomer is that this reality comes less than a month after Florida Senator Bill Nelson said that the Iraq war has ravaged the stand-by dual use equipment the National Guard needs for things, like, you know, hurricanes, fires, and, well, shit, big goddamn F5 tornadoes. Oh, and domestic terrorist attacks. Remember those? Florida's only got about 50% of its National Guard equipment, as does Texas, Louisiana, and California. Oooh, is that glass half empty or half full? "The Florida Guard was down 500 Humvees, 600 trucks, short 4,000 pairs of night vision goggle and needed 30 more wreckers," said a spokesman for the Florida Guard.

Oh, and back in January, the GAO had this to say in a report on National Guard readiness: "[S]ome Guard units, particularly in the Army National Guard, may be less ready for domestic missions than they were 2 or 3 years ago because...large quantities of equipment have been sent overseas to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, decreasing the supply of equipment available to nondeployed units." That would have been pre-Katrina, in case you're not good at math.

In his brief words on the Greensburg apocalypse, President Bush said, "There's a certain spirit in the Midwest of our country, a pioneer spirit that still exists, and I'm confident this community will be rebuilt. To the extent that we can help, we will." Or "You're on your own, shitkickers." At what point does this become an issue of Homeland Security? Bush added, "The most important thing now, though, is for our citizens to ask for the good Lord to comfort those who hurt." The Lord, though, wonders why he has to do the shit that people should have been doing all along.