"A Gulf Opportunity Zone!" Wowie-Zowie! That's the ticket, Georgie!

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

This man has no foot in reality.

Try home ownership on $5.75 and hour, you dickhead.

[Lancer]

1. GOZ

I can hear it now. When it doesn't "work out well for you," as Shrub's Mom says, you can tell people you "got GOZZED."

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

6. I like it!

Took me a moment, but you are so spot on!

hu·bris Audio pronunciation of "hubris" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (hybrs) also hy·bris (h-)
n.

Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance: “There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris” (McGeorge Bundy).

[elehhhhna]

8. T-GOZ sounds more hip hop...jus saying.

[soup]

14. 'follow the yellow brick road

follow the yellow brick road
follow the, follow the, follow the
follow the yellow brick road'

We're off to see the wizard, the W. **wizard of GOZ.

[H2O Man]

2. One of his worst speeches.

This isn't the speech that could help him. It's sad that this clown is the president.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

7. What is even sadder is that most Americans will go: "YAY"

We live in a nation of "morans."

[H2O Man]

9. I respectfully disagree.

This was not a speech that will go over well. He harmed himself.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

10. I hope you are right. Me, I'm betting on PT Barnum.

[bullwinkle428]

3. He probably meant "GOLF opportunity zone" -

Now watch this drive!

[tjdee]

4. But even I, a minority, can own one of those businesses and homes!

Bush told me I could!

He loves black people, all those black people who said he didn't were just so wrong.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. There has always been a gulf between opportunities in that zone.

[H2O Man]

11. It sounded like he

offered $5000 for, among everything else, education needed to get a good job. That amount won't pay for a heck of a lot of education in this part of the country. At a community college, it wouldn't cover a single semester; at the closest private college, you couldn't take two courses.

[charlie]

13. What, are you kidding?

The evacuees are turning their $2000 windfalls into caribbean cruises, replete with the finest designer accoutrements. The best I could manage would be 6 months of groceries or maybe a 1998 Ford POS. Dubya's generosity has uncorked a wave of financial prodigies, buying 4 years of higher education should be a piffle for these folks.

[H2O Man]

15. Years ago

(actually 1988) there was a plan to transform a "low income" neighborhood in Delaware County, NY, into an upper-middle class neighborhood, using HUD money. It was the largest "poor" neighborhood in a three county area. The plan would have left 120 families homeless.

The interests behind it were going to use the HUD funding to give each family $2000 for "relocation" funding. At first, this sounded almost sincere. But, as an organizer of the tennants' group, I pointed out to the media that while most of the families were "working poor," a $2000 "windfall" would leave them ineligible for almost any form of public assistance for a period that far exceeded what $2000 could last.

I had help from cultural anthropologist Janet Fitchen from Ithaca College, by the way; we were able to get the village of Sidney to use the HUD funding to assist the poor folks, as intended, rather than a wealthy developer.

Listening to the clown last night, I was reminded of that.

By the way, thank you for your humorous post. I needed the laugh! The thought of that $5000 education helping people get jobs in today's economy is so pathetic. It also reminds me of the woman asking his father about the price of groceries in '92.

[charlie]

18. One thing I don't see discussed often

in the matter of chronic and growing poverty, is whether the skillset and knowledge required of a salable worker is growing beyond the ken of an average human being. For example, it wasn't terribly long ago that computer programming was considered an arcane art, worth great recompense because not many could do it. Within the past half decade, it's become commodified, it's value descending into ordinary middle class employment and sinking. The same thing is happening to college degrees of all stripes. I wonder if the skills that make a worker valuable aren't becoming so rarified that even the best educated are going to be eventually doomed to marginal economic status.

[Hubert Flottz]

17. We need to remind him of all the $90,000 checks his friends...

in the top income bracket reeled in from his last Tax Cut. I hear that Cheney pocketed a tax refund check for over $80,000, when the checks were cut after the last(third)tax cut. I heard that 170,000 of those big checks were mailed out. That money could have schooled everyone in the city of New Orleans, but it's all trickling down and trickling out. If Bush is serious about helping the folks who lost everything, he'd repeal his tax cuts for the rich. Instead Bush wants to give more big tax cuts to his buddies, who are already making HUGH windfall profits in the oil business.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

12. He is his father's child. nt

[DoYouEverWonder]

16. Did anyone else notice

that everytime he said the word 'rebuild' he would light up in a grin? You could even see the dollars signs in his eyes. That's all the repugs care about is the rebuilding opportunities and the lucrative no-accountability contracts. I just hope the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast doesn't end up like the rebuilding of Iraq and the WTC.