Let's Play find the Scapegoat
It's little more then a week since Katrina hit the Gulf coast and one thing is clear...all levels of government officials screwed up BIG TIME! I heard today then Bangladesh (no I'm not kidding) was offering aid.
All we hear from Dubya is that it's not time to play the blame game, he wants to save lives. Golly gee ya think! Perhaps filling the post of FEMA as a reward for political patronage wasn't quite such a good idea. Or perhaps systems to help people get connected with people could have been set up and coordinated ahead of time. The Red Cross and FEMA both have systems to register people and they (of course) don't talk to each other. This is not rocket science, it's exactly the type of systems that one would think could be planned.
Fingers are being pointed at the Mayor of New Orleans. Yep they certainly should have had better plans but they clearly don't have the resources. More fingers are being pointed at the Governor of Louisiana, yep she was clearly overwhelmed, not all that surprising it was an overwhelming event. So let's talk about FEMA, it's the reason for their existence! Yes this was an unbelievably (although predicted, many times) event where's the leadership. Why didn't FEMA take charge? Where they waiting for a gold leaf invitation from the Governor? Wasn't the point of reorganizing the government since 9/11 to be able to respond effectively to disasters either man made (terrorism) of natural?
So Bush is all ready to investigate the problems (when the time is appropriate). I can't wait. Heard a great comment on the tube today: "Having Bush investigate problems with Katrina is like having Ken Lay investigate Enron."
There's just no way around it Dubya has screwed it up big time, and the stench of rotting bodies floating in New Orleans is on his hands. Bush is no scapegoat he's supposed to be where the buck stops, it's called responsibility.
1 Comments:
Yes, the Democratic Governor
of LA & the Democratic Mayor of
NO should have done a better job.
Neither is a Rudy Giuliani. Have
any blue states taken any refugees???
When the tragedy in NO had been
going on for many days now and will
probably last for many months in the
future. The total number dead will
probably never be known but
estimates are sure to come forth
in the coming months.
Remember that this city was living
on BORROWED time. It's 12 ft
below sea level and nothing but a
big empty swimming pool before
Katrina arrived. This was a surprise
to no one and has been predicted
for many many years.
Judge the government response by
comparing New York 911 to the
local Katrina devistation in NO.
Within 1 hour there were thousands
of New York police, and fireman
on the streets of New York. FEMA
did not show up for several days.
NO on the other hand had virtually
NO police or fireman working the
disaster, and many of them threw
down their badges and QUITE!
It is very evident that the corrupt
local and state government in
Louisianna was responsible for
immediate local response.............
NOT FEMA. The inept Democratic
Govenor and Democratic City Mayor
never responded to the crisis, along
with most of the State disaster agencies.
It was the City of NO's and State's
total responsibility to have manpower
on the streets of NO's immediately
after the flooding started.
It is against the law for any President
to order troops into a city or across
state lines without a request and
permission from the Governor of
that state.
A few facts are in order:
a.. President Bush declared Louisiana
a disaster area two days before the
hurricane struck the New Orleans area.
b.. President Bush urged New Orleans
Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to order the
mandatory evacuation that was issued
on Sunday, August 28.
c.. First responders to a disaster are
always state and local emergency
agencies. FEMA is there to supplement
the state and local activities.
d.. The hurricane threatened an area as
large as 90,000 square miles covering
three states. Immediate relief could not
possibly have been delivered to all the
places that required attention.
e.. An AP photo showed a large fleet
of New Orleans buses soaking in six
feet of water. The mayor apparently
had the means to evacuate many of
the folks who ended up stranded at
the Superdome and the convention
center.
f.. FEMA began its activities almost
immediately, not expecting the magnitude
of the flooding, the non-response at the
city and state level, and the anarchy that
resulted.
g.. The local and state governments had
rehearsed for a different scenario. Disaster
drills in New Orleans had taken place, but
with a false assumption that the levees would
hold.
Both the law and protocol prohibit the
president from ordering military
***
You have a riveting web log
and undoubtedly must have
atypical & quiescent potential
for your intended readership.
May I suggest that you do
everything in your power to
honor your encyclopedic/omniscient
Designer/Architect as well
as your revering audience.
As soon as we acknowledge
this Supreme Designer/Architect,
Who has erected the beauteous
fabric of the universe, our minds
must necessarily be ravished with
wonder at this infinate goodness,
wisdom and power.
Please remember to never
restrict anyone's opportunities
for ascertaining uninterrupted
existence for their quintessence.
There is a time for everything,
a season for every activity
under heaven. A time to be
born and a time to die. A
time to plant and a time to
harvest. A time to kill and
a time to heal. A time to
tear down and a time to
rebuild. A time to cry and
a time to laugh. A time to
grieve and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones
and a time to gather stones.
A time to embrace and a
time to turn away. A time to
search and a time to lose.
A time to keep and a time to
throw away. A time to tear
and a time to mend. A time
to be quiet and a time to
speak up. A time to love
and a time to hate. A time
for war and a time for peace.
Best wishes for continued ascendancy,
Dr. Howdy
'Thought & Humor'
P.S. The vultures of the venomous left
are attacking on two fronts, first that the
president didn't do what the incompetent
mayor of New Orleans and the pouty
governor of Louisiana should have done,
and didn't, in the early hours after Katrina
loosed the deluge on the city that care and
good judgment forgot. Ray Nagin, the mayor,
ordered a "mandatory" evacuation a day late,
but kept the city's 2,000 school buses parked
and locked in neat rows when there was still
time to take the refugees to higher ground. The
bright-yellow buses sit ruined now in four feet
of dirty water. Then the governor, Kathleen
Blanco, resisted early pleas to declare martial
law, and her dithering opened the way for
looters, rapists and killers to make New
Orleans an unholy hell. Gov. Haley Barbour
did not hesitate in neighboring Mississippi,
and looters, rapists and killers have not turned
the streets of Gulfport and Biloxi into killing fields.
The drumbeat of partisan ingratitude continues
even after the president flooded the city with
National Guardsmen from a dozen states,
paratroopers from Fort Bragg and Marines
from the Atlantic and the Pacific. The flutter
and chatter of the helicopters above the ghostly
abandoned city, some of them from as far away
as Singapore and averaging 240 missions a day,
is eerily reminiscent of the last days of Saigon.
Nevertheless, Sen. Mary Landrieu, who seems
to think she's cute when she's mad, even
threatened on national television to punch out
the president -- a felony, by the way, even as
a threat. Mayor Nagin, who you might think
would be looking for a place to hide, and Gov.
Blanco, nursing a bigtime snit, can't find the
right word of thanks to a nation pouring out
its heart and emptying its pockets. Maybe
the senator should consider punching out
the governor, only a misdemeanor.
The race hustlers waited for three days to
inflame a tense situation, but then set to work
with their usual dedication. The Revs. Al
Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, our self -
appointed twin ambassadors of ill will,
made the scene as soon as they could,
taking up the coded cry that Katrina was
the work of white folks, that a shortage
of white looters and snipers made looting
and sniping look like black crime, that calling
the refugees "refugees" was an act of linguistic
racism. A "civil rights activist" on Arianna
Huffington's celebrity blog even floated the
rumor that the starving folks abandoned in
New Orleans had been forced to eat their
dead -- after only four days. New Orleans
has a reputation for its unusual cuisine,
but this tale was so tall that nobody paid
it much attention. Neither did anyone tell
the tale-bearer to put a dirty sock in it.
Condi Rice went to the scene to say what
everyone can see for himself, that no one but
the race hustlers imagine Americans of any
hue attaching strings to the humanitarian aid
pouring into the broken and bruised cities of
the Gulf. Most of the suffering faces in the
flickering television images are black, true
enough, and most of the helping hands are white.
Black and white churches of all denominations
across a wide swath of the South stretching
from Texas across Arkansas and Louisiana
into Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky,
Alabama and Georgia turned their Sunday
schools into kitchens and dormitories.
In Memphis, Junior Leaguers turned out for
baby-sitting duty at the city's largest, most
fashionable and nearly all white Baptist church,
cradling tiny black infants in compassionate
arms so their mothers could finally sleep.
The owner of a honky-tonk showed up
to ask whether the church would "accept
money from a bar."
A pastor took $1,400, some of it in quarters,
dimes and nickels, with grateful thanks and
a promise to see that it is spent wisely
on the deserving -- most of whom are black.
The first polls, no surprise, show the libels
are not working. A Washington Post-ABC
survey found that the president is not seen
as the villain the nutcake left is trying to make
him out to be. Americans, skeptical as ever,
are believing their own eyes.
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