Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

[uberreiniger]

Enjoyable and largely correct article by Ben Stein:

http://www.americanprowler.com/util/print.asp?art_id=8693

Do I think George Bush is blameless? Absolutely not. He had an opprotunity to swoop in there, be the hero, and possibly redeem himself a little bit in a lot of peoples' eyes? Did he? No. As we all know, he showed up two days late and just sort of stood there mumbling something about it being "unacceptable." However, this op-ed piece makes a valid point.

This is a situation which has made people feel powerless. Having a Bad Guy to blame for it all makes people feel less powerless. But the ugly truth, chock full of ugly implications for this nation, is that every single city, state, and government official with the ability to fail in this situation, did fail. From the mayor of New Orleans with his failure to coordinate bus evacuations right on up to the Oval Office with their boggarting hurricane-proofing money for the Iraq war. You can set up one man as a straw target all you want to to take the blame for it, but it changes nothing. What we have here is a catastrophic failure of an integrated system of give-a-damns on a massive scale.

Comments

[rolodexpropaga.livejournal.com]

While I infinitely dislike President Bush, I must completely agree with you. It is not just his fault or even mostly his fault.

[rolodexpropaga.livejournal.com]

That said, this really bothers me:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05bush.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1125900698-UiEY64NotQQvytMEA4XaFw

[donkeyjon.livejournal.com]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4834204

Thought you might like to see this. Essentially, it's an NPR piece by a guy who helped with relief efforts in the Congo. He is pointing out that the response to the NO hurricane is likely as fast as it is possible to respond to a disaster of this magnitude. He is also pointing out that the people bitching about the time it took are unrealistic in their outlook if they think an entire nation can mobilize in less than 72 hours.

[blkhmster.livejournal.com]

well honey babe, you know how i feel about bush :P ... but i have to agree to an extent..i just find it interesting that whenever something happens in florida we're down there in two shakes of a lambs tail...not so in this situation..granted it turned into a virtual lake wobegone rather quickly..would like to see how much of the money raised by red cross actually gets used for the victims, as it's my understand that unless you specify that you want all of your donation to go to the victims, they only give 20% and take the rest for overhead...we donated through another group American Harvest: America's Food Bank Network or something like that. Dad said he read yesterday that Hilary Clinton (yes, i know, not one of your fav's) said something to the effect of if we're not able to respond to a crisis like this, how are we going to be able to respond to another terrorist attack. i have to say, that was food for thought. ok, i'm done rambling. trying to keep my mind busy, as you know tomorrow's the "big day" :D

[adonijah74.livejournal.com]

The problem is, there were sufficient warnings that were issued by both the Mayor of New Orleans, and the President of the United States where they in absolute CLARITY said: "Get OUT!"

There were literally hundreds of thousands of residents who simply said...Nah, I'm going to sit this one out. And we see the consequences of that decision.

This is the single largest natural disaster in our history people. We're not talking about a creek or a river overflowing it's banks and flooding a few houses and businesses. We're talking about WHOLE cities being flat-out destroyed. And not just New Orleans, but the coast of Mississippi, and places in Alabama.

It's funny to me how intellectually desolate crackheads like Kanye West want to blame George W. Bush for a so-called lack-of-response, but the Mayor of N.O. didn't see it fit to organize a mass exodus of citizens with the HUNDREDS of school buses that were literally left in an enormous parking lot for two days before the storm hit and now sits in 4-5 feet of water. Guess it was more important for him to get himself out of town than to focus on a massive evacuation of the people in his city.

Would I absolve FEMA of any blame? Absolutely not. In fact, if I were President Bush, I would fire the head of FEMA for the traffic jam that was the response to the disaster. There was clearly WAY too much red tape and beauracracy for a focused and expeditious response to take place.

Also, I would blame the New Orleans Police Department. Yes, N.O.'s finest DID organize a mass exodus from their DUTIES when over 200 of them turned in their badges and fled like cowards from the ensuing chaos of looting, raping, and murder from N.O.'s thugs, who apparently chose to stay behind and take advantage of the disaster victims. Want a real heartbreaker? How about the 7-year old girl who was raped and murdered by one of these animals? Nice, eh?

Fortunately, a group of men came upon the scene and beat the man responsible to death. Thank God, someone did the right thing and just killed one of these bastards. No arrest, no miranda rights, just swift justice.

Add to that, the fact that these thugs were actually FIRING at Medical Evacuation crews and you can see where some police presence could have really been helpful. Maybe if the NOPD would have had the guts to stick around for the aftermath of Katrina, we would have heard far fewer heartbreaking stories like that of the little girl.

This is a massive tragedy. Much larger than I think even some of the experts might have imagined (due to the number of people evacuating before Katrina hit).

President Bush is heading up an investigation into both the preparedness of emergency management services leading up to Katrina as well as the results of the response in its wake. Hopefully, some heads will roll at both the state as well as the federal level wherever there is evidence of either negligence or a lack of urgency.

In the meantime, we should all contribute either monetarily or otherwise to the national effort to clean up this mess. People need to roll up their sleeves and get dirty, not just stand around an bitch about a make-believe conspiracy of racism. That is the exact opposite of help.

Well...

[adonijah74.livejournal.com]

Sorry to double-post, but all one needs to do is look at the State of Louisiana's very own Emergency Operations Plan. In particular Section D and Part III of Section D. Check out #8 of Section III. Keep reading for even more VERY well written plans to deal with such an emergency as Katrina.

It is clear to me now, that this mass of humanity debacle that happened in the aftermath of Katrina, lies squarely on the shoulders of the Mayor and State government of Louisiana for NOT implementing THIS very plan of operation.

http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/EOPSupplement1a.pdf

Read and weep, because you won't hear this side of the story on CNN, MSNBC, The NY Times or the L.A. Times. They're going to be too busy politicizing this into a Bush-bashing opportunity.

[act-3.livejournal.com]

Once again we're going to seriously disagree, but here're my two cents.

For what it's worth, I think this is the excuse the media has been waiting for to go on a witch hunt for President Bush, and quite frankly, I don't actually care. I hope it's a witch hunt on par with when Clinton was outed for screwing around with Lewinsky, the difference being the astounding loss of life in this instance.

This is George W. Bush's equivalent of when the FBI was finally able to nail Capone for tax evasion. And when Jon Stewart, who ordinarily retains at least some small measure of unbiasedness and is in actuality probably one of the finest political commentators in our country...when he goes on national television and tells the right-wingers "No. Just shut up." and virtually seethes with anger on air, I'm going to listen. I've never seen him that angry in my life. He's smiling, but there's a point after he shows a blurb of Bush that's so plainly awful that he just shakes his head and goes "...more after this." and cuts to commercial.