Once again this administration is reflecting any blame and their responsibility in the aftermath of Katrina. Bush had this to say about the slow federal reaction:
"I am satisfied with the response," he said of the government's emergency operations. "I'm not satisfied with all the results."
GOI: Huh? What the F*ck does THAT mean???
The Right Wing apologists are spinning faster then the spin cycle on your washing machine:
Bush partisans went on the offensive. Grover Norquist, the conservative activist with close ties to Karl Rove, blamed the chaos on "looting in a Democratic city run by a Democratic mayor and a Democratic governor."
GOI: So, Democrats are looters by nature? Is that implication here?? The Democratic mayor decided to let anarchy reign I guess. Even though he was cut off from his police forces and stranded in a city hall which had basically turned into an island. Hmm, yeah that makes A LOT of sense.
Still, nobody accused Bush of an overly rapid response. It took two days for Bush to fly over the disaster zone in Air Force One, and four days for him to touch down.
GOI: No matter how you try to spin this mess it is still Bush's country and therefore Bush's baby. He seems to like to take credit when credit is do but point fingers whenever it is obvious that he and his administration have made mistakes.
---End of Transmission---
14 comments:
republican bloggers are trying to spin this as us being preoccupied with finger pointing and 'politics' and not actually helping people. Be wary of this, as they try to bury accountability.
I ran into one of these guys posting on my own blog about this. This self-proclaimed Libertarian is basically putting 90% of the blame at Nagin's feet and accusing him of trying pass the buck on his guilt to the President.
My point was that Nagin might not be blameless, but there were failures at every level of government in this fiasco. Most critically the DHS and FEMO really showed that they have been doing next to nothing (other than coming up with neat color charts) in the four years since 9/11.
Btw, what is a Libertarian? Is that a Republican that smokes pot?
jessica: thanks for the heads up. I've already been hit up by some con-jobber saying every administration before this one is responsible but not the bushies.
puke.
paolo: Libertarian confuse me too. How can you blame Nagin with 90% of the blame when he was hog tied by lack of electricity and massive flooding around his civic center and surrounding city!
I've found that 85% of Libertarians are Republicans who want the actions of the Republican party off their conscience - they can claim any of the good the party does and wash their hands of the bad by saying "hey, I'm not a Republican!". The rest are real Libertarians - obsessed with strangling government down to next to nothing. I'm not a Libertarian and pretty much abhor the philosophy, but I don't think anyone who blames Nagin for this tragedy can claim to be a true Libertarian. A true Libertarian believes one of the few fundamental jobs of the government should be to protect its citizenry, something the feds clearly failed to do here.
I'm shocked, but I shouldn't be, by the spin cycle starting up again, and I'm starting to see it take hold in the media just like it always does. I fear this will have no long-term effects in the balance of power.
Oh, and I enjoy the blog - I'll be linking to it from mine (sorry for the multiple posts. Why is there no edit function on blogger?).
I think that blame will need to be assessed by a commission. A top flight legit congressional commission can spend millions, create a timeline and analyse how decisions were and were not made.
HOWEVER, a quick, preliminary assessment needs to be made since we are still early on in hurricane season AND we do need to be able to respond to terrorists' assaults which could happen at any moment.
We should congratulate CNN and other TV networks, The New York Times and other newspapers, James of GOI and other bloggers for their focus on this issue. IT WILL NOT BE SWEPT UNDER THE RUG.
crimnos: Thanks for visiting. I am glad that you find my blog stimulating. Also, that you for the analysis on Libertarians. I have never quite been able to understand what they believe so your comment was very imformative.
tom: thank-you for your kind words and encouragement. I do my best and I refuse to let this story be swept under the rug as you say. I'm on it like flies on shit.
Commission. I can imagine that the commission will probably be composed of wimps or Bush cronies, who will magically absolve him and his buds of any accountability for what happened
Jessica,
Commissions of the past decade or more have been highly responsible. It is true that Bush tried to pack commissions, as he does other groups. [He tried to get Kissenger to lead the 9/11 commission, but surviving relatives of that tragedy wouldn't allow it.]
Only a well-financed investigative effort of some sort can get to the bottom of the Katrina-aid snafu. All the finger pointing going on now is superficial guesswork and speculation.
As much as it's a good idea to do some sort of investigation as to what happened with the FEMA response to Katrina, they should probably first convene a commission to determine why the results of the 911 commission were largely ignored by the administration.
Otherwise, we'll hear a lot of heart-wrenching testimony and stories of incompetence, and then Bush will give another round of medals to Brownie and Chertoff, and we'll end up with a serious of recommendations that again, the Administration will not take seriously.
I'm not quite sure what the alternative is, though. Mass demonstrations in the street? Someone needs to go to prison over this, I'm we're already seeing the signs of the eventual whitewash.
The point of a commission is for US to know what happened. Sure, Bush is likely to want to ignore it, and to have congress appropriate megabillions so that it can all be forgotten.
There will be a lot of interest in some red states [and everywhere, for that matter] in the report. The press is no longer the lapdog it's been. And one thing's for sure ... James won't let us forget.
ZU, yeah I get that, and I agree that it's something that needs to happen if that's our only recourse.
I am just still feeling very stung by the fact that the 911 Commission resulted in very little (if any) change, after we were all learned up what happened leading up to and on that. I mean, jeez louise, the f*cker even got re-elected. So much for the power of educating the public.
I really hope that, if a Katrina commission is convened, the American public and its representatives will not miss the opportunity to hold the right people accountable for what caused tens of thousands of people to suffer unnecessarily. Based on recent experience I am, as you can probably tell, not optimistic.
OMG I see the whole picture here.
FRODO has failed....
BUSH has the ring!!!!
Post a Comment