The Bush administration has embraced a term that truly sets my teeth on edge: The Blame Game.
Yet again, the administration trivializes that which it wants to draw attention from or diminish, finding new and innovative ways to dodge questions and avoid responsibility.
I have no clear idea yet, for certain, if lapses in administrative judgment can be blamed for everything from siphoning money away from shoring up the levies in order to support the war and Bush’s tax cuts, to slow response to the emergency. But these are questions that must be asked. Clearly, the Bush administration embraces this notion with the same enthusiasm and thirst for truth that it did the 9/11 panel. Instead it endeavors to sprint along the obvious “high road”: The Bush administration will not play “the blame game” when people need to be helped.
You know what? The government is large enough to multitask. There’s no reason it can’t help people AND investigate. Not play “the blame game.” It’s not a game, Mr. Bush. Perhaps much of your life has been thus far. Play with toys such as corporations, governments and armies, run them into the ground, and then wait for others to clean up your mess. But it’s not. A game. It never has been, and that’s something that this administration has yet to comprehend.
One thing guaranteed, though: They’ll try to find a way to blame it on Clinton. But Clinton shouldn’t take it personally. It’s all part of the game.
UPDATED 10:45 AM. Maggie Thompson sent me the following link: http://www.thisisnotover.com/archives/2005/09/heres_what_gets.html This is one of those “I wish I’d said that” entries.
PAD
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What is going on reminds me a bit of “Deny everything”. That is the game that is going on, but it is of course not a fun game. One pushes the blame to the other and at the end everyone more or less says that they all did the best they could.
I am living in Britain and I don`t know the fineries of US politics here. But some of what I have seen is just common sense: Maybe people couldn`t have been evacuated sooner but nobody can tell me that even immediately afterwards there was no one who could have dropped urgent supplies like food, water, baby milk powder and maybe even some medical supplies. And locking up a large number of people in a dark stadium and kind of throw away the key for days without food or water is of course a recipe for disaster.
I have seen pictures that made me sick and very angry.
What was needed is leadership. Someone who stands up immediately and gets things done. Not buerocrats who wait for orders and instructions, who don`t move until it is too late for the most vulnerable.
Bush certainly didn`t show leadership here. But what first of all counts is, what were the people who run the local government doing? The local police, the army? I was annoyed at pictures of people driving around in cars investigating but nobody stopped and took at least some of these desperate people out.
I heard that one policeman even pointed a gun at a woman who wanted to get in his car.
Bush is certainly to blame. But he is not the only one.
The main thing is, get these people out, look after them – and learn lessons from this chaos. Because unfortunately the weather is getting more and more violent and unpredictable. More disasters will come.
Their is plenty of blame to go around. The local government wasn’t prepared, the state government wasn’t prepared, and the federal government didn’t react soon enough when the other two levels of government didn’t respond quickly enough.
Considering that one of the first things out of the mouths of the Mayor of NO and the Govenor of the state was to blame the feds and especially Bush, I would say that the President is reacting defensively. He could have come out and asked the Mayor why he didn’t use the available transportation to start moving people out, or the Gov. why she didn’t request federal assistance sooner.
Peter,
While I have no love of President Bush or his policies, I think you’ve failed to cast a wide-enough net on who’s playing the “blame game.” From what I’ve seen (on both the right and left), nearly everyone is playing some form of it. Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco blame Bush, or FEMA chairman Brown; the congressional Black caucus blames Bush and FEMA; the Red Cross is blaming Blanco for blocking attempts at rescue; right-wing bloggers are blaming Nagin for failure to implement a coherent evacuation plan and for not using buses to evacuate those unable to… And I could go on and on. And at this point in the recovery process, it makes me nauseated to see it, regardless of which political stripe is doing the blaming.
This is all part of human nature, and never more so than now; we want to find someone at fault, and we want to deflect fault away from ourselves. I think that’s why we are so impressed when someone actually stands up and accepts responsibility for their mistakes.
Now, if you ask me who’s to blame? I start with Katrina, work my way through the very many people at various government levels who so ineptly dealt with the disaster and its aftermath, and go back to the people who decided to build a city below sea level in a known hurricane zone and then proceeded to destroy nearly all of the natural barriers to preventing said hurricanes from causing such catastrophic damage. Bush is in there somewhere, but he’s far from the only target.
And now, I have to suppress a shudder after defending the President (even a little).
Here’s the thing I see. Right now, the New Orleans mayor and Louisiana governor should pretty much be totally occupied with doing whatever they can, administratively and personally, to help. Their moment of responsibility will come during the next round of local and state elections, when the voters will be able to decide whether they should be held accountable for lapses in duty.
Bush won’t face any such moment. He’s a lame duck, with no future check on his actions. I was watching CNN the other night, and for a moment, I thought I was watching the Daily Show, when they edit an Administration press conference to string all the soundbites of Blame Game together to emphasize how often they use this tactic.
I totally agree with PAD. If our Federal Government isn’t competent enough to run a relief and rebuilding effort while simultaneously investigating whether there was any negligence on behalf of anyone, then we should just trash the entire government and start over. How is it possible that they can wage a war half a world away, yet not be able to conduct an investigation into this event while the facts are still fresh? Our maybe our government has the administrative equivilent of the inability to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Here’s another irritating thing: It took many governmental officials, GOP and Democratic alike, several days to come off of vacation, not just Bush. Another failure of leadership. However, Renquist’s body was hardly cold before Bush was up there nominating him for the position of Chief Justice. If Bush had acted half as quickly last week, there’s a good chance that the casualties might only be in the hundreds, rather than in the thousands.
And that isn’t a knock on Roberts. He’s got a lot of precedent behind him to both be a good associate Supreme Justice, as well as Chief Justice someday.
“One thing guaranteed, though: They’ll try to find a way to blame it on Clinton. But Clinton shouldn’t take it personally. It’s all part of the game.”
It’s funny you should say that…because I’ve already seen some anti-Clinton sniping on a few conservative Web sites. One, in particular, said (sic), “The people of New Orleans should be thanking Mr. Bush! If Clinton had gotten his way and had all his health care initiatives passed, they’d be worse off than they are now! And they’d better hope Hillary Clinton doesn’t get elected someday, or they won’t have any health care!”
***sigh***
There’s more than enough blame to go around, but I have no confidence that partisans on either side will do anything BUT blame. Why should they? It’s too easy to blame the other guy and make political hay then solve problems.
I’m gonna repeat this, because I think it’s a useful post for this topic:
http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2005/09/04/katrina-response-timeline/
http://www.thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline
Two sites with timelines for events that happened (or, at least, PROMISED to happen).
I was watching a clip with George and Barbara Bush being interviewed the other day, and George Sr. used the phrase ‘blame game’ just after I had heard from two or three White House functionaries. I couldn’t help thinking just before the interview, when one of the president’s people prepped Bush’s parents with the key talking points, including ‘blame game,’ that just before the interview began, Bush Sr. turned to his wife and said, ‘You see Barbara, I told you we should have put Jeb forward, not Junior!’
And regarding the blame game, here are my predictions for the next few months:
1. Nobody gets fired.
2. Brownie gets a medal or award of some kind, a la George Tennant
3. Cheney’s face cracks right down the middle as he tries to smile, demonstrating his compassionate conservatism to survivors on the ground. When the endoskeleton underneath is revealed, it finally confirms what we already knew, that the vice president is in fact an android.
Okay, maybe not #3.
This past weekend, I watched an old Sesame Street tape with my nieces called “Elmopalooza.” In it, John Stewart spends most of the show trapped in his dressing room as a parade of muppets and celebrity guests tried unsuccessfully to break down the door. Finally, someone turns to Oscar the Grouch, who says, “Sure, I can get it open.” When asked why didn’t do anything sooner, his repply is “You didn’t ask.”
What does have to do with this topic? Well, “you didn’t ask” is now FEMA’s primary excuse for why they didn’t respond sooner rather than later. While I agree that there was a complete breakdown on the city and state level, for FEMA to use this weak excuse for not coming to the aid of New Orleans is just ludicrous. The country was facing the worst natural disaster in recent memory and they’re hung up on protocol.
Bush’s call not to play the “blame game” while “Brownie” and Chertoff are pointing fingers at state and local officials is SOP for this administration. This is the same crew that decries the “politics of personal destruction” while smearing their enemies at the drop of the hat.
Perhaps after nearly five years, we shouldn’t be surprised at this, but don’t we as voters and taxpayers deserve better Oscar the Grouch as president?
This past weekend, I watched an old Sesame Street tape with my nieces called “Elmopalooza.” In it, John Stewart spends most of the show trapped in his dressing room as a parade of muppets and celebrity guests tried unsuccessfully to break down the door. Finally, someone turns to Oscar the Grouch, who says, “Sure, I can get it open.” When asked why didn’t do anything sooner, his repply is “You didn’t ask.”
What does have to do with this topic? Well, “you didn’t ask” is now FEMA’s primary excuse for why they didn’t respond sooner rather than later. While I agree that there was a complete breakdown on the city and state level, for FEMA to use this weak excuse for not coming to the aid of New Orleans is just ludicrous. The country was facing the worst natural disaster in recent memory and they’re hung up on protocol.
Apparently, that’s only the first part of FEMA protocol; if you DO ask, they’ll say “If you want our help, we have to be in charge.”
I don’t know Peter, I am of the line of thinking that problem falls highly in the local and state government. I feel the current U.S. government had a mayor fault for not seeing that the local and state was incompetent.
What got to me was that the New Orleans Mayor when he was asked when did he call for help. He admits he only called people after the hurricane hit. When asked what his plan was, he said it was to put people in the Superdome and Convention Center and wait for help. “I called everybody the day after the storm.”
The possibility of a hurricane hitting New Orleans is not new. This very last semester I took a Meteorology class and when we touch over this same subject (hurricanes) the false sense of security that New Orleans had was a main topic. We talked about how horrible it would be for them to be hit by a hurricane of 3.5 or more. Here is an eerie article it’s a few months old (hence why is creepy)
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/22040b4511b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
But, yes, this is the lesson we’ve learned from all this and that one is one the Bush administration has to eat and fix.
Maq
All, here’s a useful timeline to better review the response of all levels of government. Yes, it’s a right wing blog, but the primary source is the Times-Picayune.
I’ve seen plenty of “blame” to go around: The city for not implementing its own disaster plan, the state for not requesting federal help sooner (and in some cases turning it away), the feds for having too much bureaucracy and paperwork getting in the way of deployment orders.
I found a link yesterday (that I can’t find now unfortunately) where former Secretary Tom Ridge had once advised people keep a minimum three-day supply of food/water because it would take that long for federal help to become really engaged. He was panned for it at the time (this was the “duct tape” incident), but it looks like he was proved right – it took four.
Where do I have the most questions? At the state level. Yes, New Orleans didn’t really have things in place for evacuation, but the state is the first major level of response. Blanco has seemed to delay at several junctures – taking 24 hours to make decisions, worrying about political implications of those decisions, etc.
I still have problems with the federal allocation of resources: firemen in Atlanta being told they were to distribute flyers. What a joke. But Blanco is who I’ve got the most questions for.
Forgot to post the link I wanted, and it looks like Robert beat me to the post while I was typing:
http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2005/09/04/katrina-response-timeline/
I found a link yesterday (that I can’t find now unfortunately) where former Secretary Tom Ridge had once advised people keep a minimum three-day supply of food/water because it would take that long for federal help to become really engaged. He was panned for it at the time (this was the “duct tape” incident), but it looks like he was proved right – it took four.
Funny thing about Ridge. When he was governor of PA, the northeast was hit by the blizzard of 93, then dubbed the “Storm of the Century.” We had massive ice jams across the rivers. Compared to Katrina now, it was nothing, but within a few days after the storm, Ridge was all over the media screaming about how FEMA was dragging its heels in getting help to us.
I guess some things never change.
Yeah, I want to see more on Blanco. She certainly delayed on asking for help from the feds, but it appears at least some of that was because the feds were playing power games (“You don’t get helicopters, National Guard, food and water unless we get put in charge.”); I want to know what else she did that could have been done better.
“Yeah, I want to see more on Blanco. She certainly delayed on asking for help from the feds, but it appears at least some of that was because the feds were playing power games (“You don’t get helicopters, National Guard, food and water unless we get put in charge.”); I want to know what else she did that could have been done better.”
If this turns out to be true, it sure doesn’t mesh with what some Repubs are now saying, that the process is a bottom-top process. If primary responsibility rests, as Bush and his supporters feel it should, with local and state representatives, shouldn’t that mean that when they ask for help, the Fed. just provides what supplies are asked for? And the governor and mayor get to be in charge, or at least in the chain of command? If the Fed response was “sure, we can help, but we help OUR way, or you get nothing,” I think a majority of people would have an issue with that. While people were suffering and dieing, government managers were having a pìššìņg match.
Sorry, I wanted to add a fourth prediction to my earlier post: over the next few weeks, various governmental agencies will do their level best to keep the press out of New Orleans. Their justification will be the potential health hazards of the area, but in fact they’re actually doing it to keep us from seeing all the dead bodies that will be exposed by the receding waters. What they won’t be able to do is keep out people with their own video cameras who manage to get slip the gauntlet.
If you change the word “blame” to “responsibility” what happens? Who is responsible for what happened? In this case, the responsibility falls on FEMA. Handling crises like this is why FEMA exists, and they dragged their feet. Instead of preparing for the worst, they were caught flat-footed. Memos have already surfaced showing that Michael Brown waited 5 hours after Katrina hit before acting, then suggested sending in 1,000 agency workers — after 48 hours of training them. (Check http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/documents-show-how-disaster-agency-delayed/2005/09/08/1125772641508.html?oneclick=true for the article.) Isn’t it FEMA’s responsibility to act quickly, not wait 5 hours after a disaster hits? Shouldn’t the personnel be trained and ready to act, not need 2 days to get ready? After 9/11, we didn’t spend 48 hours training pilots to patrol the air.
But I don’t think anything will happen to Michael Brown. Karl Rove outed a covert government agent during the war on terrorism, and Bush went from firing anyone who leaked her identity to firing anyone convicted of a crime. U.S. soldiers tortued and humiliated Iraqi prisoners (heck, we have photos of this) and no leaders were held responsible. George Tenet may be facing legal charged for his falsifying intelligence about Iraq, and Bush gave him a medal. So with Bush providing the best job security imaginable to his friends, I doubt a little think like Michael Brown failing to do his job will be enough for Bush to have him take responsibility for that failure.
Here’s what a friend of mine and two other college students did to help:
http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-643298.html
I thought everyone might find it an interesting portrait of the state of affairs down there.
If this turns out to be true, it sure doesn’t mesh with what some Repubs are now saying, that the process is a bottom-top process. If primary responsibility rests, as Bush and his supporters feel it should, with local and state representatives, shouldn’t that mean that when they ask for help, the Fed. just provides what supplies are asked for? And the governor and mayor get to be in charge, or at least in the chain of command? If the Fed response was “sure, we can help, but we help OUR way, or you get nothing,” I think a majority of people would have an issue with that. While people were suffering and dieing, government managers were having a pìššìņg match.
This is what the LA Governors’ office says (which may be spin); there was a quote from the NY Times stating
But the NY TIMES quotes an anonymous source says this was more of a “power sharing agreement.” Which, if true, just means they wanted to grab power…..
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart had two comments that I found particularly relevant. The first was that to the Bush Administration, calling it the “blame game” is their way of dismissing what anyone else would call accountability, and the second was that usually, those who “dont play the blame game” are usually to blame.
If you missed last night’s Daily show, you really should check out the replay. Stewart’s delivery when saying “to blame” cannot be in any sense re-created in text.
Well. Now this is interesting. FEMA hired a private company, IEM Inc., to assess the evacuation plan for New Orleans. They were also suppose to shore it up by designing an evacuation plan for getting the old, sick, and poor out. But the funding for that got cut and it never got done.
Hm.
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/09/03/Worldandnation/One_question_builds__.shtml
“It’s not a game” -PAD
Peter, would you please pass that on to your liberal friends who want to take advanages of tragedies, like this to further their politcal power? I know democrats are exempt from even the hint of playing political games, and everyone should hate Bush as much as you do, but it seems to me that you may missing something.
One more thing, I’m a little confused by your logic: You say Bush is playing “game” because the administration has stated it doesn’t want to play the “Blame game”. Their desire to “Not Play” would mean they are ar NOT playing a game, but are taking it seriously. I would take their statement as to mean that they are suggesting some people may be treating this situation like a “game”. If I say “I don’t want to play monopoly”, would you then accuse me of “playing monopoly”? I think the president should have gone in sooner, but the govenor of Louisianna needed to sign off, and she had to think things over, so he couldn’t. Bush’s mistake was letting her think too long. I know liberals think the federal government should be all powerful, but until you guys burn the constitution there will have to be a system to be followed. The funny thing is liberals love bureaucracy, which is what hindered things in NO and after we have all these hearing and committees we will end up with an even larger bureaucracy in place. Oh, Peter why don’t you look up how all the levies are managed in NO, what politcal persons are responsible for each levy, and the steps needed to go through to do anything to a levy? Or don’t look it up as it might make it a little harder to hate Bush so much (and since he is the devil lets not give him any benefit of the doubt).
“Sorry, I wanted to add a fourth prediction to my earlier post: over the next few weeks, various governmental agencies will do their level best to keep the press out of New Orleans.”
Already happening. Photojournalists have been turned away at several points.
Once again, I don’t buy this “we had to wait until the governor said pretty please before FEMA could help” argument. The city was literally drowning, and if FEMA immediately started airlifting supplies into New Orleans without all the paperwork being signed, well I’m sure everyone would have been willing to overlook all the bureaucratic niceties just this once.
It’s kinda like a “do as I say, not as I do” thing with this bunch, isn’t it? You can almost be assured that whenever the Mayberry Machiavellis accuse their supposed enemies of doing something, they’ve already done that very thing (or are still in the process of doing so).
I can’t get this quote from Frank Herbert out of my head:
“The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices.”
“Acceptable choices?”
“They can usually be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually he acts in ways which create serious problems.”
Anybody seen a good administrator lately? All I seem to be findly lately is bureaucrats.
I “love” how the focus is shifting from why people were left to wallow in their own filth for 3 days to blaming local government for not getting those people out before the storm.
Yes governments on all levels failed before the storm, some of those failures going back decades. However none of those failures excuses what happened in the days after Katrina hit. The most powerful nation ever should not treat its own citizens the way we did last week. WTF is wrong with us that we care more about pointing out what went wrong before hand, when deaths and what not not weretheorectical, to gain political points then about how FEMA failed so miserably last week when there were actual people in harms way?
I’m not saying that local goivernments should get away blameless for poor planning. I am saying that, once the nature of what was going on became clear, the lack of a prompt rescue response was appalling. Given the right (or wrong) circumstances, that could have just as easily have been one of our mothers we saw dead in that wheelchair or one of our children that we saw dehydrated and upset.
>Apparently, that’s only the first part of FEMA protocol; if you DO ask, they’ll say “If you want our help, we have to be in charge.”
Makes sense. You want ONE person/organization in charge, otherwise trying to get coherent/effective action out of the various groups involved becomes a nightmare.
“While people were suffering and dieing, government managers were having a pìššìņg match.”
Were that it was just an American thing. Back in the winter of ’98, when the ice storm hit and we had communities without power or water for a week or more, we had the military (Federal level) base in one area wanting to help out, only to be told to “butt out” by the anti-Federalist Québec provincial government who didn’t want to be upstaged by the rest of Canada. Idiots.
>(From the link in PAD’s original comment) “I want to hear that he was panicked. Because I was panicked. Everyone I know was panicked.”
Uh, I don’t. Think about it. The leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, given to panic attacks? Somehow that would not be a terribly conforting thought.
Lastly, the Japanese have a very wise saying: “Fix the problem, not the blame.” Deciding who’s to blame is one thing. Having a workable, effective plan in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again is another, and rather more important, matter altogether.
I have a question: the republican party is obviously very good at creating talking points and creating and taking control of the discourse. Why are the democrats unable to match that? It seems the minute Karl Rove thought of the “Blame Game” quote, everybody in the administration and everybody still defending them was saying nothing else. Why are their oponents unable to create Quotes like that too, for example, as somebody suggested, exchange the blame for responsibility. “We’re not playing the Blame Game, We’re playing the Responsibility Game”. Take charge and don’t let the opponent define the terms.
I’ll admit that my quote probably isn’t the best possible, but I’m not paid for that kind of stuff. Don’t the Democrats have people who are paid a lot of money for exactly that?
http://www.bobharris.com/content/view/637/1/
Now this interesting, apparently, Bush’s pre-storm declaration of emergency only applied to the inland parishes.
Gee, don’t hurricanes usually attack the coast first?
If this turns out to be true, it sure doesn’t mesh with what some Repubs are now saying, that the process is a bottom-top process. If primary responsibility rests, as Bush and his supporters feel it should, with local and state representatives, shouldn’t that mean that when they ask for help, the Fed. just provides what supplies are asked for? And the governor and mayor get to be in charge, or at least in the chain of command? If the Fed response was “sure, we can help, but we help OUR way, or you get nothing,” I think a majority of people would have an issue with that. While people were suffering and dieing, government managers were having a pìššìņg match.
The governor has a lot of responsibility in these situations. Bush can declare a disaster situation, but other troops or national guard can’t be sent in unless the state governor requests it. What really ticks me off is that for all the claims on all sides that bureacracy won’t hinder aid – that’s exactly what happened. Some reports indicate the Bush kept asking for Blanco to officially request federalizing the issue, but Blanco was concerned about the political ramifications. I think your last comment spells it out nicely.
Well, Benjamin, you just hit on one of the strong points of this administration: They are very good at finding the right sound bite and running with it.
It’s kind of sad that the voters can be influence by repeating certain slogons, but I guess it works.
It seems to me that this administration has, from day one, approached governing as a marketing project rather than a management one. The problem is, it’s become clear that the only thing they have to sell are empty slogons.
“Lastly, the Japanese have a very wise saying: “Fix the problem, not the blame.” Deciding who’s to blame is one thing. Having a workable, effective plan in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again is another, and rather more important, matter altogether.”
I agree with this. In this case, I think the problem IS the administration. If the only thing plopping in front of the administration were just a slow response to a national disaster, I’d feel less strongly about that. But this is just the latest failure in a long line of failures directly related to this particular kind of national event. Going back to the creation of Homeland Security, to the changes to FEMA and the budget raiding that lessened our response time, there’s been one series of actions after another that directly lead to the Federal paralyzation that occured for 3, 4 days after the worst disaster to hit occurred. And what’s worse, is not only did we have years and years to prepare, we also had days of advance warning that this might occur.
The governor has a lot of responsibility in these situations. Bush can declare a disaster situation, but other troops or national guard can’t be sent in unless the state governor requests it. What really ticks me off is that for all the claims on all sides that bureacracy won’t hinder aid – that’s exactly what happened. Some reports indicate the Bush kept asking for Blanco to officially request federalizing the issue, but Blanco was concerned about the political ramifications. I think your last comment spells it out nicely.
No.
This is dead wrong.
According to the timelines, Blanco asked for federal help BEFORE the hurricane hit. She was offered help from other governors with more National Guard on that same day, but paperwork kept them from entering Louisiana until the next week. She asked for federal resources, but FEMA wanted to be in charge. If it’s the local government’s responsibility, then GIVE THEM THE RESOURCES.
“I have a question: the republican party is obviously very good at creating talking points and creating and taking control of the discourse. Why are the democrats unable to match that?”
Because most Dems still have a conscience?
–R.J.
Apparently, that’s only the first part of FEMA protocol; if you DO ask, they’ll say “If you want our help, we have to be in charge.”
Makes sense. You want ONE person/organization in charge, otherwise trying to get coherent/effective action out of the various groups involved becomes a nightmare.
Then don’t you DARE say that it’s the local government’s responsibility as first responders. Then you HAVE to say that it’s the federal government’s job to step in and take over and to hëll with local control and responsibility. But that’s NOT what the Bush administration is saying.
Moreover, bringing up this kind of jurisdictional dispute at the 11th hour is DUMB. Either the responsibility is local–so give the resources to the local authorities….or the responsibility is national…so get your ášš in there and get going.
Moreover, bringing up this kind of jurisdictional dispute at the 11th hour is DUMB. Either the responsibility is local–so give the resources to the local authorities….or the responsibility is national…so get your ášš in there and get going.
Haven’t you figured it out yet, Roger? Bush is responsible for nothing. It’s always someone else’s fault. PAD is right, they’ll be pinning it on Clinton sooner or later.
Considering that one of the first things out of the mouths of the Mayor of NO and the Govenor of the state was to blame the feds and especially Bush, I would say that the President is reacting defensively
Considering that Bush has made it the Dept of Homeland Security’s job, and thus FEMA’s job, to deal with all diasters in the US, Bush is sitting naked in the sand, baking to death, and deservingly so.
“Then don’t you DARE say that it’s the local government’s responsibility as first responders. Then you HAVE to say that it’s the federal government’s job to step in and take over and to hëll with local control and responsibility. But that’s NOT what the Bush administration is saying.”
Dude, it’s called “Autonomy”, y’know the thing that people excercise so that no one can force you to do something you don’t want to do even if you’re being stupid. The federal government is “suppose” to be LIMITED in how much power can be ussurped from the states (read constitution), but this is a foreign concept these days since: A) No one reads the constituion and B)People expect the government to wipe their butt for them.
“Would you please pass that on to your liberal friends who want to take advanages of tragedies, like this to further their politcal power?”
Randy,
I would agree with you more on this if it was only us liberals who were questioning what has happened. Unless, of course, you consider Newt Gingrich a liberal.
http://www.drudge.com/news/72930/gingrich-criticizes-bush-homeland-security
Dude, it’s called “Autonomy”, y’know the thing that people excercise so that no one can force you to do something you don’t want to do even if you’re being stupid. The federal government is “suppose” to be LIMITED in how much power can be ussurped from the states (read constitution), but this is a foreign concept these days since: A) No one reads the constituion and B)People expect the government to wipe their butt for them.
The problem was that FEMA TRIED TO OVERIDE THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES AND RUN ROUGHSHOD OVER THAT AUTONOMY. And THEY’RE COMPLAINING THAT THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES FAILED.
Dude, I call that hypocisy and incompetence, all rolled into one.
I just find it hilarious that the right-wingers are claiming that LA’s governor wouldn’t sign over power to the feds when the disaster hit, and that’s why they couldn’t move in.
Can someone please tell me exactly when Jeb in FL signed over the authority in his state to the feds when FEMA moved in *HOURS* after the hurricanes struck FL? Or is it that the governor has a (D) next to her name, and *isn’t* related to the “Let them eat cake” family?
And, to all of those who claim that LA should have had all of this food and emergency supplies stockpiled ahead of time – can you tell me where *the 49th poorest state in the nation* is going to come up with the money to pay for it?
I know – they will just whip out their “Louisiana Express Card” – don’t get caught in a flood without it! Yup, they are just laying on *piles* of cash in that state…
Does anybody truly doubt if the people who were abandoned at the Convention Center were White republicans, they would have been rescued a lot sooner?
If they were white republicans, they wouldn’t have been trapped at the Superdome in the first place. Bush would have had them airlifted from their homes.
Does anyone seriously think that if a Democrat was in office the same fûçkìņg things would have happened?
This is about A)it not being an election year, therefore there was no need to make sure as many people as possible were happy with Bush(as was the case in 2004 in Florida) and B) general bureaucratic nightmarish BS.
Neither of which is a Republican specific problem. Democrats are just as easily caught up in expediency during an election year, the cronyism that lead to a FEMA director with no credentials AND they’re even worse at being overly optimistic about things in general.
As for the article wishing there were stories about Bush losing his šhìŧ over this.
Do you want a President who will panic and lose his šhìŧ over things or one that’s calm and collected.
I’ve no love for Bush, but most of this would have been the same under a Democrat, don’t fool yourselves, Democrats aren’t any more competant or any less corrupt and lazy.
While I’m sure quoting the NYT is going to send a few people here into epileptic seizures, I thought they had an editorial yesterday that expressed things absolutely brilliantly:
This is not a game. It is critical to know what “things went wrong,” as Mr. Bush put it. But we also need to know which officials failed – not to humiliate them, but to replace them with competent people.
It’s obvious, for instance, that Michael Brown has met the expectations of those who warned that he would be a terrible director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This is no time to be engaging in a wholesale change of leadership, but in Mr. Brown’s case there seems to be precious little leadership to lose. He should be replaced with someone who can do the huge job that remains to be done.
They go on to say that things extend way beyond Brown, and various other things.
Yes, they should probably be looking at state and local officials more than they are, but I think they did a good job absolutely demolishing the idea that this is about nothing more than “the blame game.”
TWL
Democrats are just as easily caught up in expediency during an election year, the cronyism that lead to a FEMA director with no credentials AND they’re even worse at being overly optimistic about things in general.
While in general I’d agree with this, I’ll disagree with the second point. The only time in my entire adult life that FEMA did its job worth a dámņ was under James Witt, a Clinton appointee. It was lousy under Reagan, under Bush I, and it’s lousy again now that Bush II is appointing buddies rather than experienced people.
TWL