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
• 
Do you want a President who will panic and lose his šhìŧ over things or one that’s calm and collected.
Bush doesn’t get panicked – he gets utterly dumbfounded, as we saw during 9/11.
But panicked, worried, caring, considering? None of those things.
Bush should be just as pìššëd øff as the mayor of NO and governor or LA about how this went down. But Bush just keeps on a’smilin and makes things sound all happy-go-lucky.
I just wanted to respond to one factoid, repeated again upthread (but to be found in every discussion I’ve encountered on the topic, usually in an attempt to dismiss arguments of state or federal responsibility for the disaster). No one “decide[d] to build a city below sea level”. When New Orleans was built, to greatly ease trade from the Mississippi River, it was well above sea level. The sea level, and the level of the ground, have changed over the ensuing centuries.
And Randy, the “autonomy” argument doesn’t wash. Remember that one of the purposes of the Constitution is “to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare…”. That’s why FEMA was established in the first place. And originally, when it was headed by people who actually had some sort of experience in dealing with emergencies, it did its job quite effectively. When potential disasters were seen brewing, they would enter the area beforehand, and make sure that whatever they thought was necessary was already on hand. Now, under the “management” of a former horse inspector, they not only aren’t there beforehand, they aren’t even there afterward until someone gives this so-called “leader” specific directions! Remember when Brown said that he was unaware of anyone in the Superdome? Or of the conditions there? I don’t watch the 24-hour news channels – I caught the news of the Superdome roof coming off, and the stories of some of the evacuees, during a News Update segment on a local channel here in San Diego. So, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was less well-informed about the ongoing emergency in New Orleans than was a citizen half a continent away from the action, who happened to be bored and channel-surfing one afternoon. This doesn’t look good…
You know what’s truly sad is that the only thing consistent about the Bush II Administration is lack of accountability in anything and everything that doesn’t go Bush’s way.
Does anyone seriously think that if a Democrat was in office the same fûçkìņg things would have happened?
Maybe the same thing could have happened. Maybe not. Despite the rhetoric we throw around here, I don’t believe that either Democrats or Republicans are single, monolithic groups in which everyone things and acts the same way. Phrases like “liberals love bureaucracy” or “all republicans only care about is the rich” therefore are meaningless to me.
What I can say with 100% certainty, is that the people this particular president appointed bungled their job. Whether some hypothetical Democrat president would have appointed someone better, I don’t know. I do think, however, that the kind of turf war wrangling that apparently occured last week is symptom of the “you are either with us or against us” mentality that is endemic to this particular administration. Maybe a president, democrat or republican, who valued people skills over cronyism and a willingness to be called by demeaning nicknames, could have gotten better cooperation and planning for emergency response.
All I know for certain is that this president had four years since 9/11 to revamp our national emergency response program and he screwed it up royally.
“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.”
I have, in fact, read the constitution, and parts of it quite recently, and there’s a little clause in there calling for the Federal Government to act to protect the general welfare. Also to act to protect interstate commerce. New Orleans, sitting at the mouth of the Mississippi, serves as a commercial and industrial gateway for nearly the entire country. Anything that fouls that up impacts a lot more than just people that live there. And the entire Gulf Coast is home to over 10% of the this nation’s oil production, refining, and pipeline capacity. Since we’re an industrial society, whether we like it or not, we run on petroleum. It impacts every single facet of every single American life. All our prices are impacted by an oil disruption.
So, when people try to retort that this is just a liberl attempt to expand the Federal power, I laugh. When the Federal Government fails to take action to protect the few things the Constitution actually does give it power to protect, yet at the same time seems to be taking more and more steps to try and restrict things like marriage and freedom of speech and religion, things that the Bill of Rights expressly prevents the Federal government from regulating, I really start to wonder if, as you say, the people not reading the Constitution include those that derive their authority from it.
“Now, under the “management” of a former horse inspector, they not only aren’t there beforehand, they aren’t even there afterward until someone gives this so-called “leader” specific directions!”
What makes this worse is that, in just a few years since FEMA moved under DHS, a good number of the mid-level managers, those with experience in dealing with disasters during the Clinton years, left the agency. You can manage very well with incompetent top level management, if your field managers know what they’re doing. But when you have incompetency at multiple levels, you’re not going to be effective at all.
Peter, thanks for the additional link, which voices one of the points that really bugged me over the last few days. I’m not sure I want to speak for any of the unfortunate people who suffered through this terrible experience, but I wonder how some of them felt if they’d been able to get to a TV and saw their president with that dámņëd ever-present smirk of his, glad-handing Brownie for doing a good job and joking about sitting on the porch with Trent Lott (who will no doubt be at the front of the line when it comes to doling out money to rebuild). Whether or not Bush cared about what was going on, he didn’t APPEAR to care. When hundreds of dead bodies are floating face down in the flooded streets of New Orleans, it’s not a time for jocularity, real or forced.
And to the previous poster who wondered why the Democrats can’t come up with an appropriate sound bite, maybe it’s because some of them are actually taking the situation seriously. The fact that Republicans use the phrase ‘blame game’ as a key talking point speaks volumes. To some of them, it is indeed a game.
Finally, while everybody seems to heaping tns of blame on FEMA, the White House and just about everybody on a Federal level, I can’thelp thinking it’s the local or state gvernment officials who were responsible for row after row of school buses now submerged under the flood waters when they should have been used to evacuate hundreds, even thousands of people out of New Orleans. If we’re playing the blame game, there’s more than enough blame to go around.
Blame Game Tied
http://borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1210&srch=
Let us go back to the ol’ story of the boy who cried wolf and why left wing media bias hurts everyone.
Bush’s opponents have been trying to destroy him for years. After 9/11 “Bush Knew” now the supposed claims of racism.
Even when there is legitimate reason for critic, everyone is instantly on the defensive,
Everyone is instantly polarized the only thing that suffers is healthy debate and the truth.
All levles of gov’t failed miserably. But instead of looking for the true weak link and at this point we have to look at Governor Blanco, you;re too busy asking for Bush’s head.
1 Anybody else notice that President Bush has, at least twice, refered to the gulf coast area of the country, of which he is president, as “that part of the world”?
Let us go back to the ol’ story of the boy who cried wolf and why left wing media bias hurts everyone.
What left wing media bias? You mean the media that has turned into a bunch of Bush-loving sycophants?
Bush’s opponents have been trying to destroy him for years.
As opposed to the GOP, who did nothing but give Clinton the benefit of the doubt for years.
F#ck, 5 years later and Clinton’s enemies still can’t stop bìŧçhìņg about how much they hated him!
But instead of looking for the true weak link and at this point we have to look at Governor Blanco, you;re too busy asking for Bush’s head.
Since I’m not a resident of Louisiana, I’ll leave calls for her head to her own constituents. I do, however, have to live under Bush for another three years, so I feel justified in calling for his accountability.
“Because most Dems still have a conscience?”
I know a lot of republicans. I know a lot od democrats. Their lack of conscience is pretty much the same…they just lack it in different areas.
I’m watching CNN and there showing the devastaton to Plaquemines Parish which is a local government that stretches tens of miles southeast of New Orleans out to the Gulf of Mexico.
The community is still submerged. People are trying to cope. National guardsmen are just entering the area for the first time.
And guess what – every person in that parish on CNN’s cameras is white.
So don’t tell me race has anything to do with this tragedy. Federal bureaucratic incompetence has to do with this tragedy. State bureaucractic incompetence has to do with this tragedy.
I’m sick of hearing about racism. When major hurricanes hit, they go in, destroy everything in sight and then go away and the flood waters recede immediately because most communities are above sea level. The poor response to Hurricane Katrina is the unique setting of southern Louisiana where entire communities (and cities like New Orleans) lie BELOW SEA LEVEL. How can the National Guard trucks move in? How can the FEMA trucks move in? Its not like there is a massive stockpile of thousands of small watercraft that the federal, state or local government has access to. The uniqueness of the local geography is the #1 reason for the slow emergency response. Not the color of anybody’s skin.
All levles of gov’t failed miserably.
At least we can agree on this.
But instead of looking for the true weak link and at this point we have to look at Governor Blanco, you;re too busy asking for Bush’s head.
Ahh, so in the same breath, you say “We shouldn’t blame Bush, we should blame Governor Blanco”.
Yet, who created the mess that is the Dept of Homeland Security and FEMA? Bush.
Who sent our National Guard to Iraq when they could be home and helping save lives? Bush.
Who sent our money to Iraq when it will now be needed for rebuilding here? Bush.
Who refused to give money to LA to help shore up their levees? Bush.
Who appointed Brown, an incredibly unqualified man for the position of authority he was in, to head FEMA? Bush.
I sense a pattern here…
So, when people try to retort that this is just a liberl attempt to expand the Federal power, I laugh.
I laugh, too, because from what I can tell, the Louisiana governor is being blamed for the actions of the federal government trying to flex ITS muscles.
I think that’s ironic. (Though whether or not she could have tried harder or in a different direction may be pertinent)(but the point remains is that at least one point of failure stems from a federal grab for power).
All levles of gov’t failed miserably. But instead of looking for the true weak link and at this point we have to look at Governor Blanco,
Not for failure to call in federal resources, from waht I can see. But perhaps there’s some other drastic fumbles she’s made; I think I want to be educated on them.
i think we’re all overlooking the fact that many hurricanes pass through Cuba before coming to the U.S.
Cuba has long been an enemy of the United States and of freedom. i say that Cuba is the geographic center of the Global War on Hurricanes.
i think it’s time we start building popular support for regime change in Cuba, by negotiation if necessary, by military aggression if possible.
after the horror of Hurricane Katrina, i think most people would agree that we’d be better off fighting the hurricanes in Cuba so we don’t have to fight them back home.
Thank you for your responses.
I never said we should not blame Bush
Bush should be critiqued. It is your right to critique and Bush screwed up. This was a tragedy
However if you suffer from BDS(Bush Derangement Syndrome) things quickly escalate and get out of control.
It is the histrionics that let the debate get taken over by extremists. Most BDS sufferers do not realize they are extremists.
Take Craig for example. Clear signs of BDS:
HIM: Ahh, so in the same breath, you say “We shouldn’t blame Bush, we should blame Governor Blanco”.
ME: If all evidence shows she was negligent then yes,
HIM Yet, who created the mess that is the Dept of Homeland Security and FEMA? Bush.
ME: You;re right. Evidence shows that Blanco hindered both organizations
HIM Who sent our National Guard to Iraq when they could be home and helping save lives? Bush.
ME: BDS ALERT!!!!
HIM: Who sent our money to Iraq when it will now be needed for rebuilding here? Bush.
ME: Major BDS readings. Off the charts!!
HIM: Who refused to give money to LA to help shore up their levees? Bush.
ME: No one refused. Evidence shows that the levvee money was transfered by state officials themselves. IN fact a scandal insued as to where the money went (state politicians pockets)
HIM: Who appointed Brown, an incredibly unqualified man for the position of authority he was in, to head FEMA? Bush.
ME: you’re right!
It is all about race.
Katrina. Wiht a “K”?????
Why not a “C”???? Uh!
Racist Hurricane.
Kanye West is an áššhølë!
HIM Yet, who created the mess that is the Dept of Homeland Security and FEMA? Bush.
ME: You;re right. Evidence shows that Blanco hindered both organizations
Not before Katrina hit. That was when FEMA tried to muscle in and cut the local authorities out. (And after that action, would it be rational to rely on them?)
But other actions?
And, yeah, folks are right; it’s not a race thing. A class thing, maybe….but not race.
AnthonyX: We live in polarizing times and it does seem like the whole country is divided into two factions: One that blames Bush for everything from the economy to post-nasal drip and the other that seems pathologically incapable of admitting he’s ever made a mistake in his life.
I admit I lean towards the former, but in this case, we do have a clear instance where Bush at first appeared to not care about people’s suffering while the feds played jurisdictional games with the state and local authorities. It’s also clear that Brown had absolutely no clue about anything going on in New Orleans even though he was supposedly doing “a heck of job.”
I really have to wonder what was going through his mind in Biloxi. Thousands of people are dead and thousands are stranded without food or water. I know, let’s a make a joke about partying in NO! Then I’ll talk about how I can’t wait to see Trent’s no porch.
As for the race issue: I don’t think Bush is actively racist. I do, however think that he is largely indifferent to people, black or white, making less than six-figure incomes and it shows in his generally carefree attitude.
However if you suffer from BDS(Bush Derangement Syndrome) things quickly escalate and get out of control.
No, the only degranged person is that monkey in the White House.
And people like yourself, who are more than ready to genuflect at the Altar of All Things Bush.
As I said, there is no accountability. And you, AnthonyX, continue to support such a lack of accountability to the complete and total detriment of this country.
“What left wing media bias? You mean the media that has turned into a bunch of Bush-loving sycophants?”
Now, I think the left wing bias is an overstatement…but I think this is a bigger one…outside of FOX, I haven’t seen much media that praises and does happy dances around Bush. I’ve seen plenty of criticism and questions-including with the NO tragedy that focus heavily on Bush as the problem and pay little attention to anyone else’s failures. The few places that I have seen harp on the Mayor and Gov harder than on Bush have been primarily non-mainstream sites.
Sue me, I’m slow.
But back to the folks discussing whether they’d want the President to show a little concern, or outright fear, in the face of the devastation some have suffered. I think I’d prefer fear to his glibness cracking jokes when people are STILL DIEING in the devastated areas.
Well, the media criticism of Bush for Katrina has been the exception, not the rule. For the most part, the White House Press Corps has swallowed whatever sh!t this administration served up and asked for seconds.
And excuse me, but how is it the media’s job to do “happy dances” around Bush? I always thought that it was the news media’s job to hold government’s feet (regardless of which party was in power) to fire and not let them get away with pulling a fast one.
Silly me.
Happy dance at my house this weekend.
“Dude, I call that hypocisy and incompetence, all rolled into one.”
As Homer Simpson would say “Thats right! hypompetence!”
or maybe incomocisy
JAC
Interesting article from the Wash Post:
In Katrina’s wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush’s administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state’s congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana’s representatives have kept bringing home the bacon. . . .
Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, remembers holding a protest against the lock four years ago — right where the levee broke Aug. 30. Now she’s holed up with her family in a St. Louis hotel, and her neighborhood is underwater. “Our politicians never cared half as much about protecting us as they cared about pork,” Dashiell said.
Glenn at Instapundit has a great suggestion–lets divert some of the money wasted on pork projects like those in the transportation bill to the resconstruction of New Orleans.
Glenn at Instapundit has a great suggestion–lets divert some of the money wasted on pork projects like those in the transportation bill to the resconstruction of New Orleans.
Seconded.
BDS(Bush Derangement Syndrome)
HIM Who sent our National Guard to Iraq when they could be home and helping save lives? Bush.
ME: BDS ALERT!!!!
So are you saying that bush is deranged for doing this or that bush isn’t the one who sent them there?
I think it’s a great idea. Let’s start with that $221 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska and the bike paths Pelosi funded in California.
Isn’t it obscene that the federal government can find money to build bike paths, but couldn’t find the cash to fund a project that might have prevented the flooding in NO back in 1998?
And excuse me, when did I *say* it was their *job* to do “happy dances”? Seriously…all I was noting with that statement was that they never seem that enamored with Bush. You made it sound like the media is contantly in high praise of Bush and heavily supportive of him.
It’s not the media’s job to do happy dances around *any* president. They should should, frankly, avoid being to cozy with any and all of them.
That bridge doesn’t go to no where! It leads to an island that has a permanent resident population of like 12 people. 12! Do you know what a pain…ah, nevermind, even in sarcasm mode, I can’t keep that up.
The worst thing about that project is that it’s going to be named after the blowhard that wrote it into the bill. George Washington and the rest of our Founders would be all set to rise from the dead and revolt all over again, seeing as how we’ve effectively replaced our hereditary monarchy with an elective one.
Well, I guess I should have put a smiley in there somewhere, Thom.
Anyway, we essentially agree on the happy dance thing. I just wanted to have some fun with the name.
I’ll happily third Glenn’s suggestion. For the price of a vanity bridge project to a remote Alaskan island with a population of 50, think of the amount of meals that could be provided. Or construction supplies. Or clothing. And that’s just one of many self-serving projects that could easily be jettisoned for the greater good.
I’m reminded of that scene from the movie Dave, where Kevin Kline rounds up his cabinet and asks them to do away with some of the more ridiculous projects in order to make extra money available for a homeless shelter. Naturally all the politicians capitulate, because they don’t want to be heartless, but could you imagine George Bush saying, ‘Hey Alaska guy, do you think you could sacrifice an expensive but useless bridge in order to feed several thousand of your fell Americans?’
No, I couldn’t imagine it either. For a moment, I was just having a Capra moment there.
Sorry, that should have been fellow Americans. Guess I was having an illiterate moment too.
“Well, I guess I should have put a smiley in there somewhere, Thom.”
#@&! right you should have. 🙂 I thought you were thinking I thought the media should do a little dance for the president.
“Anyway, we essentially agree on the happy dance thing. I just wanted to have some fun with the name.”
Yup. It is a fun name. 🙂
Fell Americans. That’s one significant slip. Imagine…”My Sinister Americans…..”
Well, if I wanted to blame Bush, I’d do it for not cracking heads at FEMA and Homeland Security and telling to Get It Done Now, and for changing the course of FEMA to something that’s far less useful than it was. But that’s a venial sin that’s WAAYYYY down my list (certainly way below the mayor).
I REALLY want the meat axe on the meat heads at FEMA that were diddling around with bureucratic nonsense like org charts, sexual harassment training for emergnecy workers and using trained search-and-rescue personnel to hand out flyers. Yes, I’m talking to you, Mary Hudak…
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_3004197
I think the real Bush Derangement Syndrome is the percentage of Americans who will find fault with ANYTHING Bush does.
There seems to be a pathological tendency amongst people on the left when it comes to ANYONE named Bush. They come up with bizarro conspiracies and insane readings of their behavior that seem to have no relation to the middle ground I choose to stake out.
From the middle, this vast land of “both sides have points” this place where no one is pure evil and no one is a Shining Knight Come To Save The Day where Howard Dean’s just as kooky as Bush and Al Franken and Michael Moore are as annoying as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Rielly I don’t see Bush as evil, I don’t see the war in Iraq as wrong, wrongly founded but perfectly acceptable considering who was running Iraq, I don’t see the aftermath of the hurricane as anyone’s fault but the pencil pushers who demanded to have approval for basic needs AND the media’s treatment of the process like it should happen like a fûçkìņg war.
Random Aside:
Air Drops Are Not A Good Idea
In war a bomb can miss a target. If they had dropped food and water from a plane PEOPLE WOULD HAVE BEEN HIT BY THE DROPS or worse, those food and water drops would have been comandeered by the thugs who had taken over the Superdome.
Point is they had to secure the ground before thye could have an orderly dispersal of the food.
And why wasn’t the ground secure?
Beacuse Nagin is as much of a fûçkûp in this as anyone else. Have you not seen the pictures of a FLEET of schoolbusses that could have been used to take people out of NOLA?
Everyone failed. Democrat, republican, pencil pusher. They should all be fired.
But we won’t do that, because you people are so fûçkìņg attached to your political parties that we’ll never get rid of them, no matter how corrupt and ineffectual they are.
You vote Democrat and Republican exclusively, it’s your fault as well. You created this mess by relying on corrupt parties.
Again, I voted against Bush, I don’t care for the Bushes, I would never vote for one, but my dislike is not pathological. It’s based upon their lack of tact and inability to stop putting up everyman fronts when none of them have worked a day in their lives.
Has anyone any information on the story circulating that the Red Cross was trying to deliver food, water and blankets to the people in the superdome and were stopped by the Louisianna Dept of Homeland Security? Supposedly they didn’t want any more people to go to the superdome so they stopped the delivery.
I think it’s a good idea to take any story with a grain of salt these days so I’d like some confirmation beofre I call for the head of whoever decided to make starvation and subhuman living conditions as the Official Policy.
“Have you not seen the pictures of a FLEET of schoolbusses that could have been used to take people out of NOLA?”
Many people have mentioned this and, if in fact, NO had the resources to operate those buses, then city offcials f*cked up big time.
However I tend to think using these buses was easier said then done:
1) were those buses operational? (I imagine the answer is “yes,” given that the school year was about to start, but we don’t know)
2) did they have enough qualified drivers? (putting random people behind the wheel of a 5-ton bevile carrying 50 peoples during a mass evacuation is *not* a good idea)
3) did they have fuel for those buses?
I’m really interested to see how this all shakes out.
Has anyone any information on the story circulating that the Red Cross was trying to deliver food, water and blankets to the people in the superdome and were stopped by the Louisianna Dept of Homeland Security? Supposedly they didn’t want any more people to go to the superdome so they stopped the delivery.
Think this is on the Red Cross web site. Part of the reasoning is to try to draw people OUT of New Orleans. Guess the problem is that they haven’t a clue on how to do that [which may or may not be stupid, as the state would have to use National Guard forces to do this, and I don’t know feasible that was. Nor do I know what camps were available for foot travel, though the state should have known that, as well].
Glenn at Instapundit has a great suggestion–lets divert some of the money wasted on pork projects like those in the transportation bill to the resconstruction of New Orleans.
Fourthed, or fifthed, or whatever number we’re up to now. Count me in.
TWL
Wow, a lot of reading for a thread which started about eight hours ago – ! Many good points here, starting with PAD. And thank you for that link, PAD – some EXCELLENT points made there. True, you don’t want a panicked president; but one who seemed to give more than just the tinniest flying f#*k about the thousands of Americans suffering, dying, and dead would be nice. However much blame is due at however many levels – some at all of them, obviously – we seem to have seen at least as much concern about avoiding ANY responsibility for ANYTHING by the administration as we have for the people whose lives have been devestated or lost. I’m reminded of the Presidential debate last year wherein Bush was asked to admit a mistake, and he just COULDN’T DO IT. Whether this is because it has just been drummed into him so deeply to never admit ANY fault AT ALL because it could possibly hurt your grip on power, or this is indicative of a chronic mental inability to perceive one’s own errors on his part, is debateable. (If he did actually admit that mistakes were made in the Katrina situation, but pledged to work at correcting them – and actually did make some beneficial changes – any attempt to turn his admission against him could backfire on the people trying to use it. But, there may be too many “if”s there …. And the Republican leadership appears to have paired the mindset of “Our way is the only way – you must fall in line” with “We don’t err. We never err.”) Obviously it’s too much to hope for Bush ever to be eloquent (though it occurred to me today that two of our most eloquent presidents, Presidents Clinton and Kennedy, appear to have been two of our most adulterous, as well. Coincidnce? Well, the gift of gab can often be very useful in the romance department …. This would make it less likely that W. Bush will ever be caught having an affair – he couldn’t SPEAK his way into much of anything, let alone that); but for him to be more than superficially moved and saddened by the death and losses of thousands of his constituants – those he’s supposed to be serving (and I don’t really buy the racism argument, either, though the question of classism should be examined) – his fellow Americans, fellow human beings – shouldn’t be too much to ask.
1) were those buses operational? (I imagine the answer is “yes,” given that the school year was about to start, but we don’t know)
Everything I’ve read says yes. Why would they have hundreds of non-working buses anyway?
2) did they have enough qualified drivers? (putting random people behind the wheel of a 5-ton bevile carrying 50 peoples during a mass evacuation is *not* a good idea)
I can drive a bus. I do it occasionally for field trips and things. It’s easy. Kind of like driving a car only taller. At any rate, excluding Halle Berry or Ted Kennedy, it’s hard to imagine many drivers being a worse option than staying.
3) did they have fuel for those buses?
Even if they were bone dry they had planty of time to fill them. This was a hurricane not an earthquake.
I say; let the investigations begin. There will be so much blame to spread around it’s even possible some truth will come out.
Some of it may make people uncomfortable. An interesting bit from John Berlau:
The national Sierra Club was one of several environmental groups who sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees.
The Army Corps was planning to upgrade 303 miles of levees along the river in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This was needed, a Corps spokesman told the Baton Rouge, La., newspaper The Advocate, because “a failure could wreak catastrophic consequences on Louisiana and Mississippi which the states would be decades in overcoming, if they overcame them at all.”
But a suit filed by environmental groups at the U.S. District Court in New Orleans claimed the Corps had not looked at “the impact on bottomland hardwood wetlands.” The lawsuit stated, “Bottomland hardwood forests must be protected and restored if the Louisiana black bear is to survive as a species, and if we are to ensure continued support for source population of all birds breeding in the lower Mississippi River valley.” In addition to the Sierra Club, other parties to the suit were the group American Rivers, the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, and the Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi Wildlife Federations.
The lawsuit was settled in 1997 with the Corps agreeing to hold off on some work while doing an additional two-year environmental impact study. Whether this delay directly affected the levees that broke in New Orleans is difficult to ascertain.
here’s the thing though–the Sierra Club may well have been correct. At least one person I know with considerable expertise in this stuff (a flaming liberal but I love the guy) thinks that the levees have ultimately made things worse than they would have been if nature had been allowed to take its course and that this will just accelerate now. If New Orleans is rebuilt with ever taller levees the result will be, at some not so distant point in the future, a storm that causes even more devastation. repeat as needed.
I don’t know if he’s right. I don’t even know if the question can be asked.
And, regarding that Alaskan bridge pork project: according to Rolling Stone (which is undoubtedly anti-Bush, perhaps to the extent of sometimes harming the appearance of their journalistic integrity at this point; but this particular sidebar [issue 981] lists pork from both sides), $223 million will go to one bridge, while “Don Young’s Way” is a separate $231 million project bridging a sparsely populated marshland. At least he remembered his wife while putting this together – his bill is called SAFETEA-LU – “Lu” because it’s his wife’s name 🙂
There was also a very interesting article in Scientific American a few years ago (I don’t have a link handy, but if you google Drowning New Orleans and Scientific American, you can find it easily) that lays everything out chapter and verse about how this disaster was waiting to happen, what were some of the factors that made it worse, and what could have been done to prevent it. Ironically, even if some of the environmental suggestions put forward in the article a couple of years ago were implemented the following day, it probably would have been too late anyway. Nevertheless, it’s all there in black and white, in simple language that anybody with even an average intelligence could understand, which apparently excludes Arabian horse breeders-turned FEMA chiefs, Homeland Security directors and a current president.
Scientific American, Oct. 2001.
National Geographic, Oct. 2004.
The links are available at snopes.com.
Ummm… excuse me, American people? My President seems to be broken or something, because he’s completely ineffectual. I’d like to know how to go about getting my money back? A refund or an exchange or something? ‘Cause I really ain’t liking what I’ve got…
Seriously, people, I think we’ve more than conclusively proven that Bush sucks hard at being a president. His approval levels are in the toilet, the rampant cronyism in his administration has got to be worse than the Harding and Grant tenures combined, and Mr. “I’m-a-uniter-not-a-divider” is FAR AND AWAY the most divisive presence in America’s political landscape. Even his staunchest supporters are having a hard time justifying his actions. Honestly, I don’t care if he’s a Dem, a Repub, or a freakin’ American Communist… there’s got to be a person out there who can handle the job better. How far does he have to fall before Americans flat-out demand a new President?
There’s no way Bush is responsible for the lack of response in New Orleans. This is a reality that so many seem willing to acknowledge.