h/t Thought Mesh Most of the stuff in this article and others I've posted below and dozens of others around the blogosphere was available right after the "disaster" happened, yet the big lie continues. The water didn't overrun the levees. This was known immediately, yet "news" stories continue the myth. Why?
I've defended the president more stoutly than others because I firmly believe the decisions he makes are more informed by many orders of magnitudes than any of his detractors. However, his decision to accept blame for Katrina really baffles me on so many levels. He's been excoriated for not sending in federal troops and equipment when he's barred by law from using the military domestically. The whole nonsense about FEMA confuses me. Billions of dollars in aid have been send to New Orleans from private donations to the Red Cross to federal and state agencies. Where is that money?
I read somewhere that had each New Orleans resident who suffered from Katrina been given a check for one million dollars, we'd be ahead by quite a bit. I don't know if that's hyperbole, but it sounds like it could be true.
11 comments:
I do find great fault in the President, but not for the things the media harps upon.
First, while he isn't the first, he is certainly guilty of putting incompetent placeholders in positions that do, in fact, require some degree of competence: Brown was a buffoon, or at least manifestly unqualified.
Second, and related to the first, when your opponents are trumpeting their graft and incompetence, now is not the time for distractions.
Given the obvious seriousness of the storm, and the very obvious potential consequences, the President could have front loaded push-logistics (i.e., prepositioned men & material as close as practical to the storms devestation area. "Push" logistics are very inefficient, but the only game in town when exact needs are unknown).
Instead, the administration just sat there, flat-footed and ignorant.
There is simply no excuse for failing to grasp a victory that your opponents are handing you, with a rose, on a silver platter.
You know more about disaster reactions than I do, but from what I've read, the situation, while bad, was no near as bad as the dems in charge made it.
HS, I find it very hard to believe anything I see in the media, so I can't say if Brown was incompetent or not. In fact, I don't know what the heck is going on and I won't find out anytime soon, so I have to trust that Bush knows what he's doing.
My husband is like you. He wants Bush to come out swinging, but that wouldn't work because it would give the media another issue to obsess about.
... from what I've read, the situation, while bad, was no near as bad as the dems in charge made it.
Regardless. But making the dems look as bad as they deserve would have been akin to pushing on an open door.
On political terms alone, the failure was so profound as to leave me gob-smacked.
You're so obviously right, I can offer no explanation. Perhaps, I so want to believe there is a reason, I'm willing to give Bush the benefit of a doubt . . . and he did win another one yesterday with the little tyrant publicly saying that he's dismantling his, in my opinion, non-existent nuclear program. Maybe it's only a PR victory, but since so much of what the public is told, is false anyway, what's the diff? Can the slightly taller little despot be far behind?
BTW - I finished "The Road to Serfdom." There's so much to absorb that I haven't yet decided what exactly I want to say about it mostly because my own narrative began just about the time the book was published, so I know what happened next.
A couple of things surprised me. One was his Hayek's belief that Germany would continue to be a major player. He couldn't foresee the complete collapse of fascism (I define Nazism as non-Soviet communism) and the emergence of the big lie that the Soviet Union was our counterpart.
My husband is watching old movies about the cold war (there's a Sean Connery marathon on TNT) and you can almost feel the glee of the movie makers as they portray the Reds as just like us, except better and with much better looking women.
I read somewhere that had each New Orleans resident who suffered from Katrina been given a check for one million dollars, we'd be ahead by quite a bit. I don't know if that's hyperbole...
It's hyperbole. That would be about three times more than has officially been spent to date, and that money wouldn't have done anything to fix the infrastructure, which is where much of the Federal money has gone.
But AOG's "buy-out and tear down" plan would have worked at least as well, and possibly much better.
Re: Germany, they have remained the key player regionally, just not as much globally.
And, of course, that's after they got the "American Makeover".
Germany remained a minor player, it's Nazism that went into the circular file.
I still need to learn that readers can't read my mind only what I type.
"I finished "The Road to Serfdom.""
Good. Now you're warmed up for Hayek's "The Fatal Conceit" which is, in my opinion, an even more important book (though even more cumbersome to read and digest).
You boys forget that I'm flying with most of my brain AWOL, but I'll give it a shot.
I have to strongly disagree with Skipper. If the abject and obvious failures of the governor of LA and mayor of New Orleans didn't make their graft and incompetence obvious, nothing (and I mean nothing) Bush could have done would have made a difference. Not even the massively different outcome in Mississippi made a difference.
Had Bush pre-positioned and prevent the disaster, it would have been no news at all.
Yes, that's my take too.
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