Placing the Blame in the Right Place - My Turn on Katrina
To the Bush-bashers, you’re right, Bush appointed a bunch of the leadership of FEMA. There are still numerous holdovers from Clinton’s ERA… to be intellectually honest, there has to be universal accountability.
The pansies at FEMA who cowered in the face of the looters should be tried for manslaughter and deserting their post. I volunteer to offer Kaseberg Park in Roseville as a place to hang them. (joke, lighten up people)
To those that have been jamming this blog with comments in an effort to blame Bush… take the time to read this entire post and then comment as it will be easy for me to tell if you are using talking points or if you are engaging in an intellectually honest debate.
I still can’t believe the gotcha game, Bush-haters will use anything to get to him.
Those of you that want to see Bush’s head on a silver platter need to acknowledge the following:
1. Louisiana got more money than MS or AL for disaster preparedness… some $4 Billion! While the media focuses on the destruction of New Orleans, they are conveniently ignoring that Texas was ready to receive the refugees and MS and AL are rebuilding and cleaning up nicely.
2. The foul-mounthed kuncklehead Mayor of New Orleans deserves a one-way ticket to Federal Prison. Mayor Ray Nagin (DEM)… where were the emergency supplies at the Superdome and the Convention Center? While you were screaming racial hatred at President Bush… armed thugs were raping and looting including some of your own police officers! If Bush has to take responsibility for FEMA, than the same logic dictates that Mayor Nagin has to take reponsibility for the actions of the New Orleans police officers, including those that committed suicide. This is called dereliction of duty and that rests squarely on you and Jesse Jackson and all the race racket can not remove that responsibility from your shoulders.
(Speaking of knucklehead Mayors, Heather Fargo (DEM)… oh mama… Stopping a Wal-Mart in Downtown Sac has been more of a priority than disaster preparedness.) Meantime, Sacramento has the worst flood protection of any Major US metro area in a Flood Plane… yikes! Fortunately, my Mother and Brother’s house are in a 100-year flood plane and I sit atop a 100 foot high hill above them. If my place flooded, the Central Valley of California would be under sea. Let’s hope that 100-years came up in 1998 when Linda Creek busted its’ banks and the next bad flood will be in 2098 when I am long sense dead. (I was born in 1971)
3. Governor Kathleen Blanco (DEM) deserves to be held accountable. Where did the $4 Billion that LA received after 9-11 go? Why were Mississippi and Alabama better prepared to clean up? Why was Florida able to get hit by two hurricanes and rebound so quickly? (granted, they were both class 3 not 4, but two threes in a two month period is a problem) Governor Blanco, you should resign and move out of state to somewhere where you can get a job and live in anonymity.
While liberal posters want to put the blood of the victims on Bush… Intellectual honsety acknowledges that FEMA is a 3-5 day response team and they way things were set up was that the State in question is the first responder. Look at Florida once again, they were mobilized within hours to respond well before FEMA arrived. The fact that there was little or no plan in Louisiana shouldn’t shock anyone. Blaming Bush for Louisiana’s corruption is absurd.
Also, leave us not forget… a few years ago, the levee system around Sacramento received a major boost when Millions of Tons of Concrete were injected into the levees. Why did the same thing not happen in Louisiana? That $4 Billion? Where did it go? Did Edwin Edwards get some of it!? (Joke) As an Insurance Broker in this area, I have had many clients be thankful now that they no longer have to carry flood policies. (Flood Insurance is typically more costly than your homewoner’s coverage.) However, I advise them to carry a “Preferred Flood Policy”, because they live in a home below Sea Level for pete’s sake! I don’t care how much concrete you inject into a levee… until that thing becomes a full-fledged Dam, I wouldn’t take any chances.
Louisiana is the home of the Edwin Edwards VS. David Duke Goob election. Remember the stickers that said, “Vote for the Crook, not the Klan”!? Duke was a KKK grand wizard and Edwin Edwards is currently serving time in federal Prision for Corruption. In Fact, it only took about 18 months after Edwards was elected for him to get indighted for the third, fourth and final time before the Feds could get a conviction…
Look, here’s the ballgame… Louisiana Squandered the money they were given.
The Mayor of New Orleans didn’t plan to fail, he failed to plan. The Governor is ultimately accountable for the failure of the state and she and her Democrat predecessor should be held accountable for allocating the Money the Feds gave Louisiana for disaster preparedness.
The results of Louisiana’s corruption have come home to roost and that is not Bush’s fault. That is on Louisiana.
– by contributing blogger, Aaron F Park
September 7th, 2005 at 10:57 am
I agree with what Kayne West said on NBC five days ago that Bush does not care about black people, and I think that influenced the miserable failure that is Bush’s response to this disaster.
First, Bush has never agreed to meet with the NAACP, and is the only President since Herbert Hoover in the 1920s that has been so insensitive to this organization for black people. He has nominated some extremely ideological conservative judges to federal district courts who have been hostile to civil rights and civil liberties such as:
a.) Terrence Boyle, 4th circuit court judge who ruled for whites and against blacks in two voting rights cases-reversed both times.
b.) Janice Rogers Brown, DC circuit court judge who voted to protect racist speech in the work place.
c.) D. Michael Fisher, 3rd circuit
court judge who voted to protect racist speech in the work place.
d.) William Pryor, 11th circuit court judge who voted to promote states’ rights over the rights of blacks who have been discriminated against.
Bush has also repeatedly passed tax cuts that mostly help his rich 1% upper class friends while at the same time he has cut social services to help the very poor. Bush’s much-touted No Child Left Behind Act is inadequately funded and does not address the soaring number of poor, under funded, racially segregated public schools nationally. The Bush administration also backed white students in their effort to torpedo the University of Michigan’s affirmative action program. Bush backed so called “race neutral alternatives†that cripple the fight for workplace diversity.
In short, Kanye West is 100% right when he says that Bush doesn’t care about black people. Maybe if Bush did care about minorities he would have responded more appropriately to this disaster rather than commenting on how much he hopes that Senator Lott’s mansion would be rebuilt so that he could BBQ on the porch.
September 7th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
Glad I found you, excellent write up.
If your usual kind of commenter is Mike from Mississippi up there…phew, man, you must have a lot of patience.
Oh, and Mike…you might want to check your regurgitated liberal rhetoric before posting it blindly. That first one, Janice Rogers Brown, the big racist evil person who proves Bush doesn’t care about black people?
She’s black.
Swing and a miss, and the count is 1 and 0.
September 7th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
Aren’t black organisations another form of racism. It kind of implies that they are constant charity cases unable to take care of themsleves.
Maybe for change we can stop thinking about blacks as victims and let them get on with life. America mostly rewards hard work, as immigrants from many nations have found out. The first generation usually has a little trouble but their kids tend to attend school and life tends to look a little better.
I hardly see appointing Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell to key government posts insensitive. Not only that, they were appointed for their expertise and not because they were black. I call that rewarding a life of hard work and dedication to duty.
September 8th, 2005 at 12:14 am
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September 9th, 2005 at 8:36 am
Mike from Mississippi, you’re a putz. Here’s my theory… I think that the democrats are responsible for this disaster. See, there were children among the victims and it’s clear that democrats are against children. We all know that the Democrat party platform is pro-abortion (aka, babykilling). So it’s only logical to conclude that since democrats are against babies the democrats were obstructionist and withheld aid to the city so that more babies could die. BTW, I don’t think that Barbara Boxer has met with any pro-life groups lately, snubbing them bady, I might add, so it’s simply obvious what the connection is.
(And yes, this is a joke highlighting Mike’s stupid logic, not what I really believe. My own theory is that Bush seemed to be making all the right moves before the storm hit and the governor and mayor seemed to be playing LA political games, then started shifting blame when it was obvious they had screwed up.)
September 29th, 2005 at 8:36 am
California is a gay-friendly, liberal State ad Arnold Schwartzenegger is no conservative (do you actually believe that Arnold is a conservative??? Have you been up in Eureka smokin’ out with the hippies?). If you’re so certain that conservatives are the “silent majority” of the California electorate, can you please explain to me how Bill Jones got his behind so thoroughly whipped by Barbara Boxer? We’re not talking about a few percentage points we’re talking about a clean sweep for Boxer, Jones wasn’t even in the ballpark! So, that’s OK, lick your wounds and keep dreaming. And when Gay Marriage becomes the law in CA, you might wanna think about moving to a Red State…