Posted on 01/28/2008 8:47:44 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush sought on Monday to ease the embarrassment of his administration's response to Hurricane Katrina by turning the world spotlight again on New Orleans.
To a standing ovation from Congress, the U.S. president said: "Tonight I am pleased to announce that in April we will host this year's North American Summit of Canada, Mexico, and the United States in the great city of New Orleans."
Bush said he would invite the leaders of neighboring Canada and Mexico for their regular "Three Amigos Summit" in the city which has been slow to recover from the August 2005 hurricane, the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.
In his annual State of the Union speech, Bush also reaffirmed his pledge to help residents rebuild their homes on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and killed about 1,400 people.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and then-Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco criticized Bush for omitting disaster recovery efforts during his 2007 State of the Union speech. Critics said the government was slow to act and burdened by bureaucracy.
The North American leaders' gathering last year centered on trade issues, beefing up drug enforcement and the thorny issue of immigration.
The only satisfaction I’ll ever get, is knowing that when I p!ss in a ditch here in Indiana, at some point it’ll run through the middle of that $uckhole of a town.
One of President Bush's greatest failings has been to let false accusations stand. The federal government is not a first responder. The DBM has had a field day repeating lies and half-truths so often that most people think that they are true. Internet searches will yield thousands of repetitions of these repetitions.
The never-ending propaganda right there in the first sentence. It was President Bush who had to lean on the Louisiana yokels to order an evacuation in the first place. And Reuters knows full well the response to this disaster was as timely as any disaster response. It was the drive-by media playing CYA for Nagin and Blanco that, somehow, managed to fix the blame on the President.
Since when is the President responsible for hurricane damage? I can’t find that in the Constitution.
The first responsibility is with the totally incompetent mayor, and the whole state government of Louisiana.
Mississippi, right next door, had massive damage, and handled it much more efficiently.
Dat be true. Si, Senor
Benito Juarez, an admirer of his contemporary Abraham Lincoln and the most revered President of the United Mexican States, spent some years in exile working at a cigar factory in New Orleans.
The mayor and gov didn't know they were first responders. They had an emergency plan that nobody bothered to read.
I bet Bush is welcombed to NO by the new Republican governor of LA.
Does this mean that Boosh will repopulate NOLA w illegals?
Whenever I hear “North American” whatever....I know that means Americans are gonna get skrewed
Peachy.
Glad the SPP aka North American Union is something the President felt was important to mention as a priority in his State of the Union address.
Of course "Union" seems to have a slightly different meaning to Jorge than to average patriots.
Yes.
Great. Now you got Shepard Smith’s mascara running.
“U.S. President George W. Bush sought on Monday to ease the embarrassment of his administration’s—”
just plain garbage ... and so are you, Pelofsky! Is that the best you can do!!!!!!!
Amen, I just went to Gulfport on MLK Day and guess what I saw, road crews that were actually doing work. I have yet to see any progress in NO in the 6 months that I have lived here.
One flood begets another flood Mad Tom.
The idiocy of rebuilding a town that is 14 ft below sea level and robbing taxpayers to rebuild it just simply leaves me aghast...
The only place above sea level is Uptown along the River, and the French Quarter. That’s about it.
North American Summit, huh? With 'Conservatives' like Bush, who needs Democrats? (revised from: With friends like that, who needs enemies?)
Bush said he would invite the leaders of neighboring Canada and Mexico for their regular "Three Amigos Summit"
Barf-o-rama.
“..elimination of our Northern and Southern borders..”
This is a prime example of how the will of the American people is completely ignored. I thought that Jorge swore an oath that he would defend and protect the Constitution. What is the value of the US Constitution in a North American Union?
And to think how some seven years ago Rush said that this man could potentially become the greatest president in a century. Was he a democrat sleeper?
Thanks! (Big Smile) :)
Slipping a rotten apple into the bushel of good ones. It will cause the whole bushel to rot. Some probably applauded that too. At least they arent' sneaking around about it anymore. I wonder if they will have the U.S. military surround the meeting place to keep out the rif-raff, including the media again, as they did in Quebec at the last tryst.
:)
Please, be honest. I go to my downtown NOLA office 3 times a week and I see progress every time I go there. The amount of recovery has been extraordinary in less than 3 years.
Exactly.
Probably not. Just a Rino/Dino Globalist. Has some other masters to serve. The House of Saud and the house of his apparent Mayan Ancestors.
Let me preface my remark by saying that while I have been an avid supporter of the President, I too have been embarrassed by his groveling to those who defend the nanny state agenda.
But it appears that you misunderstand G.W's mindset when it comes to matters concerning his own liberal mentality.
You, being a conservative non political civilian (like most of us) can't seem to grasp that in his "compassionate conservative mind" he sees this as being a legitimate accusation, because he agrees that the fed is supposed to be a first responder.
IF this where not the case, he would have defended himself.
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I couldn’t believe I was hearing him say “North American Summit” tonight. I almost fell out of my chair. If the citizens could just take their blinders off, nahhhh, that’s not going to happen. I dare say that 99% of Americans have no idea what they’ve put into motion with these North American Summits, David Rockefeller is so proud.
One of Bush’s many failings is that he’s let stand expectations that the feds in general and FEMA in particular are the first responders to any crisis. Every time some poor wretch is marooned on his roof, it’s going to be Washington’s fault for not having a boat ready.
Yes, the Bush Administrations's response was an absolute disgrace, beginning with allowing the socialist Democrat newsrooms to get away with portraying FEMA as a "first responder" that failed, to dishing out $2,000 debit cards to every welfare parasite who wasn't taken by the hand and led away from the impending, unprecedented natural disaster.
The Bush Administration's response was an abomination.
The levees. New Orleans is a small city/parish. What is not below sea level is right at sea level, swamp. The swamps are dried by building levees around some land and pumping them dry as best you can. But then the water table is like 6 inches and NO gets 80 inches of rain a year. Ya gotta always keep pumping.
Developers got rich by buying some swamp, building their own sub par levees, draining it and then building houses.
Floods, broken levees? No problem. Uncle Sam would bail you out with emergency funds.
People down there would put in their claims, dry out their houses and furnishings and collect federal flood insurance every couple of years for the same stuff.
A couple decades ago, congress decided it was good to put welfare people in brand new single family slum dwellings instead of hi-rise slum projects. So, NO built some more levees and Uncle Sam helped with the financing and cheap sub-prime mortgages and voila lots more people living below sea level.
yitbos
These few words pretty well sum up what ails our country today! There was nothing in the response of the Bush administration to Katrina that was even remotely as bad as the MSM and his opponents have been saying. Yet here is the Congress of the United States, the very people who are responsible for making the rules that govern us and they are buying into the myth that the feds had the responsibility of first response to the storm!
As the country that has been the greatest in the history of the world we are in deep trouble. The sky is not falling, but we have any number of serious problems, any one of which could be very damaging to this nation.
At the very core of those problems is our government, at every level in every jurisdiction. It controls every aspect of our daily lives and sucks every penny it can from our pocketbooks. And at the top of that heap is the federal government. It’s become the tail that wags the dog, so far from the vision of our Founding Fathers that if you brought them back and gave them a crash course on today’s America they wouldn’t even recognize its government as the one they fought and died to give us!
Put in a good one for all of us.
BTTT
Ditto, ditto, ditto! You can't say that enough times.
Hi,
I’m not following your activism ping. Is your issue Free Trade, Open Borders/World Government, the Federal Government acting as first responder, or New Orleans in general?
The reason why the borders are going to be opened up is the same reason that Republicans will go out and vote for John McCain.
Ignorance and the failure to see the facts has destroyed the US.
Sorry, I haven’t. I drive down N. Claiborne to Poland Ave every day to MARFORRES and haven’t seen much progress. I go down 10 to MS, AL, and FL and see progress being made, all I hear out of NO is “what is the Gov’t going to do for me” and “more money, more money, more money.”
And the US cannot do much in any circumstance when the local and state officials choose to do nothing. Nagin and Blanco both basically got a free pass for any responsibility for the lack of a response....
And so the New Republican Way- capitulate and leave the truth behind.... Just another reason to be glad when GW leaves office in a year (assuming an impeachment case doesn’t get traction).
You are correct - We did vacation this past summer in Corpus Christi area, then took the coast back to Biloxi, MS, and then North back to home in Arkansas. The contrast between the NO area and the Biloxi/Gulfport area was amazing. While neigher area is back completely, the MS gulf coast showed a lot more signs of effort.
I guess it is a case of work ethic vs. lack of work (draw a check).
But we can’t say that, because it would imply some form of racism...
Jeb Bush had no business letting that hurricane get past Florida to begin with...
I am being honest and I don’t think the recovery is extraordinary at all. The crime rate has skyrocketed, the murder rate is kept down by the fact that the stats don’t include anything but Orleans Parish. Trash on many streets, streets that could destroy your car by driving down them, and alevel of corruption in the local government that may be unprecedented.
I came down here looking to help with the rebuilding but have become very frustrated with the amount of people that would rather just sit on their butts and wait for the checks to roll in and complain.
Thank you, that is exactly the way I saw it. MS pulled on their big boy pants and got to work NOLA sat and waited for the big payday.
I guess it's now so blatant that even those who would gouge out their own eyes to avoid seeing the truth are too embarrassed to keep up the pretense.
Let’s hope for a cat 6 to hit while they’re meeting to discuss our surrender to Mexico.
ping for later
Where do you get your facts, Einstein? I guess you just make them up like a Democrat. Here's an elevation map of the city -- do you see anywhere that's 23 feet below sea-level?
This "dead" city has an awful lot of life this winter and spring -- three college football bowl games, including the BCS Championship that LSU won; New Year's; Mardi Gras (going on right now); the NBA All-Star Game; Jazz Fest; etc.
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