THE MAYOR WHO FAILED HIS CITY (NEW ORLEANS) -- Blaming Bush: How Low Can The Left Sink?

http://www.iconoclast.ca/NewPage16.asp ^

[clintonbaiter]

The Left has not idled down its criticisms of Bush, blaming him for global warming and poor planning. The facts tell another tale.

The infrastructure the Left criticizes Bush of withholding, planned by the Army Corps of Engineers, would have only defended the city from a level three storm; Katrina’s level five winds would have overwhelmed the project, even if it had been completed. Former Louisiana Democratic Senator John Breaux said the funds leftists blame Bush for cutting have been diverted by presidents since the 1970s.....

[clintonbaiter]

Amazing how the mainstream media have played 'pile on' in this irresponsible attempt to pin the tragic after-effects of poor local planning and a natural disaster on the Bush administration.

Talk about reprehensible and political dirt-mongering.

[ExcursionGuy84]

Boy...seems every time President George W. Bush turns his cheek..

...his opponents/the naysayers/media outhpieces are always, and I mean A-L-W-A-Y-S, shooting,flinging, hurling and pooping verbal mud, feces & saliva...at His proverbial cheek.

[msnimje]

I call for an immediate FCC investigation into the Mainstream media and their POLITICAL ACTIVITIES. It is obvious they are a branch of the Democrat party.

[Zacs Mom]

"In 1892, the visionary Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the New York World, offered Columbia University the money to create the world's first school of journalism. At the time, what journalism education there was in the United States and elsewhere consisted of experienced editors and reporters passing along the rules and tools of the craft. Pulitzer's idea seemed farfetched.

"Why, people wondered, would any university want to train journalists? They were mere ink-stained wretches who practiced what at best was a craft, learned on the job. The idea that journalists belonged in a community of humanists and scientists seemed laughable. Columbia's trustees rejected the offer.

"Pulitzer, whose name is associated today with U.S. journalism's highest award, the Pulitzer Prizes, persevered. In 1904, he published an article titled "The College of Journalism" in The North American Review. In it, he laid out his case for journalism education":*

The above Joseph Pulitzer quote appears on an inscribed plaque visible to all upon enter the halls of the Columbia School of Journalism.
*See this article from 2003 by William F. Woo ~ 'Journalism and Serving the Public Trust'

Visionary, indeed! Pulitzer was downright prophetic!

Most of what Americans read in their papers and see on television is the product of only a handful of giant corporations and the situation in NOLA is but the latest example of dishonest and blatantly incendiary "reporting" by agenda driven representatives of these mega-corporations. Reporting specifically intended to undermine national and international confidence in President Bush and his administration.

A review of the outrageously provocative "coverage" of Hurricane Katrina and NOLA serves to underscore the extent to which the "MSM" has joined forces with the radical left in an all out effort to overthrow a standing president. Such a review clearly demonstrates that these "Guardians of the peoples right to know" are not merely complaisant in this assault on the presidency of George W. Bush but that they, in fact, active participants!

They aggressively propagate malicious falsehoods and knowingly lie by omission, they willfully disseminate misinformation and disinformation and they go out of their way to facilitate and legitimize every radical entity's Bush-hating promulgations.

One has only to review the speeches given at the cRATconvention in 2004 to realize that this orchestrated effort to undermine/discredit/impeach President Bush is an ongoing vendetta against George W. Bush for having "STOLE"the Presidency in 2000 and the "Fourth Estate" is the means with which to "reclaim what is rightfully theirs" regardless of the cost!

IMHO, we cannot afford to simply try to ignore these attacks! We must all be on the offensive to loudly expose this for it is at each and every opportunity!

[MNJohnnie]

What is frightening is just how ignorant almost the WHOLE Dinosaur Media and about half our citizens are in just what limits there ARE on a Presidents powers. It seems that too many Americans figure that as long as a President "means well" he should just ignore any legal restraints and just do what they FEEL he should do. For example, as the Washington Post reported Sun Sept 4th, the Bush is STILL asking Gov Blanco of Louisiana to release control of operations in NO to the Feds. She is STILL saying no. To too many of our voters, just because what they see on TV makes them FEEL bad, makes them demand the President DO something. NO Govt official, and certainly NOT the President with his world changing powers, should ever be elevated above the Law. Law is our one last restraint on the overwhelming power of Govt. If you want to argue the laws need to be changes, fine, write Congress and demand they get busy. But don't EVER demand the law just be set aside because your emotional whimsy TELLS you to.

[Zacs Mom]

see my post #4 that came right behind yours:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1478496/posts?page=4#4

[hiredhand]

Please see -



http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1477607/posts

...or directly via...

http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1026

[Lancey Howard]

After days of blaming the federal officials for not responding quickly enough to the Hurricane Katrina crisis, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin praised President Bush on Monday - and charged that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco had delayed federal rescue efforts by 24-hours.

[Jake The Goose]

The night before Katrina hit - I sat and watched the Mayor of New Orleans being interviewed by the local news. He was sitting at the news desk and asked the weatherman, "what can we expect if the levees break"?

I swear to you - that's what he actaully asked the guy !!!

The man was completely clueless.

No one forget - it was President Bush who order the mayor to evacuate the city.

The media is so racially terrified - they can't see the truth.

[hophead]

Very well said.

I had this argument with my socialist friend yesterday. He did not know and seemd not to care when he was told that the Feds cannot just go in without the invitation of the governor.
He still thought it was Bush's fault. There seems to be now way to get this through the skulls of these people.

[YOUGOTIT]

How low can the left sink:

Just listened to Boortz and he read a post by an anti-American left-wing democrat called DEMGUL or DENGAL, I did not hear because of talk, that she saw a mother an little baby in distress on the side of the road with a broken down vehicle she was going to stop but the van had a W sticker on it so she sped up and off and stated that she would never help anyone who was a Republican and that we were dumb for voting for an idiot. Another wanted the FReepers to put stickers on their cars so she could run us over.

That is how low they will sink. They are non-humans who worship their God Stalin and belong to the party of slavery. If they ever get back in power, be prepared to sell all of your stock and they will destroy the Nation.

[softwarecreator]

she was going to stop but the van had a W sticker on it so she sped up and off and stated that she would never help anyone who was a Republican and that we were dumb for voting for an idiot.

I saw this posted on another forum and went over to DU to see for myself.

The letter was real and almost all the responders echoed the same sentiment.  Most said it was just too bad that the baby had to suffer just because of her stupid mother, but they would not have stopped to help either because of her mother's politics.  And yes, a few felt she should have run over and killed the mother & baby to let her know what happens when you vote for a murderer.  Apparently the hypocrisy is lost on them.

[finnman69]

USACE debunks the LEFT lies.

US Army Corps of Engineers News Release (Levee failure, repair & background)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1478445/posts

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers News Release Release No. PA-09-01 For Immediate Release: September 3, 2005 Contact: Connie Gillette: 202-761-1809 Constance.S.Gillette@hq02.usace.army.mil

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Hurricane Relief Support and Levee Repair Background Information

The breaches that have occurred on the levees surrounding New Orleans are located on the 17th Street Canal Levee and London Avenue Canal Levee. The 17th Street Canal Levees and London Avenue Canal Levees are completed segments of the Lake Ponchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project. Although other portions of the Lake Ponchartrain project are pending, these two segments were complete, and no modifications or improvements to these segments were pending, proposed, or remain unfunded.

Three major pending projects are in various stages of development: two hurricane protection projects -- the West Bank and Vicinity project and the remaining portions of the Lake Ponchartrain project, and the Southeast Louisiana flood damage reduction project. Even if these three projects in development were completed and in place, they would not have prevented the breach and the flooding caused by the breach. Like the levee that was breached, the hurricane protection projects were designed to withstand forces of a hurricane that has a .5% chance of occurrence in any given year. This translates to what is now classified as a Category 3 hurricane.

Funding

The Administration's Fiscal Year 2006 budget request for the four main New Orleans flood control projects [West Bank, Southeast Louisiana, Lake Ponchartrain, and New Orleans-Venice] was $41.5 million.

The perception of cuts to the Corps budget may come from a misunderstanding of construction project funding practices or from comparing the Administration's budget request to the Corps' project capability figures for these four main projects, which for FY2006 totaled $142.7 million.

Annual project funding is based on a variety of factors, including an analysis of the work that can be completed in an upcoming year and the work that already has been completed in a previous year. Funding levels may vary as a project progresses toward completion. Assumptions that these year-to-year changes reflect a change in a projects' prioritization or are intended to cha nge the rate of its progress fail to take into account the broader factors necessary to manage resources in an organization that is simultaneously completing multiple construction projects.

Additionally, project capability figures are not budget requests and do not represent a request by the Corps for funding. Instead, project capability figures represent the maximum amount of work on a project that the Corps estimates could be accomplished in a given year, assuming an unlimited supply of resources--financial, manpower, equipment, and construction materials.

Project capability amounts are rarely funded. If full capability funding were provided for every project in a given year, it would be very difficult to complete all the work because it would likely not be possible to secure sufficient Corps or contractor personnel to construct all projects at the same time. The same holds true for specific regions of the country. If full capability funding were provided for every project in the same region or locality, completing all the work would be very difficult given the significant strain this would place on existing contracting, staffing, equipment and material resources.

[Quotes below are from Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, Commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Chief of Engineers, and are excerpted from his remarks during a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Special Briefing for the media via conference call on Thursday, September 1, 2005 at 1 p.m. EDT. A full transcript is available from the Public Affairs Office at (202) 761-0011.]

There have been suggestions that inadequate funding for levee projects delayed their completion and resulted in the flooding of New Orleans.

GEN. STROCK: "In fact, the levee failures we saw were in areas of the projects that were at their full project design... So that part of the project was in place, and had this project been fully complete ... [West Bank, Southeast Louisiana, and Lake Ponchartrain] it's my opinion, based on the intensity of this storm, that the flooding of the Central Business District and the French Quarter would still have occurred. So I do not see that the level of funding is really a contributing factor in this case."

There have also been suggestions that the Corps of Engineers was unable to fully fund flood control needs in New Orleans or elsewhere because funding was diverted to the Global War on Terror.

GEN. STROCK: "Let me also address the issue of the general impact of the war in Iraq on civil works funding. We've seen some suggestions that our budget has been affected by the war. I can also say that I do not see that to be the case. If you look at the historical levels of funding for the Corps of Engineers from the pre-war levels back to 1992, '91, before we actually got into this, you'll see that the level of funding has been fairly stable throughout that period. So I think we would see that our funding levels would have dropped off if that were the case; so I do not see that as an issue that is relevant to the discussion of the flood protection of the City of New Orleans."

Finally, some believe that New Orleans flooded because there were inadequate coastal wetlands in Southern Louisiana to absorb the storm surge.

GEN. STROCK: "Again, my assessment in this case is that any loss of wetlands in the barrier islands associated with those processes did not have a significant impact on this event. I say this because the storm track took it east of the City of New Orleans, and most of those barrier islands and marshlands are located to the south and west of the city; so the storm did not track through that direction anyway, and I don't think that that was a contributing factor in the situation."

[phillyfanatic]

Wes Pruden in the Wash. Times has an article on the Vultures of the Left. realclearpolitics.com has many such articles showing just how miserable the Left really is as it blames W and everybody else but the Dem leaders in La and in the Congress for not providing leadership before, during and now after the horror. The MSM must be reeling that its own polls show the voters do not put first blame on Bush. Local and state officials did not even follow their own evac and natural disaster plan and program.

[Chief Engineer]

For many more comments on the same article see:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1476662/posts

[hiredhand]

Thanks for putting the link in again. EVERYBODY needs to read it! :-)

[mercy]

Political looters.

[Arizona Carolyn]

I think the mayor and governor are digging such a ditch that even the most liberal publications aren't going to be able to cover it up for long.

[DallasMike]

Fellow Freepers:

At the suggestion of writer Michelle Malkin last Friday, I have cobbled together a blogsite called Texas Clearinghouse for Katrina Aid to serve as a clearinghouse for refugee efforts in Texas.

Texas is getting more refugees than any other state -- that's fine, we'll take them all -- but we need help providing them with food, clothing, and shelter.

If you are a refugee, you can information that will help you find relief. If you want to donate or volunteer, you can find someone who needs you.

Right now the site mostly covers Houston and Dallas but I will add various churches, schools, and other charities in San Antonio and Ft. Worth tonight. My wife is down at Reunion Arena in Dallas as we speak handing out care packages and otherwise ministering to the refugees as a representative of her employer.

There are a lot of churches and other organizations in Texas that need help in dealing with the problem and I would be most appreciative if you would get the word out.

Many thanks,

Michael McCullough

Stingray blogsite

[Ciexyz]

I'm thinking of all the good people of Florida last year who braved three (or was it four?) major hurricanes and didn't loot and kill and rape. They'll never receive as much money as the victims of Katrina, with the fundraisers, telethons etc. No fair! No justice!