Posted on 09/10/2005 5:22:20 AM PDT by goarmy
...Former President Bill Clinton called in to the BET telethon to express support and was asked by co-host Steve Harvey what his administration would have done differently if it were in power during the hurricane. Clinton refrained from criticizing Bush, but talked about the importance he placed on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We always thought faster was better than slower,” Clinton said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Is that what he told Monica while she was under his desk?
Beat me to it. Darn!
Sorry! Conservative minds think alike I suppose.
I know what you mean. I was scrolling channels, stopped on the BET channel for 2 seconds when the sinkmeister was on the cell phone with the telethon. His voice and his adoring fans made me sick to my stomach so I quickly changed the channel.
“We always thought faster was better than slower,” Clinton said.
So that's why the Clinton Admin. let Osama Bin Laden slip through their fingers and China snatch up top secret military defense technology, because they were sooooo much more faster with their thinking. The only thing Bill clinton was ever fast at was a wink and smile....
at twenty something year old female interns.
1999 Hurricane Swamped Clinton's FEMA
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/7/134914.shtml
Democrats led by Sen. Hillary Clinton are blaming the Federal Emergency Management Agency for failing to respond adequately to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
But FEMA didn't do much better under much less taxing conditions, when the floods that followed Hurricane Floyd left tens of thousands stranded up and down the Eastern seaboard, wondering what happened to federal rescuers.
Story Continues Below
New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida were hit hard when Floyd slammed the coast on Sept. 16, 1999. It was the worst storm to hit the U.S. in 25 years - yet it killed only 61 people. That death toll expected to be dwarfed by Katrina.
Clinton FEMA Director James Lee Witt won high marks for hurricane preparation, but the flood that followed swamped his agency.
A full three weeks after the storm had passed, Rev. Jesse Jackson interviewed Witt on his CNN show "Both Sides Now" - and complained that flood victims were still suffering from a "misery index."
"It seemed there was preparation for Hurricane Floyd, but then came Flood Floyd," Jackson began. "Bridges are overwhelmed, levees are overwhelmed, whole town's under water . . . [it's] an awesome scene of tragedy. So there's a great misery index in North Carolina."
Witt explained that the storm's devastation was unparalleled, prompting Jackson to ask what was being done for the thousands of families left homeless by Floyd.
Though nearly a month had passed since the storm first hit, Witt said his agency was just beginning to address the problem.
"We're starting to move the camper trailers in," he explained. "It's been so wet it's been difficult to get things in there, but now it's going to be moving very quickly. And I think you're going to see a -- I think the people there will see a big difference over within this next weekend."
The Clinton FEMA Director came in for more criticism during another CNN interview - this time for failing to do a better job with Hurricane Floyd evacuation efforts.
"I hate to do this to you so early in the morning," host Carol Lin began apologetically.
"But I want to show you some video of Hurricane Floyd. This was the evacuation scene out of Florida last year. And you can recall, some three-million people in three different states were hitting the highways, jammed back-to-back trying to get away from the danger. And much of the local as well as the federal government was criticized for this backup. What is being done this year to prevent something like this from happening again, keeping people out of harm's way?"
Witt explained that evacuation problems were to be expected under such dire conditions. "It was very unusual when you had multiple states all evacuating at the same time," he told CNN. "It was the first time that that has happened that way and it did clog the highways."
While Witt's reputation remained largely intact after the Floyd fiasco, more than a few of the storm's thousands of flood victims complained that the agency had failed them.
"I had heard FEMA was going to be downtown, so I got up early to get down there and get in line," one North Carolina woman told the Associated Press, recounting her ordeal months after Floyd had passed. "The time came and nobody was there, just all these people waiting in line."
FEMA's sorry performance left her overwrought.
"I had been let down so many times, I just lost it," the flood victim said. "A friend of mine came walking up, and I just started toward her. She said, 'Robin, what in the world is wrong?' I was just standing there in the middle of the street crying, totally disoriented, practically hysterical."
Weeks after Floyd's floodwaters subsided, the suffering for many had yet to be addressed.
"We passed hundreds of families sitting outside their now-uninhabitable homes, with their water-soaked possessions spread out on their lawns," the Raleigh's News & Observer noted on Oct. 3, 1999.
"Desperately picking through the mess for anything to salvage, most people - particularly the elderly - seemed to be in a state of shock."
And where was FEMA?
"The larger towns had a visible FEMA and Red Cross presence," the paper said. "But in smaller towns it looked like utter confusion and despair - no one in charge, no one knowing what to do or where to go for help."
How many weeks did it take the "Milk Every Disaster 'til It Hurts" crew to stage this event? How many excruciating days had to pass before the "Look at Meeeeee!" crowd could get themselves together to react. It's a national disgrace! Military and civilian relief organizations have been hard at work delivering medical and material aid for days and days before a single professional whiner even strummed a note! Private individuals and businesses had dipped deep into their purses and sent assistance long before these bozos said "Hey, kids, let's put on a show." Disgraceful incompetence.
Totally agree. Seems these days, whatever happens, these fools are out parading themselves.
I give, but what I give, and to whom, is my business.
So .... how many truckloads of malt liquor have been donated so far?
The man puts Confucius to shame, doesn't he?
You sre absolutely right. Slowly many Blacks are beginning to see that they have been had by their beloved Democrat Party and their current leaders in the Congressional Black Caucus and NAACP, etc. Problem is, the majority of Blacks can't see the forest for the trees. The end result will be as the last fity years were. Blacks will stay mired to the bottom of the economic and opportunity totem poll, that they, themselves have chained their folks to. The Democrat Party holds them in economic bondage to gives them just enough existance that they will continue to vote Democrat.
Now that strategy was just peachy as long as Blacks were the number one minority in this country. That is no longer true. Hispanics are now the number one minority and are passing Blacks by as if Blacks were standing still. Combine that fact with the diverse political and economic power of our growing Asian groups, and Blacks not only will stay at the bottom of the jobs, opportunity ladder, but they are losely significant political power with each day that passes.
A good, positive sign is that many of the New Orleans Blacks have seen other opportunities available to them outside of their corrupt city, and will never go back, thus beginning "new" lives in an America they were brainwashed to believe did not exist for them. At the end of the day, until Blacks forsake the Democrat Party, and truly make serious effort to assimilate into the general American society as all other groups have done including modern day Hispanics and Asians, they are going nowhere. A political change away from the Democrat "Slavery" Party and their own failed Black leadership is badly and most urgently needed right now.
Just watched a legal expert on Fox go thru the disaster event by event. Based on the Law Gov Blanco is legally liable. If lawsuits are filed, there is no way she can duck it. In addition, when Bush went went down there, he offered her immediate deployment of Reg Army troops, she told both him and Nagel that she "needed 24 hours" to decide. This is DC politics. As everyone from Bush to Clinton to Carter learned, Washington Politics are a whole lot tougher then local politics. Blanco is toast. EVEN if the National Dems get the "Independent Commission" there is no way to rescue her based on the Law. I suspect that is why Mayor Nagel has been so quiet. He found out last Fri just who was holding the knife in his back, and it wasn't Bush
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