Posted on 10/26/2007 7:23:23 AM PDT by rightinthemiddle
President eager to show mettle after Katrina muddle
If there is a lasting image of presidential detachment that has haunted George W. Bush since Hurricane Katrina, it is the picture of him gazing out the window of Air Force One as he flew over the Gulf Coast en route from his Texas ranch to the White House.
It was two days after the storm, New Orleans was 80% flooded, and tens of thousands of people were trapped without help.
But the best their commander-in-chief could manage was a presidential flyover.
"It's devastating," Bush said then. "It's got to be doubly devastating on the ground."
It was. From that moment of inaction, the widespread perception of him as the go-to guy in times of crisis evaporated.
He was no longer the commanding figure who stood atop a pile of rubble at Ground Zero, his arm round a fatigued emergency worker, vowing to get the terrorists. He was the guy who, on his first actual visit to the Gulf, turned to Michael Brown, FEMA's bumbling director, and quipped, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."
So it's no wonder that Bush -- with a year left in his second term and a legacy to consider --has been eager to show things have changed.
Ever since the Southern California wildfires burst into public view late on Sunday, the White House has been at the top of its game. As soon as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called for help, Bush declared a state of emergency in California. He followed up by agreeing -- again, at Schwarzenegger's request -- to designate the state a "major disaster" area.
(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...
Yes, absolutely. And fair means honest.
One of the most dangerous and ignominious events in United States history has been the decision of the U.S. newsmedia, its producers, and its "journalists" to produce propaganda and not to inform the American people truthfully.
They adopted the infamous policies of Josef Goebbels, Director of Propaganda for Nazi Germany:
The American people ignore and allow this mendacity at their peril--and at the peril of liberty and justice--and at the peril of the people of the world.
Thanks, y’all.
Mississippi did a much better job dealing with Katrina’s aftermath even though
about half the counties in Mississippi were declared national disaster areas, and
the coast looked like a nuclear bomb hit it.
BTW, I know it’s “levees.” ;o)
I think you misquoted Goebbels- I believe that he said “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes bigger than the truth.” That’s an important distinction; I know many many postmodernists who quite literally believe that a lie actually becomes truth.
I said the flyover was a mistake at the time, especially coming after a month's vacation, for which I was roundly flamed.
Same reason here - along with my "I 'heart' my carbon footprint".
A question is whether they’re completely alive at this time...in any case they do seem to have a propensity for suicidal behavior.
I don’t know that Darwin would place them very high in survival coefficients.
A lie can be asserted to be the truth through "deconstruction" of literature and history and whatever. But it remains in truth a lie - and the false "truth" only binds instead of freeing.
For post modernists and others such as existentialists, there is no truth except what they state it to be, usually what they want it to be.
Thus they proclaim themselves gods - and end up badly as all false gods do.
Very well stated.
You are definitely right that many postmodernists literally believe that a lie becomes the truth. Many do not believe in any absolute truth but believe that truth is whatever one believes or whatever a concensus believes.
“Bush was with Nagins and Blanco in New Orleans on Air Force One on Wednesday and asked Blanco to allow the Feds to take over. Blanco said she needed 24 hours to THINK about it.”
Bush met with Nagin and Blanco at Armstrong International Airport on Friday September 2, 2005.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050902-8.html
I don’t have a written source but I remember hearing it in an old WWII documentary. I’m betting Wiki or Google would settle it.
As for post-modern notion of truth, most of its adherents seem to hold the “consensus” viewpoint, probably because they tend to be collectivists as well. I would expect that those who are anarchists would most likely not seek a “consensus” truth.
Disclaimer: I try not to listen to post-modernists so this is mostly speculation.
More on that- given that Goebbels seemed to be an “honest” liar in the sense that he made no secret of the fact that he was lying, “becomes bigger than the truth” is probably closer to his viewpoint than “becomes the truth”. His job, after all, was the exploitation of ingnorance but he was certainly not ignorant himself, at least not in the early years of the Nazi regime.
Thanks for the correction. Looks like I got the timeline wrong. Here is the dialong about that meeting:
......
In a harried, fast-moving interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien this morning, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had many words of praise for President Bush, while pointing much blame at Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco:
......
Nagin>> I got promises too. I can’t stand any more promises. I don’t want to hear any more promises. I want to see stuff done. That’s why I’m so happy the president came down here because I think they were feeding him a line of bull also. They were telling him things weren’t as bad as it was, he came down and saw it and he put a general on the field. His name is general Honore. When he hit the field, we started to see action. What the state was doing, I don’t friggin’ know but I tell you, I am pissed. It wasn’t adequate. The president and the governor sat down. Air force one, I said, Mr. President, Madam governor, you two have to get in sync. If you don’t get in sync, more people are going to die.
O’Brien>> What date was this?
N>> I don’t know.
O>> When did you say that?
N>> Whenever air force one was here.
O>> Okay.
N>> And this is after I called him on the telephone two days earlier. And I said, Mr. President, madam governor, you two need to get together on the same page because the lack of coordination people are dying in my city.
That’s two days ago? Easement I don’t know the exact date. They both shook their head, said yeah. I said great. I said everybody in this room is getting ready to leave. There was senators and his cabinet people, you name it, they were there. Generals. I said everybody right now, we’re leaving. These two people need to sit in a room together and make a doggone decision right now.
O>> Was that done?
N>> The president looked at me. I think he was a little surprised. He said, no, you guys stay here. We’re going to another section of the plane and we’re going to make a decision. He called me in that office after that and he said, Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor. I said — I don’t remember exactly what — two options. I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision.
O>> You told me the president told you the governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision?
N>> Yes.
O>> Regarding what? Bringing troops?
N>> Whatever they had discussed. As far as what the — I was advocating a clear chain of command. So that we could get resources flowing in the right places.
O>> The governor said no?
N>> She said she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could of left air force one, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn’t happen. And more people died.
http://newsbusters.org/node/953
They were not shooting at people in Cali. NOLA residents were looting Wal-Marts and taking everything they could find while shooting at people trying to save their lives. Also NOLA residents were going into hospitals and stealing from the sick....... oh how soon we forget and try to rewrite history!
my thoughts exactly
“What is the difference between the two?”
Qualcomm, as I understand it, is located away from the fires and they had running water, electricity and communication capabilities. If the evacuees became stir crazy or hot, they had the ability to go outside and walk about. Ir they had cars they were even able to drive somewhere. Volunteers were able to come in and furnish them with some amenities, and from what I gather, even a bit of entertainment. Last I heard, since many of the fires are now contained, many people had already left the stadium and were heading home. I hope that the majority of them find their property intact.
The Superdome is located in downtown New Orleans. When the levees broke the city was inundated and the Superdome was surrounded by water. All communication was cut off, there was of course no electricity, or running water, food or other needed items. The people inside were virtually trapped. It took days to jury rig the levee breeches so that the pumps could begin to empty the city. It was well over a month before the city began to slowly restore electricity. Nearly 200,000 homes in New Orleans were damaged or destroyed.
Whatta load of horse hockey!! Considering there was not much of a place for them to LAND AF One, then the security on the ground would have been more a nuisance than anything else, he was right to stay in the air.
But it takes a few functioning brain cells to figure that out, so it seems it's beyond the ken of most of the MSM.
“NO’s damage was self-inflicted due to their neglect of the levies.”
CORPS CHIEF ADMITS TO ‘DESIGN FAILURE’
Thursday, April 06, 2006
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — In the closest thing yet to a mea culpa, the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged Wednesday that a “design failure” led to the breach of the 17th Street Canal levee that flooded much of the city during Hurricane Katrina.
Lt. Gen. Carl Strock told a Senate committee that the corps neglected to consider the possibility that floodwalls atop the 17th Street Canal levee would lurch away from their footings under significant water pressure and eat away at the earthen barriers below.
“We did not account for that occurring,” Strock said after the Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing. “It could be called a design failure.”
A botched design has long been suspected by independent forensic engineers probing the levee failures. A panel of engineering experts confirmed it last month in a report saying the “I-wall” design could not withstand the force of the rising water in the canal and triggered the breach.
http://www.nola.com/frontpage/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1144306231230500.xml
Also-2005 LEVEE FAILURES IN GREATER NEW ORLEANS
http://www.nola.com/frontpage/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1144306231230500.xml
Well stated.
“and who said ‘nope, stay on vacation in Crawford’.”
My vote is on Rove, the most over-rated political advisor of recent years.
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