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Re: Re: Re: Superb commentary. (Reply to this comment)
by ginzo
And it was Clinton that let osama get away and it';s a democratic congress thats ruining this country.
it's time people learned the facts.
Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate.
He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton. Never in my life have I seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost.
Yet Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he's not behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant.. Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America. But let's look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial 'beauty.'
Start with national security, since the president's most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists - something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s.
Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.
Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago.
Yet Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on 'the rich.' How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes. How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes.
His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.
Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, 'All praise and glory to God!' but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have 'hijacked' - hijacked - Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois, he refused to vote against a statewide ban - ban - on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francis co values, not Middle America values.
The real Mr. Obama is an easy target for the general election. Mrs. Clinton is a far tougher opponent. But Mr. Obama could win if people don't start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches.
His vision of 'bringing America together' means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or warmongers. Uniting the country means adopting his liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs.
But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent of a speaker he is and - yes - they're talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president. Mr. Obama's radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream, to the left of Mrs. Clinton.
It's time to talk about the real Barack Obama. In an election of firsts, let's first make sure we elect the person who is qualified to be our president in a nuclear age during a global civilizational war.
Kind of scary, wouldn't you think
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Jun 04 '08
9:22 am PDT
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Re: Re: Superb commentary. (Reply to this comment)
by jsommersby
If your going to make such annaylsis you could say Clinton played the sax while the towers fell
Perhaps he was. You're forgetting, of course, that America was under Bush's watch, not Clinton's. (Of course, I know you didn't forget this. People like you find it a lot easier to ignore inconvenient facts for those deficit-contributing tax cuts.)
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Jun 03 '08
4:02 pm PDT
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Re: Re: post mortems (Reply to this comment)
by ginzo
Beware of gooberpyle the infamous epinions trust-slut
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Oct 02 '07
12:55 pm PDT
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Re: post mortems (Reply to this comment)
by pierretascher
I think everyone should encourage anti-military recruiting campaigns.
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Oct 01 '07
1:52 pm PDT
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post mortems (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
One could substitute "George W. Bush" for "Abu al-Zarqawi" in the story, since the former has done much more damage to the Constitution of these United States as well as to the security of its citizens. I think it far more likely that Bush and al-Zarqawi will embrace in Hell than that either will be meeting the Founding Fathers of the American republic in Heaven.
In his column today titled "George W. Bush Is Dead To Me
Nation cringes as the worst president ever continues long, painful slog to the end" Mark Moford writes:
" For thoughtful Repubs with a conscience (they actually exist, I have seen them), there is little left to defend. There is little this administration has done among all categories of ostensible GOP values that they can look to with any sort of pride. Medicare? Shrinking the budget? Smaller government? Less intervention in our lives? Reduced spending? Increased respect in the international community? Responsible international citizen? Ha. Name your topic, BushCo has failed. Spectacularly.... America's reputation as a powerful and respected diplomatic peacekeeper, as the nation that sets the standards for human rights and economic freedom and choice, is hobbled. Crippled. Is very nearly dead."
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Jul 07 '06
10:49 am PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: ... (Reply to this comment)
by ginzo
Abu al-Zarqawi died, met George Washington
After Abu al-Zarqawi died, George Washington met him at the Pearly Gates.
He slapped him across the face and yelled, "How dare you try to destroy
the nation I helped conceive!"
Patrick Henry approached, punched him in the nose and shouted, "You
wanted to end our liberties but you failed!"
James Madison followed, kicked him in the groin and said, "This is why I
allowed our government to provide for the common defense!"
Thomas Jefferson was next, beat al-Zarqawi with a long cane and snarled
"It was Evil men like you who inspired me to write the Declaration of
Independence."
The beatings and thrashings continued as George Mason, James Monroe and
66 other early Americans unleashed their anger on the terrorist Leader.
As al-Zarqawi lay bleeding and in pain, an Angel appeared.
Al-Zarqawi wept and said, "This is not what you promised me."
The Angel replied, "I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for
you in Heaven. What did you think I said?"
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Jul 06 '06
9:37 am PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: ... (Reply to this comment)
by ginzo
Yes,thanks :
FROM A SOLDIER IN IRAQ AND BEYOND
"To all:
First off, thank you for your support. Coming down the home stretch of a 12 month deployment in Iraq I can say without a doubt your support at home means everything to me. I don't know some of you on this list so here's the basic rundown:
I am a non-commissioned officer in the US Army serving in Baghdad, Iraq. I have served on three continents over the past 7 years on active duty in multiple roles to include areas encompassing counterintelligence, human intelligence, and reconnaissance. Born and raised in Minnesota, my current residence (when I'm not deployed) is in Heidelberg, Germany with my wife and two children.
I do not, as a rule, speak for other soldiers or their experiences. However, I would like to give a link to a website that in my opinion gives an accurate account of much of what is faced out here every day. I refuse to name specific news channels, but i will say they constantly aggravate me in so many ways. Stop basing your opinions off of the information you receive from channels found on basic cable. "
http://michaelyon-online.com/
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Jul 06 '06
9:25 am PDT
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Re: Re: Re: ... (Reply to this comment)
by drdevience
Jeff honey..
You may wanna state that that was a quote and not from you...
GrinningDoc
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Jul 05 '06
6:30 am PDT
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Re: ... (Reply to this comment)
by drdevience
...this is the most on-point thing I've ever read.
And a brilliant analogy, too.
What S.R. said...
LateButHereDoc
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Jul 02 '06
3:20 am PDT
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And another nail through the liar-in-chief's hands (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
Mar 1, 4:57 PM (ET)
WASHINGTON (AP) - In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, risk lives in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage of the briefings.
Bush didn't ask a single question during the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck on Aug. 29 but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."
Six days of footage and transcripts obtained by The Associated Press show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.
Linked by secure video, Bush's bravado on Aug. 29 starkly contrasts with the dire warnings his disaster chief and a cacophony of federal, state and local officials provided during the four days before the storm.
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Mar 01 '06
2:09 pm PST
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More on Bush's "No one predicted" lie (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
Fromm AP today:
The preparedness exercise that began in July 2004, dubbed Hurricane Pam, warned that a Category 3 storm would overwhelm the New Orleans area with flood waters, killing up to 60,000 people and destroying buildings and roads. State and federal officials were concluding Pam's findings when Katrina, an actual Category 4 storm, roared ashore on Aug. 29.
"As a dry run for the real thing, Pam should have been a wake-up call that could not be ignored," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Senate committee's examination of Pam's findings at a Tuesday hearing. "Instead, it is apparent that a more appropriate name for Pam should have been 'Cassandra' — the mythical prophet who warned of disasters but whom no one believed."
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said Pam gave the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Homeland Security Department "explicit notice" that a catastrophic storm in New Orleans would require urgent aid from Washington to state and local response officials. "But despite these warnings from Pam, preparations for Hurricane Katrina were shockingly poor," said Lieberman.
A month before Katrina hit, state and federal officials working on the Pam exercise estimated that government plans to evacuate people from New Orleans were only 10 percent complete. "If you think soup lines in the Depression were long, wait till you see lines" at collection points in New Orleans, Transportation Department regional emergency officer Don Day said at a July 29 briefing with federal and state authorities. Notes of the briefing, as recorded by Baton Rouge-based contractors Innovative Emergency Management Inc., were examined at the hearing.
"We're at less than 10 percent done with this ... planning when you consider the buses and the people," Day said at the briefing.
Lieberman also accused the White House of trying to stall a Senate investigation into the government's response to Katrina by failing to produce requested documents and prohibiting federal officials from answering questions. "This assertion of a kind of virtual immunity of the White House from this inquiry has obviously frustrated our committee's ability to learn and tell the full story of Katrina," Lieberman said. "In my opinion, it is unacceptable."
However, Lieberman noted, the committee did receive an e-mail sent to the White House Situation Room hours before Katrina hit, warning that the storm's surge could breach levees and leave New Orleans flooded for weeks or months.
The e-mail included an Aug. 28 report by the Homeland Security Department's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center, which concluded that a Category 4 or 5 hurricane would cause severe damage in the city, including power outages and a direct economic hit of up to $10 billion for the first week. "Overall, the impacts described herein are conservative," stated the report, which was sent to Homeland Security's office for infrastructure protection.
"Any storm rated Category 4 or greater ... will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching, leaving the New Orleans metro area submerged for weeks or months," said the report.
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Jan 24 '06
11:43 am PST
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Anticip-p-p-p-pation (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
The weather forecast was for an even more direct hit of New Orleans. The woeful lack of preparedness of the much vaunted pork-distributing Department of Homeland Security, the cronyism and denial of reality that is characteristic of Dubyah-style governance were shown up.
There is ample documentation that the administration cut funding for preparations for a category-5 hurricane, and that the possibilities of devastating levee breaches were discussed in the media in the days before Katrina hit, though we know that the president does not look at any news except summaries prepared for him by those who know he doesn't like bad news. He is even more cut-off on than LBJ was when "credibility gap" was coined.
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Dec 03 '05
3:22 pm PST
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Re: One More Thing (Reply to this comment)
by ginzo
And one more thing,don't enter the twin towers with food,water and what ever else your hero ars has for us. didn't you see one fell and this ones next??
My point is,there was a very good reason why the canadiens were not allowed. no one was and no one could. It was impossible!!
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Dec 02 '05
10:29 am PST
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Re: Bush's couldn't have anticipated lie (Reply to this comment)
by ginzo
The performance by the two agencies WHICH DIDN'T COME TILL THE DAY BEFORE THE HURRICANE STRUCK DOES NOT call into question claims by President Bush and others in his administration that Katrina was a catastrophe that no one envisioned.
The performance you refer to has to do with their ACCURACY of the path THE DAY BEFORE IT STRUCK (WOOPI!)AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PREDICTING A CATASTROHE AHEAD OF TIME.
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Dec 02 '05
10:24 am PST
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A comment from Jamaica (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
Columnist John Maxwell, writing in the Jamaica Observer, contrasted the tiny island's apparently effective and often-tested hurricane-preparedness plans with the can't-get-it-together shenanigans of Bush's federal emergency-relief managers. "Cuba is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a national income below that of Jamaica or the Dominican Republic," Maxwell noted. "The United States is one of the richest countries in the world and has more millionaires than Barbados has people." Still, even with all their resources, Maxwell wondered, why do American leaders "wait until the last minute to make preparations for events [they] know are sure to happen"?
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Sep 27 '05
8:50 am PDT
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Bush's couldn't have anticipated lie (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
(AP) For all the criticism of the Bush administration's confused response to Hurricane Katrina, at least two federal agencies got it right: the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center. They forecast the path of the storm and the potential for devastation with remarkable accuracy. The performance by the two agencies calls into question claims by President Bush and others in his administration that Katrina was a catastrophe that no one envisioned.
For example, Bush told ABC on Sep. 1 that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." In its storm warnings, the hurricane center never used the word "breached." But a day before Katrina came ashore Aug. 29, the agency warned in capital letters: "SOME LEVEES IN THE GREATER NEW ORLEANS AREA COULD BE OVERTOPPED."
National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield also gave daily pre-storm videoconference briefings to federal officials in Washington, warning them of a nightmare scenario of New Orleans' levees not holding, winds smashing windows in high-rise buildings and flooding wiping out large swaths of the Gulf Coast.
A photo on the White House Web site shows Bush in Crawford, Texas, watching Mayfield give a briefing on Aug. 28, a day before Katrina smashed ashore with 145-mph winds.
The National Weather Service office in Slidell, La., which covers the New Orleans area, put out its own warnings that day, saying, "MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS ... PERHAPS LONGER" and predicting "HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS."
And the risk to New Orleans in particular was well-recognized long before Katrina. "The 33 years that I've been at the hurricane center we have always been saying — the directors before me and I have always said — that the greatest potential for the nightmare scenarios, in the Gulf of Mexico anyway, is that New Orleans and southeast Louisiana area," Mayfield said.
As early as three days before Katrina pulverized the Gulf Coast, the hurricane center warned that New Orleans was in the Category 4 hurricane's path. Storm-track projections released to the public more than two days (56 hours) before Katrina came ashore were off by only about 15 miles — and only because the hurricane made a slight turn to the right before hitting land just to the east of New Orleans.
That is better than the average 48-hour error of about 160 miles and 24-hour error of about 85 miles.
Two days before the storm hit, the hurricane center predicted Katrina's strength at landfall; the agency was off the mark by only about 10 mph. That kind of accuracy is unusual, because forecasters find it particularly difficult to predict whether a storm will strengthen or weaken.
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Sep 17 '05
10:40 am PDT
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Re: I've been listening to the garbage (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
If there is one thing mention of Nero brings to mind for most people it is that he "fiddled" while Rome burned. Of course, he strummed, there being no fiddles (or tomato sauce) at the time. I think that Dubyah will be remembered the same way, though I thought the deer caught in the headlight response to news of the World Trade Center attacks would be his lasting image.
All Dubyah and his handlers care about is further enriching the already very rich as they have been pushing the US more and more into the mould of a Latin American country in which dissent is sedition, the rich/poor gap is immense, and foreign debt is astronomical, cronyism is rampant and taxes go to friends of the ruler (Halliburton in this instance). The main difference is that the IMF is unable to impose fiscal discipline on the world's largest economy. In a few weeks, the pressure to make the removal of any estate tax permanent will resume. Dubyah takes care of his own, and "his own" is not the red states but other plutocrats.
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Sep 13 '05
9:27 am PDT
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I've been listening to the garbage (Reply to this comment)
by AliventiAsylum
spewed by the toe-the-line Bushies for days. I see how it happens, though. The paid-for pundits of Fox News and the like spew the talking points about everything being the fault of the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans, including spreading the lies about them not asking for help. Then Scott McClellen of course denies to reporters during his press conferences that the President said anything like that or that events happened like that. But the lies stick and get repeated over and over.
I am so tired of listening to the ignorance. I've come to the conclusion that these people have a need to believe in the government and that if it happened to *them* the response would somehow be different. They just cannot conceive of Bush & Co. ignoring them, while the truth is that the majority of us in this country are seen as nothing but cannon fodder for the neo-Cons. Barbara Bush's 21st century version of "Let them eat cake" should prove that if nothing else.
Patti
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Sep 12 '05
5:44 pm PDT
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More on what Bush Inc. ignored (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
First Responders Warned Feds on Training
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
The Bush administration was warned by congressional investigators this summer that some first responders were concerned that their training and equipment was tilting too much toward combatting terrorism rather than natural disasters.
...
The emphasis changed once the Federal Emergency Management Agency lost its independence and joined the 22-agency Homeland Security Department in March 2003.
The mammoth department was created in 2002 as a response to the lack of coordination prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and its emphasis clearly is terrorism. Officials developed an "all hazards" policy that used the same training exercises and equipment to prepare for two distinct types of disasters: a terrorist attack and an event of nature.
The agency in the past four years awarded $11.3 billion to state and local governments to prepare and respond to a terrorist attack.
Congress' Government Accountability Office reported in July that of 39 first responder departments surveyed, 31 disagreed that the training and grant funds worked for all types of hazards.
"In addition, officials from four first responder departments went on to say that DHS required too much emphasis on terrorism-related activities in requests for equipment and training," the GAO said.
...
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Sep 06 '05
10:33 am PDT
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Re: Re: Superb commentary. (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
I don't recall where Clinton was on 9/11, but he was not president. The person who was was glazed at a photo op which he did not interrupt.
As I DO recall, Clinton was impeached so that anything he did overseas was immediately derided by the Republican congressional majority as "Wag the Dog." He did not get Osama bin Laden killed before 9/11, but it has been almost four years since 9/11 that the current administration has failed to do so (or find the anthrax terrorist, or indict anyone not already in custody for aiding the 9/11 attacks). Our Nero sloughed off the concerns of the outgoing administration about al Quaida, and terrorist attacks were not on Attorney General Ashcroft's list of concerns (unlike pornography and eusthenasia).
The hobbling of Clinton was accomplished by the Republican congressional majority. If he had played his saxophone in the last days of August, you can be certain it would be in a shelter in Louisiana, not on a political trip to Arizona.
It was Bush who "borrowed" the National Guard to quell the Islamist terrorism that Bush's invasion introduced to Iraq. It was Bush who dropped FEMA from cabinet level and after 9/11 put together the Department of Homeland Security that was supposed to be better able to respond to disasters (see the Newt Gingrich observation below in the comment thread). It is Bush who lied that no one had warned of the possibility of the levees breaking. It is Bush's war that diverted not only the National Guard, but equipment, and funds for the Army Corps of Engineers to the quagmire on the Euphrates after misrepresented the imminent danger Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. Etc.
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Sep 06 '05
9:36 am PDT
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Re: Superb commentary. (Reply to this comment)
by tommy_lop
I'm tired of these Nero comments. First off if your going to compare Bush to Nero for the Katrina. If your going to make such annaylsis you could say Clinton played the sax while the towers fell. It was Clintons cutting the CIA and making them follow stupid rules that allowed 9/11 to happen.
Has for this it goes on all 3 levels. Bush is responsible for some of FEMA's slow response. But on the local and state level we had equal incomentence that made the mess even bigger. First rather then finding people without adequate modes of transporations a bus ride out they bus them to a shelter which means they underestimated the levis. As far has the levi needing upgrading people have been saying that for 20 years since the latter days of Regan so that would means that Bush Senior is also guilty, has well as a famous democratic president that set for 8 years. And even if Bush had given the order to fix the levis it would have taken at least a decade to have upgraded them.
In the end this was a disaster waiting to happen and it would have been just has bad if Kerry had won the election.
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Sep 06 '05
1:23 am PDT
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Superb commentary. (Reply to this comment)
by dahlink
All of what you write echoes my own sentiments. Your opening statement sums up the situation perfectly. Indeed, even the image of Nero fiddling as Rome burns came to mind. When will the US population wake up and perhaps, more important, CARE, about the devastation wreaked by this arrogant and willfully ignorant administration? Thank you for posting this.
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Sep 04 '05
5:26 am PDT
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One More Thing (Reply to this comment)
by Granniemose
The Canadians had trucks of food, water. clothing and medical supplies loaded up and ready to go by 7a.m Wednesday morning. They were proud to be considered a good neighbor. So guess what? They were not permitted to enter - told "maybe later."
If interested, I can Email you the link to the Canadian paper that printed this information which apparently will not appear in the US papers.
Virginia
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Sep 03 '05
1:11 pm PDT
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The leader strumming while ignoring disaster analogy (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
(and the if the levee had been bombed analogy) recur in today's LA Times piece that further elaborates on the connecitons of the Bush war and the post-hurricane disaster:
After flooding in 1995 killed six people in New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers started work on a massive civil engineering project designed to strengthen the region's levees and improve the pumping system that regulates water levels.
The work got off to a good start, but in 2003 federal funding started to run dry, leaving many projects — including a planned effort to strengthen the banks of Lake Pontchartrain — on the drawing board.
As early as 2004, the New Orleans Times-Picayune began to report that local officials and Army Corps of Engineers representatives attributed the funding cuts to the rising cost of the war in Iraq.
Facing record deficits, the Bush administration cut costs — and cut corners — by including in its 2005 budget only about a sixth of the flood-prevention funds requested by the Louisiana congressional delegation.
The war in Iraq also has made recovery from Katrina slower and more challenging. The Army National Guard units normally available for domestic disaster relief found rapid emergency response unusually difficult since so many of their personnel are deployed in Iraq. Although more units were dispatched later in the week, the manpower shortage was painfully evident during the crucial first hours.
The Iraq war is not the only reason for insisting that the Bush administration deserves some blame for the magnitude of the still-unfolding catastrophe.
After 9/11, the president promised that the nation would never again be so unprepared in the face of disaster. The Department of Homeland Security was created with a view to ensuring that every American city had adequate emergency plans in place for the kind of large-scale crisis that could accompany either a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.
It was an empty promise.
Four years after 9/11, the fiasco in New Orleans underscores our nation's ongoing inability to cope with serious threats.
...
The catastrophic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina stands as an indictment of Bush's false economies, empty promises and foolish priorities.
Consider Louisiana's wetlands, to take just one example. Policies associated with the administration exacerbated the geographical and ecological conditions for severe flooding. Over the decades, oil and gas company actions played a significant role in destroying the wetlands. Other factors also contributed, including residential development and, ironically, the overbuilding of some of the region's levees. But the "man-made" aspects of the disaster highlight the folly of the policies of unlimited development and environmental despoliation that the administration has so consistently embraced.
(the whole piece is at
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brooks3sep03,0,7334703.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions )
And given that New Orleans was infamous for violent crime, including robbery before the hurricane, even without memories of Baghdad, it should have been expected. (Moreover, New Orleans was a big city and people were stranded far longer than upstream flooding on earlier occasions, Tom.)
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Sep 03 '05
10:28 am PDT
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Did (Reply to this comment)
by ifif1938
you happen to see Bill Maher last night? If not try to catch it in one of it's reruns this week...
I think you will really appreciate it and most of what was said by the panel and ofcourse by him.
B
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Sep 03 '05
8:13 am PDT
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Well said. Well said indeed. (Reply to this comment)
by AdaDavis
There are about 70,000 refugees in Arkansas, and there will likely be more than 100,000 within the week. As soon as the evacuees started arriving, our own state government began coordinating refugee support in every county in the state. They are registered, then bussed to a shelter that has space for them. They didn't try to stuff 20,000 people into a sports arena, because the problem is going to be long-term. The refugees are going to live here for months, if not years. They need a place to live and send their kids to school. Even if they could go back, they have nothing to go back to.
Our own National Guard (one big slice still in Iraq and another group having just returned in August) were alerted, but were unable to move to Louisiana until they were "invited", and neither the President nor the Louisiana Governor seemed all that concerned. They lost precious time and lives, just waiting. After days of delay getting the go-ahead, they arrived in NOLA to jeers of "What took you so long?"
I would like to think that a new administration would have done better, and a changed Congress after upcoming elections will make better decisions. But I don't. I'm beginning to think the system is irretrievably broken, and the political process too corrupted to be fixed. When voters elect the guy they would most like to have a beer with instead of the one with some ability to do the job, this is what you get.
And if this sounds like a partisan rant- well - the President and the Homeland Security Chief are Republicans, but the Louisiana Governor and the Mayor of NOLA are Democrats. And they all should be fired for unbelievable incompetence.
Ada
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Sep 03 '05
6:45 am PDT
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election dates (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray
I'm hoping the last two years of the Bush presidency will be a divided government in contrast to the current one in which Republicans control all three branches of the federal government, thus 2006. Then, perhaps, we could have some serious investigation of the high crimes of this administration including the lies that got authorization for the invasion of Iraq.
As usual, the White House is trying to spin any criticism as inappropriate. One of the most partisan Republicans of the previous millennium, Newt Gingrich struck a note in tune with mine of yesterday: "I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond
faster than this to an event we saw coming across the
Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to
respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" (quoted
from www.nynewsday.com 9/2/05)
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Sep 02 '05
11:26 pm PDT
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Re: !!!!! (Reply to this comment)
by Penguinlady
Uriah HEEP specialized in groveling obsequiousness, a small amount of which would actually be welcome from our incredible Pres, given that it would at last indicate some personal acknowledgment of his incompetence. So far, all we've had is denials of responsibility and evasion of accountability for everything he's done. Any person in public life who can't think of a single thing he's done wrong in that life is anything but a Uriah Heep.
Margaret
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Sep 02 '05
10:05 pm PDT
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Re: hey there again... (Reply to this comment)
by Penguinlady
It's also November 2008, for crying out loud, if the original writer was referring to the date when we'll be relieved of this stupid, mean, and incompetent administration.
Margaret
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Sep 02 '05
9:57 pm PDT
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Amen, bro (Reply to this comment)
by Penguinlady
I wish I had an "extraordinarily helpful" button.
Margaret
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Sep 02 '05
9:53 pm PDT
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