On August 6, as her 15 minutes of fame was just beginning, Cindy Sheehan used an odd term in a TV interview with Mark Knoller of CBS. She referred to the foreign insurgents and terrorists in Iraq as âfreedom fighters.â Knoller cut those words out of his report, he told me, because he âreally wasnât interested.â He should have left them in. In fact, alarm bells should have rung in his brain. First of all, itâs startling that an antiwar mother would talk that way about people who blow up children and who may have killed her own son. Second, âfreedom fightersâ in this context is the telltale lingo of the hard, anti-American left. When the grieving mother starts talking that way, itâs news.
Knoller recalls that other reporters on the scene were watching his interview that day in Texas, but apparently they werenât any more interested in Sheehanâs little linguistic adventure than he was. Apparently none bothered to report it. The âfreedom fighterâ remark reached the public only because an antiwar group, Veterans for Peace, filmed the CBS interview. It was picked up by an anti-Cindy Sheehan website, sweetness-light.com, where bloggers and conservative commentators noticed and circulated it.
Sheehan, before and after her arrival in Texas, said a great many colorful things that failed to interest mainstream reporters. Some of her acid comments registered with the public mostly because of George Willâs powerful column of August 25 and his similar comments on the Sunday ABC TV news show This Week. A few made it on to cable news. Others simply failed to make it into the mainstream media. Itâs worth reviewing what she said: The neocons deliberately allowed the terrorist attacks of 9/11. American soldiers are âbeing sent to kill innocent peopleâ in Iraq. Her son, Casey Sheehan, âdied for oilâ and was âmurderedâ by President Bush. The United States is ânot worth dying for.â The president, who âstole the election,â is part of the âBush crime family,â a âlying bastard,â a âfÃŒhrer,â a âfilth spewer,â âthe biggest terrorist in the world,â and an âevil maniacâ who is guilty of âblatant genocide.â Sheehan also compared Lynne Stewart, the radical lawyer convicted of aiding terrorists, to Atticus Finch, the heroic lawyer who battled racism in the book and movie To Kill a Mockingbird. She has been accused of making vaguely anti-Semitic remarks, but she attributes those remarks to her political opponents. On Hardball, she said the American attack in Afghanistan was âalmost the same thingâ (i.e., just as evil) as the invasion of Iraq.
Extreme politics.
The mainstream mediaâs lack of interest in these little verbal grenades is astonishing. According to a computer search, not one of them made it into news coverage by the New York Times. The Times has a public editor, or ombudsman, who might want to ask why. One explanation for the news failure is that the media wedded themselves early to a simple narrative line-the president, holed up on his ranch, refuses to meet with and comfort a grief-stricken mother. This narrative became frozen in cement when columnists of the left began talking about the âmoral authorityâ of a parent who loses a son in war. This story line-moral mom versus stone-hearted president-didnât allow much room to note Sheehanâs great contempt for America. There is also the vituperation she has been showering on Bush for years. She campaigned against him in 2004, vigorously promoting his impeachment, not seeking a meaningful heart-to-heart chat with the âevil maniac.â Nor did reporters point out that Bush would set himself up for more abuse if he sat down with Sheehan, probably in the meeting and surely in the press conference afterward. By sticking to the anguished-mother story line and declining to publish her outlandish verbal abuse, mainstream reporters protected the public from an inference that would otherwise been obvious: that Sheehan had either gone around the bend psychologically or, more likely, had simply thrown in her lot with the extreme America-hating left. Whenever the mainstream media inched toward actual information about what Sheehan was up to, they employed the familiar âconservatives are claimingâ construction, not directly reporting Sheehanâs odd comments and extreme politics.
On the whole, the mainstream media depicted Cindy Sheehan as a moral figure without blemish. Maybe reporters and editors felt paralyzed by the âabsolute moral authorityâ rhetoric or justified by polls showing declining support for the war. Some reporters, of course, detest Bush and oppose the war. For whatever reason, they werenât able to break from the original soft narrative line about a motherâs grief and tell us what was really going on.
Steve Graham examines the actions of the parties involved and explains why events played out as they did.
I guess there is no way to avoid getting into the finger-pointing contest taking place in connection with the New Orleans disaster. New Orleans is a corrupt city in an extremely corrupt state, and the state and local response to the hurricane was inept and irresponsible, and now the ineffective locals are doing their best to shift the blame onto President Bush, Congress, and FEMA. And the liberal press and the Democratic Party are helping them.
Let's start with one simple fact. States and cities bear primary responsibility for preparing for and responding to their own problems, and Louisiana and New Orleans get a big fat "F" for their efforts. They can blame Bush all they want, but the fact remains, they blew it big-time and caused a catastrophe to which an adequate federal response was virtually impossible. It's amazing, how talking heads and Democrat politicians-and even some Louisiana Republicans-are trying to make this a federal failure. When did the federal government become society's diaper? If you don't take reasonable care of yourselves, shouldn't you expect to have terrible problems while Uncle Sam gears up to save you from yourself? How can anyone pretend to be surprised, or that the federal government is chiefly to blame?
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Look at the failures on the local level.
1. Locals chose not to pay for an adequate flood control system. It was well within their means, and they had almost three hundred years to get it done. When they complain about the "Bush-Dominated" Congress's evil refusal to foot the whole bill, and they tell us how much more money was needed, they themselves quote a figure of about sixty million dollars. Don't tell me an entire state couldn't come up with sixty million dollars. As a reader of mine pointed out, they somehow came up with a hundred and thirty-eight million dollars to pay for a football stadium. But they chose to buy a Category Three system instead of the obviously necessary Category Five system. Now the bill will be in the tens of billions of dollars, and thousands of people are dead. And who believes that flood control improvements funded during the Bush administration would have been finished by the time Katrina arrived? It helps if your political career depends on believing it.
2. After assuring eventual disaster by refusing to pay for flood control projects, local officials failed to respond quickly enough to the threat of storm damage. They had a plan in place, and they failed to follow it. They were aware that many citizens had no transportation, yet they failed to identify them and take them to shelters. Here in Florida (and everywhere else), we respond to the approach of hurricanes by notifying FEMA, setting up shelters, and issuing evacuation orders well in advance of landfall. The mayor of New Orleans and other local officials dragged their feet. They didn't even open the Superdome to evacuees until noon on the day before the hurricane, and at first, they limited access to people with special needs. And the governor, who must request federal aid before Washington can come in and provide it, didn't formally invite the feds in until Monday. Florida's Democrat governor Lawton Chiles did the same thing after Andrew, and then he complained about FEMA's slow response. A bureaucrat's prime directive is "Cover your behind at all costs, and if you can blame your enemies in the process, so much the better."
The failure of local officials is even more shocking when you realize that New Orleans-as they well knew-is a city built in a bowl surrounded by dirty water. A city whose floodwalls and levees were expected to fail in a severe storm.
3. A large number of local citizens refused to evacuate, ensuring that they and their children and pets would die. We're not supposed to talk about this, because it's "blaming the victims." I'm sorry to ask this, but when a person is a victim because of his own irresponsibility or bad judgment, isn't it an injustice to blame his suffering on someone else? In the course of ordinary life, when a parent makes an irresponsible choice that leads to the death of a child, do we exonerate them because of their searing, constant emotional pain? To the contrary. We do our best to put them in jail.
I don't say people deserved to drown. Tiny children and invalids and elderly people died horribly in this catastrophe, and they are still dying, and the suffering beggars understanding. I suffered every time I heard the voice of a starving baby bird after Andrew; I can assure you that I feel pain over the immeasurable agony of Katrina's victims. If watching videos from New Orleans doesn't break your heart, there is something wrong with you, and if you don't want to help the survivors, regardless of their attitude or how much responsibility they bear, you must be made of stone. But many residents made-and continue to make-tragic choices that lead to unnecessary and incalculable misery. These choices caused a large portion of the problems with which New Orleans is now dealing. And they do not consitute a federal failing.
Watch cable news for an hour, and you'll see or hear the same story over and over. A New Orleans resident refuses to leave a flooded house, days after the storm. In the driveway are one or two flooded cars this person could have used to flee. Rescuers have to argue and cajole to get this person and his or her children into the boat. And sometimes they still refuse to leave. This is AFTER the storm, mind you. There is no food, no clean water, no electricity, and no police protection, and these people still won't leave. How, by any stretch of the imagination, can it be fair to blame their pain on the federal government? I would even give local officials a pass on this problem. If these people won't leave for CNN, they would not have left for Ray Nagin.
Pre-hurricane evacuation is always handled by locals, not FEMA, and residents have to cooperate in order for it to work. Isn't it unfair, then, to saddle the feds with primary responsibility for the deaths of people who stayed home and died?
4. The New Orleans police have disappeared. A deputy commander had the gall to blame the National Guard for taking two whole days to show up, and then for amusing themselves during down time by playing cards. Meanwhile, his own officers are gone, and some are too busy shoplifting to do their jobs. According to the National Guard, the New Orleans police department has "disintegrated," and part of the delay in restoring the city was caused by the need to obtain troops to replace the police. But somehow, the disorder is the Guard's fault. Here's what happened here: many of the deputy commander's subordinates proved cowardly and selfish, and they abandoned their jobs, and in order to avoid responsibility, he's launching a preemptive PR/CYA strike on the very people who are now doing his job for him.
5. Evacuation holdouts are shooting at the police and the Guard and contractors and everyone else they can draw a bead on. Call me crazy, but I think this discourages and slows down rescue efforts. General Honore has confirmed that in interviews. Even liberal Sean Penn wore a bulletproof vest on his highly publicized rescue missions. Here in Miami, after Andrew, people shot looters, not the police (who stayed on the job, unlike the New Orleans cops).
Sure, the federal response could have been better. That's what happens when you shift your own responsibilities to the federal government. Like the flooding of the city, this was expected. Has anyone in New Orleans or the MSM been awake during the last two hundred years? Has the federal government EVER responded to a national disaster in less than two days? The federal government is like an ocean liner. It doesn't start and stop quickly. Local government, when it works properly, is much more responsive. You don't call the FBI when you see a burglar in your yard. You call the local police. Similarly, you don't wait for Washington to build your floodwalls and evacuate your citizens. New Orleans had buses. It had trains and planes. There were places it could have set up temporary shelters, and they could have been set up well before landfall. And the disaster should never have occurred in the first place; locals should have looked after their own flood control needs. But as I said, Uncle Sam is society's diaper, so none of that matters.
Two things are going on here. First, local bureaucrats are sweating bullets. They let down their constituents-with fatal results-and they know they're in trouble, and a bureaucrat, by definition, cares more about his job than anything. Imagine how you would feel, if you screwed up at work and caused thousands of people to die. So they're desperate to find other people to blame. Second, for a long time, Democrats have had a policy of responding to every national development by finding some way to use it to hammer Bush. And this is just another example.
I'm still waiting for someone like Michael Moore to say Karl Rove sent the storm to New Orleans so President Bush could steal Louisiana's oil. If you are familiar with the retrospective rantings of far-left kooks, you will realize that that is not much of an exaggeration.
Democrats and local officials are so intoxicated with Bush Blame Disease that they are actually calling for post-Katrina hearings. If they get them, they'll find comparatively minor federal failings and egregious, unconscionable local failings. Ray Nagin will be burned at the stake. Governor Blanco may be the first liberal who actually has to move to France.
Yes, the feds have made errors, and surely some of those errors have cost lives. But on the whole, they're the only group that has done much of anything right.
The Louisiana bureaucracy amazes me. They're taking thousands of people killed largely by the failures of the bureaucracy itself, and they're turning them into a legion of Casey Sheehans. In retrospect, they're going to look heartless, tactless, and despicable. They could do themselves and New Orleans a world of good by considering that right now and trying to make up for their failings instead of blaming them on George Bush.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, governor of the State of Louisiana, chose to disregard repeated warnings of the imminent threat to her State. By her actions, she is therefore directly and indirectly responsible for the death of thousands of people.
Unlike the governors of the States of Mississippi and Alabama, by whose actions severe natural disaster was limited almost exclusively to property damage, governor Blanco, for whatever reason, chose inaction and indecision at a critical time.
She did not make use of more than adequate resources available in her State for protecting its citizens, nor did she request federal assistance until after the disaster had fully descended upon her State.
For these reasons, she should be impeached from the office of governor, and removed from office.
#1
Can being a useless, weeping bimbette be one of the articles of impeachment? What if we just shoot her and then give her a fair trial later?
Posted by: Jonathan ||
09/07/2005 14:16 Comments ||
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#2
I will repeat my comments about another incompetent boob that used to run California. "Any idiot can be in charge when things are going good. It is when things go bad that you find out if you have an idiot or not as an elected official." I think we all know how Bush can handle a crisis and now we know how Blanco cannot. Can Louisiana recall their governors? Might want to start that recall petition soon while the memory is still fresh.
#3
I've been saying this about bloggers on the Left. Applies equally to Bloggers on the Right - THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT TIME FOR POINTING FINGERS AND PLAYING POLITICS. Let's at least finish getting people out and settled, then get the city drained, and the dead buried.
#5
DMFD: Actually it *is* the time to point fingers. Far too often, the right holds its tongue under a blistering barrage of insane moonbattery, name calling, and personal and political attacks.
Right now, typical Americans don't blame the President for the disaster. However, if he is blistered with a deafening barrage, and nobody either stands up for him or puts blame where blame is due, then they will by default assign him blame. Facts be damned.
And there is plenty of blame already. Not just the agitators who talk of "cannibalism" and "racism", but among the politicians who know they failed and are desperate to cast blame elsewhere.
There is only one reason that hundreds or thousands of New Orleans died--the governor of their State. She *chose* not to act, to gamble with people's lives, and it doesn't matter if she did it from some base political motive, or by sheer spinelessness, she must be held accountable.
And by that I do not mean criminally or civilly liable, but politically liable. She should not hold an office of responsibility and trust if she cannot be trusted to use good judgement in that office. She must be removed for the present and future well-being of the people of her State.
Would anyone suggest she be left in office if *another* hurricane menaces New Orleans? Such a thing is not unheard of, thinking of the multiple hurricanes that assaulted Florida last season.
As a police officer is obliged to use their gun to protect life, so too is a governor obliged to use the power of their office in the same cause. And if either cannot do this, then they should not be in that position of trust, responsibility and authority.
#6
Anonymoose - Blanco is not a subordinate, Bush can't simply fire her. Do you REALLY want the LA legislature to convene an impeachment hearing? Now? Do you want them spending time and effort on that? Now? Do you think that in a state like LA it will be fair and open? We are where we are - let's not introduce distractions from the primary job at hand.
That said - we on the right need not sit back and take the insanity that is pouring forth from the left and the media. Defense - yes, going on the attack - not now. Americans are smart enough to see who's taking action, and who's spouting BS.
#7
Do you REALLY want the LA legislature to convene an impeachment hearing? Now?
Why not? Remove her before she can cause any more damage. If you have a dangerous incompetent on the job, you don't wait for their next annual review to get rid of them.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
09/07/2005 21:42 Comments ||
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#8
DMFD: She will not be impeached or tried for the simple reason that democrats control the legislature. So for all intents and purposes, she will get away with it, unless the people of Louisiana throw her out in 2007.
Just plain incompetence isn't enough, it seems. Unless she performed an act of commission that was in violation of federal law, she may be responsible for the deaths of more Americans than Osama bin Laden, and yet she will walk away from it, perhaps to harm her State and its people further.
So the only recourse left is for the blame to be firmly, and permanently affixed to her. Now. Not at some later time, when she will deftly try to change the subject. Not in 2007, when the media and the democratic party have done everything in their power to fix the blame on George Bush for two years.
Louisianans, wherever they are, must know what she did. They must be told, and told often, and efforts to spin away her fault must be slapped down with the truth. Her name and this hurricane should become synonymous.
#9
The Anchoress just highlighted these bumper stickers that the left has already printed. I retract everything I've said in this thread. I was wrong, you are right. Go for it.
#10
Any chance she can be called before Congress? I would hope that if there is an investigation she would be called. (Not that the limp-dick republicans in congress now would do anything or ask any real questions....).
#11
see the Fox article I posted - will show after 9PM PST/Midnite EST.
Red Cross stopped from delivering prepositioned supplies to Superdome and Convention Ctr refugees by La State Gov't Homeland Security. WTF???? From Hugh Hewitt's Show:
was watching up on the corner television in my studio, and it's headlined that the Red Cross was blocked from delivering supplies to the Superdome, Major Garrett. Tell us what you found out.
MG: Well, the Red Cross, Hugh, had pre-positioned a literal vanguard of trucks with water, food, blankets and hygiene items. They're not really big into medical response items, but those are the three biggies that we saw people at the New Orleans Superdom, and the convention center, needing most accutely. And all of us in America, I think, reasonably asked ourselves, geez. You know, I watch hurricanes all the time. And I see correspondents standing among rubble and refugees and evacuaees. But I always either see that Red Cross or Salvation Army truck nearby. Why don't I see that?
HH: And the answer is?
MG: The answer is the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security, that is the state agency responsible for that state's homeland security, told the Red Cross explicitly, you cannot come.
HH: Now Major Garrett, on what day did they block the delivery? Do you know specifically?
MG: I am told by the Red Cross, immediately after the storm passed.
HH: Okay, so that would be on Monday afternoon.
MG: That would have been Monday or Tuesday.
***
HH: I also have to conclude from what you're telling me, Major Garrett, is that had they been allowed to deliver when they wanted to deliver, which is at least a little bit prior to the levee, or at least prior to the waters rising, the supplies would have been pre-positioned, and the relief...you know, the people in the Superdome, and possibly at the convention center, I want to come back to that, would have been spared the worst of their misery.
MG: They would have been spared the lack of food, water and hygiene. I don't think there's any doubt that they would not have been spared the indignity of having nor workable bathrooms in short order.
HH: Now Major Garrett, let's turn to the convention center, because this will be, in the aftermath...did the Red Cross have ready to go into the convention center the supplies that we're talking about as well?
MG: Sure. They could have gone to any location, provided that the water wasn't too high, and they got some assistance.
The Democrats may need to re-think their calls for an investigation.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/07/2005 23:28 Comments ||
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#12
I agree with everybody on this thread..Lets give money to the charitys we believe in, if we live near LA or MISS we can pitch in.
and we can ATTACK the Bastards at the same time.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
09/07/2005 23:45 Comments ||
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#13
the abuses here at the local level are just over the top.
How about strenghtening a rule to have some level of compitency for folks that want to run for office to be at least minimally talented.
I'd like to call it the Nagin Noggin rule thought of this one while driving to work this morning, remembering Nagin's outburst on TV. :)
Posted by: Jan ||
09/07/2005 23:53 Comments ||
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DC Examiner .pdf file. Page forward to page 6. The Author, one Leslie Milk, titled her opus "Where to Place the Shame"
Like many Washingtonians, I spent a lot of time last week sitting in my air-conditioned house watching people in New Orleans suffering and dying in the aftermath of a hurricane and a flood. So you just seethed, Leslie? And like lots of Washingtonians, I was horrified by what I saw. Federal officials absolved themselves by blaming everything on Mother Nature. But only the Federal officials, Leslie? You didn't hear about the Mayor, or the Governor? When all else fails, blame your mother! cute. Some of them blamed the victims â why hadnât they left when ordered to evacuate? Some chose not to go. They chose poorly. Never mind that most of those left in the city were either too sick or too poor to go anywhere. Some were supposed to be rescued by the city where they lived, and protected by the State where they lived. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff even blamed the media. The nerve! In an interview on public radio, Chertoff said that rumormongers were spreading lies about crowds of desperate people at the convention center. Never mind that CNN and Fox were at the convention center showing the very scene Chertoff denied. Killings, rapings, throat-slashings, eating the dead? Iâll bet a Chertoff briefer was chewed out about that!
Last week, our government was exposed as the callous, class-conscious operation it really is. Ahhh, now we come to the real 'meat' of the editorial! While Congress handed out tax breaks to the rich, they let the walls come crumbling down in cities like New Orleans. I sure hope the Jack Welches and the Ken Lays are donating their tax refunds to disaster relief! When did you contribute, Ms. Milk? Let them think of it as enlightened self-interest. As part of the war on terror, President Bush has hired his buddy Karen Hughes to run a multimillion-dollar campaign to improve the U.S. image abroad. This is a bad thing?Thatâs going to be tough now that the world watched America abandon thousands of its own starving and suffering people of color. Did you turn your TV off last week, or just shut down your brain? You must have missed the rescues, the six-year old kid who led five other younger kids to safety, the other towns where chaos did not reign, selfless people helping others, not just whining about poverty. But enough about our loathsome leaders. Who did you vote for again? Maybe if you appointed our leaders, you wouldn't find them so "loathsome". What about us? Why did it take a cataclysmic event for us to see the other America? How could we be so blind to the grinding poverty in our own country? Because the War on Poverty is a quagmire, Leslie! 40 years and six presidents, three of them Democrats. Closer to home, why are we so blind to poor people in Washington? Because we donât see them. What do you want to do, Ms. Milk? Got an idea that hasn't been tried for 40 years? Years ago, we had an exchange student from Finland living with us for a year. So will you take in a poor person from New Orleans? This was back when Washington had gained international notoriety as the âMurder Capitalâ of the country. Since replaced by New Orleans, in that place of shame, no doubt due to the loathsome Federal officials. âDonât worry,â we told her parents in Finland. âThatâs not happening where we live.â We explained the geography of the city, the great divides of Rock Creek Park and the Anacostia River. No drive-by shootings and young men killing each other in our neighborhood. That was the other Washington. And you are ashamed of that, Ms. Milk? Moving to the other side of the River to DO something about it?
We have invented a whole vocabulary to shield ourselves from poor people. They are âdisadvantagedâ or âinner city.â Who makes up the PC words, Leslie? We certainly donât talk about race â even though in Washington, as in New Orleans, the face of poverty is most often black. We pride ourselves on being colorblind when, in fact, we are just plain blind. If the federal government doesnât admit its mistakes and commit itself to serving the poor as well as the rich, shame on it. See above. 40 years, etc. If we donât admit our own callous disregard for the poor people around here and do more to help them, shame on us.
E-mail Leslie Milk at lmilk@washingtonian.com. I will!
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/07/2005 07:44 ||
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#1
The War on Poverty was only a partial success. Its main failure was the philiosophy that simply helping people who won't or will not actively participate in securing their future and their family's future will doom any effort and to quit wasting resources on those and reapply them to others who will. Second it allowed the program to defuse through layers and layers of patronage and corruption on state and local levels which changed the mission from solutions to maintenance and dependence to secure politicial power. The failure to tie metrics [standards of outcome] to funding meant that it would never be solved and only become the model for our education system as well.
For those of us who were aware of our world in the 1950s, a hell of a lot of poverty then has been reduced, but the definition of poverty has shifted as buearucrats kept moving the goal line and thus kept themselves employed. There are still places you can find traditional poverty in America. However, just consider what is considered poverty by buearucratic definition.
"The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:
â Forty-six percent of all poor households own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and porch or patio.
â Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
â Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
â The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other European cities. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
â Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.
â Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television. Over half own two or more color televisions.
â Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
â Seventy-three percent own a microwave oven, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.
Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family isn't hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, activists and politicians."
source - http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,132956,00.html
The manifestation of poverty in NO as we seen on television has many fathers. If we're rebuilding Iraq without the crooks, thugs, and kleptocrats that ran the place before, we certainly have the means to rebuild NO without the same here. The question is whether we have the will to do so.
#2
GREAT facts to store away, there GC9685! We've got to remember that the poor here in America are doing MUCH better than many middle classes in other countries. Yes, many in N.O. are "poor" according to today's standards, but place them there with what they have now just 30 years ago, and they were living like kings!
We certainly donât talk about race â even though in Washington, as in New Orleans, the face of poverty is most often black.
I, myself, am so sick of this argument it makes me wanna puke. We give and we give (taxes and private donations), yet it's never good enough. I do wonder what Ms. Milk has done herself? I imagine she can more than afford to donate at least some money, if not time/effort down on the coast. In reply to the "black/poor" issue, I always think of the amigos who are dying to get here just to pick strawberries/pour concrete. Don't hear them complaining about anything, do ya? I'm sure they qualify as "poor" too. Yet, they work harder than most others I know to provide for family (here at back in Mexico), live 10 people to an apartment, etc. It's time we get some outcomes for the BILLIONS we have spent in the "war on poverty." I realize there will ALWAYS be those with us that can't work (physically), but when you won't work, that's a whole different ballgame.
Posted by: BA ||
09/07/2005 9:46 Comments ||
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#3
When watching the coverage over the last week the thing that struck me was the number of poor that are way over weight.
People forget what we here in the United States take for granted - where the 'poor' here would be considered 'rich' in most of the rest of the world - yet it is never enough.
I think Mrs Milk should visit a 3rd world country like the Philippines or India or even Mexico - and I dont mean to stay in the glamours 'resorts' or 'hotels' but get her ass out there to where the real people live. Live it up in a one-room shack with no running water (never mind the cable TV or phone system).
âDonât worry,â we told her parents in Finland. âThatâs not happening where we live.â We explained the geography of the city, the great divides of Rock Creek Park and the Anacostia River. No drive-by shootings and young men killing each other in our neighborhood. That was the other Washington.
Translation:
These are not our people! Those are the unwashed masses - your spawn will never have to associate with the likes of them!.
From the Wall Street Journal Online's blog, Best of the Web. Reg. req'd.
A Political Tempest?
It was inevitable, we suppose. Less than a week after hurricane Katrina, the first poll came out to measure its political impact. The results, which ABC News released Sunday, will be highly disappointing to the Angry Left: 55% of those polled do not blame President Bush for the storm's devastation, and although 67% think the federal government wasn't "adequately prepared," 75% say the same thing about state and local government. John Podhoretz's interpretation is right on the money (capitalization his):
Once again we see the gigantic divide in this country--not between Right and Left, but between people who live and breathe politics and those for whom politics are only an incidental part. You need to look at the world through political glasses to assume that THE key aspect of a natural disaster is the response or lack thereof of the authorities--whether they be local, state or federal. The president doesn't MAKE hurricanes, therefore he will not be blamed FOR hurricanes. Nor do the governor and the mayor.
ABC also has an emotional breakdown by party: Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to describe themselves as "shocked" (68% to 42%), "angry" (63% to 27%) and "ashamed" (63% to 28%) at the response to Katrina, while Republicans were far more "hopeful" (80% to 50%) and "proud" (43% to 17%). Is there any doubt that those gaps would have been similar if the poll had been conducted after any other major event--or indeed at any other time--since President Bush was elected, other than immediately after 9/11?
Indeed, the experience of 9/11 shows how resistant political trends are to the influence of big events. The attack on America changed a lot, but not the electoral map: Only three states were carried by a different party's presidential candidate in 2004 than in 2000, the smallest such shift since 1924.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
09/07/2005 0:40 Comments ||
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#3
Just to add: Celebrity angst...Oprah
Winfrey's staffers went to Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Tennessee, looking for stories, she said, that hadn't yet made it to TV. During her travels, she became weepy, angry and sick to her stomach.
Among the most gut-wrenching: children being sexually assaulted in the Superdome, an image Eddie Compass, New Orleans' police chief, says is among those that will haunt him for life.
Mayor Ray Nagin walked away from his interview with Winfrey after getting emotional about the lack of aid. He became angry, saying that he felt other major cities would have fared much better because response time would have been swifter.
This is perhaps the most honest take on the New Orleans's tragedy I have ever read!!!
It took four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it also took me four long days to figure out what was going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalistsâmyself includedâdid not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergencyâindeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows a SWAT team with rifles and armored vests riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to speed away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Superdome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage one night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"âthe informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channelsâgave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of those who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then told me that early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jailsâso they just let many of them loose. [Update: I have been searching for news reports on this last story, but I have not been able to confirm it. Instead, I have found numerous reports about the collapse of the corrupt and incompetent New Orleans Police Department; see here and here.]
There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hitâbut they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminalsâand wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheepâon whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. In a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supportersânot to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue themâthis is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.
The welfare stateâand the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encouragesâis the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005
Robert Tracinski is the editor and publisher of TIADaily.com and The Intellectual Activist magazine.
Posted by: DanNY ||
09/07/2005 22:16 Comments ||
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#2
What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them.
well said, the lack of values is very evident here. How sad this truth is. With the refugee's being spread out with the evacuations, maybe it will help the communities in not being so saturated with the welfare recipients. I see many staying where they are relocated to, because of not being able to afford to move back. I guess we'll see.
It would be good to screen welfare recipients more frequently and a bit more than they do, having them submit proof of not being able to work, and really follow that up etc, often I feel many could volunteer several hours per week, giving back to the communities they are in. Getting involved in their communities would help their psyche in not expecting something for nothing. I would also very much like to see drug testing to be eligable for benefits, the abuses here are evident.
Here in the Denver area we have guys with cardboard signs on every street corner. I'm sure alot are truly needy, but alot seem to do this for a living. We need to get workers back into the work force and be proud of a job well done. I would much rather give to help someone get back into the mainstream of working and contributing rather than supporting sustinence.
Posted by: Jan ||
09/07/2005 23:32 Comments ||
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The physical devastation caused by hurricane Katrina has painfully revealed the moral devastation of our times that has led to mass looting in New Orleans, assaults on people in shelters, the raping of girls, and shots being fired at helicopters that are trying to rescue people.
Forty years ago, an electric grid failure plunged New York and other northeastern cities into a long blackout. But law and order prevailed. Ordinary citizens went to intersections to direct traffic. People helped each other. After the blackout was over, this experience left many people with an upbeat spirit about their fellow human beings.
Another blackout in New York, years later, was much uglier. And what has been happening now in New Orleans is uglier still. Is there a trend here?
Fear, grief, desperation or despair would be understandable in people whose lives have been devastated by events beyond their control. Regret might be understandable among those who were warned to evacuate before the hurricane hit but who chose to stay. Yet the word being heard from those on the scene is "angry."
That may be a clue, not only to the breakdown of decency in New Orleans, but to a wider degeneration in American society in recent decades.
Why are people angry? And at whom?
Apparently they are angry at government officials for not having rescued them sooner, or taken care of them better, or for letting law and order break down.
No doubt the inevitable post mortems on this tragic episode will turn up many cases where things could have been done better. But who can look back honestly at his own life without seeing many things that could have been done better?
Just thinking about all the mistakes you have made over a lifetime can be an experience that is humbling, if not humiliating.
When all is said and done, government is ultimately just human beings -- politicians, judges, bureaucrats. Maybe the reason we are so often disappointed with them is that they have over-promised and we have been gullible enough to believe them.
Government cannot solve all our problems, even in normal times, much less during a catastrophe of nature that reminds man how little he is, despite all his big talk.
The most basic function of government, maintaining law and order, breaks down when floods or blackouts paralyze the system.
During good times or bad, the police cannot police everybody. They can at best control a small segment of society. The vast majority of people have to control themselves.
That is where the great moral traditions of a society come in -- those moral traditions that it is so hip to sneer at, so cute to violate, and that our very schools undermine among the young, telling them that they have to evolve their own standards, rather than following what old fuddy duddies like their parents tell them.
Now we see what those do-it-yourself standards amount to in the ugliness and anarchy of New Orleans.
In a world where people flaunt their "independence," their "right" to disregard moral authority, and sometimes legal authority as well, the tragedy of New Orleans reminds us how utterly dependent each one of us is for our very lives on millions of other people we don't even see.
Thousands of people in New Orleans will be saved because millions of other people they don't even know are moved by moral obligations to come to their rescue from all corners of this country. The things our clever sophisticates sneer at are ultimately all that stand between any of us and utter devastation.
Any of us could have been in New Orleans. And what could we have depended on to save us? Situational ethics? Postmodern philosophy? The media? The lawyers? The rhetoric of the intelligentsia?
No, what we would have to depend on are the very things that are going to save the survivors of hurricane Katrina, the very things that clever people are undermining.
New Orleans can be rebuilt and the levees around it shored up. But can the moral levees be shored up, not only in New Orleans but across America?
#1
By and large, I see the difference even in this one storm. Looking east to Mississippi, you still see looting, but not on the order of magnitude in N.O. And, Mississippi has already announced it has arrested over 100 people there for looting and they face 15 years and up to $10k fine (from last night's ticker on Fox News). Of course, I don't know how they'll pay it, but the law is already working there. Looking back to N.O., you see looting (in some cases, the cops were in on it themselves), mass desertion by NOPD and 2 suicides. I know these people lost everything, but so did those in Mississippi (in fact, they got hit by the worst side of the storm in Hancock County, Miss. and I've yet to find many pictures of that County, except for on the local paper from Biloxi, the Sun Herald). The difference? Many in Mississippi survive on their own/don't look to gov't to feed/clothe/house them. You do have some pockets of anger/frustration there (mostly at FEMA), but not the violence you see in N.O. I (personally) have known for YEARS about N.O. and what would happen should she be hit directly (and I've lived in GA all my life, except for college in Auburn, AL). Not to mention the fact that local/state politics in N.O. are known the Southeast over for being the most corrupt officials anywhere around (even the cops). N.O. (outside the French Quarter) is a rough town even on a good day. Tons of this (if truly investigated) will fall on the locals/State.
Posted by: BA ||
09/07/2005 9:34 Comments ||
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#2
"Government cannot solve all our problems, even in normal times, much less during a catastrophe of nature that reminds man how little he is, despite all his big talk."
If there is a lesson to be learned (or reinforced) from the Katrina tragedy, Sowell has distilled it in one sentence. Unfortunately the people that most desperately need to listen to his wisdom will not hear it much less head it. The purveyors of victim logy have quickly mobilized. After all, exploiting tragedies seems to be their most effective strategy. Instead of preaching hope and unity to the affected individuals they fuel outrage in the desperate masses. The "We will take care of you better then they did" message is not only shameful but also reckless. It will only perpetuate the false sense of security that was witnessed in the Gulf.
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