Hurricane Katrina: Blame Bush
by The Panda Man · 08/31/2005 11:21 amYou know the Left is cracking up when natural disasters bring out the politics in them instead of concern for their fellow man. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has written a short tract in the Huffington Post blaming Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and President Bush for indirectly causing Hurricane Katrina’s rampage through the Gulf Coast.
The link?
…it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.
So thanks to Barbour and Bush we now have killer hurricanes roaming the world slaughtering innocent coast-dwellers. What about the great Galveston hurricane of 1900, which killed about 6,000 people out of the population of 37,000 and devastated the city? Were we emitting tons of carbon dioxide back then, Mr. Kennedy?
This is absurd. A Category 4 hurricane is not a new, “global warming era” invention. This is petty “Green” politicking while disaster relief is ongoing. Unfortunately, this sort of tasteless discourse is more typical than ever from modern Liberal Democrats.
Our neighbors and fellow Americans in Louisiana and Mississippi have been hit by a very strong hurricane and are trying to save lives and restore some order. Instead of finger pointing, moaning, and standing around with jaws gaping we must get to work.
There are displaced persons to be sheltered, fed, and clothed. Disaster relief organizations need funds and volunteers. Order must be restored in devastated areas. There is considerable work to be done through the storm’s path but this is America, and we will take care of our own and rebuild.
Focus on bringing out the best in people and save the blame game for later.
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What do you expect from a bunch of bootlegging inbreds and white trash. The Kennedys are just a bunch of JACKASSES.
If anybody or anything is causing global warming, it’s those blowhard Democrats. All that hot air they are spewing is as good a reason for global warming as what RFK, Jr. has to say. I have noticed how the media ALWAYS turns to the Democratic committee chairmans for all the answers, as if being in the minority makes them more qualified to answer all the problems of this world. If they were so smart, then how come they are the MINORITY and not the MAJORITY??????
The problems New Orleans faces are the result of complacency, thinking it would never happen to them. The city and state leaders are responsible for the suffering of their people. They had NO plans in place to handle any of this aftermath. They didn’t learn from our problems with Allison and we don’t live in bowel like they do in New Orleans. Let’s see if any Democrat calls for hearings (something they seem to be good at) to find out what went wrong and who is at fault. It’s too bad the “Blame Bush” bandwagon can’t roll into New Orleans.
This spoiled pup has about as much credability as his pompous Uncle Teddy.
it is very prideful to think that the efforts of any aministration, organization or government could affect of nature. Erosion is a natural of occurrence of the movement of land mass and changing weather patterns and ocean currents.
Anyone that thinks that something man builds can halt that, just need to watch the videos of Katrina tossing about concrete bridges and whole buildings like toys in a baby’s bathtub.
Although, I dislike to cast any blame so early upon some who may be restarting life over now; if there is any blame to be thrown about; it seems the local governments of New Orleanas and Louisianna have not kept up the levee system and their responsibilities to their citizens.
Hopefully, Texas politicians heed this warning from nature. New Orleans flood pictures could have been just as easily Houston flood pictures.
While I’ll agree that RFK Jr.’s piece is misinformed and even more ill-timed, it is not just liberal groups who are playing the blame game.
It took Repent America — not a fringe group, but a group supported by other conservative religious groups — only two days to blame the storm on gays and the overall "wickedness" of New Orleans. Would you agree that this is at least equally as offensive?
The link to their release:
http://www.repentamerica.com/pr_hurricanekatrina.html
If there’s any time to put aside political labels and differences, this is it.
JEREMY WEIDENHOF RESPONDS: Actually Mike, that was the entire point of my story. Mr. Kennedy wrote his accusations on the 29th, hardly waiting for the storm to pass before needlessly pointing fingers. I would also suggest that many mainstream Democrats subscribe to the environmentalist mumbo-jumbo espoused by Mr. Kennedy, while the following for the "RepentAmerica" folks is likely much smaller.
"You know the Left is cracking up when natural disasters bring out the politics in them instead of concern for their fellow man."
Compare:
http://www.rnc.org/
with
http://www.democrats.org/
Do you want to apologize now or later, moron?
JEREMY WEIDENHOF RESPONDS: So the Democrats have more disaster relief stuff on their website, this is supposed to make up for a Kennedy accusing the President of indirectly causing the hurricane? What do these websites have to do with Mr. Kennedy’s accusations Mr. Anderson? How about addressing the issue instead of resorting to the time-honored Tolerant Liberal tradition of name-calling?
Mike - RFK Jr is a representative to the Congress of the United States. We should expect very responsible statements from him compared to any group from the left or the right. The difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives don’t take our wackos seriously. On the other hand, liberals do take Michael Moore and Moveon.org as gospel (pardon the pun) truth. And if you don’t consider Repent America a fringe group, you better let us know how you define what you consider as mainstream and fringe.
Listening to 90.1 KPFT earlier this morning on a show called “Connect the Dots” the host and hostess were ranting and raving about the damage of Hurricane Katrina, no suprise, though of course they had to mention how they had not yet heard of any major corporations come forward and make a single dollar pledge; and that so far it was all on the backs of the people. (Archive audio of this show can be found at this link under “Connect the Dots” Aug. 30. http://www.kpftx.org/archives/kpftsignal/index.php
Ignorance is bliss at KPFT since apparently they were too busy to catch this story, which I found at Newsmax and I”m sure can be easily found elsewhere. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/8/31/211436.shtmle people.
P.S. If you have spare time check out shows such as “The Atheist (Half)Hour”, Progressive Forum, and for duct tape inducing liberal spew - “The Other Side”. You can easily download and save to play on your computer or MP3 player.
If you don’t take care of the earth, the earth will take care of you.
Get it?
BRAMANTI RESPONDS: No, I don’t. Please expound.
True leadership is not reactive it is proactive. Thus each decision made in Washington greatly impacts every facet of our lives to the extent of life and death.
People are complaining for the lack of leadership demonstrated by the lack of response on the ground. Where is the help? Why are people still dying and without food, water and shelter! For this to unfold before our eyes after 5 days makes us wonder where is the leadership?
Whether you believe in Global warming or not environmental laws and protections do make a big difference. The fact bush rolled back protections for the wetlands — which serve as a buffer between cities and the storms — to allow developers to drain thousands of acres contributed to the force in which Katrina hit. And he cut funding by 44% to re-build the levees.
Notwithstanding it cannot be blamed entirely on bush by any means, but he did escalate the situation by not taking steps that would have weakened the actual force on impact. “Preventive” measures do not exist in the WH vocabulary. If they did it would have cost less in lives and treasure to have done something beforehand.
And by dismantling FEMA has made it that much more difficult for the nation to respond to domestic disasters.
So in this case life and death decisions were made regarding a situation on the brink of disaster. They were warned about the prospect of a hurricane hitting New Orleans — it was one of the top 3 catastrophes listed by experts in a FEMA report given to bush in early 2001 in his PDB… The other two: an earth quake in San Francisco and the other… a terrorist attack in NY!!
Yes people are dying and in need of help. So where is it — where is the leadership this nation needs now.
You made the following claims:
“The fact bush rolled back protections for the wetlands – which serve as a buffer between cities and the storms – to allow developers to drain thousands of acres contributed to the force in which Katrina hit. And he cut funding by 44% to re-build the levees.”
“…he (Bush) did escalate the situation by not taking steps that would have weakened the actual force on impact.”
“And by dismantling FEMA has made it that much more difficult for the nation to respond to domestic disasters.”
“They were warned about the prospect of a hurricane hitting New Orleans – it was one of the top 3 catastrophes listed by experts in a FEMA report given to bush in early 2001 in his PDB… The other two: an earth quake in San Francisco and the other… a terrorist attack in NY!!”
I would like to see sources for all of this. These are pretty serious claims to make without backing it up. Further, this is not “all Bush’s fault” like everybody keeps saying. Bush didn’t single-handedly destroy the wetlands near NO, nor did he build the city there in the first place. BTW: Federal funding (or the lack thereof) is not the answer/cause for everything. As long as we’re throwing out theories, I would suggest that the situation in NO would have happened there sooner or later, and no one US President has had much effect on the outcome one way or the other.
Can someone tell me how a city that can afford to spend millions of dollars each year to insure that it’s residents and thousands of visitors can stay stumbling drunk for a week (Mardi Gras), does not have satelite phones in it’s police stations and hospitals, nor food and water in it’s designated Emergency Shelters?
Can someone tell me why the Mayor and City Council of such a place gets a free pas when it comes to pointing fingers?
Why, when Mayor Nagin complains about the slow response of the Feds, does nobody ask him what he did with all the money earned from Mardi Gras?
http://cantotalk.blogspot.com/2005/09/no-room-for-partisans.html
No room for partisans
I can play the partisan game as well as anybody.
However, I think that we need to cool it for a while and give everyone a chance to fix New Orleans.
Some future “blue ribbon” commission may conclude that
a) New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/opinion/02fischetti.html?pagewanted=print);
b) we did not act quickly enough (http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110007201)
or
c) Katrina was too much for us (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0509010022sep01,0,4532098.story?coll=chi-newsopinion-hed).
I happen to believe in “c” and “a”.
We need to be more humble and respect the force of mother nature.
Let’s put the politics aside and fix New Orleans.
I don’t see Dems or Reps in trouble. I see fellow citizens in need.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/national/nationalspecial/01levee.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1125634216-vUW1sfEFwPQmSTQc8nzEbw
The Levee
Intricate Flood Protection Long a Focus of Dispute
By ANDREW C. REVKIN and CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: September 1, 2005
“The 17th Street levee that gave way and led to the flooding of New Orleans was part of an intricate, aging system of barriers and pumps that was so chronically underfinanced that senior regional officials of the Army Corps of Engineers complained about it publicly for years.
Often leading the chorus was Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps and a 30-year veteran of efforts to waterproof a city built on slowly sinking mud, surrounded by water and periodically a target of great storms.”
(Ok I won’t argue that the levee maintenance was under funded but read a little further in the article and this nugget shows up, I love the “but ummm” in this story)
“A breach under these conditions was ultimately not surprising,” he said last night. “I had hoped that we had overdesigned it to a point that it would not fail. But you can overdesign only so much, and then a failure has to come.”
“No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.
Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was “along a section that was just upgraded.”
“It did not have an earthen levee,” Dr. Penland said. “It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick.”
SPEAKS VOLUMES don’t it? Time to let New Orleans return to the gulf. Naomi himself has just said you cannot over engineer enough to stop this from happening again.
“bootlegging inbreds and white trash…” “blowhard Democrats cause[ing] global warming…”
So much hate.
I have a hard time believing you all really feel this way about your fellow man. But it is tough to have to argue against people, especially when you’re defending someone who really has made a lot of mistakes, and won’t own up to a one.
I find it sad that the good people of America’s heartland have been forced into this position–defending their leadership choice by tearing down other Americans–and meanwhile, unless you’re millionaires, he’s not really doing anything for you.
I know it sounds hippy-dippy, but now is the time for compassion and love, not bickering & hate. And someday in the future, when your job is outsourced and your pension is gone and your ex-CEO gets a slap on the wrist for stealing it all, and the social security funds went to Wall Street, etc., you maybe realize that instead of blindly attacking those who would fight for the common man, you defended those who lined the pockets of the rich.
Sigh…