According to the Washington Post, “for liberals, this has been the perfect storm.” Democrats need to consider all the potential blowback resulting from attacking the Bush Administration right now.
Take the higher road. Poor form. Didn’t all those years at Andover and Harvard teach you nothing? This is a time for unity and not for blame. This was not the issue that would get your crown back. Bush and the White House knows how to turn all of this against you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Not that anyone would wish such massive death and destruction on Louisiana and Mississippi, but they now have a rare opportunity not just to criticize George W. Bush, but to paint his response to Katrina as a metaphor for his presidency,” says the Washington Post.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Republican’s/FEMA poor form. In the first 4 days after Katrina struck, FEMA refused to allow Coast Guard personnel, Red Cross, Salvation Army or any other employee of any other Federal Agency into the areas of Louisiana and Mississippi that were hardest hit. For the record, all clueless republicans should know that no FEMA-sponsored employee is within 40 miles of the coast. The needs of Southern Mississippi Gulf Region are now being served by the National Guard. That’s what I call “Pussy Emergency Management”…then again most Republicans never join the US Military so that just goes with the territory.
A manager for the Red Cross at Red Cross HQ in Washington DC advised…”FEMA called us off and refuses to let any Red Cross personnel near the Gulf Coast line. They don’t want to put federal employees in harms way.” Poor Form, DEMOCRATS? How about withholding water from thousands of Democrats is that “Good Form”…while criticizing the idiot republican who is responsible “Bad Form”? If you can’t get “water to New Orleans on a helicopter, you don’t deserve to call yourself “emergency manager”!
PS: To all republican’s that believe this B..Shit!…you better start stuffing the ballott boxes in Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama…right now! You morons are going, down!
Daddy Doesn’t Have It Under Control
No, you’re wrong here, Chris. There is a reason the right-wing blogosphere is pissing in their pants, begging in sweaty-palmed panic for the rest of the country (world?) not to blame the administration for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Americans. The reason is this: this administration is not competent to handle disasters, and now everyone knows it. That is why the Right is desperately repeating their rosary of “no investigations, unity not blame, ha-ha (forced laugh) isn’t-it-silly-how- they-are-trying-to-blame-Bush-c’mon-it-is-funny-ha-ha-why-isn’t-anyone-laughing”.
The fact is that this administration has ridden on its daddy-will-protect-you image, and now everyone can see that they can’t even handle a storm they had days of warning about – not to mention some future surprise terrorist attack on a US city. The dirty bomb/anthrax attack/backpack nuke isn’t going to give us a week’s warning for this administration’s agencies to gently get their acts together (or not, as the case may be). If Bush’s teams can’t deal with an oversized thunderstorm that gave polite advanced notice without losing 10,000 Americans their lives, then I think everyone can see that these guys aren’t going to protect anyone from a big boom in a big city that happens unexpectedly in a blink of an eye.
This was a lack of competent response worthy of a bumbling third-world country, not the richest nation in the world. There is one reason for this colossal failure: the Homeland Security disaster-response structures we’ve been spending so much money on to protect us from massive after-the-fact deaths from catastrophes and terrorist attacks are jokes when it comes to protecting Americans’ lives. They are slow, ill-managed, poorly-led, badly-organized.
Americans now know. Homeland Security is not going to give us any security. The system they told us was protecting us failed when put to a moderate test. It’s been a lot of hush-little-baby, and now we know daddy doesn’t have it under control.
Now is the time for Americans to grow up and accept that everything is not alright. Daddy is an alcoholic, daddy is a bumbler, daddy’s been faking it for four years. Now is exactly the time for SOMEONE to attack the administration, and attack hard. It should be all the leaders attacking, but if only the Dems have the balls to do it, then it must be them. This is not the time to play the well-bred, conflict-averse, enabling family and go back to pretending – believing the lie that all is right in our home. This is the time to fix what is wrong in our household so we’ll survive the next catastrophe like the most powerful nation in the world, rather than die like dogs by the thousands.
http://abcnews.go.com/
(thought you’d get even a bigger laugh at this!)
FEMA Was Unprepared for Katrina Relief Effort, Insiders Say
The union warned Congress in a detailed letter about FEMA’s decline a year ago. State emergency managers also warned Capitol Hill and Homeland Security just weeks ago that DHS was too focused on one thing — terrorism.
“We’ve had almost zero support for a natural disaster and an all-hazards approach,” said Eric Holdeman, director of the King County Office of Emergency Management in Washington State. “It’s been terrorism only.”
The Department of Homeland Security insists FEMA has been enhanced by being part of a large department with vast resources, but critics say that was not evident in the response to this disaster.
The next day, President Bush listened in on a FEMA conference call during which Mayfield warned of a storm surge of more than 20 feet of water rolling over levees.
FEMA had 1,300 disaster assistance workers pre-positioned, and FEMA Director Michael Brown assured Bush they were ready for the storm.
“FEMA is not going to hesitate at all in this storm,” Brown said. “We are not going to sit back and make this a bureaucratic process. We are going to move fast, we are going to move quickly and we are going to do whatever it takes to help disaster victims.”
All of us were just shaking our heads and saying, ‘This isn’t going to be enough, and the director has to know this isn’t going to be enough.’ But nothing more seemed to be happening,” said Leo Bosner, president of the FEMA Headquarters Employees Union.
Bosner has been with FEMA since it began 26 years ago. He says the agency has been systematically dismantled since it became part of the massive Department of Homeland Security.
“One of the big differences I see,” said Bosner, “besides taking away our staff and our budget and our training, is that Homeland Security now, in my view, slows down the process.”
The union warned Congress in a detailed letter about FEMA’s decline
All of us were just shaking our heads and saying, ‘This isn’t going to be enough, and the director has to know this isn’t going to be enough.’ But nothing more seemed to be happening,” said Leo Bosner, president of the FEMA Headquarters Employees Union.
Bosner has been with FEMA since it began 26 years ago. He says the agency has been systematically dismantled since it became part of the massive Department of Homeland Security.
“One of the big differences I see,” said Bosner, “besides taking away our staff and our budget and our training, is that Homeland Security now, in my view, slows down the process.”
The union warned Congress in a detailed letter about FEMA’s decline