posted on December 30, 2005 03:15:57 PM new
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 5:47 p.m. ET Dec. 29, 2005
“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees,” President Bush said on Sept. 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina punctured the system of dams protecting New Orleans and created the greatest natural disaster in American history.
Unfortunately for the president, that wasn’t true, as news reports about studies that did just that would make clear. But it sounded good at the time.
“I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, ‘New Orleans Dodged the Bullet,’” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said three days later, explaining why his department was slow to respond to the devastation. “Because, if you recall, the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse.”
Of course, it didn’t. And even if it had, that would only have meant that the bullet took out Mississippi and Alabama, rather than Louisiana. But it sounded good at the time.
That was 2005. It was the year of the excuse.
‘Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job’
Hurricane Katrina was the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. It killed 1,300 people, ravaged five states along the Gulf Coast and all but destroyed New Orleans. It also caused a political and bureaucratic storm of unprecedented proportions.
At the center of it was Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who became a laughingstock after he betrayed his agency’s lack of planning before Katrina and its lack of awareness afterward. Brown told CNN that he didn’t even learn that hundreds of New Orleanians were trapped in the fetid Convention Center until two days after the television networks had been broadcasting the scene to the world.
Instead, e-mail records showed, Brown and his staff were hard at work making sure he had enough time for a leisurely dinner in Baton Rouge and looked snappy on TV. “I got (my shirt) at Nordsstroms (sic),” Brown wrote. “Are you proud of me? Can I quit now? Can I go home?”
Katrina gave plenty of folks opportunities galore to step into big, steaming piles of rhetoric:
“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” the president said at a post-disaster photo-op, hard on the heels of pictures of the chief executive reviewing hurricane-ravaged areas from the comfort of Air Force One while returning from vacation.
The president’s mother placed foot firmly in mouth when she said this of the thousands of Louisianans who took refuge in Houston’s Astrodome: “So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”
And Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., was overheard telling lobbyists: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”
It sounded good at the time
Fifteen years after she collapsed in a coma and seven years after various members of her family began fighting in court over what to do with her, Terri Schiavo died in a hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., in March. The battle over which relatives should have the final say in whether to remove her feeding tube turned into a proxy for the abortion wars as figures from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to the Rev. Jesse Jackson weighed in on the meaning of life.
Quotation: “This is not somebody in a persistent vegetative state,” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a physician, diagnosed in Washington after watching Schiavo on videotape. Turns out she was, as her autopsy revealed.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on December 30, 2005 03:52:32 PM new
Republican year in review....
...yep no more 9-11's.
...more and more suspected terrorists being stopped BEFORE they can carry out their 'deeds' that some liberals here don't think they want to on our land.
....Iraqi's voting FREELY for the THIRD time.
.....trying to bring the deficit down even though the dems are fight tooth and nail AGAINST it....while they continue to #*!@ about how high it is.
.....No crap that's been thrown at this President actually 'stuck'. Dems proving over and over all they can do is TRY to make stuff stick....but since they've been lies....they haven't/won't.
posted on December 30, 2005 03:56:40 PM new...yep no more 9-11's.
Yeah but there was a great flood in New Orleans.
Is Bush going to take credit for not having a flood in New Orleans during 2006?
There was no "Pearl Harbor's" during the last four administrations. You didn't see them jumping for joy.
Bush can not take credit for something that may only happen once in a lifetime.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on December 30, 2005 09:35:11 PM newYeah but there was a great flood in New Orleans.
Are you kidding me? logansdunce clearly doesn't have a clue. Like Bush flooded New Orleans. The real problem with New Orleans was that stupid Democrat Mayor who didn't evacute along with the idiot Govenor of Louisiana that did nothing either. It was the sole responsibility of those two, to prepare for the disaster that everyone in the USA KNEW was going to happen. Now Bush has had to clean up their mess. And the sad thing is Bush is taking the heat that is rightfully deserved to the Demomorons.
Look at the hurricane that hit Florida a few weeks after Katrina. It did a ton of damage too. But those people were told straight out, get the hell out or you are on your own. And that is exactly what happend.
The Demomoron smoke screen is being more and more exposed everyday.
.
.
.
Many misleading tricks in 2006. The new Demomoron slogan.
posted on December 31, 2005 05:57:41 AM new
Stone,
Don't expect an answer from the left.
The problem is they believe all the negative press, they believe any pitiful craptoid that will bind them together.
There is no truth in the Liberal fantasy world.
………………………………………………………………………….
Below is the Liberal mind set:
Bush is bad, Kerry was a saint!
Iraq was better under Saddam.
The Neo-cons have ray guns that will stop us from thinking. (stinking)
Bush caused the hurricanes on 2005.
All business is bad.
Bareback Mountain was the mega hit of 2005.
I’ve been abducted by aliens and probed.
(LD, I’ve been abducted by aliens (from South America) and probed in a bar in NYC)
It’s all about the Oil.
There is no God, religion is evil.
Mao and Stalin weren’t bad people. They were misunderstood.
The government is spying on me and knows what I’m doing with small furry animals.
posted on December 31, 2005 07:38:22 AM newThere is no truth in the Liberal fantasy world.
Like all the truth in the Republican fantasy world:
Iraq has tons of WMD
Iraq was part of 9/11
We need the Patriot Act in order to be safe otherwise the terrorists will attack again.
Everything is going well in Iraq. The insurgents are in their last stages.
The Iraq war will only take a few days, weeks or months.
The war would only cost around $200 billion.
Terry Schiavo is not brain dead nor is she in a vegetative state.
Who is living in a fantasy world now. You people are so brainwashed by this administration.
Colin you should be used to brainwashing since you do it all the time to the members of your cult.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on December 31, 2005 11:00:39 AM new
LOL....I thought Colin's list was very good too.
-------------------
oh logansdad - You're improving....you got ONE on your list correct.
We need the Patriot Act in order to be safe otherwise the terrorists will attack again.
Yep, that's correct.....and the VERY PA you #*!@ about all the time prevent the terrorists here from blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge and who knows murdering how many American's.
So....you just keep routing against it.....so appropriate....if it's actually WORKING....YOU want it to be stopped.
