Blaming Bush
I haven’t posted yet about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but I’ve been following the story (like pretty much everyone in the US fortunate enough not to be more-directly involved). Probably inevitably, I’ve been drawn to stories that attempt to draw a connection between Bush’s leadership (or lack thereof) and the extent of the chaos.
I have mixed feelings about these stories. There’s a side of me that wants very much to make sure that Bush’s shortcomings as president are exposed. But there’s another side of me that says hey, wait a second. People are dying. Tens of thousands of people, probably, have died or are going to die in the coming days as a result of this disaster. We have more-immediate concerns right now than Bush’s shortcomings.
Besides that, no one, not even a Bush-hater like me, can blame the guy for this. Hurricanes happen, and they pre-date the Bush administration. New Orleans was built on sinking ground in one of the wettest parts of the world — again, before Bush came along. Give the political knife-sharpening a rest. There will be time for assigning whatever blame rightfully belongs to Bush later.
That second side of me has a good point, which is one reason why I haven’t posted about this until now. But despite that, I want to mention some stories I’ve been reading about this, and talk a little about how I view the various criticisms.
There are four main prongs of the blame-Bush-for-Katrina’s-misery argument:
Prong the first: Bush’s contributions to climate change. By fighting a delaying action against any effective response to global warming, Bush has contributed to a situation that scientific consensus now agrees is creating more-severe hurricanes. Logically, this argument is weak. It might be correct; but there’s no proof at this point. Super-strong hurricanes like this may be becoming more common as a result of the policies Bush has been supporting, but it’s too early to say that with any degree of certainty. Yeah, I think Bush’s head-in-the-sand approach to global warming is stupid, and evil, but as a practical matter of today’s politics, he’s safe from being challenged on this issue (which, indeed, is probably why he feels safe serving the interests of his big-energy buddies, even if it means dooming millions of our descendents to climate-related misery — those descendents don’t have a vote today).
Anyway, making this argument against Bush just makes it easy for Bush supporters to mock us for being reflexive haters. I’m giving this argument a pass for now.
Prong the second: Poor disaster prep. Bush’s fingerprints are all over the weakening of FEMA and the reassignment of its responsibilities to the now-revealed-to-be-woefully-inadequate Dept. of Homeland Security. He has slashed the budget for levee upgrades, and supported wetland draining and development. All of these actions have served to make this disaster much worse than it otherwise would have been.
People have been screaming about this for years, and now they’ve been proven right. I think this is the strongest argument against Bush, logically. No, he wasn’t responsible for causing the hurricane or choosing a stupid spot to build a city. But his policies have made the aftermath of the storm worse than it needed to be.
Still, I think Bush has a good chance of having most of this mud slide off him. As with the inadequate attention given to al Qaeda prior to 9/11, and the pre-war intelligence doctoring on Iraq, the mere fact that we have smoking-gun documentation of his mistakes doesn’t mean he’ll be held accountable for them. He’s really, really good at escaping blame in these situations. Freakishly good, you could say.
Prong the third: Misplaced priorities. Through the launching of an ill-advised war of choice that has siphoned off manpower and dollars, Bush has severely constrained our disaster-recovery options. Yeah, the Iraq war was stupid, and we’re now paying a price for having a quarter or more of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard troops in Iraq. And the fact that the federal coffers have been drained by $5 billion/month for the last two and a half years to pay for the war certainly hasn’t helped.
Whether this argument carries weight with a particular person basically turns on whether that person supports the war or not. Given that a majority of the US now believes the war was a mistake, I think this is potentially a pretty damaging argument against Bush. Symbolically, at least, the fact that we now have a domestic example of inadequate preparation and bungled aftermath, with dramatic TV visuals for months to come, is going to make a lot of people connect those dots in their heads. I call first dibs on the use of “quagmire” (metaphorical in the case of Iraq, literal in the case of Katrina’s aftermath) as a linking device in the resulting story.
Prong the fourth: Poor leadership. Through his weak and ineffectual initial response, Bush has contributed to the chaos we’ve seen in the early stages of the hurricane-recovery effort.
This argument doesn’t carry as much weight with me as some of the other ones. Yeah, he could have done a better job of cheerleading and comforting the country and marshalling our efforts on behalf of the victims. But I’m not sure that his failure to do so has made much of a real-world difference.
The fact that Bush doesn’t do real-time leadership very well isn’t something I really hold against him personally. He’s just not that kind of guy. He’s not that smart (book-smart, I mean). He doesn’t really know much, and when he’s caught flat-footed by events it shows. He needs a few days for Karl and the gang to figure out what response will put him in the best light, and then they have to write the speech, and set up the visuals, and all that takes time.
But this is the prong that I think could damage him the most in the public eye, because of the memories it evokes of his initial response to 9/11. Will he be able to pull off another bullhorn-speech-at-Ground-Zero moment to supplant the public’s image of him as an incompetent boob? I don’t know. I’m sure he’ll try.
And note this, too: It’s not so much that Bush was slow to react after the hurricane. It was that he was slow to react before it hit, when it was clear that it was headed for New Orleans, and when a little presidential goosing of the relevant agencies might well have made a difference that could have saved thousands of lives.
Okay; enough of me. Here are the links I promised:
- Explosions rock flooded New Orleans — from South Africa’s Mail & Guardian Online.
- McClellan Refuses To Answer Questions About Levee Funding — from ThinkProgress.
- Waiting for a leader — NY Times editorial.
- Bush and Katrina, Chronology, and Clueless — Kevin Drum.
- Former Clinton advisor: No one can say they didn’t see it coming — Sidney Blumenthal in Spiegel Online.
- Destroying FEMA — Eric Holdeman in the Washington Post.
- Democracy sucks — Philosoraptor.
- A total disaster — good link roundup from Michael of Discourse.net.
- Here are some things to consider… — Joshua Micah Marshall.
And finally, I want to steal these two images from David Corn. Both were taken on Tuesday, August 30:
Pretty much tells the story, doesn’t it?
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:30 am
I’m looking for an audio file for Download of the Mayor Ray Nagin on local radio station WWL-AM. There is steaming audio of it on CNN.com ‘get off your asses’ about 12 minutes, well said and some good points throughout.
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:33 am
Prong the first: You’re right to dismiss this one. Eco freaks will blame a stinky fart on ecological disaster, and like so many of their arguments, it’s merely speculative. Furthermore, as a person critical of just about everything Bush has done, I think that his questioning of the conclusions of ecologists is appropriate. It’ OK to do this, and it’s also OK to call ecologists out on having a political agenda, and it’s appropriate to call them out on stifiling any real dialogue on the matter. They seem just slightly less full of shit as those representing the energy industry, but still full of shit and absolutely unwilling to be objective about the issue, rather, they tend to be emotionally charged and angry without willing to consider anything other than their way. (Yeah, once again, I think that both sides of this debate deserve to be damned).
…Finding for global warming as the causation of the hurricane is as specious an argument as claiming that this is gods wrath for our sinful western ways.
Prong the second: I heard Bush say something that nobody ever anticipated that the levees would break. What a bunch of utter horse shit. I’ve been hearing about concerns with the complex levee system in New Orleans for over a year…and I’m just some uninformed opinionated schmuck! Granted it was on NPR, which is not the news that Bush pays any attention to, those liberal bastards!
I am really curious though about the 9/11 thing (and this is not one of those cliched comparisons to 9/11 or fascism). In the 9/11 report, it was (basically) said that nobody ever imagined that such an act could take place and it wasn’t really anyone’s fault per se. Was it bullshit there too? Or maybe if the excuse worked once, it can be used over and over again.
I will say, however, that FEMA deserves a great big black eye for this one. I saw the director of FEMA on the news last night, responsing to the criticism that there weren’t helicopters dropping palettes of food and water on people. He said that they didn’t understand the extent of the situation until yesterday. This strikes me as particularly lame, since we’ve only been watching it on the news over the past week. Does the federal government not respond to news reports in a disaster situation? Do they not subscribe to telecommunications? Perhaps the horseback rider that was dispatched on Monday evening just arrived in Washington on Thursday afternoon to explain to FEMA that there was, in fact, a disaster — and further, that people were actually dying.
I understand the the federal government works slowly, but seriously FEMA — you’re bogarting that joint and I want a hit off of that shit.
Finally, on your second prong, IIRC, Bush doesn’t control the budget. He only has veto power over the whole budget, and issues basic guidelines. He didn’t say “Fuck those New Orleans fuckers, let’s take away their funding and see if they keep showing their tits on Mardi Gras!” IMO, he did the right thing to tell congress to cut spending growth. (That’s right, we’re still spending more.) At this point, I’m fairly certain that a multi-million dollar study on the levees would have accomplished a thing. Remember that the budget was just passed last month, and it’s a federal study — so the study would not have even begun by the time the hurricane hit. Still, I’m sure that many will say that it’s the principle of the thing. I see the point, and understand. However, as it stands, it still would not have made an iota of a difference.
Prong the third: Ya, I’m with you there all the way. He sorta fucked us on that one on so many different levels. I wonder why there aren’t enough national guard to go around in the Gulf. What a dick.
Prong the forth: I’m going to come off sounding like a Bush apologist after this, and I’m not…but I actually think that Bush has some solid leadership qualities. The problem is (and this is totally semantic at this point), he’s a really shitty manager. Sometimes leadership and management qualities conflict, and they always need to be balanced out. Leadership would be his ra-ra’ing and unbending dedication to his ideals and principles. Whether or not I agree with his ideals, his devotion to them is actually a strong leadership quality. The problem is that they get in the way of our progress. A good manager would realize that these need to be balanced , and think about work through issues with measured pragmatism. Bush is about as pragmatic as Pat Robertson. A good president has both leadership and management. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that Bush belongs in the White House, except maybe in a special wing, sitting atop a dunking pool with a huge target for people to throw softballs at.
I think that a major part of the issue is that many of these people are poor and/or black. It’s not a major conspiracy against poor or black people, however. The problem may be one of influence. There are fewer powerful/influential people that cover the backs of the people of the Mississippi delta than, say, those of southern Florida. For this reason, the governmental response is measurably slower than it would be in other parts of the country. It’s a real bummer too. Bureaucracy eats ass.
Damn, I’m distractable on a Friday morning before a long weekend. Back to work for my soapbox talkin’ ass.
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:38 am
I don’t want to play the blame game either but, wait a minute, yes I do.
Bush magnanimously cut short his vacation to deal with the horrible disaster in New Orleans. Of course, he was seen on Tuesday eating cake and abusing a nice guitar.
While saying he would do everything in his power to help, he conveniently forgot to mention his own actions which have helped make this event inevitable.
Despite warnings in early 2001 from his own Federal Emergency Management Agency, that New Orleans was “likely” to be destroyed by a well-placed hurricane, Bush not only did not act, he did his best to scuttle the programs in place to solve the problems.
He cut funding to the Army Corps of Engineers by 44 per cent in the New Orleans area and wanted further cuts for 2006. Where did the money go? Iraq, of course.
Bush has also seriously diluted the power of the National Guard by using them instead of the regular army who are also strained to the breaking-point. While spending $8 billion per month in Iraq, the funds needed to protect New Orleans represented a few hours of warfare and were denied by Bush and the Republican Congress.
Despite warnings from environmentalists that destroying wetlands along the Gulf coast increases the damage from storm surges, Bush not only refused to act, but over his term in office he has opened up more wetlands to his developer friends, further increasing the danger.
Mississippi has been decimated well inland, in part because of the erosion of wetlands.
When will this dangerous, incompetent and foolish leader face impeachment?
And don’t kid yourself, if there was a Dem in the White House the right would be all over this.
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:44 am
I meant to say global warming instead of ecological disaster, but I suppose it falls under the category of ecological disaster.
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:49 am
This link purports to be the Nagin interview: http://www.atypical.net/mm/nagin.mp3 .
Update: And this page has the bittorrent feed: http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3377957 .
September 2nd, 2005 at 9:31 am
Maybe this is old news. But there was a movie called Oilstorm released on FX in June that is basiclly this same scenario.
http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/oilstorm/main.html
read synopsis.
September 2nd, 2005 at 9:51 pm
Well a least Dumbya has a killer tan, dude! The fuckhead looks good.
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:17 pm
Okay, I live in Pensacola, Florida. Last September we were hit with Ivan. If you look at Pensacola Hurricane History or hurricane history in general you will find that hurricanes are cyclical. The Spanish founded a settlement in Pensacola in 1559. Unfortunately hurricane after hurricane hit Pensacola and they left. So officially Pensacola did not become a city until 1822. My point is global warming has nothing to do with hurricanes. In fact if you take an Undergraduate Senior Level course in biogeography you will discover that global warming is hype and myth. The earth is actually still cooling down after the “big bang.” However, if you look at a chart of the earth cooling down it looks like a sharply descending jagged line with sharp jagged peaks. We are in a peak right now, but the earth is still steadily cooling off.
As far as whose fault the disaster in New Orleans is, the fault is with the local city government of New Orleans and especially its bigot mayor. You’ll find that while he sympathizes with his own “people of color” he takes in money through his back pocket.
There is a saying in Ecclesiastes that there is a time for everything. Well, there is a time for partying, and there is also a time to use your brain. Unfortunately New Orleans hasn’t been using their brains for a real long time. I live about three hours from that city and everytime I’ve left that city in my rearview mirror I can’t help but think “What a doomed city….” If I were mayor of New Orleans I would have moved all residential areas out of below sea level ground. But hey, it’s all about partying and money. Meanwhile let’s keep the colored people down by not teaching them how to read. Because after all we don’t want them to ever expand their minds and learn what a hurricane is and that they’re living below sea level, because surely, if they ever found out about that they would’ve found some way out of the city. (sarcasm) ~Christina~
September 3rd, 2005 at 1:05 am
Also, those two pictures are misleading. If you’ll notice those pictures were taken on Tuesday, the day everyone started realizing that New Orleans was flooding. The storm didn’t stop until Monday evening. On Monday night the news was showing some partying going on in the French Quarter. Then by midday on Tuesday everyone started realizing that is was turning into a disaster. So, let the president play guitar to celebrate with the partying in the French Quarter. (sarcasm) And let me clarify….it is the local government of Louisiana that is responsible. When they fail then the feds are called in. That’s how it worked in Pensacola. Also, it seems you may have been exposed to the exaggeration of Michael Moore. When the President is in Texas his days are filled with staff meetings and speeches. He doesn’t really take “vacation” like the rest of use do. Try finding the article “59 Deceits in Fahreinheit 9/11” written by a Nader supporter and voter.
September 3rd, 2005 at 1:17 am
Also you gotta realize that FEMA was actually weakened by all those hurricanes last year that hit all but three counties in Florida.
September 3rd, 2005 at 1:21 am
Basically you’re a good writer, you make yourself sound like you know what you’re talking about. But you’re basically full of hot shit. And I would know because I’m from the area and I’m working on a doctorate degree.
But hey, you’re appropriate material for lies.com.
September 3rd, 2005 at 2:22 am
I didn’t realize it was possible to get a PhD in hot shit. I’m impressed. What is the subject of your dissertation?
September 3rd, 2005 at 6:22 am
cjh21799 has demonstrated how the racist white man (and woman) on the right is spinning this tragedy. Blame the black man for not leaving, with out taking into concideration that many of them had no money. Sure, they were asked to leave, but there was no plan to evacuate them. There was no place for many of them to go.
Amazing how she focuses one prong of jbcs argument that jbc even says isn’t relevent: global warming. She ignores the rest of his “prongs”, then tries to spin it off to being the black mayors fault, or even Michael Moore’s fault! Bush supporters will no doubt pass the buck of responsibility onto any democrat they can, while accusing us of playing partisan politics by rightfully holding the president of our country accountable.
Four years after 9/11, it is inexcusable for it to take four days to get aid to the people of New Orleans, and I’m disgusted by any I’ve heard. What has the Bush adminstration been doing for the last 4 years, aside from securing the oil field in Iraq? And now it’s been proven: our country, my family is less safe because of this president.
What I hope happens is that the African American community and its leaders come together to call these racists on their bullshit. While I don’t think race played a factor in it taking so long to get them aid, I’m sure there are plenty of Bush supporters sitting back in their living rooms who don’t care because of that. But they’ll be able to successfully make the case that this is Bush’s responsibility. The buck stops at the White House. Bush supporters won’t be able to make their “partisan politics” accusations. If they try to spin it, they’ll be revealed for what they are: racist.
September 3rd, 2005 at 8:07 am
Guess what? I’m not racist and I have many friends who are of color and I myself am of color. If you had read what I wrote with your brain (called thinking) you would have realized that what I was saying is that that bigot mayor has done nothing to educate those people. Education is the key to anything including your one sided view. Amazingly my PhD is in education. Is it possible for a partially black woman to be racist against her own people????? That mayor took money into his pocket and shipped out 400 tourists from the Hyatt which was across from his office. Paraded them around the dead and dying at the superdome and let the tourists out first. Don’t you think that’s a little evil? Don’t you think he’s showing signs of racism???? And he has the nerve to try to cover up his lazy ass by accusing other people of being lazy. I mentioned the stuff about global warming because you guys talk about it like there is global warming which there is not. That was my point! Use your brain please! I noticed you made no comment about my observation about FEMA and the misleading photos.
September 3rd, 2005 at 10:58 am
Once again people like the above refuse to hold this government accountable for anything. What are you getting your doctorate in, ignornace?
Here is article that demonstartes the disconnect beteween whats is being said by trumpeting officials on TV, and what is/was actually happening on the ground:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina.response/index.html
Also, maybe you could use your education to navigate to your own government’s website that shows the earths climate is warming, and has been for years. Debate the cause of it all you want, but the fact is the planet is warming, period. Icecaps don’t melt if it gets colder, did you miss that class?
Finally, if you think a 5,6,7 day response to a disaster they knew was coming is satisfactory for a government that has supposedly invested billions of dollars in preparing for terrorists attacks, that I want to know the school where you got your education, because I want to make sure my children never go there!
Maybe it’s in the la la land of the evertythings peachy keen world of the Bush administration?
September 3rd, 2005 at 10:59 am
Sorry for my sloppy writing, I just woke up and that moron really got me going.
September 3rd, 2005 at 3:24 pm
cjh21799: I’m glad you are not a racist. I know you to pass such a judgement. As to whether a person who is black or “partially black” can be a racist, you answered that question for yourself when you called the mayor of New Orleans a bigot. But if there is one thing that is clear about this disaster, race was definately a factor in who got out and who stayed. One of the realities of George Bush’s America that needs addressing.
I don’t know much about the mayor of New Orleans myself, but from what I’ve seen about him, he is the only politician showing any real emotions about what is happening. You are making some serious accusations about him, and if true then he should be held accountable. How about some proof. What evidence do you have of your statements about the mayor?
As to who to blame, I’m sure there is plenty of that to spread around. But to blaming the local governments of Louisiana and New Orleans for our countries disaster relief failures is a cop out. Such a large undertaking can not be left to local governements, and needs to be taken care of at a national level.
As to me commenting on FEMA or the two photographs, I don’t see that you’ve made much of an observation of them to warrent comment. Perhaps you should follow jbcs link about how Bush has basically destroyed FEMA by cutting all its funding. As to the photographs, I don’t see how you can excuse Bush on that Tuesday he was visiting in sunny San Diego, rather than focusing on relief efforts. To say no one saw this coming is a lie, and to bring up Michael Moore just silly. Everyone who was paying attention saw it coming. I myself remember it in the news last year when a hurricane just missed New Orleans how devistating it would be if they took a hurricane head on. But did Bush let a little old thing like a hurricane ruin his vacation or his trip to San Diego? No. A photograph speaks a million words.
September 3rd, 2005 at 3:26 pm
In my first paragraph, I meant to say: I don’t know you to pass such judgement. Sorry.
September 3rd, 2005 at 3:37 pm
…and here I was, afraid that all this human suffering would pass without a) providing partisan hacks with political ammunition and b) providing RiseAgainst an opportunity establish his intellectual superiority, as well as work the term “fuckhead” into a “polite” conversation. At least all of this has been good for something.
September 3rd, 2005 at 6:05 pm
Alright you want to know about my education: I hold a B.A. in Anthropology/Archaeology, Art History and English from the University of West Florida……a very liberal college. I hold a M.S. in Information Systems from FSU and now I’m working on my doctorate first in History and Philosopshy of Education, then in International Education. By the way, I’ve been everywhere on this planet except parts of Africa. I lived for a year teaching in Istanbul. I lived for two years in Jordan working on archaeology. I spent a summer in Florence studying art. I speak Arabic, Spanish and French. I’m actually part Cherokee, African American, Irish, German, and who knows what else, but I’m dark skinned. If you walk into my bedroom my walls are covered in books. I read about three in a week. I think I know a little bit more about this earth than you guys. And who said I was for Bush? I didn’t vote for him. It’s funny how you took everything I said out of context. I’m just saying that out of all the southern states Mississippi is the worst in education and Louisiana follows up next. You can look up the stats yourself. Although Florida has sunk in the past 6-7 years. And whether you agree or not my opinion is that New Orleans cares about entertainment, jazz, and drinking and nothing else.
And let me tell you I have studied the biological earth and it’s stratigraphy and for the record there is no such thing as global warming. Read some biogeography textbooks and look at the graphs. I mentioned Michael Moore because he lies. And it seems like ya’ll have bought into it. But hey, I’m not coming back to this website so knock yourself out with you ignorance. And please start reading something reliable. Forget Michael Moore and Al Franken and all those nuts. They will lead you astray. And let me just say….America is still the best country on earth…I’ve seen it firsthand.
September 3rd, 2005 at 6:18 pm
Also I clearly stated that everyone saw it coming…didn’t I say I knew New Orleans was doomed everytime I left that city??? Fema ran out of money because of all the Floridians who went through all those hurricanes last year. In fact they still owe some of my friends money from last year, which they have avoided paying thus far. I reiterate LOCAL GOVERNMENT is supposed to plan the disaster relief….then the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is called in if the local has failed. As we saw in New Orleans no one had a plan…..
If you get the transcript from Bill O’Reilly’s Friday night show, Shepard Smith reports about the Hyatt incident and everyone knows that he takes money for favors.
Do you understand sarcastic writing???
September 4th, 2005 at 10:30 pm
Also about global warming: So if I’m understanding you the earth can never freeze again….is that what you’re saying? Have you ever studied all the eras of the earth???? Haven’t you noticed that over periods of 15,000, 30,000, and 45,0000 years the earths temp flip flops???? So the icecaps are melting…in the history of the earth that is completely normal. I assure you..we’re due for another iceage. And we’re actually due for the poles to change in our lifetime. North is going to become South. The magnetic fields are changing. And the earth wobbles on its axis with thousands of years of time….which causes temp change. Okay, that’s my last comment. Hope you read it. And I hope you take a class on this…and your eyes will be opened.
September 4th, 2005 at 10:32 pm
By the way to gather my worldwide travel money I work at The Home Depot on the weekends. I’ve checked out tons of New Orleans refugees and I’ve asked them their opinion of their mayor. Guess what the majority of them say: “He’s an asshole!”
September 5th, 2005 at 10:22 am
cjh – u must be a 20%er
20% of American’s think the Sun goes around the Earth
global warming is caused by the highest CO2 levels in eons (I mean that temporal stake in the sands of time literally) greenhouse gases mean anything to you?
please go back to your nice safe crysalis of insanity and half truths.
u freepers are just plain silly with this whole Bush can do no wrong, he has never made a mistake, he never will I think there is plenty of blame to go around (fire the moron in charge of FEMA, mb he can go back to his horse show gig? ooops he was fired from that one too)
put aside the partisan bs for a week or so, please? open your wallet and your home to help others in need. open your heart to other ideas, be not so swift to defend the powerful as they watch the pitiful die and suffer
WWJD? he sure as hell would not have invaded Iraq and he would have been down there handing out food and water and tending to the needy. He wouldn’t have waited for days and days to get his ass in gear like Preznit Fucktard. Too strong? How about Preznuts Failure?
September 5th, 2005 at 10:23 am
hmmm after the “he never will” bit there is supposed to be a HTML -like bit
anyways…
September 5th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
While it is true our earth has been through many cycles, it is ignorant to think we can continue polluting the planet without concequences (i.e. global warming). It is like a smoker who defends his habit by saying something is going to kill him in the end anyway, so why not smoke. It’s still not good for you, and it stinks.
September 5th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
Strange, I was fishing at the time. Does that make me a criminal? Let’s not be hasty in blaming Bush.
I would say the blame should be entirely on the State of LA and their committees.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:06 pm
For the record, I do not support Bush. But I do support blaming Ray who had no plan for his city. Watch him in interviews. He is a babbling idiot. And Enkidu I can tell you’ve never been to college which is sad. You know what is really wrong with this world and which is going to happen before “global warming”? Overpopulation. By the year 2050 at the rate of birth and death that is happening today we will have 10-14 billion people. That means mass war and famine on a global scale…America too. If everyone on the planet would have 2 or less kids everyone on the planet could live a middle class American life. Isn’t that something. Enkidu you should be banned from this site because you judge without knowing.
I’m the one with the education. And I’m telling you to expect another iceage in a few thousand years if we don’t have a nuclear war first. Also I am supporting refugees who have evacuated to my area.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:09 pm
By the way did you know Nagin switch his his party from Republican to Democrat in order to sway voters? Sounds pretty shallow to me.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:15 pm
Before his election, Nagin was a member of the Republican Party and had little political experience; he was a vice president and general manager at Cox Communications, a cable communications company and subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. Nagin did give donations periodically to candidates, namely President George W. Bush and former Republican U.S. Representative Billy Tauzin in 1999 and 2000, as well as to Democratic U.S. Senators John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston earlier in the decade.
Days before filing for the New Orleans Mayoral race in February 2002, Nagin switched his party registration to the Democratic Party, presumably in order to improve his chances of winning the race in heavily Democratic New Orleans. Shortly before the primary election, an endorsement praising Nagin as a reformer by Gambit Magazine gave him crucial momentum that would carry through for the primary election and runoff. In the first round of the crowded mayoral election in February 2002, Nagin received first place with 29% of the vote, against such opponents as Police Chief Richard Pennington, State Senator Paulette Irons, City Councilman Troy Carter and others. In the runoff with Pennington in May 2002, Nagin won with 59% of the vote. His campaign was largely self-financed.
Shortly after taking office, Nagin launched an anti-corruption campaign within city government, which included crackdowns on the city’s Taxicab Bureau and Utilities Department. Nagin made a controversial endorsement of current Republican U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal in the 2003 Louisiana Gubernatorial Runoff over current Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco and only reluctantly endorsed U.S. Senator John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential race.
Nagin received a B.S. degree in accounting from Tuskegee University in 1978 and an M.B.A. degree from Tulane University in 1994. He and his wife, Seletha Smith Nagin, have three children: Jeremy, Jarin, and Tianna.
September 6th, 2005 at 1:18 am
cjh – i see you are back troll
up yours – I was second in my class
not a junior kiddie college in east bf
go back to your freeper fantasyland
please
September 6th, 2005 at 7:08 am
Hey CJH.
Where did you copy and paste that last entry from, Dr.?
Leftbehind – Sorry if the term fuckhead rubs you the wrong way. I’ll try not to swear. Please note that I did not call anyone here that. I was calling Bush a fuckhead. Bush is a fuckhead.
A couple observations myslef,
a) I though Bush supporters might actually hold his administration accountable for a massive federal failure but they just won’t;and
b) You couldn’t offer anything to support your side in this “polite” debate so you tried to take a personal shot at me. That’s fine, I can take it.
You know, that’s typical right-wing thinking. Spin, spin, spin until it”s somebody else’s fault.
So far what we see from the view on the right on this thread is that its mine, the mayor of NO, and Michael Moore’s fault.
Blaming a local mayor for the failure of a federal response is ludacris and only further demonstrates you ignorance to the facts (the F in FEMA means Federal, I think maybe you don’t realize that).
Give your head a shake people.
September 6th, 2005 at 10:23 am
1) NAGIN DID NOT HAVE A PLAN. What’s a mayor supposed to do???? Party all day? I got his biography from some random site. Do a search and you can probably find something about his background. Took me 3 seconds.
2) I know the “F” in FEMA stands for federal. But do you understand what a bureacracy is? Bureacracies always take a long time. I’ll repeat myself and say some of my friends are still waiting on FEMA checks from last year, because FEMA ran out of money because they had all of Florida (except a few counties) making claims at the same time.
3) Look at the tsunami. AT CHRISTMAS TIME when people are out of town visiting with relatives it took the u.s. 1 to 2 weeks to get to the tsunami disaster. Wow! How slow! Nagin himself said he didn’t get a hold of anybody till Tuesday night….which he said in an MSNBC interview where he dodged all the questions. The U.S. got to New Orleans in full mass on Friday….three days after everyone realized New Orleans was drowning. In the meantime you have all the interstates covered in water, you don’t have enough helicopters in the area to scramble-they have to come from up north. The governor should have had the national guard in New Orleans before the storm struck, but she failed to.
4) Bush does not deserve all the blame.
5) When I’m writing out of my head….I’m writing from experience. I’m not going to site sources on a blog.
September 6th, 2005 at 10:50 am
Well, then the people doing you the favor of reading what you have to say are going to assume (rightly) that the only authority you’re offering is your own say-so. Which, in all honesty, isn’t much.
I realize that you believe you’re an authority on these matters. You’ve cited your education as showing that you have a better handle on things than those who disagree with you. You wrote this, for example:
But even if we take your statements about your education at face value (and why should we do that?), this is what your education amounts to:
So, please explain for me how the courses you took at the University of West Florida in Anthropology/Archaeology, Art History, and English (Brief aside: That’s a major? It sounds like three. Should we assume that you have, in essence, 1/3 of the education in each of those areas as someone who actually majored in one of those?), and your masters courses in information systems at FSU, and your unspecified amount of doctorate work in education at an unnamed institution, confers any authority on you at all as an expert in subjects like meteorology and climate, disaster recovery, and government.
And you’ve lived in the South. Cool. But again, it doesn’t, in and of itself, make you any kind of authority that others are going to defer to.
Basically, you come to this discussion with your own opinions. Which is fine. So does everybody else. But if you want people to take you seriously, then you’re going to have to do better than citing your Art History classes at the University of Western Florida. Frankly, I (and probably most of the other participants in this discussion) don’t care where you went to school or what you studied. If you can’t support your position with a logical argument and evidence (preferably, evidence we can independently evaluate, like links to relevant documentation), your trying to bolster your authority by citing the fact that you’re working on a PhD (in something, somewhere) actually works against you, rather than for you.
September 6th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
I would like to add that the writers excessive use of the ? character when asking questions puts a lot of doubt in mind that the writer is as educated as they would have us believe. Just a personal observation.
September 6th, 2005 at 1:00 pm
Hey! Because I am working on a PhD at FSU I don’t have time to cite my arguments. This website is for amusement. Those question marks are rhetorical. Writers use them to get their readers to think and also for sarcastic purposes. Also, this writing is not professional, its entertainment for me. Also my B.A. degree is triple interdisciplinary. But I also included in my background that I read 3 books a week and travel extensively which should count as part of my education. UWF was an awesome school. In fact the Princeton Review rated it as a best southeastern college. Also UWF beats out Harvard in that it offers both terrestrial and maritime archaeology. I think its considered third in archaeology in the U.S. behind Texas A&M. And FSU speaks for itself. So basically I don’t have time to make this website a career. It’s for fun….and maybe if you don’t take everything I say out of context and really analyze it you could learn something. And I gave you my background so you could know where I’m coming from culturally and ethnically.
September 6th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
The best thing about learning is that learning never stops. The thing about institutionalized education is that you take specified courses. But that doesn’t mean that’s all you know and all you can learn. Because I am an avid reader and I take in things on a genius sponge-like level I know more than what my degrees will reflect on my resume. And I’ve actually had field experience in Archaeology. I’ve actually been to Florence. I’ve actually lived in two Muslim cultures. So yeah, my degrees do not say much about what I actually know. But when you have people on this website who obviously cannot write and make false accusations I have a hard time believeing they have an education. My hot shit comment was out of line. But you angered me. Because people outside of the hurricane zone don’t really know what it’s like. If you ask me: Nagin should be held ultimately responsible (because he did absolutely nothing to prepare his city), the governor, of course, is responsible, and Bush is responsible, but Bush should not be responsible for the whole thing. We live in the United States – all individual states with our own governments that are responsible. And we rely on the bigger governement to help out when a state can’t handle it.
September 6th, 2005 at 8:06 pm
So where did I get my information about global warming? How can I possibly know about meteorology and climate? Well here is an example of a course I took at UWF called Biogeography. Class make-up: about 6 juniors, 10-15 seniors, and 7 graduate students. Method of learning: lectures made up 50% of the material, graduate student presentations made up 20%, hundreds of handouts, charts, graphs, maps, taxonomic lists, etc., made up another 20%. And the rest came from a textbook, which was not a great book because there is no great book out right now about Biogeography. It skims the surface. Topics we covered: Biology and the Hierarchies of Life, Physical Geography and the Functioning of the Earth, Interacting Physical Controls on Geographic Distributions, Environmental Gradients and Species’ Niches, Predation, Competition, Symbiosis, Combined Physical and Biological Controls on Distribution, Changing Continents and Climates, Dispesal Colonization and Invasion, ETC. I’m not going to list everything. And that’s just from the syllabus. In the last class of the semester we talked about overpopulation which is a more immediate concern, than is global warming. Because the Earth is continually wobbling on its axis, the sun doesn’t always hit the earth the same way. But you gotta realize that it takes time and time is what we have so far. How can I possibly know about disaster relief? Because I’ve lived through a disaster. How can I know about government….because I’m constantly reading.
September 6th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
http://www.populationconnection.org
September 6th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
cjh: “5) When I’m writing out of my head….I’m writing from experience. I’m not going to site sources on a blog.”
Wow. Do you write for wikipedia, or have you been plagiarizing your way through college?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Nagin
September 7th, 2005 at 3:55 am
Uh….no. Like I told you in one of my above posts, I did a search and picked a random site and posted it here for Nagin’s biography……Please learn to read!
September 7th, 2005 at 3:57 am
But I’m glad you found what an incompetent man he is…..TRUTH!!!!
September 7th, 2005 at 4:05 am
Also, did you know professors now scan papers into a program which searches the web for plagiarism? You can’t get through school with plagiarism. Also, everybody has their own style. Dunces can pick it out. I’ve won first place and 700 bucks in two writing contests. And I’ve placed in every competition since I was in 2nd grade.
I KNOW HOW TO WRITE. Stop taking cheap digs.
September 7th, 2005 at 5:02 am
If you had bothered to read the whole post where you took what I wrote out of context you would have read this (particularly the part about how I found his biography):
cjh21799 Says:
September 6th, 2005 at 10:23 am
1) NAGIN DID NOT HAVE A PLAN. What’s a mayor supposed to do???? Party all day? I got his biography from some random site. Do a search and you can probably find something about his background. Took me 3 seconds.
And it probably took you 3 seconds. Not hard.
5) When I’m writing out of my head….I’m writing from experience. I’m not going to site sources on a blog.
I know I misspelled site = cite.
September 7th, 2005 at 5:03 am
I didn’t expect you’d believe I wrote that biography……:)
September 7th, 2005 at 8:36 am
I think Sven caught you red handed.
September 7th, 2005 at 9:21 am
Actually he didn’t. I was honest and told him I did a search and he could do it too in 3 seconds. Did you read that? The reason why I don’t put links is because I don’t do much internet reading. I read books. I could try to scan some books for you guys but how could I choose out of the nearly thousand that I have. Both of you, RiseAgainst and Sven, if ya’ll are male – I’d like to have dinner with you two. Ya’ll remind me of my boyfriend who is a die hard democrat. We get in knock down arguments over dinner. Then I take him into my room and point out some passages to him and then he starts babbling like an idiot and then gets angry and says “Get on the Bed Bitch!” I guess to try to rouse up his manly power. Then we have angry sex. Is that too conservative for you guys? Well, hey it’s been fun….but since I’m not a proper blogger I think I’ll quit and leave ya’ll alone. Au Revoir! And I’m going to try not coming back because everything you say incenses me to reply……..:)
September 7th, 2005 at 11:10 am
Wow…what a total poop-slinging assfest.
Here’s the score so far as I see it: cjh has a few points that I think are pretty valid, but is totally pompous in her presentation, and thinks that her education allows her opinions to outweigh everyone else’s (and doesn’t want to cite her references). Education doesn’t make for a smart person — it just helps. Even a jackass like GW Bush can have a degree from a top-notch institution and still emerge a total putz. Further, she’s unable to put a coherent thought into a single post (lies.com really needs a preview button) and wasn’t all that smart to start ripping into JBC (whose friends all post here…of course they’d rush to his side).
Was it a troll? Was it for real? I dunno.
In any case, if you cut through the flamewar crap, cjh had a few rational points. Too bad it was all too incensed in flamewar to have a reasonable discussion about it. Lameness all around.
September 7th, 2005 at 11:56 am
Yes, JBC is very nice and fair and writes well. His last post was very fair. Unlike the first guy who mistakenly called me a “white racist woman” and accused me of supporting Bush without knowing who I was and where I come from. That’s what got my goose. How shallow and judgemental.
September 7th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
To further highlight the ineptness of FEMA, under Brown’s leadership…
Since Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, more than 90 countries and international organizations have offered to assist in recovery efforts for the flood-stricken region, but nearly all endeavors remained mired yesterday in bureaucratic entanglements — in most cases, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
In Germany, a massive telecommunication system and two technicians await the green light to fly to Louisiana, after its donors spent four days searching for someone willing to accept the gift.
“FEMA? That was a lost cause,” said Mirit Hemy, an executive with the Netherlands-based New Skies Satellite, who made the phone calls. “We got zero help, and we lost one week trying to get hold of them.”
For the full story…
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
September 7th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
WTF does anyone’s angry sex have to do with any of this?
For the record, CJH did raise some good points but they were totally overshadowed by some of these ridiculous postings that came after. I guess I started thinking you were a troll because of that and stopped taking you seriously.
So…. tell me more about this angry sex…lol j/k!!
September 7th, 2005 at 1:38 pm
just trying to make someone laugh…and my boyfriend is ridiculous, but hey I kind of like to be dominated. (And please don’t think that has anything to do with my intelligence.)
September 7th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
and I do have a problem with being proud….sorry
September 7th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
Scene from the bedroom:
He screams “Crazy Bush Lover!”
And I’m like “No,no,no,no you’re the bush lover!!! Ah YES!”
hahahahhahah….I love dating a liberal guy……..
September 7th, 2005 at 4:30 pm
Too much information…
September 7th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
Hey JBC, I’ve been reading some of your stuff on God. The driving question of my life is “Did God create the brain or did the brain create God?” That’s how I got into archaeology and evolution and earth cycles and all that. There is an intriguing book called Food of the Gods by Terrence McKenna. It deals with the evidence of plant effects on human development, particularly the era where you find the beginnings of art and ceremonial burial. Right before that era the fossil record shows an enormous jump in brain matter, suggesting that religion came with the expansion of the brain. Of course that corresponds with Adam and Eve’s story of the pursuit of knowledge. Figuratively. Don’t you find it funny that God cursed Eve with pain in childbirth and it turns out that the reason women have pain in childbirth is because the human head at birth is bigger than the pelvis bone. Big head = knowledge. I think McKenna actually called the Old Testament story “the first drug bust in history.” I also find it funny that God commanded Adam and Eve to “wax and multiply” and that is what’s cursing our planet today….too many people waxing and multiplying. You’d find McKenna’s book interesting. My question for you is…do you have a biography of yourself on here? What religious persuasion are you of? From some of your writing I gather that you might be a gnostic christian from the purest form of christianity……but you always leave me wondering….
September 7th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
I love Richard Dawkins, not because I agree with him….but because his writing is interesting. I have all his books.
September 7th, 2005 at 8:21 pm
cjh:
You’ve been boldly claiming to be more intelligent than anyone else here. I see that as being judgemental and shallow on your part.
I don’t believe I ever specifically called you said you a racist, although I’ll admit I implied it. You began your posts here insinuating that the people of New Orleans were too stupid to get out of the way of Katrina. You even went so far as to say that the 20% of people who believe the earth is flat must all live there. Knowing that the majority of the people left behind in New Orleans were African American, these statements of yours could easily be interpreted as racist. These are the same kind of arguments I’d expect from Bill O’Reilly, and you even cited him as a source to some piece of information of yours. But as I stated previously, I do not know you well enough to pass such judgement. If I didn’t make it clear enough before, I apologize, and I’m glad to hear you’re not a racist.
September 8th, 2005 at 4:05 am
In the first post that I wrote I was being sarcastic about the education of the people of New Orleans, because Louisiana has a crappy education system. I was implying that it was the government’s fault for not educating those people. And I was being sarcastic towards Enkidu, who I think is the stupidest person on here because he/she keeps repeating that 20% of Americans believe that the Sun goes around the earth. So I made the snide remark that those 20% live in New Orleans….sarcastically – because the government has let them down on education. I don’t think the people of New Orleans are stupid, I think they’ve been left in the dark, and I think the mayor and the governor of Louisiana bear a lot of responsibility. Read my comment “Meanwhile, let’s keep the colored people down by not teaching them how to read.” I was pretending to be the mayor.
September 8th, 2005 at 4:09 am
I cited Shepard Smith who witnessed the Hyatt incident who as on O’Reilly’s show.
September 8th, 2005 at 9:10 am
Here is an excerpt from today’s Sept. 8 edition of USAToday from an article entitled “Mayor worries FEMA overlooking lesser-hit coastal city of Pascagoula”:
“Right now, our biggest problem is FEMA and getting the FEMA trailers in” to house the homeless, said Avara, sworn in two months ago and now forced to run his government from a city maintenance building.
Avara said he fears that FEMA’s resources were exhausted by Hurrican Ivan last year. “I know a lot of the trailers are still in use in Alabama and Florida,” he said.
It’s not like FEMA was at a pristine operating level ready to move in to New Orleans. They were already stressed because of last year. I think it took the feds two days to make in to P’cola and we were not flooded out except for the beaches and downtown P’cola and the bay areas.
September 8th, 2005 at 11:48 am
Re: “Did God create the brain or did the brain create God”?
I really like that. Is that a phrase you came up with or did you read it somehwhere?
I’m not going to pretend I know the answer to that, but my opinion would definitely be the brain created God. But I really like how that question is posed, it’s a simple question about a complex subject.
I personally feel that the bible was the first fairy tale ever written and jesus was the first magician and master of illusion.