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Post by Jeff on Sept 3, 2005 19:40:57 GMT -5
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Post by luceph on Sept 4, 2005 6:53:14 GMT -5
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Post by amanda mcbride on Sept 6, 2005 6:50:53 GMT -5
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Post by tammy on Sept 6, 2005 8:40:41 GMT -5
All of our leader are on drugs, and not the right ones.
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Post by Tyler on Sept 6, 2005 9:21:59 GMT -5
Let them eat cake.
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Post by Jeff on Sept 6, 2005 10:03:09 GMT -5
As Bill Maher said on Friday: The difference between Bush and Marie Antoinette is that Marie actually had some cake.
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Post by amanda mcbride on Sept 6, 2005 22:02:02 GMT -5
From America's Finest News Source (www.theonion.com):
Bush Urges Victims To Gnaw On Bootstraps For Sustenance
WASHINGTON, DC—In an emergency White House address Sunday, President Bush urged all people dying from several days without food and water in New Orleans to "tap into the American entrepreneurial spirit" and gnaw on their own bootstraps for sustenance. "Government handouts are not the answer," Bush said. "I believe in smaller government, which is why I have drastically cut welfare and levee upkeep. I encourage you poor folks to fill yourself up on your own bootstraps. Buckle down, and tear at them like a starving animal." Responding to reports that many Katrina survivors have lost everything in the disaster, Bush said, "Only when you work hard and chew desperately on your own footwear can you live the American dream."
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Post by amanda mcbride on Sept 7, 2005 7:05:33 GMT -5
www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/07/katrina.congress/index.htmlDeLay countered that assessment later in a news conference by saying that the onus for responding to emergencies fell to local officials. "It's the local officials trying to handle the problem. When they can't handle the problem, they go to the state, and the state does what they can to, and if they need assistance from FEMA and the federal government they ask for it and it's delivered," DeLay said. He added that Alabama and Mississippi did a much better job of responding quickly than Louisiana. Alabama and Mississippi have Republican governors.
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Post by Jeff on Sept 8, 2005 23:50:07 GMT -5
www.slate.com/?id=2125812&nav=tap2/Reprint: An Imperfect Storm How race shaped Bush's response to Katrina. By Jacob Weisberg Posted Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005, at 12:59 PM PT With the exception of Secretary of State Condi Rice, nearly every black person I've seen quoted in the press or on television—and most every white liberal—believes that African-Americans suffered disproportionately from government neglect in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Those being pulled from waist-deep corpse water sometimes put the case much more bluntly. But what is the evidence that race itself—as opposed to such determinants as poverty, bad luck, geography, bureaucratic incompetence, and daunting logistics—deepened the misery of African-Americans in New Orleans? In that city, as in many others, blacks as a group were more prey to harm of many sorts because of the historic legacy of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. But those who, like me, think race was a factor in other ways as well ought to be able to give some account of how racial bias made the catastrophe worse. At the heart of the matter is the racial pattern of American constituency politics. I don't think Kanye West can support his view that George W. Bush just doesn't care about black people. But it's a demonstrable matter of fact that Bush doesn't care much about black votes. And that, in the end, may amount to the same thing. Blacks as a group have voted Democratic since the 1930s. The GOP has not courted them in any real way since the 1960s, focusing instead on attracting white constituencies hostile to civil rights and African-Americans in general. Even many conservatives now accept blame for this ugly, recent history. In July, Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, apologized to the NAACP for those in his party he said had been "looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization." Yet the underlying racial dynamic of party politics hasn't changed at all under Mehlman's boss. Though he appointed the first and the second African-American secretaries of state, Bush seldom appears before black audiences. Beyond his interest in education, he has little to say about issues of social and urban policy. Bush has never articulated an approach, other than faith-based platitudes and tax cuts, to bettering the lives of African-Americans. And indeed, has not bettered them. The percentage of blacks living in poverty, which diminished from 33 percent to less than 23 percent during the Clinton years, has been rising again under Bush. In 2000, Bush got 8 percent of the black vote. In 2004, he got 11 percent. Because African-Americans constitute only 12 percent of the population, it's possible for Republicans to neglect them and still win elections. Indeed, as Mehlman indicated, neglecting them has often helped Republicans win. Because they don't see blacks as a current or potential constituency, Bush and his fellow Republicans do not respond out of the instinct of self-interest when dealing with their concerns. Helping low-income blacks is a matter of charity to them, not necessity. The condescension in their attitude intensifies when it comes to New Orleans, which is 67 percent black and largely irrelevant to GOP political ambitions. Cities with large African-American population that happen to be in important swing states may command some of Karl Rove's respect as election time approaches. But Louisiana is small (9 electoral votes) and not much of a swinger these days. In 2004, Bush carried it by a 57-42 margin. If Bush and Rove didn't experience the spontaneous political reflex to help New Orleans, it may be because they don't think of New Orleans as a place that helps them. Considered in this light, the actions and inactions now being picked apart are readily explicable. The president drastically reduced budget requests from the Army Corps of Engineers to strengthen the levees around New Orleans because there was no effective pressure on him to agree. When the levees broke on Tuesday, Aug. 30, no urge from the political gut overrode his natural instinct to spend another day vacationing at his ranch. When Bush finally got himself to the Gulf Coast three days later, he did his hugging in Biloxi, Miss., which is 71 percent white, with a mayor, governor, and two senators who are all Republicans. Bush's memorable comments were about rebuilding Sen. Trent Lott's porch and about how he used to enjoy getting hammered in New Orleans. Only when a firestorm of criticism and political damage broke out over the federal government's callousness did Bush open his eyes to black suffering. Had the residents of New Orleans been white Republicans in a state that mattered politically, instead of poor blacks in city that didn't, Bush's response surely would have been different. Compare what happened when hurricanes Charley and Frances hit Florida in 2004. Though the damage from those storms was negligible in relation to Katrina's, the reaction from the White House was instinctive, rapid, and generous to the point of profligacy. Bush visited hurricane victims four times in six weeks and delivered relief checks personally. Michael Brown of FEMA, now widely regarded as an incompetent political hack, was so responsive that local officials praised the agency's performance. The kind of constituency politics that results in a big life-preserver for whites in Florida and a tiny one for blacks in Louisiana may not be racist by design or intent. But the inevitable result is clear racial discrimination. It won't change when Republicans care more about blacks. It will change when they have more reason to care.
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Post by Jeff on Sept 9, 2005 7:57:29 GMT -5
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Post by Jeff on Sept 9, 2005 8:25:31 GMT -5
I like this one a lot.  |
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Post by rickus on Sept 9, 2005 8:55:39 GMT -5
I think I'd like it more if it weren't so true.
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Post by luceph on Sept 9, 2005 9:52:10 GMT -5
It's not true though. There are many reasons why Katrina killed so many people and why everything got so proper fucked up. The state government of Louisiana is among the most corrupt in the nation. Same for the city government of New Orleans. There was no real plan for evacuating the 150,000 people that were too poor to leave the city. Billions of dollars that were meant to help Louisiana were redirected to other things such as the Iraq war and pork projects in LA that don't really help anyone but aid politicians in getting re-elected. There was the lack of National Guard, since a large number of them are deployed in Iraq. There is the complete and utter incompetence of the new head of FEMA. There is the weakness of the president after the hurricane hit and his reluctance to end his vacation early despite the fact that people were dying. There is the fact that most of New Orleans is poor and those poor people lived in mostly concentrated areas that sit below sea level, are most likely to flood and least likely to be evacuated. There is the fact that 40,000 people were told to go to the Superdome to be evacuated and the buses never came for them. There are many other facts that led to this tragedy, without even getting into the ridiculous such as weather patterns, but tax cuts did not destroy the Gulf Coast, tax cuts did not kill up to 50,000 people in New Orleans. I am not a fan of the tax cuts at all, at all, but tax cuts did not do this and in my opinion the comic was stupid.
man I'm in a pissy mood today.
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Post by Jeff on Sept 9, 2005 13:54:09 GMT -5
1. Katrina Preparations, Response Saw Failure at ‘Every Level’ newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=2341 Hugh Kaufman, a policy analyst and investigator with the Environmental Protection Agency, said that throughout the Gulf Coast region, "rather than beefing up, over the last four or five years, the protections for that area, they were diminished substantially… for the Iraq War, tax cuts for the upper brackets, etc." 2. Come flood or fire, tax cuts for rich flow on www.nj.com/columns/ledger/moran/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1126243804213830.xml&coll=1"Last year we went from $105 million to $40 million in spending to protect the soup bowl of New Orleans," Corzine says. "You can do that kind of thing to fund high-end tax cuts, but you're going to end up paying the piper at some point." 3. Conflict in Congress: Katrina and tax cuts www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-vpcoc4413274sep06,0,7015875.column?coll=ny-news-columnists "Enough of the tax cuts that have drained the public treasury so that chief executives can enlarge their beach houses, while flood-control projects for New Orleans are cut. Enough of paying for wars overseas by piling up debt at home and diverting money from the very same environmental projects that local officials in the gulf states were counting on to improve those problematic levees and to address persistent predictions about the Big One." Etc... (Related) 1. US Republicans say hurricane won't stop budget cuts today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=URI:urn:newsml:reuters.com:20050907:MTFH68211_2005-09-07_21-22-45_N07195901:1The Democrats said that budget plan "would likely cut programs that many victims of Hurricane Katrina will be relying on" and asked that it be suspended "indefinitely." 2. Clark links tax cuts and New Orleans (New Zealand!) www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3402095a11,00.html Etc… Many argue that tax cutting played some role in our inadequate response to the disaster. Of course, it is not the only, or perhaps even the main, factor. Would you agree to that, Chad? Or do you argue that it is a red herring? Jeff |
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Post by Betterout on Sept 9, 2005 14:32:05 GMT -5
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Post by Guest Justin on Sept 9, 2005 15:45:23 GMT -5
This Brown guy is a real "brown guy," a term coined by Jeff in his shoulda-been-famous early 90s ode, On Shitting.
From Democracy Now (http://www.democracynow.org/):
Report: FEMA Head Fabricated Parts of Resume
More questions are being raised about the head of FEMA, Michael Brown. According to Time Magazine, Brown may have fabricated parts of his resume. Brown claimed that he worked in Edmond Oklahoma as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." In fact he was an administrative assistant to the city manager. One city official said he was essentially an intern. Brown also claimed that he was once the Director of Christian nursing facility in Oklahoma. But an administrator at the facility told Time that Brown was "not a person that anyone here is familiar with." In addition Brown claims on his resume that he won a prize for being "Outstanding Political Science Professor" at Central State University. But according to an official at the school, Brown "wasn't a professor here, he was only a student." Time reports these revelations raise new questions about how rigorously the White House vetted Brown before putting him in charge of FEMA. Most of his work experience prior to joining FEMA dealt with horses. He worked as the head of the International Arabian Horse Association for 11 years. He became the head of FEMA two years ago replacing his college friend, Joe Allbaugh.
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Post by rick on Sept 9, 2005 16:54:23 GMT -5
Makes Oklahomans look real good.  |
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Post by Jeff on Sept 9, 2005 18:42:50 GMT -5
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Post by Tyler on Sept 10, 2005 19:45:05 GMT -5
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Post by amanda on Sept 10, 2005 22:25:52 GMT -5
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