Death by Arrogance
Happy Friday.
George W. Bush, a president who campaigned (based on his own vice-president’s representation) on the premise that electing John Kerry would threaten our nation’s security. George W. Bush, a president who campaigned on the promise that he could better protect America. George W. Bush, a president who insisted during the debates that he had not made a single mistake his first term in office. (Perhaps, just for the sake of humility and respect for those lost, he could have at least said, “I wish I had done more to prevent 9/11.”)
The current administration is so arrogant that it actually blamed people for not leaving New Orleans before the hurricane -- without any appreciation for the fact that many had nowhere to go and no way to get there.
Death by Arrogance: 9/11. Afghanistan. Iraq. Madrid. London. New Orleans.
Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, disgusted by events, shared this:
My friend Mike Rogers drafted an email as an outlet for his rage, from which I excerpt:
And it gets worse. The timeline of events surrounding the destruction defines an administration replete with arrogance leading to incompetence. Some lowlights:
Sunday, August 28 -- Katrina is upgraded to a category 5 hurricane.
AFTERNOON — BUSH, BROWN, CHERTOFF WARNED OF LEVEE FAILURE BY NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER DIRECTOR: Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center: “‘We were briefing them way before landfall. … It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped.’” [Times-Picayune; St. Petersburg Times]
Monday, August 29 -- New Orleans Mayor Nagin reports water is flowing over the levee.
MORNING — BUSH CALLS SECRETARY CHERTOFF TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION: “I spoke to Mike Chertoff today — he’s the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on — a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are.” [White House]
MORNING – BUSH SHARES BIRTHDAY CAKE PHOTO-OP WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN [White House]
10AM — BUSH VISITS ARIZONA RESORT TO PROMOTE MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “This new bill I signed says, if you’re a senior and you like the way things are today, you’re in good shape, don’t change. But, by the way, there’s a lot of different options for you. And we’re here to talk about what that means to our seniors.” [White House]
2PM — BUSH TRAVELS TO CALIFORNIA SENIOR CENTER TO DISCUSS MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “We’ve got some folks up here who are concerned about their Social Security or Medicare. Joan Geist is with us. … I could tell — she was looking at me when I first walked in the room to meet her, she was wondering whether or not old George W. is going to take away her Social Security check.” [White House]
9PM — RUMSFELD ATTENDS SAN DIEGO PADRES BASEBALL GAME: Rumsfeld “joined Padres President John Moores in the owner’s box…at Petco Park.” [Editor & Publisher]
Tuesday, August 30 -- New Orleans and its environs are destroyed. Tens of thousands are suffering.
9AM – BUSH SPEAKS ON IRAQ AT NAVAL BASE CORONADO [White House]
3PM – PRESIDENT BUSH PLAYS GUITAR WITH COUNTRY SINGER MARK WILLIS [AP]
EVENING - BUSH RETURNS TO CRAWFORD FOR FINAL NIGHT OF VACATION [AP]
Wednesday, August 31 -- Tens of thousands are trapped in the Superdome; 80,000 are reported stranded.
PRESIDENT BUSH FINALLY ORGANIZES TASK FORCE TO COORDINATE FEDERAL RESPONSE: Bush says on Tuesday he will “fly to Washington to begin work…with a task force that will coordinate the work of 14 federal agencies involved in the relief effort.” [New York Times, 8/31/05]
8:00PM – CONDOLEEZZA RICE TAKES IN A BROADWAY SHOW: “On Wednesday night, Secretary Rice was booed by some audience members at ‘Spamalot!, the Monty Python musical at the Shubert, when the lights went up after the performance.” [New York Post, 9/2/05]
9PM — FEMA DIRECTOR BROWN CLAIMS SURPRISE OVER SIZE OF STORM: “I must say, this storm is much much bigger than anyone expected.” [CNN]
* * * * The outrage over our nation’s current leadership has been slow to reveal itself; often easily dismissed by the right as partisan criticism. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that even recent events are sufficient to convince the nation of the horrors that still lie ahead, if left unchecked.
George W. Bush, a president who campaigned (based on his own vice-president’s representation) on the premise that electing John Kerry would threaten our nation’s security. George W. Bush, a president who campaigned on the promise that he could better protect America. George W. Bush, a president who insisted during the debates that he had not made a single mistake his first term in office. (Perhaps, just for the sake of humility and respect for those lost, he could have at least said, “I wish I had done more to prevent 9/11.”)
The current administration is so arrogant that it actually blamed people for not leaving New Orleans before the hurricane -- without any appreciation for the fact that many had nowhere to go and no way to get there.
Death by Arrogance: 9/11. Afghanistan. Iraq. Madrid. London. New Orleans.
Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, disgusted by events, shared this:
But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defy its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans even though the government had heard all the “chatter” from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. … And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection; or at least amelioration against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological. … It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.
My friend Mike Rogers drafted an email as an outlet for his rage, from which I excerpt:
Various images -- many of which mean nothing out of context -- are haunting me. Crying children missing only pot bellies and flies around their heads; seas of poor black people stranded and abandoned in a city of the old south; police with fear on the faces; Bush looking and sounding scared, drunk or on the verge of mental collapse as he stood next to his dad and Clinton -- each of whom looked very “presidential” -- in the Oval Office yesterday; a dead woman in a wheelchair with a blanket tossed over her; gas lines straight out of 1974; the head of FEMA lying like a criminal on CNN last night. I can’t take it.
And it gets worse. The timeline of events surrounding the destruction defines an administration replete with arrogance leading to incompetence. Some lowlights:
Sunday, August 28 -- Katrina is upgraded to a category 5 hurricane.
AFTERNOON — BUSH, BROWN, CHERTOFF WARNED OF LEVEE FAILURE BY NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER DIRECTOR: Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center: “‘We were briefing them way before landfall. … It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped.’” [Times-Picayune; St. Petersburg Times]
Monday, August 29 -- New Orleans Mayor Nagin reports water is flowing over the levee.
MORNING — BUSH CALLS SECRETARY CHERTOFF TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION: “I spoke to Mike Chertoff today — he’s the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on — a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are.” [White House]
MORNING – BUSH SHARES BIRTHDAY CAKE PHOTO-OP WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN [White House]
10AM — BUSH VISITS ARIZONA RESORT TO PROMOTE MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “This new bill I signed says, if you’re a senior and you like the way things are today, you’re in good shape, don’t change. But, by the way, there’s a lot of different options for you. And we’re here to talk about what that means to our seniors.” [White House]
2PM — BUSH TRAVELS TO CALIFORNIA SENIOR CENTER TO DISCUSS MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “We’ve got some folks up here who are concerned about their Social Security or Medicare. Joan Geist is with us. … I could tell — she was looking at me when I first walked in the room to meet her, she was wondering whether or not old George W. is going to take away her Social Security check.” [White House]
9PM — RUMSFELD ATTENDS SAN DIEGO PADRES BASEBALL GAME: Rumsfeld “joined Padres President John Moores in the owner’s box…at Petco Park.” [Editor & Publisher]
Tuesday, August 30 -- New Orleans and its environs are destroyed. Tens of thousands are suffering.
9AM – BUSH SPEAKS ON IRAQ AT NAVAL BASE CORONADO [White House]
3PM – PRESIDENT BUSH PLAYS GUITAR WITH COUNTRY SINGER MARK WILLIS [AP]
EVENING - BUSH RETURNS TO CRAWFORD FOR FINAL NIGHT OF VACATION [AP]
Wednesday, August 31 -- Tens of thousands are trapped in the Superdome; 80,000 are reported stranded.
PRESIDENT BUSH FINALLY ORGANIZES TASK FORCE TO COORDINATE FEDERAL RESPONSE: Bush says on Tuesday he will “fly to Washington to begin work…with a task force that will coordinate the work of 14 federal agencies involved in the relief effort.” [New York Times, 8/31/05]
8:00PM – CONDOLEEZZA RICE TAKES IN A BROADWAY SHOW: “On Wednesday night, Secretary Rice was booed by some audience members at ‘Spamalot!, the Monty Python musical at the Shubert, when the lights went up after the performance.” [New York Post, 9/2/05]
9PM — FEMA DIRECTOR BROWN CLAIMS SURPRISE OVER SIZE OF STORM: “I must say, this storm is much much bigger than anyone expected.” [CNN]
posted by Happy Friday | 7:09 AM
3 Comments:
Dear Mr. Bush:
Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane
Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be
airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military
choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears
parking lot. Man, was that a drag.
Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could
really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do
like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to
begin with?
Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of
Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then
but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there
were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this
storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody
tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know
how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to
and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!
I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying
to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps.
Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was
over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?
And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you
specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New
Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them
that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there
weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you
had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING
DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!
On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I
was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the
clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of
the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and
stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done
that.
There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to
use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out.
Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this
would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter
and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all
their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a
hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that
stretched from New York to Cleveland.
No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30
percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had
no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean,
it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving
white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race
has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!
You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army
helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and
the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com
P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch.
She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving
across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you
can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.
OFF TO THE RACES
Katrina: Trying To Forget, Or At Least Forgive,
The Administration's Response
By Charlie Cook
Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005
My last column for National Journal, written less than 36 hours after Katrina
devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast and on the same day that the New Orleans
levees broke, was an initial assessment of the political and economic
implications of hurricane's damage.
My thesis was that drawing the focus of the public and the news media away from
the worsening situation in Iraq might, at least temporarily, help President
Bush, while sharply higher gasoline and fuel oil prices could become the blow
that tips our fragile economy into a real downturn.
Friday afternoon, as I write this, my assessment is very different.
On the political level, playing off of Malcolm Gladwell's recent bestseller,
"The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference," I originally
argued that the public's increasingly negative attitude toward Bush and the war
in Iraq might have been nearing a tipping point, which Gladwell argues is "that
magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips,
and spreads like wildfire." Gladwell argues that sometimes fairly small,
seemingly insignificant shifts can push something over that tipping point, with
enormous consequences. On a political level, Katrina may have stopped one
tipping point from having been reached, at least for now, while on an economic
level, it could push the economy past another tipping point.
>From the beginning of Bush's first term through mid-June of this year, in only
two out of 170 Gallup national surveys did his disapproval ratings reach 50
percent or higher. Since mid-June, eight out of 10 Gallup polls have put his
disapproval rating above 50 percent. And virtually every major national poll
shows his job-approval ratings this summer at their lowest level yet. News from
Iraq has been worsening, and the war, along with rising gasoline prices, had
driven Bush's approval ratings far below where those of every modern two-term
president, save Richard Nixon, were at this point in their fifth year in office.
With violence in Iraq expected to only get worse in the period leading up to the
October referendum on that country's new constitution, U.S. public opinion seems
about ready to stampede away from Bush and the war. So, in my National Journal
column I argued that if the public's focus shifted away from Iraq, even for just
a few weeks, that might either prevent or delay a tipping point from being
reached and, thus, might help Bush, at least in the short run.
The flip side, I argued, was that our economy had been kept afloat over the last
year or so largely by the housing sector, but rising interest rates coupled with
a regulatory clamp down on extremely risky lending practices were making housing
less able to serve as a prop. My point was that while the economy had been able
to absorb rising gasoline prices reasonably well up to that point, we could be
approaching a tipping point. In other words, sharply higher post-hurricane
prices could push us into a real economic slowdown, rather than just the "soft
patch" that we've been in for the last few months.
But rereading my National Journal column Friday afternoon, it seemed detached
from reality. I suspect that in the aftermath of Katrina there is a giant gap in
public opinion separating those who have watched a good bit of horrifying
television news coverage of the devastation and those who have not. Most of us
viewers felt shock and disbelief at the images of death, destruction and misery
we saw on Monday and Tuesday. Those feelings carried perhaps even into
Wednesday. But the images on Thursday seemed to shift people from being numb to
being angry.
===========================================================
Don't keep Charlie's insight all to yourself!
Please forward the following link to friends and colleagues.
Sign up:
http://nationaljournal.com/about/cookcolumn.htm
===========================================================
An amazing special hour-long edition of "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams"
on Thursday night was the most powerful and heart-wrenching network news
broadcast I've ever seen. The images and stories told were so disturbing that
anyone who watched would be hard-pressed not to feel frustrated and angry on
behalf of those people who had gone for days with little or no food and water or
those awaiting rescue and evacuation days after the hurricane hit and the levees
broke.
Hearing an NBC cameraman describe babies dying on the floor of the New Orleans
Convention Center and seeing the people of that city asking whether anyone was
watching, listening or caring, my 12-year-old son had to leave the room because
he was so angry at the slow response of governmental agencies. Likewise, my wife
was furious. No matter what broadcast network or cable news network one watched,
the images were the same -- of suffering and despair long after the hurricane
hit and long past any reasonable time for rescues to have been completed.
Natural disasters and other tragedies offer both opportunities and risks for our
elected leaders. They offer the opportunity to demonstrate leadership,
decisiveness, compassion and competence -- all during a period of maximum
visibility. The risk is that if a leader fails to rise to the occasion, a
national spotlight illuminates the failure for all to see -- and judge.
President Bush masterfully demonstrated leadership qualities after 9/11. (His
reaction to last year's Florida hurricanes and his efforts to help their victims
were also impressive.) Americans were not just satisfied with the response of
their government to the tragedy of 9/11, they were proud of it. But this
Wednesday, Thursday and even Friday, as I write, I doubt many Americans who have
followed the government's response to Katrina are proud.
The hurricane hit on Monday morning; the New Orleans levees broke on Tuesday. It
is understandable, perhaps, that for the first 24 hours or so after the
hurricane hit and the levees broke that the government didn't adequately
respond. But it's hard to understand why food, drugs and water shipped from as
far away as Seattle or Boston, let alone from Houston, Little Rock, Memphis,
Birmingham and Atlanta, would not have begun to be distributed in sufficient
amounts to feed everyone by Thursday. And it's hard to understand that military
and civilian personnel stationed anywhere in the continental United States
couldn't have reached the victims and rescued and evacuated the last of them by
Thursday. The president's declaration on Friday, as he visited the scene, that
the government response was "not acceptable" was the understatement of the week.
The racial aspect to all of this is equally discomforting. While it is
absolutely true that there are large minority populations in southern Alabama,
Louisiana and Mississippi and that New Orleans is overwhelmingly
African-American, it was hard to see so much footage of blacks stranded on
rooftops or wading through floodwaters in search of food and not think about
racial inequality: Most of New Orleans' white residents are more affluent and
had the means to get out before Katrina struck.
Blaming Bush for everything, as some liberals were quick to do, is certainly
unfair. Yes, his administration has to accept responsibility for having cut
requests for Army Corps of Engineers funds to strengthen the New Orleans levees.
But let's face it, much of New Orleans has been under sea level for as long as
people have lived there, and it's safe to assume that the same areas would have
flooded whether John Kerry, Al Gore or Bill Clinton were president today. It's
impossible to say how fast any of these other men would have reacted, but on
Bush's watch the reaction was too little, too late. The magnitude of this
disaster is far beyond anything that a governor or mayor can handle without
massive federal assistance, just as New York's problems on 9/11 weren't just a
problem for that state and city to cope with.
The question now is whether President Bush and his administration, following his
visit to Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, respond with sufficient resources
to make people forget or at least forgive what had transpired before.
The Board of Commissioners of the Orleans Levee District is the government body responsible for the construction and maintenance of the levees that broke. Recently they spent over 2 million to refurbrish a water foutain and 15 million to build overpasses so that people can have an easier commute to the casino boats. Check out their website, http://www.orleanslevee.com/Bids%20and%20Proposals%20-%20Engineering.htm, to see what current and future projects they are working on.
Post a Comment
<< Home