Obama’s Suggestion; Plug The Damn Hole
May 26, 2010 Political
When Katrina hit the liberals went into high gear to blame George Bush and to slam the federal response. I have often written that the federal response did lack in some areas but it was not as bad as the liberals portrayed it. The bulk of the blame for the problems at the state and federal level went to Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco. Their missteps caused undue delay and made the federal response much more difficult.
Barack Obama promised not to forget the Gulf Coast when he was running for office. He told us that he remembered the storm and he would not forget the Gulf Coast implying that Bush had forgotten about it.
Why would he not give that impression? Bush was blasted for not going there right away, blasted for being on vacation, blasted for fundraisers, blasted for a slow response and accused of hating black people. The left painted this unfair picture and it stuck. It was deliberate and it played politics with the lives of those affected.
But Obama fairs no better. He has made one trip to the Gulf (I think Bush had visited the Gulf nearly 10 times by this time frame during Katrina), the federal response was slow, he went on a mini vacation after the disaster and he is going on another this weekend, and he is squeezing a fundraiser in as well.
Obama had no plans to go to the Gulf but has capitulated and will visit the area this Friday after he returns form a fundraiser today and then he will go to his home in Chicago for some time off. He is so worn out from his quest to destroy our nation that he will miss the Ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day.
He will reportedly go to a cemetery in Illinois on Memorial Day. I hope his vacation is not interrupted too much.
Obama is getting hammered from the right (and now some of the left is chiming in) for the way he has responded to the Gulf oil spill. He is being held to the same standard that the left held Bush to during Katrina and to the standard he promised would be better than the one Bush had set.
Perhaps this is why Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called the media into the West Wing and scolded them for asking too many questions about the oil spill. I don’t recall the media letting up on the questions asked of Bush about Katrina and I am sure that the liberals kept asking questions. It is funny how things change when the ones who criticize are on the receiving end.
And Obama, who is very thin skinned, is not happy. He knows his messianic reputation is taking a hit. He knows he is teetering on being a failure in the eyes of the public because he knows what unfair accusations did to Bush. Obama participated in those accusations. He is getting tense by the day and is reported to have snapped, “Plug the damn hole.”
Gee, if only BP had thought of that…
And yes, I said unfair accusations. No occupant of the White House can slip into a phone booth and change into Superman and fix things. Bush could not swoop into New Orleans and fix things any more than Obama can swoop into the Gulf and fix things. Leaders have to rely on the people under them who have responsibility for things. Bush had to rely on a state and city that was led by incompetent boobs and who worsened the situation. Obama has to rely on the experts in the oil industry to fix the problem that the government is not equipped to take on. He had to rely on a decades old plan that ended up falling flat because required equipment was not in place. That plan was in place long before Obama (or Bush for that matter) was in office.
It sucks being the leader when the things that are supposed to be taken care of are not. It sucks when you get the blame for things out of your control.
But Obama was happy to criticize Bush and the response to Katrina. He was happy to pile on the unfair accusations and he was happy to say he would do better.
That is important to remember. He said he would do better and he has not. Whether the problems are his fault or not means nothing because he made promises he is now unable to keep.
And he is being held to the same standard that he held Bush to.
Liberals do not like it and Obama does not like it but you reap what you sow.
So while Obama is out at fundraisers and on vacation the Gulf remains in peril and the people there feel forgotten.
Even though they were promised that would change.
How is that Hope and Change working out for you now?
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: bp, Bush, fundraiser, gulf coast, katrina, Obama, oil spill, vacation
Barry Barry Quite Contrary
May 2, 2010 Political
There is a huge oil spill in the Gulf and though it is quite a disaster it is not a reason to stop drilling for oil. This is the first major oil spill in the Gulf in 40 years so it is not like this happens every day. It is terrible, make no mistake, but it would be even worse to stop drilling for oil because of it.
We are Americans and we do not stop because of a problem. We did not end space exploration when astronauts died, we did not cave to Japan after Pearl Harbor and we did not give up despite numerous setbacks during the Revolutionary war. We dig in, fix the problem, refine the process and make things better. That is what we do as Americans.
The Obama regime has halted new drilling until this disaster is assessed. Not a bad thing so long as the halt is temporary and Obama does not use it as an excuse to stop new drilling. And so long as this is not used as an excuse to nationalize the oil industry (why SWAT teams to the oil rigs).
It is interesting that coal and oil suffered big setbacks over the last month because coal and oil are the very forms of energy opposed by the regime.
But Obama has other things to worry about. He needs to ensure his legacy does not suffer a hit like Bush’s did during and after Katrina. That hurricane had not blown itself out before the left was declaring Bush’s efforts slow and disjointed. The left was busy blaming Bush for what happened (while ignoring the Democrats in Louisiana who held the lion’s share of the blame) and that hurricane haunted him the rest of his presidency.
Now Obama has to worry about being seen in the same light though he does not have to worry about it from the state run media or the left. They are content to give Barry a pass on his slow response.
Yes, Governor Jindal did not declare a state emergency until many days after the event but that might actually be because the oil did not threaten his state until then. The accident took place in international water and it would be up to the federal government to handle the issue though I do not blame them for waiting to see how the oil company handled the mess. However, once it became clear that this was bigger than first thought and that more resources would be required, it took the regime a good while to muster the resources.
Obama has put out information about the federal response to silence his critics but the reality is that it took more time than people would have liked. Is he finally seeing that sometimes it takes quite a while to muster resources? Perhaps the finger pointing he and his fellow Democrats did concerning Katrina is coming back to bite them in their behinds.
And Barry has been quite contrary. At first he was not going to the region though a trip was not ruled out. Then, not long after that announcement, we learned that he will visit the Gulf. Perhaps he did not want to be seen as a do nothing leader. Perhaps he did not want to be saddled with the same image painted of Bush.
Maybe he initially did not want to go because he felt he might get in the way and disrupt things. That was what Bush said about a trip to New Orleans during Katrina. Maybe Obama is worried about a picture of him in a plane being used to show that he flew over the problem, like the one used to paint Bush as unconcerned and out of touch.
Barack Obama is no more to blame for the oil spill than Bush was for the hurricane. Bush was roundly criticized for his response to Katrina and Obama might receive criticism as well. Let us see if he is held to the same standard by the state run media.
This is from an Obama for America publication about rebuilding New Orleans:
As president, Barack Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. And he will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.
Barack Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush administration’s “unconscionable ineptitude” in responding to Hurricane Katrina, Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims. Obama visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region. He worked with members of the Congressional Black Caucus to introduce legislation to address the immediate income, employment, business and housing needs of Gulf Coast communities.
Barack Obama swiftly responded by introducing legislation which then takes months to be debated and passed (if it even passes). Yep, there is swift for you. Obama talked about Bush’s “unconscionable ineptitude” in responding to Katrina but his response to the oil spill has been slower and, if we were to use the same grading criteria, displayed “unconscionable ineptitude.”
Barry is learning that governing is not as easy as he thought and that a nice smile and fancy rhetoric will only get you so far. He is also learning that when a politician makes promises and bashes others those words often come back to haunt said politician.
Is this Obama’s Katrina? Only time will tell but if we depend on the state run media the answer will of course be “No.”
I really don’t care what they want to call it. His response has been slow and lackluster and while the Gulf Coast is in real trouble, Obama was busy telling jokes…
You just know what the response would have been if it were a Republican.
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: gulf coast, jokes, katrina, louisiana, Obama, oil spill
Barbara Bush Was Right
Feb 1, 2010 Political
When Katrina hit New Orleans after the biggest failure of local political leadership in many years, Barbara Bush was going through Houston meeting evacuees and she said that many were overwhelmed by the hospitality. She also said that many living in poverty so this was working out for them:
“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway,” she said, “so this is working very well for them.” NYT
Of course some people were upset at this honest statement and had something to say about it. The reactions here and here are examples of the response with the last link indicating that Mrs. Bush insulted the people. I guess the truth is an insult here but not so much when the truth comes from Harry Reid (about light skinned non negro talking Obama).
So will these folks take a similar stance at Arne Duncan’s honest statement about the people of New Orleans?
Education Secretary Arne Duncan, one of the Chicagoans brought to Washington for “The Golden Age of Hope and Change” (aka, “The Unmitigated Disaster of Unprecedented Proportions”), said recently that “the best thing to ever happen to the school system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina”. HillBuzz
In other words, the best thing to happen to these poor people was Hurricane Katrina because they got better schools.
Is this any different than saying that the hospitality in Houston that was shown to the poor people “is working well for them?”
I think both statements are true and things after Katrina have worked well for the folks. This is not to say that the hurricane was a good thing, only that the things that happened after were good for them (though not everything has been perfect).
I wonder how much buzz Arne’s statement will create?
Want to bet none?
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Tags: arne duncan, barbara bush, katrina, Obama
Obama’s Katrina Is In Kentucky
Feb 1, 2009 Political
The state of Kentucky has a lot of people without power and without basic supplies. 42 people have died as a result of the ice storms that hit the middle part of the United States this past week. The storms hit about five days ago and even though people are dying, Obama’s FEMA is nowhere to be found.
Yep, it has been five days and Barack Obama has not sent FEMA in to rescue people. He has not sent in generators so that people could have power and he has not sent in water so people would not have to get it from the creeks. Obama has not sent FEMA to the region and by all accounts Obama has not done a thing to help.
Barack Obama must hate white people.
When hurricane Katrina hit the Democrats used the disaster to gain political traction. They made claims that Bush was too slow to respond, that he hated black people, that his response was slow because most of those affected were black, that he did not do enough and he did nothing quickly enough. This played out over and over as the MSM made victims of people who refused to leave town before the storm hit. We all watched on TV as people were rescued from roofs because they refused to leave town. We also watched as people who were so accustomed to government providing for them stood in water looking around for help and unable to walk themselves to the nearby dry land.
To this day the left mentions Katrina and discusses the failure as a black mark on the Bush administration even though the majority of the blame belonged on the Democratic governor of the state and the Democratic mayor of New Orleans. Bush and FEMA got most of the blame because it was politically good for the Democrats and their media wing played right along.
I am willing to bet that the media are not as hard on Obama with regard to Kentucky as they were on Bush with New Orleans. Obama has neglected the people of Kentucky and there are no media around to tell the story like when Katrina hit. Then it was wall to wall with all the big names lining up to bash Bush over his mishandling of the hurricane response.
The media are not in Kentucky with wall to wall coverage about people dying in the cold while Obama sits in his extremely warm and toasty Oval Office. No media to provide constant coverage of FEMA and its terrible response because Obama has not deployed FEMA so there is no response. Kentucky has some FEMA folks in the Emergency Operations Center but that is not going to help much.
I guess the media are ignoring this because there are not a bunch of poor black folks sitting on roofs crying about their fate. There is no Republican president to hammer over the issue.
Instead they have a black president who obviously hates white people in red states and he is showing his hatred by not sending in FEMA and by not helping. He has not even flown into the area to survey the damage. It is cold there and he is from Hawaii you know. Maybe he will consider gracing those people with his presence but only after he has his Superbowl party. If it were Bush the left would be having fits.
Maybe he can take Al Gore with him to discuss global warming as the cause…
Of course the folks in Kentucky say it would be nice to have the resources of FEMA but they can get along without the feds helping.
“I’m not saying we can’t handle it,” Smith said. “We’re handling it. But it [FEMA help] sure would have made life a lot easier.” My Way News
Maybe, in the aftermath of Katrina where people complained about sole source contracts, the feds are out soliciting bids to help in Kentucky. Anyone familiar with the government bidding process already knows it will be Summer and all the people in Kentucky will be past this incident before the government approves anything.
But at least there will be none of those dastardly no bid contracts that drive liberals mad (unless Bill Clinton is issuing them).
Blue State: We need help, send Greyhound buses, the gubmint did not help. Where’s my $5000 debit card so I can get liquor and go to the nudie bar?
Red State: We can manage. It would have been a lot easier with their help but we will make it.
The last time I wrote about New Orleans I got over a hundred comments from people who live there all sniveling and blaming their woes on the government. I never saw where one took any responsibility or said that local government shared any of it. It was all the Corps of Engineers and Bush. I don’t imagine anything has changed so they still feel that way. But at least now they know that their messiah Obama hates white people and the folks in Kentucky are not getting FEMA help. Maybe, just maybe the folks in NO can watch and learn how people do things when they have to rough it for a while…
Sources:
My Way News
Jammie Wearing Fool
American Thinker
Yahoo News
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Tags: fema, ice storm, katrina, kentucky, new orleans, Obama, white people
George Bush Saved The Gulf Coast
Sep 2, 2008 Opinion
Hurricane Gustav is losing strength by the minute though it will likely stall out and cause flooding in some areas along its path. However, the levees in New Orleans held, for the most part, and though there will no doubt be some flooding, the devastation will be nowhere near what it was during Katrina. This is because of George W. Bush.
Now I know George Bush did not rebuild the levees, he did not drive the evacuation buses and he did not open shelters to house people. In fact, all he did was lead from the top and provide assistance that state governors requested. But since the left blamed him for all the failures that occurred when Katrina hit, it is only fair to give him all the credit for the successes that occurred during this disaster.
It would seem ridiculous to give him ALL the credit when the five Gulf State REPUBLICAN governors worked together to ensure success by planning early and requesting federal assistance in a timely manner. However, since the president was to blame when state and local leaders were woefully inadequate he must be credited with the success when other leaders do their jobs well.
During the 2006 election season and during last week’s Democratic Convention we were reminded about the failures during Katrina. The stories about Americans being abandoned never mentioned the Democrats in charge of Louisiana as part of the problem. We were (and have been since Katrina hit) led to believe that this was a failure of George Bush and his administration.
Now that things went fairly smoothly during Gustav Americans must be reminded of how well the plans worked with REPUBLICAN leadership. America must be informed that George Bush did a great job when he was not hamstrung by a Democratic governor who was afraid to ask for help and too overwhelmed to demonstrate real leadership.
George Bush saved the Gulf Coast. I bet the Democrats who laughed about this disaster approaching are taking a second look. You see, when real leaders are in charge the probability of success increases.
I wonder if the MSM and the Democratic party leadership will acknowledge this amazing feat that President Bush pulled off. I imagine not since they were blaming him this far into Katrina and they have not said one word of praise since Gustav arrived.
The five Gulf Coast Republican Governors all worked well together and coordinated with the federal government. They were not lying in a corner sucking their thumbs like Ray Nagin during Katrina (he did a much better job this time) and they were not on TV crying about the destruction like Blanco did back then. They were leading people to get things done. Thank God Louisiana has Bobby Jindal as its Governor this time around.
I have little use for New Orleans and have been soured since the way people acted about Katrina. Having said that, I am glad that people evacuated and that the levees held. Those who stayed behind did so at their own peril and they are the only ones responsible for their fate. I pray for them and the rest of the Gulf Coast as Gustav exits and Hannah and Ike prepare to make their presence known.
Let us pray that the people down there get things back in shape before the next one hits.
Tags: blanco, Bush, gustav, jindal, katrina, leadership, nagin