74%

According to a new ABC poll, 74% of Republicans approve of Bush's handling of the Katrina disaster, and only 47% of all Americans disapprove.

Via Kevin Drum, the Army Corps of Engineers knew of the Levee breach early Monday, and FEMA has been busy preventing aid from getting to New Orleans.

At what point does incompetence shade into genocide?

Comments

  1. Anonymous9:59 AM

    Bush was not perfect this time, but with all the things he can do working since Saturday or so, and with a growing body of knowledge what obstacles he actually faced, I approve him, too.

    If you want to save your city, you should first of all elect a mayor and a governor who is a friend with the president (like the mayor of NYC in 2001), regardless of her or his affiliation. My sympathies for Ray Nagin decreased markedly.

    He apparently wanted to become the secretary of defense or something like that and directly control the federal army. I would not give him this job either.

    He does not talk with the LA governor, Kathleen Blanco, another Democrat, since the times he supported her opponent in the elections. And they did not talk to each other even when this disaster occured.

    They were necessary for the federal administration to be invited which they hesitated to do for several days. I am not blaming anybody; I am just explaining why I think that Bush was alright.

    ReplyDelete
  2. CapitalistImperialistPig11:51 AM

    Lumo - Unsurprisingly, you have bought the administration propaganda line completely. Perhaps an investigation can sort it out. I'm more inclined to believe

    We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water," said Denise Bottcher, press secretary for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana. "They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart."
    from today's NYT.

    You were close to the mark with this one though: If you want to save your city, you should first of all elect a mayor and a governor who is a friend with the president

    That's the way it works in facist kleptocracies, alright, so those who prefer such a system are no doubt gratified.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous12:12 PM

    It's not terribly important whether you label someone as "fascist kleptocrat" just because he can communicate with the president constructively. Nothing changes about the fact that this is a necessary condition for things to go right whenever a federal help is needed.

    Yes, I may be believing certain reports from Washington. And I still find it more reasonable than to believe a random Denise Bottcher whom I've never heard of. You may have a different approach, but it is your problem. It's you who then derives wrong conclusions, not me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous12:23 PM

    Incidentally, if the people were really up to their job, I think that they should be able to negotiate an organizational chart within minutes or hours. Such a chart may help to avoid various wrong decisions, doubled work, contradictory orders, and so forth.

    For example, it's important to know who is controlling the police officers etc. - because this may mean that they're either used to stop looting, or to make rescue efforts.

    But this true "management" is not exactly the thing that they cared about much. They thought that their business is probably just about screaming and getting infinite resources from anyone else. The fact that hundreds or thousands of school buses were drowned, instead of being used for anything by the local authorities, does not bother anyone. It's OK enough just to scream that they want to decouple the buses or anything else, for that matter.

    The reason why it does not bother anyone is that this fact is uninteresting for the leftwinger's tasteless goals, and the Republicans usually don't want to play this game because it is not sufficiently clean game for their standards.

    ReplyDelete
  5. CapitalistImperialistPig12:34 PM

    Lumo - You have a good point about labels, especially invidious ones. My bad.

    Who to believe is a always a difficult question, but the facts we have in hand are pretty damning: Federal help was very slow to arrive (Herbert Hoover in 1927 got help to victims of the great 1927 flood twice as fast - without airplanes; more recently, aid reached tsunami victims faster also.) Moreover, FEMA officials, and the President have repeatedly expressed ignorance of things widely known.

    ReplyDelete
  6. CapitalistImperialistPig12:47 PM

    Lumo - the Republicans usually don't want to play this game because it is not sufficiently clean game for their standards.

    I'm sorry Lumo, but I think you live on a different planet, or perhaps brane than I. Your idea of a clean game is what Bush did to McCain in South Carolina?(Spreading false rumors that his dark skinned adopted asian daughter was his illegitimate child) or Rove's little trick of spreading a false rumor that a candidate was a sex offender). How about the little phone jamming scheme that Republican Congressional campaign officials in New Hampshire are currently under indictment for?

    ReplyDelete
  7. exMI7:33 PM

    How about the simple fact that it is illegal for the federal government to just send the army in and take over everything. (short of a rebellion of course)
    The Gov. of LA has her own helicopters and soldiers, where were they? Why hadn't she laid in a supply of food adn water when it became clear the hurricane was going to hit? I am not a big fan of Bush but the Louisiana Government just dropped teh ball completely. The mayor of NO did no better.When you issue a mandatory evacuation you are sort of obligated to evacute people. Especially those who can't take care of themselves. He had school busses, transit busses, city vehicles sitting around that he could have used to get peopel the heck out of the city. He also could have arranged for sufficient food and water at the Superdome.
    A major failure at the local level that greatly complicates outside help arriving.

    ReplyDelete
  8. CapitalistImperialistPig8:50 PM

    There may well have been local failure, but once the President declares a national emergency, the Federal Government has the responsibility. You have bought into the Rove spin here, I'm afraid. This is documented on several sites.

    They can't do that," former agency chief of staff Jane Bullock said of Bush administration efforts to shift responsibility away from Washington. "The moment the president declared a federal disaster, it became a federal responsibility....The federal government took ownership over the response," she said. Bush declared a disaster in Louisiana and Mississippi when the storm hit a week ago.

    (from Kevin Drum)

    The coverup is proceeding at full speed - why else would the President, and man with no investigative experience, appoint himself to lead the investigation into the failures? Next, Dick Cheney will lead the investigation into the fabricated Iraq nukes intelligence, and Karl Rove will investigate the outing of the CIA agent.

    ReplyDelete

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