Does anyone else feel like we're the little Dutch boy with his finger

[mcscajun]

in the dike, trying in vain to keep out the sea?

It's not just freepers we have to keep in the 'debunking loop' -- the RW spin machine is working so much overtime, it's even drawing in rational independents who have few RW tendencies. One such is a friend of mine, one of the few people outside DU and my immediate circle I can even discuss politics with. He sent me this today:

FWD: Interesting Reading

I'm probably stirring the pot here but these two articles were sent to me by a friend and I thought that they brought up a few good and valid points. I thought I'd pass them on and help raise the level of debate in this country above what happened on Springer last night or what Britney eats during her pregnancy cravings. I don't necessarily agree with 100% of what is written, ... but there are some good points in there.

Please feel free to respond to me with your take on the articles (I'm sending this BCC so no one gets unwanted mail or stuck on a string), but if you're going to go on a witch-hunt or Bush-bashing or Blanco-bashing or Guard bashing, .... back it up with facts, please. No impressions of Kanye West. I seek intelligent conversation. Thanks.

http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1026
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05254/568876.stm

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My response used liberal cites from Snopes and DU posts. My thanks to all who helped me find them, or wrote them. :) Including and especially CottonBear. :)
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About the articles you sent:

The first one screamed out Ayn Rand's "objectivism" -- in which the only moral social system is full laissez-faire capitalism with a government strictly limited to courts, police, and a military -- no surprise when I checked the "about us" page and found this cite: "The Intellectual Activist is especially dedicated to understanding and promoting the revolutionary ideas of the 20th-century novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand..."

The focus of the article was completely about blaming the victims, the local/state officials, and liberalism. Nowhere in there was there anything about the federal failures far predating the storm, their inaction before, during and after.

The time line of everything that happened shows the looting and violence to be a minor story here; all the spin in the world from outfits like The Intellectual Activist can't obscure the truth.

Katrina's aftermath has exposed the structural poverty that has only grown under Bush. The inadequate response to Katrina by Bush's administration, their callous gutting of local/state government resources since 9/11 (particularly the double-whammy of budget cuts and non-delivery of promised funds to 'first responders' and the missing first responders from many locales because they'd been called up and sent to Iraq), and in the case of Louisiana, the unconscionable reductions in flood control project funds and the reduction of FEMA from cabinet-level agency to an unwanted stepchild of The DHS simply expose the failure of "MBA government", of appointing and promoting cronies, of forcing out experienced, motivated staff because they don't have the 'loyalty' to the current regime, and lo, what happens when like Grover Norquist's wet dream, you try to shrink government to the size that you can drown it in a bathtub.* Only this time, the bathtub was real, and N.O. got drowned in it.

http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline

The second article is much the same in intent if not in content, only this time with a considerable emphasis on the personal opinions of two people who weren't in charge of anything. Indeed, it's not clear if the second fellow quoted was even involved this time around. It's repeating the RW talking point about the buses, and flat-out forgetting about previous responses by other US Presidents to other hurricanes, same as Bush did.

About those buses that the RW seems to want to harp on until my eyes and ears bleed: Here's what Snopes has to say about the now-ubiquitous pic of the flooded buses in the parking lot in N.O.:

"Whether this photograph truly represents a lost opportunity to have evacuated a substantial number of New Orleans residents ahead of Hurricane Katrina is difficult to assess.

Such a claim presumes an availability of resources (e.g., experienced drivers, fuel) and workable logistics (e.g., sufficient means of notifying and getting residents to departure points, sufficiently clear roads for multiple trips out of town and back, adequate facilities within a reasonable driving distance capable of providing shelter, food, and water to a large number of people for an indeterminate period of time on short notice) that may or may not have been present. (There's no guarantee that all the buses shown in this picture were even in working condition.)

And, given the particular geography of New Orleans, any such evacuation would have had to have begun well in advance of Hurricane Katrina to avoid exposing residents to the potential danger of being stuck in buses on traffic-clogged roads in the path of an approaching hurricane.

Moreover, any type of evacuation effort would have incurred a substantial outlay of funds from local and/or state governments — while everyone agrees with the advantage of hindsight that would have been money well spent, many taxpayers might not have been left feeling so enthusiastic about footing the bill for an unnecessary evacuation had Hurricane Katrina not proved so damaging.

Opportunities like the one posited here may or may not have been missed in New Orleans, but coping with the uncertainty and confusion of natural disasters as they unfold is rarely as simple as it might seem in retrospect."

Another source about the bus story:

Nagin appeared on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning and was grilled by moderator Tim Russert over his failure to order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans on the Friday before Katrina’s arrival, coinciding with Bush’s advance declaration of an emergency, while public transit and school buses were still available for use to transport evacuees.

“That’s one of the things that will be debated,” Nagin conceded. “There has never been a catastrophe in the history of New Orleans like this. There has never been any Category 5 storm of this magnitude that has hit New Orleans directly.

“We did the things that we thought were best based upon the information we had. Sure there were lots of buses out there. But, guess what. You can't find drivers that would stay behind with a Category 5 hurricane, you know, bearing down on New Orleans.”

About 60 percent of the city has evacuated for prior storms, but about 80 percent got out this time, Nagin said.

“We were in a position of trying to encourage as many people as possible to leave because we weren't comfortable that we had the resources to move them out of the city,” he said. “We encouraged people to buddy up, churches to take senior citizens and move them to safety, and a lot of them did. And then we would deal with the remaining people that couldn't or wouldn't leave and try and get them to higher ground until safety came.”

more...
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09_12.html#078937


A. Most bus drivers evacuated.
B. 80% of population or (400,000 people)evacuated form the city, which is a record percentage for a major American city.
C. Public transit buses were also used to evacuate citizens.
D. Nagin had buses and police go up and down street w/ sirens and public address systems, urging people who couldn't leave the city to get a bus ride to the Superdome, which about 35,000+ did.
E. No AC or bathrooms on buses. Several old people died on the school buses while being evacuated because the buses were stuck in traffic and heat.
F. Bus drivers made one-way trips. In other words, the drivers were not allowed to return to NO w/ an empty bus.
G. There was no place to take people in buses. The day before the storm's landfall, there were no available hotel rooms as far north as Shreveport.
H. Amtrak stopped running trains out of the city when there was still time to get people out by train (Saturday night). Greyhound also shut down service Saturday night.
I. The airport shut down early when there was still time to get people out by private planes or giant troop carrier planes or airliners.

Details of other Presidential responses:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/446419.stm

In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd -- a category 3 -- was bearing down the Carolinas and Virginia.

President Clinton was in Christchurch, New Zealand - meeting with President Jiang of China ... he cut short his meetings overseas and flew home to coordinate the rescue efforts. This all one day BEFORE a Cat-3 hit the coast.

How about own father during Hurricane Andrew? Once again, President Bush (41) -- August, 1992 -- was in the midst of a brutal campaign for re-election. Yet, he cut off his campaigning the day before and went to Washington where he marshaled the largest military operation on US soil in history. He sent in 7,000 National Guard and 22,000 regular military personnel, and all the gear to begin the clean up within hours after Andrew passed through Florida.

In August of 1969 when Cat-5 Hurricane Camille hit roughly the same area as Katrina, President Nixon had already readied the National Guard and ordered all Gulf rescue vessels and equipment from Tampa and Houston to follow the hurricane in. There were over 1,000 regular military with two dozen helicopters to assist the Coast Guard and National Guard within hours after the skies cleared.

So, advance planning and prompt Presidential action before a natural disaster (and this was both natural AND Man-Made) has precedent, and it does make a huge difference in the response and the results. Anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant of history, or lying. And ye shall judge them by their actions...or inaction.

Bush's 'acknowledgment of responsibility' today is just so much Rovian spin designed to recoup poll losses. The statement is so full of weasel words that it is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

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*This may just be the longest single sentence I've ever written. English professors, have at it. :) I can take the heat.

[CottonBear]

1. Note:

Items A-I were my summaries of all of the news stories I'd read from various sources. Most of the facts came from live interviews w/ Nagin and other officials on local NOLA radio and local NOLA tv and radio and newspaper sites. I just wanted to clarify that A-I were my personal news summaries.

Another point: Nagin is not/was not in control of school buses. Those belong to the School Board. He used city transit buses to transport people to the Superdome. Some schoolbuses were used to transport people out of town (by whom, I don't know)and that's when it became apparent that the buses were too hot because some elderly passengeres died. Ray Nagin did say buses of all sorts typically made one-way trips out.

[mcscajun]

2. Thanks for the clarification. And Of course, I bow to you for compiling

them. :applause: I have revised my post to credit you. :)

I'll have to reread about the control of buses. I think my friend will sort it all out, though. Maybe he'll even forward this stuff back to His Friend that sent this mess out in the first place.

[CottonBear]

3. You're welcome. I think my summary is fairly accurate.

The Media Matters for America debunking is very powerful. You should send that link to your friend.

[mcscajun]

4. I did.

He's one of the more rational people I know. He'll respond to facts. :)

Wish there more like him in my circle...and elsewhere.