<p>My statement above was in refererence to Mr. B’s post from 07-SEPT: </p>
<p>“At least the White house has told Fema and Homeland security to take the $2,000 suits off and start wearing the kinds of clothes working people wear during an emergency.”</p>
<p>My reference regarding suits was that everytime I saw a senior FEMA or homeland security staffer in front of a camera…they were all clean and shiny…they did not look like they had been running the marathon in their clothes, which is how the state and local officials looked.</p>
<p>They did not have the appearance of people working diligently on the problem. Then around day four Brownie started to wear shirts without ties…like he was actually working up a sweat. By the way, I hear he was always planning to retire after this hurricane season was over. It just wasn’t mentioned until last week.</p>
<p>So, InterestedDad, are you still attaching your crediblity to Aaron Broussard after his emotional display on Meet the Press? He frabricated some facts in order to blame the Federal government for a death it had no control over. </p>
<p>Thanks for posting this. I always figured that there was something odd about that story since by Friday the water level had long since been stabilized. But, once again the government and Bush gets the black eye and the media does nothing to track down the truth - thank goodness for the blogosphere.</p>
<p>I hope when they do the post mortem of the evnts surrounding Katrina that they take a hard look at the role of the media in terms of their willingness to report stories without corroboration. It is now coming out that many of the horrors that were reported to have happened in the Super Dome, never actually happened.</p>
<p>So you feel Bush was justified playing guitar in San Diego while his countrymen were dying, and that this is the type of President you wanted when you voted. You can try to blame the locals, the media, or anyone else…but the President failed this task big time…he has not built homeland security, he built campaign helpers jobs security. Fema and other important Government agencies are being mismangaged by people whos only qualification is they supported the President during his campaign. Maybe you know a few.</p>
<p>The federal government probably did a better job than it normally does in its reaction to Katrina. Government usually screws up, though, in most everything that it does. Municipal, state, federal…they typically don’t do a very good job.</p>
<p>None of them did a very good job here…and none of them do a very good job in anything else that they do. That’s just the way that it is. </p>
<p>Wouldn’t life be great without the government screwing everything up? This isn’t just George Bush’s government either as much as I know that some of you here would like to think that it is. He may not be perfect…and I’ve said as such…but the real problem is government itself. There are just too many people who are con men and thieves and they’re not necessarily allied with any particular party. I happen to think that they’re more of them on the left and some of you happen to think that they’re more of them on the right. All I know is that any time the government gets involved it usually ends up being a lot worse than it would have been if they hadn’t gotten involved at all.</p>
<p>browninfall you are still just trying to make excuses for a terrible presidency. Bush has steered money away from social programs toward what he described as a priority of Homeland Security and then he squandered that money on hiring cronies after chasing some very competent people from government service. I think Harry Truman’s quotes; “The Buck Stops Here” and “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.” both apply. There are no excuses for the suffering this administration has caused.</p>
<p>It’s interesting that you hold Harry Truman is such high esteem but then in other posts use results of opinion polls to “prove” that Bush is doing a bad job. Truman holds the modern day record for low approval ratings. At least he took his own advice and “got out of the kitchen”.</p>
<p>Steered money away from social programs? Hmmm … he increased spending on education by something like 45%; his prescription drug plan will cost many billions. Yet he “steered money away from social programs.” You have a very selective way of looking at data.</p>
<p>…because he got the story wrong on when the man’s mother died? Good heavens - his tears were real and justified, and people were dying all week at hospitals and nursing homes. He was absolutely right to demand that they stop talking and “send somebody.” The fact that that one particular woman didn’t die on that one particular day doesn’t matter. Someone else’s mothers and fathers did.</p>
<p>The grief may have been justified, but the target of the tirade was misdirected. The people responsible for this woman’s death were primarily the owners of the facility and secondarily the local and state officials. The federal government is not expected to be the primary first responders.</p>
<p>As to the other deaths (i.e., at the convention center) this has also been shown to have been the result of state officials not allowing the Red Cross and the Salvation Army to go to the Convention Center or the Super Dome to administer aid. </p>
<p>So, yes his grief and anger may have been warranted, but the message that was conveyed was that had it not been for the careless feds this woman would lived. This was not the case. Nor was it the case that the feds were directly rersponsible for any deaths at the CC or Superdome.</p>