Mary Landrieu, Senator from Louisiana has called for the President to establish a 'cabinet level post' to direct relief efforts in her state.
She has made this extraordinary request so that federal relief officials can bypass and 'go over the heads' of state and local officials- officials that Landrieu knows are incompetent, and will only delay or prevent help from getting through. We won't even discuss what has been left unsaid. Do you want to see tens and tens of billions of dollars administered by the same people that had no plan to begin with?
Read his entire post. Check here to see how outraged Democrats are that Landrieu actually thanked the President for his help after Katrina.
Let us use our diagnostic skills here. Landrieu appears to be a person anchored in Reality, and appropriately thankful for the heroic efforts to save lives and provide relief on the Federal level. She appears to be behaving fairly normally.
OTOH, Anderson Cooper of CNN and the [other] Democrats who are criticizing her-- for daring to notice that the Democrats that run the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans are the one's who must bear most of the responsibility for the disaster post-Katrina--are acting as if she has turned to the dark side of the force. As RedState comments:
Democrats claim to be the party of a big tent. Yet every time a member of their party has a decent word to say about a Republican, this poor soul is immediately accused of being in bed (literally and figuratively) with Satan's minions. Mary Landrieu likely lost property, many treasured memories, friends, possibly family, and she has to hear her own party repeatedly attack her for not Bush-bashing, for 'smiling' too much, most of all for not putting partisanship before the destruction of her state.
This angry criticism of Landrieu's behavior is extremely suspect psychologically. Why isn't Landrieu entitled to her opinion? She happens to be a member of congress from the area most impacted by Katrina.
There is one reason, and one reason only, why so much negative emotion has resulted from her rather mild words of appreciation. Those words did not further the "Bush is Evil/Bush deliberately destroyed N.O./Bush hates Black people" themes that are currently being foisted on the public and which are apparently sacrosanct and immune from questions or facts. The caterwauling and hysteria that accompany these accusations suggest desperation, defensiveness, an intense desire to CYA, and a deliberate descent into irrationality and delusion.
What bothers me most is that all these unsubstantiated allegations and vile accusations are being made and gleefully covered extensively in the national and international media. As the situation becomes less severe and things begin to return to normal, will the truth be so aggressively reported--especially if it conflicts with the Left's talking points and supports Landrieu's formulation?
By all means, let us calmly and rationally investigate this fiasco after the essential relief is completed. Let us search for the root causes of this horrible human tragedy. Let us see what was planned and what wasn't. Who made decisions and who didn't. Who has been incompetent and who hasn't. What was known and for how long it was known. What was the City's, the State's and the Federal Government's responsibility and where did the failures occur? I have read the New Orleans Hurricane disaster plan, and must say that it is rather short on operational details. All of these areas must be looked into.
I look forward to it, because then I can make my final diagnosis. But the differential is not looking good for the reality "biased" community.
UPDATE: (hat tip: Larwyn) From the WaPo:
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.
Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.
This little tidbit was buried in the 6th paragraph of the story. It shouls have been the headline, considering how many headlines have screamed out that it was the Bush
Administration that was not responding..... Three guesses why it wasn't-- and the first two don't count.
Protein Wisdom and The Anchoress have more, with other links.
No comments:
Post a Comment