Posted on 09/11/2005 1:04:32 PM PDT by GreatOne
Sept. 19, 2005 issue - It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington. The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president's early return and the delicate task of telling him. Hagin, it was decided, as senior aide on the ground, would do the deed.
But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. . . . When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
This moron doesn't mention (1) any culpability on behalf of Nagin for implementing the first stages of the evacuation/relief efforts; (2) that while the military may be able to mobilize some of its branches within 18 hours, they're not going to drop troops in when they don't know where to drop them, what points of entrance were available, how bad the damage was, etc.; and (3) there was a lot of resistance by Lousiana emergency officials from working with the feds.
Good grief.
democrat mantra to follow.
Who is Evan Thomas and what is a newsweek...
Yes..and like anything that begins with a false premise, everything that follows is bovine feces.
From the same "news" organization that brought you the "Koran Flushed" story. I can not imagine why anyone pays any attention to Newweak anymore.
Given that Newsweek is a virtual Death Valley of diverging viewpoints, it appears more and more that projection has become the mother's milk of the MSM
It is ridiculous that this kind of vitriol is not countered. They need to answer these attacks loudly, clearly, and quickly.
Hey Evan, Newsweak has been exposed as a Bush bashing troop hating publication thanks to your negligent publishing of your phoney Koran story resulting in multiple deaths. Keep on writing Evan, no one is reading.
And all of it comes across as fact when it is nothing but bullshit.
I have mentioned this 10 times, but it's just so ironic that the Dems are now blaming Bush for not acting like the fascist they always accuse him of being.
Evan Thomas. ROTFL! I don't know anyone that takes this fool seriously.
That's one of the most amazing thing about this piece (of crap) - he's apparently unaware that disaster relief is a bottom-up situation, with the bulk of the responsibility on the local agencies. While he mentions the Bush-Blanco discussion about getting the feds involves, he doesn't bash Blanco for not handing over authority, like she should have.
Another outrageous compenent of this is that the media is completely forgetting about the Florida hurricanes, and how Mississippi has handled themselves in situation vs. Louisiana. Having a brother at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, I can tell you that they got hit straight on, and while they didn't have number of people, the damage was worse. Where are the Mississippi vs. Louisiana stories? Or Louisiana vs. Florida?
Nope - all Bush's fault. Bastards.
Bush only blew it if you're a member of the MSM.
Well, "spit" is not my preferred word exactly. But Jim Rob has rules about using impolite language on the FR Forum.
Congressman Billybob
"..couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority..."
Bwaaa...and just what would have been the reaction if he had?
The big game trick by the dems was to withhold aid and deny Federal cooperation until it was bad, then, with Bush exercising a presidential power, the blame would have been turned onto him.
What happened was that Blanco denied entry to the aid workers, stonewalled the Feds and because this little tactic backfired, the full court press in the media with Democrat talking points disseminated to all stations was quickly rolled out to stem the hemorrhage.
Guess what guys, you failed. You lose. You goofed. Tactic went kerflooy, and boy oh boy, someone is going to find out that the dems gave the media the talking points for the week which numbered, what, eight consecuative lies one right after another?
Someone will rat.....bwaaaaaa.....
It's coming. bwaaa.......
"I have mentioned this 10 times, but it's just so ironic that the Dems are now blaming Bush for not acting like the fascist they always accuse him of being."
Very true. They have no respect for individual state rights. With state rights comes a degree of independence from the federal government as was intended by our founding fathers. Of course, I figure they hate Bush so much partly because they worship government and anybody who doesn't treat their god as one, is a heretic in their minds.
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