Bill Bennett : "... abort all black babies ..."

If you are a fan of Michael Moore, then the Bill Bennet comments are a windfall for you.

On the other hand, if you actually have a brain, you realize the obvious Michael Moore-ism that took place here ... even if you did not hear the entire statement (by Bennett).

Of course ... the democrats are jumping in with the former crowd ... those without brains. Is that redundant ... "democrat" and "those without brains"?

It has been sheer joy watching the response by journalists and liberals (again, redundant). I guess the one thing that I find amazing is that these liberals continue to believe that they can hide the full context of the statement from people ... that even those that hear the liberals' carefully snipped version of what was said during liberal commentary will not eventually hear the full text and realize that the democrats are once again lying through their teeth. Don't they realize that they (newspapers, magazines and 3 major networks) do not own the information flow anymore? Do they not realize how much the average joe hates to be lied to? Will they ever learn (even after the last plug is pulled and they have to close up shop for lack of readers/viewers)?

But you do expect a higher level of discussion from me, do you not? I appreciate that.

Let's point out the obvious hypocrisy ... yesterday the world was abuzz that a doctor in Alabama was offering free abortions to evacuees. The liberals loved this because they knew it would stick under religious conservative's skins ... or so they think. Now, this doctor obviously is aware that the majority of the evacuees are black ... so how racist is it to assume that these poor black folks would want to abort all their babies? That's just sick ... and that is repulsively racist ... let's kill the black babies. Liberals rejoice, conservatives repulsed ... you figure out who the American people will side with.

Now, more importantly ... and more to the REAL topic Bennett was discussing ... a few years ago another revolting study came out that argued that from an economic view, the millions of dead babies that resulted from all these abortions have been an economic positive. I don't remember the specific details, but basically they argued that the overwhelming majority of the dead children would have been poor (which I think was immediately debunked ... it is not simply the poor that are killing their children) and ended up in jail, and therefore by reducing the poor population crime and overall societal costs would by definition be reduced. Let us just look at that ... basically this argument is that the poor are a bunch of criminals, or more likely to be criminals. Wow! But that's not racist (after all, don't the poverty pimps tell you that all the black folks are poor, or is that only during Bush's watch?) ... well, it was not racist because the arbiters of racism ... the Democrats ... were too busy telling us how wonderful it is to abort poor babies so that crime goes down.

By the way ... let us just dismiss all of this truth, and let us just assume that Bennett was in fact this racist pig, advocating all dead black children. Oh, that is just despicable, no? Really??? (You liberals know I am going somewhere with this, don't you? ;-). Well, then ... let's just look at somebody that probably was the worst of them all.

You realize that Planned Parenthood is the lighthouse of liberalism ... the foundation of the truth of democrat philosophy ... "we never met a child that should not be aborted" and all that. This organization was founded by one Margaret Sanger (note for most of you, every liberal that is reading has to stop at this point ... because they know that their Bennet-bash is a tiny little booger compared to their worship of this viscious bitch). If I am not mistaken, her son is still a key player in Planned Parenthood and democrat hero.

Let me just give you a few samples of her writings ... this one on the extermination of blacks:
"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," she said, "if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon

Better one, from "Black Genocide" (http://blackgenocide.org/planned.html) :
The founder of Planned Parenthood said, "Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated." Is her vision being fulfilled today?

Oooohhhh ... here's another juicy one ... which appears to be actively being followed by Democrats today:
"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…"Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood


So tell your liberal pals that they can shut their flappin' traps about conservative racism until EVERY democrat calls for the destruction (or at least cutoff of government funds) to Planned Parenthood.

Now ... to clean things up ... Bennett's fundamental argument in his statement was that an economics argument is a morally reprehensible way of looking at abortion ... but you probably are only hearing the first half of that statements, particularly if you are listening only to liberal news (redundant) media. His caller was arguing the loss of revenues to Social Security because of 30 million dead babies ... Bennett was saying that sword can cut both ways ... some freaks are arguing that the dead babies would have been the "bad" ones (i.e. "black children") that cost society money. He is saying that this economics argument, in either direction, is morally wrong.

Katrina ... "What problems?"

In the aftermath of Katrina, Nancy Pelosi held yet another Bush-bashing press conference, where she publicly called for the resignation of then FEMA director Michael Brown (whom we still have not apologized to). During the conference, she held that Bush was "out-of-touch" with reality because of the following conversation (note: if I am not mistaken this was the week of the hurricane ... before anybody really knew what was going on):

Pelosi : Are you going to fire Brown?
Bush: Why would I do that?
Pelosi : Because of all of the problems with the federal response (to Katrina)?
Bush: What problems?

Accoring to Nancy, Bush was out of touch. So who was really out of touch, Nancy? You see, Mr. Bush was in communications with the people on the ground ... I would assume the state officials, FEMA, and the military / guard. Nancy was in touch with ... well, nobody ... but she was watching TV!!! So ask yourself ... who was out of touch?

We now know that the majority of the TV stories were unsubstantiated: total exaggerations or downright fabrications; BUT THEY WERE NOT BEING REPORTED THAT WAY ... this is absolutely critical. We also know that across the board, almost nobody in the chain really knew what was going on ... the "victims", the reporters, the news networks ... all were either making up or perpetuating the stories without any regard for accuracy. Even the idiot, democrat (redundant) Mayor of the city was spewing forth the same garbage on Oprah that turned out to be a bald faced lie ... the about the Superdome and about stepping over dead bodies, children being raped and murdered, etc.

I also heard a recording of some city "official" ... just losing it on some news program, blubbering like a baby ... telling the story of his mother or maybe grandmother ... who day after day was calling/crying for help ... and this guy kept promising "they (the feds) were on their way" ... and finally, on Friday, she died ... gut / heart wrenching, you could see how crushed he was telling the story ... and a lie. The woman he supposedly was talking about had died on Monday (how she died is not being reported) ... so unless he was talking to the dead, he made the whole thing up. I'm sorry, but somebody that goes on national TV and exploits our feelings that bad, particularly a government official ... I'm sorry ... they should be taken out and shot. Period ... it is that despicable.

And set Nagin right down next to them, because frankly we expect that a leader will serve to calm the situation, provide rational input so that the government response is effective. This jackass (he is a democrat, after all) was out spreading as big or worse rumours as everybody else, and on national TV. And we wonder why the federal response was delayed and ineffective at first??? Note: FEMA is a coordinating agency ... they rely on the locals to ACCURATELY report what is going on and request the CORRECT help, then FEMA attempts to deliver what is needed with whatever resources they have available. With idiot democrat Nagin running around spreading B.S. about stuff that wasn't happening, and the news media perpetuating this crap, and the New Orleans police department AWOL ... exactly who the hell was FEMA supposed to respond to?

But I digress ...

So now we know it was all B.S. Groups of people (generally speaking, black people) who were accused of the most vile acts, "animalistic behavior" I think is how the mayor put it, were actually helping each other out in the kinds of ways we have come to expect of Americans during such crises. By the way, while the democrats are throwing the "racist" word around ... could you imagine if it would have been republicans or conservatives asserting incorrectly that black folks were acting like the violent animals that their own mayor and the news media made them out to be?

Were there problems? You bet ... were there bad guys acting badly? Absolutely ... some slimeballs were taking advantage of the situation. Always happens, always will, and 10000 military guys bearing down on them probably would (could) not make a difference ... and it is critical that we understand these slime were the exception, not the rule (even if it was 1000 out of the 100000 or so left behind, not to mention the "professional" slime that crawled in from other places).

This is VERY important ... some of the National Guard guys reported that these stories were making security almost impossible ... THEY knew it was a crock, but people hearing the stories ... stories created / repeated BY THE MAYOR ... were responding to the stories by getting violent. It took some remarkably intelligent moves on the part of these Guardsmen and other civilians to keep things calm. Nonetheless, the mayor and other irresponsible idiots were making things more dangerous with these lies.

So now I can take this article down several paths:

1) We are holding congressional hearings to determine how come there was such a poor response to problems that never happened. Think about that ... now for a laugh, the democrats are so indignant that they are boycotting the hearings that are about a poor response to something that never happened, because THEY wanted an independent panel to asses why we did not respond very well ... to nothing.

2) I was accosted by a lib friend (by the way, this guy is no moron) about my questioning his assertion that Bush is screwed up because GW wasn't watching the news (GW apparently had to be told by his staff what the situation being reported was). My reply was why the heck would Bush have to watch the news when he (more accurately, his staff) was in constant contact and he "knew" what was going on? To them (the liberals) ... the media is The Truth (at least the media that makes Bush look bad), so Bush should be watching it to figure out what his next moves are going to be. Think about this ... Bush was evil because he was in Crawford while this was going on, but when he engaged (as if he was disconnected in Crawford) he should have been watching TV!!! Am I crazy or is he?

Now, this was nuts ... I said ... "OK, so what should Bush or Brown had done" ... reply "Send the supplies and the military" ... "Where?" ... "In there!!!" (I kid you not, this guy really is not stupid) ... "Where???" ... "Down to the scene" (I assume he meant where the reporters were) ... "What scene?" ... ok, ok ... you get the picture ... they were just supposed to fly in helicopters, men, food ... nowhere in particular, and nevermind that THEY WERE ALREADY THERE!!! I finally concluded with the fact that the locals were supposed to tell the Feds where to send them, WHEN THEY NEEDED THEM, and then the conversation began to get circular so it was over.

I recently emailed the links to all the liberal rags (New Orleans and LA papers) that are reporting about how terrible the misinformation from the media was ... how they ALL got it wrong ... how they failed even the most basic journalistic principals ... how they ASSUMED that the stories were true (who is the racist?) ... and their lame excuses for continuing to report the lies as truth without even qualifying the stories as such (rumours and inuendo). Funny how I have not heard back from him!

3) How is it that we give a pass to EVERYBODY in this whole, sordid affair, on the REAL racism that was going on? Bush is racist because the feds were too slow (NOT!), but these guys are not racist because they assume that black folks will turn into the most vile animals under these situations? I mean, did they not all assume that the black, poor folks who they were echoing these horrendous stories about were basically expected to be doing these things? Reverse the situation ... if these kinds of stories were coming from the affluent, white communities; wouldn't these news organizations have checked them out and confirmed the facts before going to the reports? This was not just a white, arrogant media doing this ... the mayor himself was spewing this garbage.

4) Speaking of Nagin, why are we still piling on Mr. Brown when we see this same mayor as the complete and total derelict who not only failed in just about every way, but then got on national TV and repeated the garbage being reported in the media? As Mr. Brown stated ... perhaps he did make a mistake in not recognizing what a total idiot these democrats were (my words, not his).

Could you imagine Rudy G. going on Oprah and talking about the people in the towers murdering each other to get out, and then finding out he was lying? Anybody want to guess what the lead story would be in the NY Slimes? But Nagin gets a pass.

5) Now Farrakhan has claimed that he met with Nagin (between trips to the "mother ship" behind the moon, although at this point we don't know if Nagin has been to the "mother ship" with or without Farrakhan), and Nagin told him divers had discovered remnants of explosives at the levees. I would assume that Nagin never even met with Farrakhan, or if they did meet there was no talk about sabatoge on the levees ... and I am guessing there have not been any divers under there yet ... too dangerous, but I could be wrong. Nonetheless ... if Nagin did meet with the Nation of Lunatics leader and DID talk about sabatoge, then that should seal the deal and we should lock Nagin up.

6) This has been broadcast all over the world, including all the B.S. racist claims against Mr. Bush. We looked like a bunch of bungling idiots at best, or mean spirited and on the brink of a race based civil war at worst ... and it was all a lie. State, local and national leaders, all democrats, were only too eager to get on the airwaves to add their "official" seal on this ... yes, George W. Bush is to blame, he caused the hurricane, he's a racist dog and wanted dead black people, and he's totally "out of touch".

So exactly who is going out to the rest of the world and telling them "Oooppssss!!! We were wrong ... it was not as bad as we painted it!" I won't hold my breath.

Six months from now, the left wing will rejoice that Mr. Bush's poll numbers here and around the world will be way down ... and people's idea of the US will have been diminished. The conclusion they will come to will be that the world is rejecting Mr. Bush's ideals and policies. Stupid and ignorant people will believe them ...

What to do about the oil companies

As a conservative, particularly leaning toward the libertarian side of things (in the classic sense of that term, not in the sense that the libertarians I hear about have taken a hard left turn) ... I am at a quandary about what to do with the oil companies. Obviously I do not agree with the knee-jerk liberal response of beating them down with taxes ... more big government.

However, in this situation it really seems like you have a hardcore monopoly, or "psuedo-monopoly", where there really is no way to say that the oil companies are being limited by any sense of competition. You are also unable to make the "luxury" argument ... if the price gets too high, consumers don't have to use their products ... since we "must" use the products everyday ... either directly or indirectly (*everything* you touch was somehow affected by oil). I have heard some claims about the "hits" they have taken by the weather, war, or whatever; but that pales in comparison with the "hits" they have treated themselves to ... namely that their profits are not only setting records, but obscene records in the 10s/100s of billions.

Basically, I believe in a relatively pure capitalist system ... but when I say that, I mean a REAL capitalist system ... one with unlimited competition so that there is always another challenger down the pipe, even with ever-more-massive takeovers. The fight makes everybody stronger and better (if not, the competitor dies), and by definition the competition limits the prices. Using this view of capitalism, I draw a huge difference between big businesses and capitalism ... in fact I can see "big" businesses as potentially anathema to what I define as real capitalism.

It would be naive to argue that there is any real competition in the world of oil ... we're talking a commodity here that has very little play in terms of innovation (it all gets to you the same way, and despite the ads one gas is about the same as any other). Worse yet, it would be naive to argue that there is not at least the chance that these guys are conspiring to escalate prices ... I mean that you can start a bad rumour upwind of an oil refinery and cause a 25 cent increase in the price of gasoline at every station.

Now would be a great time to put together a REAL energy plan ... one that not only includes new options and new exploration, but also includes figuring out what to do with the old line businesses that seem to be raping us without restraint. I know ... I know ... FantasyLand is in Orlando.

But you know ... Bush was an oil man, from an oil state. He would probably be in the best position as a president to sit these boys down and broker a deal. Now think about this ... the oil companies are screwing us over in terms of prices, and the democrats are screwing us over in terms of exploration. Seems to me we can set up an extraordinary Win-Win-Lose deal ... the oil companies win by securing the new supplies (for the $4 a barrel it takes to get it out of the ground, not the $80 it takes to buy it from the Saudis), we win by getting lower gas prices (not sure how this is negotiated, but they can figure it out), and the democraps lose by being dumb enough to fight this as a ONE-ON-ONE issue (vs. buried in all the other garbage surrounding an election) that is FRONT and CENTER.

Let's see if the Republicans are smart enough to take this on.

Arguing Both Sides of the Issue : take 2

As has been demonstrated on countless occasions, the democrats have turned into "professional whiners" that will literally argue every side of every issue ... just as long as it is against the hated Bush. So during Katrina we were supposed to be upset about how slow the feds responded to helping, but during Rita the feds are moving too fast?

In the wake of Rita, the federal agencies (I assume FEMA) have contracted out to numerous sources to get things cleaned up enough to allow people to come home. In the wake of the howls from liberal lunatics about the slow response of the Feds in Katrina, we are now getting the howl of liberal lunatics about "no-bid" contracts being awarded to speed up the response to Rita.

Of course, the name Halliburton is being raised (nevermind the fact that numerous no-bids are going out to different companies) ... and of course the liberal media cannot mention Halliburton without at least a line or two tieing it to Dick Cheney. At some point, I'm wondering how "shell-shocked" the poor folks at Halliburton must be ... they are literally despised because of what? Their former CEO ... a man that has literally dismantled all connections to the company, disposing of millions of dollars of personal income in the process ... was Dick Cheney. Nevermind that under Mr. Cheney, Halliburton was a loyal and trusted resource to the Clinton administration, being awarded numerous, lucrative no-bid contracts without question from the loons.

So why, you might ask, does Halliburton always get in the middle of this stuff? Simply put, because they get the job done. Period (perhaps exclamation point). They are a private company that does the job fathead bureaucrats formerly did (at 10x or 100x the cost), a helluva lot faster, and more proficiently. That and the fact (most of the time) they are one of about 2-3 companies in the world capable of dealing with these situations.

Now, the OTHER company getting a big chunk of the contracts is The Shaw Group ... headed by .... (you will be hard pressed to figure out who this is, because the Liberal News Media does not report it ...) Jim Bernhard. So who's that??? The Chairman of the Louisiana Democrat Party. Hmmmm, funny how that little detail seems to fail the New York Slimes!

Nevertheless ... it has long since been beyond sickening that we have to listen to the whiners argue every side of the issue. I do not think it really matters politically, Americans for the most part are sick of it as well ... but that does not make it less tiring. Just once, JUST ONCE, would it not be nice to hear a reporter actually DO THEIR JOB and challenge one of these democrats when they do the about face (yeah, I know ... FantasyLand is in Orlando)?

Limits to lies ... take 2

In an earlier post, I surmised that perhaps the American people simply do not care about lying anymore ... and it will be interesting to watch what happens with the President's poll numbers in response to Rita AND the revelations that just about everything we were told about Katrina was an out-n-out lie.

My conclusion will be that there will be almost no change for reasons that I stated earlier ... this has been the template that the media uses to destroy Mr. Bush. This template is to focus on completely bad stuff, or buffer any good stuff with bad news ... and if anything is misreported the corrections come in very quietly, if at all.

Katrina is a great example ... they now know that absolutely nobody died in the Superdome and Convention Centers as a result of the (widely reported) violence and chaos which erupted because of the slow Federal response ... and in fact the numbers were literally miniscule ... 6 dead at the Superdome ... 4 from "natural" causes, 1 suicide and 1 OD. In addition, the widespread murder and chaos that was happening in the city that the media wanted you to think was George Bush's fault turned out to be no more than what New Orleans would experience in any other week during the year. Granted you do not normally have running gun battles between rival gangs of looters, just that this type of violence simply replaced the normal violence that is always there ... and more importantly the numbers of "violent deaths", the ones most easily blamed on Mr. Bush, were orders of magnitude fewer than reported.

Rita will probably garner the President very little, if any, credit. The reason for this is that the federal response to hurricanes over the last few years has been exceptional, and the Rita response simply followed the pattern of the last few years (Katrina was the exception). Incidentally, the excellent response by the feds over the last few years was a result of Michael Brown's exceptional leadership, which doesn't play into the media template very well. The city and state governments of Texas followed their plans, and even though they did not come off perfectly (as is ALWAYS the case with anything of this magnitude), the contingencies were also planned out and everything worked LIKE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO!

This is important ... as it is a perfect example of how things were supposed to be. In the TX evacuation, the traffic snarled and gasoline started to run out. Texas local or state officials (I believe it was state) saw the problem, figured out a solution, and then called FEMA to provide support. FEMA took the call, engaged the appropriate resources, and got tanker trucks to the stranded motorists. Now, did the plan work perfectly? No. Did the contingency work perfectly? No (some of the motorists pulled weapons on the tanker drivers, demanding a full tank instead of the allotted 5 gals). But ultimately the job got done and they pulled off the most massive evacuation in the history of this country, perhaps the world. One more thing ... if you think that this happened in spite of Mr. Brown ... like FEMA suddenly healed all of its problems in 2 weeks ... then you need to go drink some more kool-aid. This proves that the whole system works effectively if you have competent (i.e. republican) leadership (couldn't resist! ;-).

Now, the media is in a bind because this proves that the majority of the effort is in planning and execution at the city and state levels, but if they give them too much credit than it will be hard to keep the blame on Bush for Katrina. This messes up their template, so expect Rita to go quietly into that dark night.

Haunting Bill Richardson? The Corspe in the closet (it'll be a skeleton by 2008)

Since I am in New Mexico, our news coverage of the hurricane(s) has only been interrupted by the exploding (democrat) kickback scandals. My understanding is that this is beginning to get coverage across the country ... not something Bill Richardson wants for the image of his state if he has long term visions of a presidential run.

In short, if the allegations hold ... the last two treasurers of the state have been reaping hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, in illegal kickbacks from corrupt brokers who handle New Mexico taxpayers' money. As a result, New Mexicans have been getting royally screwed with some incredibly pathetic return rates on their money (< 3% by some accounts). At the same time, at least some of the kickback money has served to benefit New Mexico democrats, who have been reaping a winfall of campaign contributions rerouted (laundered) from the kickbacks.

This may have a direct impact on the democrat side of the 2008 presidential campaign. While all democrat eyes are focused on the Washington crowd, Bill Richardson would have been a reasonably moderate alternative to the radical elite field (for you lefties, nobody is being fooled by Hillary's little masquerade as a hawk). Richardson as an alternative brings: Clinton credentials, very positive image, non-Washingtonian, minority status without being "too" different, and at least a pretense of border control awareness. At the very least, Richardson had to be on the VERY short list as a VP candidate.

A key objective for the political clout of Richardson had to be to put New Mexico on the map. He has taken aggressive action to lure in businesses and to try to clean up a relatively negative reputation. Geographically New Mexico should be at or above the other southwestern states: much milder than Arizona, very low cost of living, good natural resources and scenery, etc. However, incredibly bad schools, crime, horrendous infrastructure and lack of productivity have left New Mexico way behind where it should be. If Richardson could turn things around, the state was exactly the kind of stepping stone to use to create a shining resume for national office.

Then comes the scandal, the dynamics of which could undermine the whole plan. The business climate has taken a major hit ... with outside businesses obviously concerned about making major commitments to a state (or even to Richardson himself) with corruption scandals in the highest offices. In addition, the corruption is exclusively a democrat scandal, and could ultimately spread across all branches of government like a New Mexico wildfire.

Note: there is no indication that Richardson himself is involved, and in fact I would guess that he would have taken hard measures to make sure it got cleaned up, perhaps quietly. Nonetheless, his efforts to ride this pony to the White House may have just taken a fatal hit.

Ruh-ro Professor, We're gonna need a new disaster!

The global warming fanatics are going to have to find (i.e. manufacture) a new panic in order to keep those government grants coming in. Scientists have discovered that radiation (heat) from the sun has been increasing and causing the earth to warm up.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

Actually, since global warming (in this context, I mean the "man-made" kind) is far more of a religion than anything based upon science; I do not expect the fanatical rhetoric to change all that much based upon hard-cold facts. Most of the far left is on this bandwagon, and their "solutions" all involve economic weakening of capitalist economies and strengthening of communist and socialist regimes. Go figure, eh?

I have heard one person joke that the scientists had to come to this conclusion, since they could not figure out any good way to blame George W. Bush for the planetary warming on Mars.

In terms of the "warm-up" of the sun ... there is no big need to panic, Chicken Littles. From my reading of the article, this is not so much that the sun is getting warmer, just that the sun surface activity (sun spots) is causing more radiation (heat) to hit the earth. This also seems to follow a cyclical pattern, although nobody really knows why.

Nonetheless ... what is fascinating about this is how you can track the political biases of the various "scientists" in response to this research. If you are listen to the lefty religion types ... the effect of the sun is minimal compared to the effect of the greenhouse gases. Unbelievable!!!! The SUN ... the thing that powers everything in our solar system, is less of an effect than MAN??? These guys are nuts!

We could take every atomic weapon, every ounce of oil on the entire globe, torch it all at the same time, and not create 1/1000000th the power of a single solar flare:

(From http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/flare.htm):
The amount of energy released is the equivalent of millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs exploding at the same time! (and)
This energy (single flare) is ten million times greater than the energy released from a volcanic explosion.

(by the way ... the energy and "polution" released from a single volcanic eruption is orders of magnitude greater than anything that the populations of the world add to the atmosphere ... but again, this does not give the lefties an excuse to redistribute money to their socialist benefactors ... so we need to ignore these facts in the "global warming" debate)

Granted that only a small portion of this energy directly impacts earth, but it is still orders of magnitude greater than anything that we are able to do. Of note (my observation, not in the article) ... the initial upturn in global temperatures just happens to coincide with the onset of the sunspot cycle that they attribute to the increased radiation. However, the "greenhouse gas" geniuses don't want to be confused with the facts ... particularly facts that can be used to debunk their ideas about looting the American taxpayers and funneling that money to leftist/socialists.

On the other hand ... the anti-"greenhouse gas" scientists are basically saying that this confirms their expectations that the various warming trends that we are seeing are simply part of the natural cycles. This is in line with what scientists have chronicled throughout history by various means: historical records of daily life (old stories), ice core drillings, atmospheric measurements, etc. Throughout the history of the earth (or, more precisely, the solar system), things have changed all the time ... sometimes with incredible fluctuations (by our current standards, relative to recent history). I have seen reports that the natural cycle that we have experienced over the last 100-200 years has been a remarkably "calm" period in terms of weather and other natural phenomena ... perhaps this "vacation" is coming to an end!

Thank God that the idiots that are pushing for Kyoto have failed in this country! Kyoto would have cost us billions and decimated our economy. Now, perhaps we can try an intelligent and measured approach in the solutions to the REAL PROBLEMS caused by the sun, not chasing the phantom "greenhouse gas" problems conjured up by leftist whackos.

Katrina Racism, in reverse

First off ... do we see now why it is ludicrous to blame George W. Bush for what happened in New Orleans? This Nagin is not only incompetent and derelict, but reckless ... a combination that proved deadly to the weakest people of New Orleans. His actions also explain how the catastrophe happened ... he was willing to risk the lives of his constituents for God knows what reason ... he just seems to have this hang-up about putting and keeping people in a dangerous place. It took another Cat-5 roaring toward him for Nagin to finally realize that repopulating the city too soon will sink his butt for good.

Racism, however, may help to explain why so many blacks got caught up in the catastrophe once the levees broke. The liberal picture is that they were too poor to get out ... which we can easily see is a lie. How do you explain 1,000s of cars (the number I heard reported was 200,000 vehicles, but that sounded like way too big a number) that the insurance institute(s) are saying they are going to have to make good on? In just about every picture I have seen of people wading through the swill, you see a half dozen or so vehicles under water. Insurance facts say 75% of the BLACK people in New Orleans owned a car (vs. 85% of white people). There were plenty of cars to get out ... I won't bother bringing up the buses again. So why did people stay?

I believe a big reason is that this mayor obviously did not take things as seriously as he should have until it was too late. The guy never even pulled out the emergency plan, and ended up doing some things that the plan specifically said not to do ... he just did not take it seriously. I would guess that the racist thing played into it, but reverse of what liberals want you to believe ... black folks seem to inherently trust black leaders, so they watched Nagin and did not realize they were in trouble until it was too late. White folks probably realized Nagin was in over his head (maybe that's racist or maybe just practical experience with this guy) and white folks got out.

It appears the bus drivers (white or black) also realized Nagin's failings and cleared out as well (I am assuming they really did try to call in the buses, which is probably yet another CYA lie by the democrats). His police officers also bailed out ... I doubt this is race based given that many of the cops are black ... they seemed to also know the type of "leadership" Nagin was capable of.

Another reason for the large numbers of folks left behind, one which no politician will dare bring up for fear of being branded a racist, is theft. There are a lot of scumbags in New Orleans ... I have pointed out that the numbers for murder, violent crime, burglary, etc; are ridiculously high. Many of the people staying behind, and plenty that came in from other areas, were looking to cash in big on the looting going on ... there were running gunfights with automatic weapons in the streets between rival thugs. In support of this theory, all hell broke loose and the "big" targets were hit almost immediately (faster, it seems, than the cops were even thinking of it); a higher level of intelligence tells you that these scum were thinking about this ahead of time.

Anticipation of this criminal outbreak could explain some additional holdouts: people who were willing to brave the elements to try to protect their homes and businesses from scumbags, not weather.

By the way ... this discussion presumes that everybody left behind was black, while everybody that got out was white. Again, if you listen to Farakhan and Jackson (and the echoes from Clinton, Pelosi and Reid) this is what you are supposed to believe. The truth is radically different from this. Everybody suffered, whites lost as much as blacks, rich folks lost a lot more than poor folks (they had more to lose), and the suffering is universal.

Nonetheless, I do think that if "racism" was in play, it can in fact explain why blacks stayed with their mayor while whites fled the scene.

We now know, from perfect 20-20 hindsight, that we should NEVER allow democrats to be in charge of anything.

The Resurrection of Bill Clinton, courtesy of George W. Bush

Note: the context of this message is primarily derived from an interview of Dick Morris by Bill O'Reilly (The O'Reilly Factor, FOXNews, 19Sept2005).

One of the most shocking turnarounds in the Presidency of George W. Bush is the resurrection of Bill Clinton. To get a real perspective on this, you have to go into a quiet room, close your eyes and just reckon back to pre-9-11 times.

The Clinton's had just slithered out of the White House, literally trashing the place (vandalism, stealing whatever was not nailed down, etc) ... Hillary had her new post in the Senate in a heap of controversy (pardons for votes, etc) ... Clinton was selling presidential pardons for rich contributions ... and on and on. We were also getting our first taste of what was going to be the most viscious media and political campaign ever against a man's reputation ... the trashing of George W. Bush.

Mr. Bush blew them away ... catching everybody off guard ... they had all believed their own rhetoric about how retarded GW was. His political manipulations were nothing short of brilliant, and even leftie media had to acknowledge they were being summarily "spanked". We also got the first inklings of how the President would treat his predecessors when he banned all leaks from White House staffers regarding the trashings of the place, locked up all of the records that the "far right conspiracy" wanted access to, and basically put the past behind us. Speculation at that point was that Bush simply wanted to remove the name "Clinton" from the attention of the American people so that he (Bush) could set about fixing all of the disasters Clinton had created.

Of course, Clinton did not respond in kind. He set out almost immediately on a "trash and burn" campaign ... speaking ill of Bush most notably on foreign shores. The media ignored the stench of it all, effectively hiding the fact that it was traditionally considered "bad form" for a former president to do such things ... in fact the press scrambled to find some precedents where this did happen (I'm sure they found something ... I don't remember).

Bush's response? Kindness and respect.

After 9-11 ... the evidence of the complete failure of Clinton in regards to terrorism and intelligence was a smoldering mess in the heart of Manhatten. When the smoke cleared and blame had to be assigned, the democrat attack machine revved up to pin this all on Bush. The Republicans were ready to hammer Clinton in kind, but Bush pulled them back and instead focused on leading the country into the fight. This focus was not bad, but the 9-11 commission ended up creating a huge camouflage for Clinton's massive failings. This is obvious in light of the recently exposed "Able-danger" data, ignored by the 9-11 commission, that literally exposed the terrorist plan in its infancy ... but was subverted by the insane "wall" erected by Jamie Gorelick, who's role on the 9-11 commission was exclusively for the purpose of covering up Clinton failings.

So, Clinton and his cronies do everything to pile 9-11 on Bush. In addition, the Democrats do everything to undermine the war on terror, equating Bush to some of the worst dictators in the history of the world. Clinton is right up there with them ... travelling the world and hammering Bush's policies.

Bush's response? Kindness and respect.

At the unveiling of a White House portrait of the former president, Mr. Bush gave a glowing speech on behalf of the Clintons.

Bill and Hillary's response ... viscious and unfair attacks during the Kerry campaign ... and again travelling to foreign countries to trash the US foreign policies. One could hardly write this off as mere politicking ... after all Mr. Bush had conceded the French vote to Kerry anyway. It was simply another ugly chapter in the Clintonesque "return nastiness for kindness".

So, one might imagine that at this point George W. would finally figure out that the Clintons are simply the scum of the earth ... viscious idealogues with their eyes on the White House who are simply incapable of any sense of humility ... the world revolves around them and no act of kindness toward them merits any consideration.

Nope ... Mr. Bush simply kept right on being nice.

When the tsunami hit ... Mr. Bush advanced the Clinton resurrection once again, this time appointing the man to work beside his own father. I cannot even imagine how humiliating it had to be for George HW Bush to have to work beside a slimy dirtball like der Schlickmeister after he called the Senior Bush a liar (amongst other things) in their battle for the White House 13 years ago. Nonetheless ... the entire Bush family was more than gracious in their treatment of the Clintons, even to the point where news stories commented on the relationship using words like "adoption".

Well, now that Clinton is part of the family, we should imagine that FINALLY the hateful rhetoric would subside and the Clintons would be civilized and appreciative.

Ah, HELLO? We are talking about the Clintons here.

Within a week of being called upon again by Mr. Bush, Clinton lashed out at GW during the asinine left-wing attacks on the federal response to Katrina. These rantings were particularly viscious, and particularly asinine. Clinton implied that Bush's cuts to his (Clinton's programs) led to an increase in poverty, etc. These were all lies ... there have been no programs cuts (not even budget cuts, let alone elimination) ... in fact Bush is spending orders of magnitude more in existing and new programs than Clinton ever did, and poverty is DOWN at this point compared to the same point in Clinton's presidency. Clinton's other accusations and assertions were equally as stupid ... somehow Bush cannot relate to the poor because he was never poor, and other garbage like that.

One might ask ... will George W. Bush finally get the picture that no amount of kindness to these dirtballs will ever result in anything good? How many teeth does GW have to lose before he finally stops putting his face in the path of the Clinton boot? This guy has spent his entire life using and abusing people ... Bush is acting like the "battered wife", always coming back for more and never telling the cops that there has been abuse.

But hey ... if George W. Bush wants to keep getting kicked in the teeth, why should we care? Well, because by resurrecting and helping to clean up the image of this sleezeball, Mr. Bush continues to add to the political capital of the Clintons. The country needs to know that Bill Clinton left this nation and the world exposed to terrorists, left the economy in full collapse, lined the federal judiciary with the most radical set of "legislators" this country has ever seen, and on and on. Clinton doesn't even get this interview ... a chance to once again reconstruct the past ... if he's not playing a role in this Katrina fund.

A lot of stuff is melting down in Bush's second term ... the media is gaining some traction with the relentless attacks, and the entire administration (along with the Republican Washington presence) is AWOL in responding to this garbage. For Bush to keep up this policy of the resurrection of Clinton could very well position us for 4-8 more years of another Clinton presidency.

ABC Nightline Swings Like a Slugger ... Strikes Out

After Mr. Bush's speech, ABC Nightline pulled some of the refugees / evacuees / whatever we're calling them today ... (I'll get to that later) ... out of the Astrodome for a good, ol' fashioned Bush-whooping. This was tee'd up perfectly ... no democrat response, but put the blood-n-guts victims right there ... that would be so much more powerful than even that picture of the naked vietnamese girl running from her burning village, right?

KA-BOOM!

(That's the sound of a major league backfire!!!)

Not only did these people appreciate the president, not only did they believe in HIM that he was going to see the city rebuilt ... but these people also spent a good amount of time ripping on the state and locals, who THEY KNEW were supposed to be the ones to provide the first response.

WOW!!!

You can look up the details on your own, but I did want to point this out ... the reporter at the scene, and Ted Koppel (after they returned to him), were both totally befuddled. Not confused, but totally dumbfounded ... if you watch the tape, listen for how many times the reporter says "uh", "um", "ahhhh"; the kind of thing that professionals are trained not to do, but this guy was caught so far off guard he could not help himself! Then ABC gave their best attempts at leading the questions into even a mild slap against Bush, and they got HAMMERED! These people were not even in the same ballpark as the more moderate "blame them all" type crowd, let along coming at Bush.

They were appreciative of what this country has done and is doing for them, and they were most appreciative of Mr. Bush, who they knew they could count on to fix what has been broken.

Damn them to hell!!! (If you are a democrat or in the media ... oops, redundant)

Then it hit me ... NOBODY who is trying to blame Bush (that I have seen or read about) have been the real victims! Only the Mayor, the Governor, and of course the idiot leadership of the democrat party (I know ... redundant) ... are putting this on the federal government. The actual victims themselves are HAPPY the feds are their to pick up after the catastrophe that their local and state officials have caused.

Now ... please sit down, because this will blow you away if you are not prepared ... one of the "victims" even said that SHE was responsible, because she could have gotten out but did not take it that seriously!!! Another woman said that it wasn't the hurricane, the city was still standing ... it was the levees (now the ABC reporter was licking his chops ... this has GOT to fall on President Bush!!!) ... and she was pissed that Nagin got the billions of dollars to fix the levees but never did.

Ohhhhhhh, catch me, I'm going to faint! Man ... Karl Rove better get their numbers and get them on the tube EVERY day! I am so glad this wasn't FOX News, or else you know the liberals would be screaming that these people were plants!

In all seriousnous, though ... if you are unfamiliar with the book "The Burden of Bad Ideas" (Heather MacDonald), you need to get the books-on-tape version just to listen to the introduction. In one part she discusses how you will typically get two versions of a story when you ask the people served by government programs about that program ... one is the truth (which typically lies along the lines of what conservatives say), the other is the government version that you get "when their handlers are present".

ABC's problem ... they didn't have the "handlers" standing there (check in hand) to let these people know they were supposed to be blaming this on Bush ... so we got the truth.

Actually, I am not surprised by this. These folks have not had much TV, so they have not been dieting on a steady stream of sewage flowing out of the mouths of the liberal media and the democrats. They have actually been LIVING the crises, so they know what's what. I am guessing that they didn't even read the plans (just like their mayor and governor), but still they knew that George W. Bush was not the one who was supposed to be calling the shots.

Along those same lines ... did you notice how the poverty pimps ... Farrakhan, Jackson, etc. ... are all charging and and getting all offended because the media could not figure out what term to use to reference the victims of the storm? Did you also notice that when they talked to the victims themselves, they couldn't give a crap what they were called?

Nancy Pelosi called the president "disconnected" when he asked her to justify her assertion that Brown be fired before ANYBODY had figured out what went wrong or if he or anybody else was to blame (I am ashamed of how they treated Brown ... we are going to owe that guy an apology). We certainly are seeing who is REALLY disconnected though

Do note that these opportunities to see what is really going on are going to become fewer and fewer as the media realizes that the victims are not in line with the democrat talking points.

Is there a limit to a lie anymore?

Given all the accusations that liberals have made about lying, particularly related to GW, one might imagine that telling the truth has some modicum of importance to most people. I am not that sure about that anymore ... if you look at the Clinton situation, all 8 years everybody knew the guy was lying through his teeth about just about everything, even stuff that did not "make sense", but we really did not care since our perception of everything else in the world was that all was good (do note, I did say "perception" ... because there were a lot of real bad things building up that we got smacked with literally as der Schlickmeister was leaving office).

Back to the point about lying, most of us over the age of 40 (perhaps 30) would probably remember at some point being taught that once you have been lied to by somebody, you give them very little chance of doing so a second time.

I admit to being an old timer on this ... I am the kind of person who feels somewhat insulted when I am lied to ... something along the lines of "you are treating me like you think that I am too stupid or ignorant to know (or be able to figure out) the truth". I have responded to some of the lies perpetuated by the liberal blogs, with some admittedly inappropriate over-the-top rhetoric. For the younger reader (particularly somebody that came of age during the Clinton years) my emotional response to being lied to may seem extreme, but at risk of sounding out of touch - I dare say it was not all that far out of the norm as little as 20 years ago.

This is one of the reasons why I cannot be a democrat / liberal ... you literally have to lie through your teeth and dodge and twist facts and common sense in order to sustain the argument on any of their core issues. Actually, I might argue that establishing what a core issue is to a democrat is difficult to impossible, with the exception of abortion.

It seems now, however, that not only is exageration considered normal, but that out and out lying is just not that big of a deal. I posted recently how the incompetent democrat (is that redundant?) governor and mayor involved in the New Orleans fiasco are only too eager to point the finger at everybody but themselves (actually, not everybody ... just The President and FEMA). Often times these two are busy citing specific circumstances that they themselves are responsible for (not evacuating people, not providing supplies, not picking up bodies, etc).

On the most grotesque side of the Katrina situation, and the resulting democrat accusation glee-festival, is the projection of 10's of thousands of bodies. This was the value thrown about at the peak of the ugliest part of this, the one that the liberals (and their media parrots) were proclaiming for a death count (many of whom, of course, were a result of Mr. Bush's vacation). They literally ordered up 25000 body bags, which the press was only too eager to report when it seemed much of the blame was going to be at the feet of the federal government.

Off the subject ... does anybody beside me get a little concerned about how enthusiastically the left in this country seems to be in their desire to see americans dead? This is especially true when they can blame it on the administration; preferably somebody in a uniform. This is not even a partisan tit-for-tat : I did not like Clinton but please name me the circumstance during the Clinton administration under which it could be said that Republicans were cheering for americans being dead? Maybe "cheering" is the wrong word ... how about "enthusiastically embraced for liberal partisan purposes" ... but I digress ...

Now as we find out the numbers of dead are going to be nowhere near the 25000, or even 10000, or even 10% of that, and literally that this disaster may not even hit the top 10 as body count in natural disasters go, is it time that we give just a bit of consideration to what we were told, by whom, and most importantly why? Granted that the media often times explodes the numbers to create some excitement in the story ... that doesn't excuse them, but some amount of exageration is going to happen. One might argue that the media ignores "boring" realities in lieu of wildly exagerated speculation, for as long as they possibly can, in order to try to keep the story exciting.

Even acknowledging this tendency toward exageration in the heat of battle, do we not have to at least wonder if the exagerations were not intentional to denigrate the President? The attack against the president has been all out, unrelenting, and coming from all levels ... THINK ABOUT THIS PEOPLE ... we are talking about a huricane that came close to setting all sorts of records (wind speed, pressure, etc) hitting the worst possible place: and the standard upon which the federal government is perfection ... the ability to overcome complete (democrat) incompetence in all other levels. Do we have to at least wonder why the media is not accurately reporting the facts surrounding the contentious statements of democrats? I do not expect the media to contend with a statement like "we cannot get any help here", but when instead the statement is "FEMA is not picking up the bodies" ... is there any obligation on the part of the press to clarify the situation instead of just parroting the democrat?

Mississippi and Alabama were devastated ... and in fact the pictures of those areas are (in my opinion) far more shocking than a bunch of houses underwater. Contrary to what you see in the press, these are the places that took the brunt of the storm, New Orleans took a "side shot". Nevertheless, you can barely get an idea that anything happened to those states, and I offer up that it is because nobody there is making accusations against anybody but Katrina.

Given how common this practice of misinformation is and how much damage has been inflicted as a result, I do not think we should be willing to grant the media any "benefit of the doubt" in their motivations for the inaccuracies of their reporting. Time and time again we see totally outrageous accusations being laid forth on the front page or lead story of a broadcast, only to be retracted in a very passive way (page 10) after the propaganda value has been served.

As an example: a Newsweek article (I use that term loosely, better qualification would be "hatchet job") attempted to point out the incompetence of FEMA by telling of a federal employee who suggested to a sheriff (who was requesting assistance) that the sheriff send an email. Problem was, the sheriff's office was apparently under water and their systems inoperable. OK ... if the FEMA employee is not a real idiot, I am going to guess that they did not realize this ... common sense would dictate that the sheriff would have pointed this out and the FEMA rep would have offered an alternative. Shockingly (not really), we did not catch any more of the story ... after all the author was hoping to demonstrate that the FEMA employee was lobotomized, as were all other FEMA employees once Mr. Bush entered office ... that was the story we (as readers) were supposed to get out of this.

I believe it is about time we start holding the real liars responsible: and by that I mean not only for direct lies, but for the "derived" lies. The way I see to do so is to simply tune out ... not buy their rags or watch their channels ... and to get everybody you can to follow suit. When you hear stories like this, where you know it is so stupid as to not be real, challenge yourself to find out what really went on and then point it out wherever you can. In my case, like on these deranged liberal blogs, I respond to the articles by (openly) wondering how the person that posted could be so stupid as to take these stories at face value and not think deep enough to figure out what really happened.

Liberals hate that ... they want you to have the emotion without thinking it through ... thinking people cannot be liberal.

Kathleen Blanco breaks her arm!

I would not be too surprised to see the governor of Louisiana with her arm in a cast, given how much of her finger pointing has turned around to be things that are her fault / responsibility / dereliction of duty.

In one of her more recent shreiks, The Democrat (i.e. incompentent) Governor Blanco of Louisiana was ranting against FEMA for not picking up all of the bodies floating around her state in a more timely matter. She was "offended" by the "lack of effort" on FEMA's part in retrieving the bodies, asserting that these bodies needed to be treated with as much respect as the living (a concept that I never really understood, but that's a different story).

One could only hope that Ms. Blanco would have as much concern about the respect for the truth of her statements as she has for the swelling bodies floating down the canels.

FEMA reps were bewildered by Ms. Blanco's remarks, given that they had received word from Ms. Blanco's office that the Louisiana officials were going to take care of the bodies, not FEMA. When asked about this later, state officials avoided the subject.

At what point do we simply slap on the straight jacket, duct tape her mouth, and haul her off to the funny farm? More importantly, will the news media make as big of a deal out of the TRUTH as I am sure that they did in reporting the original accusation ... I won't hold my breath. More importantly, will anybody (other than conservative blogs) accumulate and report on the misinformation campaign perpetuated at every level of the liberal movement?

What has been interesting about this entire hurricane situation is how many times the liberals stand up in outrage over something ... always blaming President Bush for the problem, and then we find out (often times in less than a few hours) that it was other liberals who were responsible for whatever it was that had gone wrong. What is even more amazing is how often the liberal doing the whining is EXACTLY the person that was responsible for causing the problem (as is the case here)!!! Remember when you were a kid, you learned that when you are involved in something really bad that you screwed up, you keep your mouth shut? In our crazy world, the more a liberal screws up, the more they bitch and scream and holler about it, the more their friends jump in! What is really surprising is that it seems to be working to some extent.

Perhaps that should not be so surprising, since the media keeps leading their broadcasts with the shreiks and blame (when it is directed at FEMA / Bush), but somehow the followup story / retraction never quite makes it out or else it gets buried at the end of the broadcast or article.

According to liberals: Republicans should rule over democrats

First off ... in the eyes of a liberal ... this is all George W Bush's fault. Because of his hatred for poor, uneducated black folks (note I had to throw in all the extra adjectives to overcome the fact that no president before Mr. Bush has had such a diverse group of individuals, particularly African-Americans, in REAL positions of power), he torched oil wells in Texas to increase global warming, personally dug large holes in the New Orleans levees, used Air Force 1 to seed the clouds in the Carribean Sea to start the storm that became Katrina, and even urinated in the water to increase the ocean temperature.

All silliness aside, if you follow the shrieks of the democrats in the Katrina argument, you can only arrive at one conclusion: democrats are arguing that Republicans should have control over everything.

1) Bush is to blame for the weakness of the levees ... this is just stupid given that they have been aware of the problems since the 1920s, but let's go with it. From my understanding, the Army Corps of Engineers are primarily driven by the funding that they receive, which is purely stipulated by Congress in the normal budget (pull out your high school American Government book if you want to know who really spends the money in this country). As I also understand it, these projects are part of the pork boondoggles that the representatives from each state manage to scrape up for themselves and their pals: from the stories it sounds like Mary Landrieu (Democrat Senator from LA) was particularly successful in securing money for Army Corp projects, none of which were dedicated to making the levees stronger. As a matter of fact, Landrieu apparently has to put in legislation which overrides the Corp on a few of her boondoggles because the Corp said the projects were a waste of money.

If you follow Democrat logic, Bush should have told Landrieu to go to hell, taken the money that she wanted to spend on her personal boondoggles (and a lot more besides) and used that to shore up the levees. Effectively, the democrats are arguing that Landrieu is too stupid to figure out where to spend money IN HER OWN STATE, and Republicans should come in from outside to fix LA's problems. One only hopes that the voters in LA agree with the democrats' logic the next time around and vote for Republicans for the US Senate!

1b) Levee problems (cont) ... Bush should also override all the whacko environmentalists that stand in the way of every project (bar none) in this country.

If you follow Democrat logic, Bush should have told the environmentalist whackos to go to hell, and undertaken all these projects regardless of the environmental impacts (the project wasn't going to get done on time regardless, but somehow the dems can turn the clock back since it MUST be GW's fault) and not allowing any liberal group delays (i.e. lawsuits). Actually, to get things done on time, we would have needed Republicans in office long before 2000, so the democrats are really arguing that we should have had a Republican in place of Clinton, fixing the levees. I would hardily agree to that!
One hopes that from here on in, the voters of the country will follow the Democrats' logic and elect nothing but Republicans to deal with all matters that environmentalist whackos will try to obstruct.

2) Bush is to blame for not getting supplies to the people ... again, really stupid considering that the supplies were there and the governor (democrat) ordered them to be kept from the people. This is particularly troubling ... since they were asking for a "Constitutionally" questionable action on the part of the federal government (I will get to that later): democrats are arguing that the Republicans should have dismissed the authority of the democrat (governor) and taken over control since obviously she was incompentent to run her own state. The first wave of attacks came against FEMA ... easy target for mindless liberals. This has since backfired since not only was FEMA in place, they were in place faster than they had in any previous storm (BTW ... if the truth ever does come out, I think the nation is going to owe Mike Brown a huge apology ... but that presumes that the media will ever get the truth out, which doesn't play well to their benefactors).

If you follow the Democrat logic: Bush should have told Blanco to go to hell, taken control of the entire state, and used the resources SHE HAD AT HER DISPOSAL to render the aid necessary to prevent the problems that did occur. Mind you, we are now finding out the problems were nowhere near as awful as the Geraldo Riveras of the media would have you believe, but that doesn't change the democrat logic that when Republicans are in charge of state governments, things work better. One only hopes that the voters in LA agree with the democrat logic and vote Republican the next time around!

3) Bush is to blame for not securing New Orleans / Superdome / Convention Center ... same basic logic as above regarding overriding the governor. Note that the feds would have had no additional resources (that is NOT what FEMA does), but of course they didn't need them ... there was more than enough national guard resources in place had Blanco given the order (or even if Blanco would have simply turned over control).

If you follow the Democrat logic: Bush should have told Blanco to go to hell, taken control of the entire state, and used the national guard that SHE HAD AT HER DISPOSAL to secure the area to prevent the problems that did occur. (Never mind that this is a very touchy area since we are talking about "military" assets used for police work which presents huge Constitutional issues). The conclusion is that the democrat logic from their complaints is that we need Republicans in charge of state governments for better security and crime prevention. One only hopes that the voters in LA agree with this democrat logic and vote for Republicans the next time around!

4) Bush is to blame for not evacuating New Orleans / Superdome / Convention Center ... do I even have to talk to this one? Nagin had a plan, ignored it. Plan predicted everything with eerie accuracy ... including the looting, rapes, destruction ... specifically saying don't do the Superdome and Convention Center without a huge security and operations force.

If you follow the Democrat logic: Bush should have told Nagin to go to hell, taken control of the city, and followed the written plan that Nagin and his "administration" had at their disposal for years. Note that this presumes Nagin can read and follow instructions. According to democrats, it is too much to assume that a Democrat politician can actually read, so you have to rely on Republicans to carry out plans or at least be there to read to the illiterate democrat in charge. One only hopes that the voters in New Orleans agree with this logic the next time around and elect a Republican!

5) Bush is to blame for all the high gas prices: the lack of supply, dependence on foreign oil, the lack of refinery capacity and all these weird gas blends. I guess I cannot really blame the libs for their ignorance, after all the types of stuff they study ... liberal arts, environment, journalism ... don't really teach the concepts of supply/demand (i.e. if you put 1Billion chinamen in cars, gas will cost more).

According to Democrat logic: we need to vote for exclusively Republicans who will open up all possible oil drilling ON OUR OWN LAND, ban the lawsuits that make it impossible to build new refineries, and remove these insane environmentalist restrictions on gas so that we can all return to using basically the same stuff. As a nation we need to follow this democrat logic and vote for only Republicans, across the board (local, state, federal ... legislative, judicial and administrative).


So, according to Democrats, you should always make sure Republicans are in charge and running the show when things go wrong. The democrats promise not to disappear, they'll all switch over to the news media (am I being redundant) and continue to whine and cry about everything, just that from behind the newsdesk, they won't have the ability to actually foist their ridiculous ideas upon us).

In the interest of bi-partisanship??

Somebody over at the LA times apparently thinks that in the interest of bi-partisanship, President Bush should consider nominating a democrat. You know ... at some point they might want to consider whether or not certain individuals that write stuff like this (with the possible exception of HBO comedians) are not safe to themselves and society.

It is bad enough that we have had to endure years of the left proclaiming that President Bush is the cause of all this nastiness ... after all, he failed to deliver on his promise (in the 2000 election) of a "kinder, gentler tone" in Washington, right? Do I need to pull up the statistics on how viscious the media has treated this guy, let alone the garbage that the democrats (even the elected ones) have said ... comparisons with Hitler, et al?

But now, after 5 years of more of this crap that anybody can remember, Mr. Bush is the one that is supposed to relent, again? I mean, after all, have not the Democrats responded generously and "in kind" to all other attempts Mr. Bush has made to "reach out" ... well, OK, the image that pops to mind are foaming at the mouth pit bulls after you toss them a scrap of raw meat ...
- was the ink even dry on "No child left behind" before the fat, drunk murderer from Mass. (who AUTHORED the damned bill) was already stabbing GW in the back?
- How many hours after Mr. Bush gave that moving and complimentary speech about the Clintons (unveiling of their portrait for the White House) was The (Impeached) Schlickmeister over in Europe tearing him apart?

At this point, one has to wonder exactly what is on the mind of somebody that can write something this stupid. I can see one of three choices:

1) They think conservatives really are as stupid as liberals like to think that we are; and that after all these years of insults and back-stabbing, we will continue to be fooled by their "offers" of compromise (arrogant)
2) They actually see themselves as being reasonable, compromising people. (deranged)
3) They are just trying to be funny. (comedian, albeit not funny)

At this point, we can only hope that Mr. Bush will follow through on his promises and pull out somebody that makes Scalia look like the ACLU. I am literally talking about somebody that would cause Leahy and Kennedy to skip a few heartbeats, even pass-out.

And then ... when the liberals lose their lunch and mount their insane assaults, I would like to see Frist launch the nuclear option ... and ram this new judge right down their throats. Maybe, after all of that, the liberals will finally realize who has been winning all of the critical elections in the last 8 years.

The timing would be incredible ... the Democrats have threatened to stop all Senate business if Frist invokes this option ... could you imagine them pulling this in an election year at this time in history? "Yeah, we left all those emergency relief bills hanging because we were in the corner sucking our thumbs".

Corrupt? Inept? Throw them $50B

In the avalanche of stupidity surrounding Katrina, you have the conservatives arguing that the inept and currupt democrats screwed things up (state, local and senate officials) and the liberals arguing that it is GW's fault by way of FEMA. I believe that I am safe in saying that the general consensus is that there are an awful lot of stupid or corrupt people that exasperated the problem.

So, what is the response of Congress and GW? Send them a blank check for $50 Billion dollars! No oversight, no supervision. "Here you go, boys and girls ... you did such a good job in the past that we thoroughly trust that you will put this money to good use!". In addition, somewhere along the line (I believe it is the federal employees involved in the disaster relief) the limits on how much a government official can slap on government credit cards without authorization has been raised to $250k.

Mark my words, this is going to be the worst boondoggle in the history of this country, ranking right up there with Teddy Kennedy's "Big Dig" in Boston.

The latest is that the few congress-people that had the cojones to stand up to this are being treated very harshly by the libs and press (So I am assuming the standouts were all Republicans). Their argument is that since Congress will be in session the entire time, there is no good reason to do this in one big pop. Congress can easily dole out the funding in an ongoing basis $5-$10B at a pop, providing at least the illusion of oversight. As a taxpayer who can reasonably be expecting to pay somewhere between $3000-$10000 for this before it is over, I don't think it is too much for me to ask that these guys keep an eye on what is going on.

Of course, several individuals are already stepping forward to vie for the top spot as the poster children for stupid - subcategory: wasteful spending. One report has the mayor already talking about a huge boondoggle he is going to throw with all of the city employees, something about taking them to some tropical island (I was not listening too closely, so don't quote me on this). The Lord knows he and his crew really deserve a reward after the outstanding job they did. Hopefully he can call the governor and get her to go too since she is at least 75% responsible for the outstanding job they did.

In a related entry, FOX News reported that those $2000 debit cards are definitely taking a bite out of the need for some very serious, life-sustaining supplies ... apparently they were used to charge the purchase of a couple of $800 Versace handbags. Again, the Lord knows that if you only have a few possessions remaining after a terrible tragedy, it is critical that you find an $800 purse to keep them in!

Hypocrisy Extraordinaire

From a caller to Rush Limbaugh (paraphrasing) :
According to liberals
1) FEMA may have been one day slow in the path of a terrible hurricane that they had 5 days to plan for, less than 2000 people died in the entire event (btw ... the number is going to be nowhere near that, and probably none directly attributable to the FED response, ignoring of course that this was not what FEMA was intended for). Conclusion: GW Bush hates blacks, planned this all out and should be impeached ...
2) Kofi Annan oversees the worst scandal in world history over many years, very likely has a direct hand in it, certainly is involved in covering it up, funnels money to his son, tens of thousands of people die as a result (not to mention continuity of torture and murders by the guy they are being paid off by), empowers one of the worst mass-murderers in the history of the world. Conclusion: Kofi Annan is a good guy

Other examples for your amusement:

To liberals:
1) Problems with immediate response in Florida in past hurricanes (after 3 or so hit the state) ... who is to blame? Governor (Jeb Bush)
2) Problems with immediate response in Louisiana ... who is to blame? President (George W Bush)

To liberals:
1) GW Bush "caught" smiling at a birthday celebration for John McCain the day before the hurricane (note: there are other pictures of GW Bush attending numerous unrelated events during his "vacation", and he's not crying at any of them) ... Conclusion: GW Bush is an evil, uncaring bastard.
2) Bill Clinton caught on camara smiling, laughing and yucking it up at Ron Brown's funeral, until he saw the camaras and then managed to work up some tears before coming out ... Conclusion: Bill Clinton is a loving, caring man

To liberals:
1) GW Bush campaign offers picture of The President on Air Force One, purportedly a shot of him on the phone during the 9-11 attacks, to people who donated money in his campaign ... Conclusion: GW Bush is an evil bastard for exploiting 9-11
2) Chuck Shumer has a "Donate to Democraps" link on the site that he has related to Democrat attacks against Bush related to the Katrina disaster ... Conclusion: so far liberals and the media have no problems with that, since Mr. Shumer is not taking advantage of the tragedy.

To the media
1) fairly nondescript break-in at Democrat political HQ by a couple of nondescript schleps ... response by the media : worthy of investigation and rather viscious prosecution (featuring Hillary) that leads to the taking down of a Republican administration (Nixon)
2) During the 9-11 commission investigation of the worst terrorist attack in the history of the country: Sandy Berger, a key member of democrat administration in place during much of the 9-11 planning and rehearsals, is caught committing the federal crime of stealing documents from the National Archives: Berger cannot explain why he did it (his defenders put out some of the lamest excuses in D.C. history) and Berger "accidently" ends up shredding the documents that were stolen ... response by the media : **YAAAWWWNNNN**, Ho-hum

To the news media:
1) Pictures related to 9-11 ... dead people, people jumping from the buildings, etc : response by the media : we need to bury these because they are too horrific, and they might generate hatred against terrorists (huh?), and the pictures should not be exploited for political gain
2) Pictures of dead bodies related to Katrina, bloated bodies floating around in the swill or fallen by the roadside, despite the fact that some families may not know their loved ones are in the pictures: response by the media : very important to broadcast these because, after all, these pictures of bodies would be a good backdrop to stories talking about how the federal government is to blame for everything.

The Wisdom of Silence in a lunatic world

In the election of 2004, I wrote a note to the Bush campaign complaining about the lack of response to a lot of the viscious rhetoric. The jist of the note was basically that I realize that the president wants to take the "high road", but at least get in the fight.

In hindsight ... the annihilation of Democrats on every front in 2004 ... I am beginning to wonder if there is an unwritten (and brilliant) strategy of silence by the Bush administration. After all, it seems that in the silence that exists due to the absence of response, the Democrats are driven to fill that void with more and more shrill and insane rantings.

Take for instance the Katrina situation: you have heard only a minimal amount of response from the administration, along the lines of "we did everything we could to try to prepare, we are now focused on tackling the day to day emergencies, and we will review how we could have done better later, when things settle down". Is there a better example of what a leader should do?

In the massive amount of airspace leftover, we have the liberals filling in ... some examples:
- Bush wants dead black people
- Bush caused the hurricane by not signing Kyoto
- Bush should abandon Iraq and bring the troops home to help in Louisiana
- Bush cut funding for the levies to pay for Iraq
- Bush wants dumb, dead blacks because he underfunded "No child left behind" (I kid you not)
- Bush is oblivious to what is going on in New Orleans (Nancy Pelosi)

So on the one hand, we can say that there is no way that the administration even could respond to such stupid statements (although, deep in your heart ... don't you wish that they could put Rumsfeld out there for this?). On the other hand, do you think the administration is just loving the "mass suicide by the mouth" of the Democrats? Is there a situation that has been more screwed up almost exclusively by democrats that could play out better than this? Note that I am not saying the Republicans are trying to exploit this, just that the democraps are destroying themselves and if this is a defined strategy, it is brilliant!

I believe that the ripple effect of this disaster, and the moronic assault that the Dems are undertaking, may cost the democrats another 5-10 seats in Congress and probably not a few state and local offices as well. I believe this will completely overpower any negatives in Iraq ... the democrats are proving that they are nothing but a bunch of whiners with no solutions. If for no more reason than they are hindering relief efforts, the democrats are toast on this one. Pelosi is shrill ... calling for the FEMA chief's head ... asserting the President is "out of touch" because he doesn't fire the guy right now. So who is out of touch, Nancy ... in the middle of a crisis is always the best time to throw a bureaucracy into chaos? Great idea!

The masterstroke of a "silence" policy is that eventually, in calm and even tones, the truth comes out. NEVER "in your face" ... preferably as part of some non-partisan review ... no blaming anybody but a cold hard statement of facts ... we are doing this because we want to improve things, not make people look bad ... don't fire anybody, teach them ... "we did this wrong but now that we know better, I know you will do it better next time".

The truth will eventually filter out, and people will see that plans were in place but ignored by local officials (all democrats), that Bush personally urged the locals to turn over control but was ignored, that Bush was personally involved (one hopes that Harry Reid is successful in his call for an investigation in his idiotic assertion that the President's vacation somehow made things worse), etc. Voters will realize that you cannot count on democrats in an urgent situation, period, and that all the after-the-fact whining only hindered efforts.

Oh, one other little tidbit ... we now find that budgets to carry out various projects by the Army Corps of Engineers in that area were in the billions over the last few years. Guess what ... they were not working on any solutions that would have avoided these problems. Louisiana's senior senator (a democrat) was instrumental in funneling that money into pork projects that accomplished nothing toward making things more hurricane safe. I really do not think the Republicans could have scripted something that is playing out as good as this, and of course the democrats are stepping right in the manure that fate has laid out for them. Wow!

Arguing Both Sides of the Issue : take 1

It is well established by myself and others (including the democraps themselves) that liberals pretty much stand for nothing ... and at this point in history they stand against everything. There is one distinct benefit to this, if you stand for nothing then you can attack somebody no matter what position they take. This is true even when a liberal does a complete "about face" on a topic ... on fine display during the Social Security debates: news programs would show videos of morons like Harry Reid saying something exactly opposite of what he had said a few years ago (when Clinton was president and proposing changes to social security). What Harry, don't you think they keep the videos?

In any case ... we saw a classic example of this just this week. Howard Dean is attacking President Bush for his visit to the hurricane zone. Only a couple of days ago the libs were attacking Bush because he didn't want to go to the hurricane zone.

By the way ... I agreed with Bush when he said he should not go ... bringing in a president is a monster undertaking, and right now they have a lot more to worry about. Bush should have steered clear and let things settle and stayed on message ... "they don't need me down there".

Nonetheless ... the libs did the classic argue all sides of an issue type move, criticizing Bush for going on site. What I find fascinating is that the libs just don't seem to get it ... these pit bull tactics are not sticking to Bush (as if that really mattered anyway, given that Mr. Bush is STILL not up for re-election), and is damaging them really badly. The poll numbers indicate that nobody is buying it, and when people look back and figured out what really happened, the Dems are in for a world of hurt.

Mental Exercises

Want to have some fun ... try this one on for size:

Sometime before the hurricane ... Bush orders Marshall Law (I am actually not even sure this is possible ... perhaps an act of Congress) ... moves troops in to clear out people. Can you imagine the newsfeeds of heavily armed american soldiers tearing poor, 90-something year old grandmas from their homes?

How about having to shoot the guard dogs to go after the folks that are refusing to leave, or forcing the people to leave their pets behind? Major News Media Reporter: "The rich white people get to take their pets, of course."

Now what is the report when the Feds clear people out, and the storm hits, and all the houses that were cleared out get looted after the fact!?!

Please note: this is 20-20 hindsight ... we now know that the levies were breached as a result of this storm hitting the city. Imagine the response to the scenes described above if the storm would have veered just before it hit land and MISSED New Orleans!

Now try this one on for size ... immediately after the hurricane, Bush orders troops in to help. The troops come under fire ... note that these are heavily armed and well trained troops. They take out a band of murderous thugs armed with AK-47s, that just happen to turn out to be a pack of 13-16 year old black youth.

Can you say "Jesse Jackson retirement plan?" ... I thought you could!

One more time ... the troops are made aware of reports of serious bad things going on at the Superdome, so they move in with force. Stop and think about the headlines "Federal Troops terrorize homeless storm victims".

Katrina Blame, Final Word

Let me preface this with a warning to all liberals with more than half a brain ... man, that's a hard one to resist; but I will (har har) ... that you would be well advised to back off the criticism of GW Bush and even FEMA when it comes to Katrina.

The overwhelming evidence on this is that the mayor and governor were at least guilty of neglect and (more likely) are guilty of serious breaches of duty ... IMPEACHABLE breaches of duty. In fact, it seems that the President WENT WAY OVER THE TOP in declarations and actions to give the governor every possible means to access federal assistance, and that the governor was derelict in accessing the systems that were available to her.

In an earlier post, I indicated some real "no-brainer" things the leaders could have done to have averted most of the problems that happened. I did not know at the time that a comprehensive response plan was in place specifically for a hurricane (although I figured that there had to have been one). This is critical : apparently there are plans at both the local and state levels. This is also critical ... at this time it seems that both the governor and the mayor did not follow anything resembling the plans, but specifically took actions that the plans indicated would lead to EXACTLY the disasterous consequences that occured.

This is CRAZY! They KNEW this stuff was going to happen in detail, many of the things HAD ALREADY OCCURRED (in prior emergencies)!!! Everything is spelled out ... the mess at the Superdome and Convention centers, rapes and other problems, looting, bands of thugs, etc. The guys that wrote this document (and others reporting on emergency drills) knew and predicted all of it; not as a wild guess, but BY EXPERIENCE!!!

WOW! This should be a fun one for those incompetent boobs to weasel out of, especially that loud (and obscene) mouthed mayor. At least it seems the governor is smart enough to keep her mouth shut!

So now what happens??? My prediction, one month from now you would be hard pressed to see anything about New Orleans anywhere in the news media ... because this will be DISASTEROUS for the democraps in the upcoming elections. You have a glaring contrast between what happens when Republicans are running the show (9-11 Guiliani, Florida hurricanes with Jeb Bush, even Haley Barber in Mississippi, etc) and what happens when Democrats are in charge. This will not be the kind of message the Democrats will want to ride into 2006 with, let alone 2008.

As a final point ... remember all the grief the liberals gave Bush when he resisted (post 9-11) the Homeland Security department? Now Her Highness Queen Hillary is proposing to pull FEMA out of that department (of course, shoot now and then figure out the facts). You gotta love that!

Global Warming

With the coming and going of any human tragedy, there are always the slimy little vermin that crawl out from under the parts of the earth where nobody wants to look. In the case of Katrina, it is the global warming crowd. I already pointed out these goofs could not even get their own stories straight: one liberal misquotes another who admits global warming has little or nothing to do with the current hurricane cycle. I will comment later on "chain lies" ... a slight takeoff of the "tell the same lie over and over until it becomes the truth" ploy currently employed by liberals ... but for now I want to stay focused on global warming.

Truth be told ... the one thing missing from all of the inflamed rhetoric of the global warming discussion is common sense on either side. On the right : the denial that certain parts of the earth are getting warmer is just goofy ... we can measure these things and plot the measurements over time. I believe this to be true despite the demonstrable fact that the biased environmentalist "researchers" (who reap great rewards for the loudest, most dire predictions) are clearly cheating on the measurements.

On the other hand, the leftie notion that man is somehow causing the problem (on a global scale) is sooooo arrogant and stupid that it defies any logic ... of course lack of common sense never stopped a liberal with a cause. There is much "counter evidence" to refute the idea of global warming, despite what looney Algore and his media friends would tell you. Again, refuting global warming does NOT say that some parts of the earth are not getting warmer, indeed they are; just that it is not happening on a global scale. It is saying that human's part in this is controversial at best, and even if man is doing something the effect is negligible. On a planetary scale, even relatively minor global and solar events, not to mention well-documented planetary cycles, have many orders of magnitude more effect on the environment and specific weather phenomena than could all the polution man can ever produce.

The truth about the leftie attempts to regulate man-made global warming is that it is less about science than it is about socialist redistribution of wealth: specifically moving as much wealth and power out of the US as is possible. One needs no more evidence than to look at the very first criteria of most leftie driven environmental remedies: exemptions for just about everybody but the US, including exemptions for India and China. The negotiated remedies usually have "rich" nations paying off "poor" nations. In addition, the plans always completely ignore any measures of "polution" but instead focus on energy used ... so called "BTU taxes". In this system, all efforts to clean up emissions are worthless, and we only avoid the penalties by shutting down production or moving it to the third world. The proposals always end up with the US paying billions of dollars just to stay where we are at today; and generally puts the money in the same hands that did such a fine job managing the Iraqi Oil-for-food program, or tiny little dictators and despots. Funny how this little tidbit gets overlooked in all the media coverage in a time where we have a shining example of how impotent and corrupt the UN is, eh?

Regardless, even the most optimistic predictions indicate that such efforts as Kyoto will amount to less than a 5% effect on the overall change in global temperatures (like I said, man has nothing to do with global warming). Even if man did have more than a negligible impact, over the next decade as China and India ramp-up and US ramps down (due to continued competition driven efforts to lower emissions and conserve fuel), overall global polution will escalate but ONLY the US will be penalized. It cannot even be argued that Kyoto is a "start" since (for reasons stated above) it has nothing to do with reducing emissions and everything to do with redistributing wealth.

So, then ... what do we do about "global warming"? The point is that "global efforts" to try to stop or slow down warming, given that man has very little to do with it, is like trying to throw a glass of ice water on a volcano. What we can do is to take proactive measures to prevent the possible problems that "local" warming may lead to. For instance, if measurements show that the Gulf of Mexico is getting warmer and we know that this will make for more powerful storms, then not strengthening the defenses against stronger storms is just plain stupid.

This strategy works perfectly for conservatives ... it leads to economic growth (results in creating jobs, improving useful technology, etc), takes away the momentum of the lunatic fringe (you can cry all you want, we are solving the real problems), and taps into the "can-do" spirit of The American that naturally opposes the fatalistic doom-n-gloom whinings of liberalism. It also keeps the money home where it belongs.

Follow-on to the Elephant : Nagin speaks!

OK, so now I guess I know why the New Orleans situation has been such a mess. Check out this interview with the mayor (requires Windows Media Player, me thinks):

http://mmslb.eonstreams.com/b/ccri/cc_corporate/cc_news/nagin.wma

'Nuf said about the mayor ... he is WAY too easy of a target.

"But wait a minute Reinhard ... now you are sounding awful liberal ... all complaining and whining but no solutions. What would you have done?"

Ooops, sorry about that. Let me qualify this with the fact that I do not actually know the city that well ... so my points will be based on some primary criteria:
a) large areas of the city would be flooded if the levies give way (they have been whispering this for years, but last year it became "real" with Ivan)
b) many houses and "low end" structures would not handle the impact of a storm.
c) New Orleans is a corrupt hellhole full of a lot of very bad people.

Assumptions:
1) In the worst case, one or more of the systems would fail and there would be serious floods in the city (note: this is what all the doom-n-gloomers were guessing every time a storm got near N.O.)
2) In all storms, despite all the urgency you can put into your voice, some folks are going to ride it out. Bad guys were going to intentionally stick around to get what they could.
3) Lots of the poor folks with no transportation will have no way of getting out
4) (most controversial) New Orleans has 3x the murder rate and 2-4x the property crime rate of LA ... it should have been pretty obvious to competent local leaders that at least the possibility of unbelievable violence existed.

OK ... with assumption 1 (flooding), as a local leader you must get your critical assets away from the city. I am going to guess that somewhere in or around New Orleans, there are a boatload of school and city buses under about 10 feet of water. I will also guess that there are dozens or hundreds of city and state vehicles drowned in the mess. They needed to load those all up on Saturday and Sunday and headed as far west as was required to save the vehicles. Done right, they could have loaded some evacuees on there as well, and as many supplies as you could drag out of the city. I won't debate the trivial stuff, but you had to assume that anything IN THE CITY would be lost and that preserving these assets was critical. The governor could have suspended laws regulating special drivers licenses (normally required to drive these vehicles) so that just about anybody could volunteer to drive the rigs. A really good mayor would have had a few seminars to select and certify the drivers, but we are talking New Orleans here.

Next, whatever facilities you were going to use to "ride out the storm", like the Superdome, had to be prepped. You were going to need water, food (MREs), sanitary systems (assume sewer is not functioning), non-electrical lighting, etc. Most important, you were going to need people who could facilitate all of this and make it happen. I worked in an arena in college, so I know it takes a lot to make it all work. This was NOT something you could pull off at the last minute with people that didn't know what the hell they were doing ... it required prep, it required practice drills ... this was going to have to all work in virtual chaos WITH THE LIGHTS OUT! Again, Ivan happened a year ago, so in my mind Nagin and the governor had a year to prepare.

Finally, you had to have staged massive national guard forces and police outside the city, ready to come in ("Hello Governor Blanco? Where the hell were you this last year?"). Just a general look at the crime statistics could tell any reasonable person that all hell was going to break loose once the bad guys figured the cops were overwhelmed. Pre-storm evacuation notices should have included warnings that police and national guard outfits were going to secure the city with zero tolerance for any problems. Note: you had to have prepared to handle BOTH law enforcement AND rescue. This had to be prepared for ... not thrown together on the fly once the chaos broke loose. For the whining liberals that decried the fact that the feds didn't do it ... this would be illegal (even today), the state controlled National Guard has this authority, not the feds.

Now, I came up with this in about 10 minutes. Are you really going to tell me that people whose job this is could not have done this in two or three brain-storming sessions?