General @ Friday September 02, 2005 08:30 am by WunderKraut
I woke up this morning all ready to write a post to counter act this whole “The Federal Government Should Have Known Exactly When And Where It Would Hit” argument, but….
Tree Hugging Sister over at The Coalition of the Swilling sort of beat me to the punch. She has an excellent post about the badgering Haley Barbour took at the hands of Miles O’Brian. Really sick stuff.
The National Guard, whatever it’s title, is under the control of the Governor. Not the President. The governor. For all Bush haters directing all this twisted, wasted energy at Washington, the square fact of the matter is that the complete responsibility for prepositioning Guard troops and law enforcement, and the first response in the immediate aftermath of the disaster rests solely with the local and state authorities. As should the blame, if prior planning and proper precautions/predispositioning were not taken. In the case of Louisiana, it is most abundantly clear they were not.
I was then prepared to launch into the whole States responsibilities versus the Federal Governments responsibilities but Jeff from The Shape of Days beat me to that one as well with his appropriately titled post “I thought a government class was mandatory for graduation”
Actual e-mail:
“If one is very, very generous, one might be able to excuse the Bush administration for the poor planning for post war Iraq, but the poor planning for post hurricane New Orleans is inexcusable.”
Guys, seriously, I thought every American high-school graduate was required to take some kind of government class before getting his diploma. Did this fellow sleep through his?
Listen up: We have what’s called a federal system here. That means that the national government — you know, the one with the President and all that — is responsible for some things, while the states are responsible for others. The national government has no legal authority whatsoever to prepare for hurricanes, floods, earthquakes or any other national disaster. If the federal government tried to go into Louisiana and start building dikes and levies, it would be a massive violation of the 10th amendment to the Constitution.
Ok, well how about the Global Warming card the Dems and Enviro’s are playing? How about the race card? Nope Rusty at The Jawa Report has a post titled “I Caused Hurricane Katrina”, in which he tackles the BushMcChimpHitler caused it because he pulled out of Kyoto meme and the southerners are racists meme. A very good post.
So now what to write about? I do not know. It has been a sad week. I have found myself very unsettled in my spirit all week. In many ways I feel like I did on election night back in 2000. I wanted an outcome. At that point, I did not care who won, I just wanted it over so that I could get on with my life. At least once a decision has been made, you pull yourself together and get back to work. All that is going on in New Orleans and the other Gulf cities has made me long for last Friday when all well with the world. I am not trying to be naive, but I just want some closure to this whole thing. And I am not even affected by it. My heart goes out to the families who are living a hellish existence in New Orleans. My heart aches for the mothers with babies. I can only imagine the worry in your heart.
In a way I am being very selfish. Watching suffering really causes me sorrow. I am a very empathetic person and it hurts to watch such suffering. I just want it to all go away. But I know that no matter how much I wish it would all just go away, those that are actually living it must be praying for something, anything to happen that will help them out. You guys are in my prayers. I wish I could do more than just send money, but I guess that is all some of us are able to do.
I can not imagine…
2 Responses to “They Beat Me To It”
The wife was in tears last night when I got home. This is all very hard to watch. Harder still when its a place you used to think of as home.
I’m having all these arguments with the lib-minded I encounter. Regardless of fact though, it’s going to be Bush’s fault directly or indirectly because of their hatred of him. Somehow it will come back to him. It’s sickening that in the face of suffering there is all this political posturing.
The best point I think THS makes is where the hell are Louisiana’s governor and New Orleans’ mayor lately? They’re finger pointing like mad, but they’ve dropped out of the picture. I really, really hope they’re on the ground somewhere doing something worthwhile, but I doubt it.
[...] I have written a few posts about the whole New Orleans being underwater let’s blame Bush meme. See here, here, here, here and here. I have also received quite a few comments, most of them agreeing with what I had written, but as is the case with any issue, there will be those who disagree with you. That is cool. After all, that is one of the foundations of our country: free exchange of ideas and beliefs. The only, and I do mean only criteria I have is that you can actually back up what ever you say, with, hmm, what’s the word I am looking for….oh yeah, FACTS! [...]