COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Dude, are you really saying that its okay he's doen fuck-all this time around? That 'the left' would criticise him whatever he did?

The story you ridicule also mentions how baby-Bush has supposedly learnt from his father's mistakes, ie he responds quickly to hurricanes.

Does it look like he's learnt anything?

Ever?

Great job on blogging current events by digging up a year old story that still makes your president look like a walking cock.
 

Jason,

I've been following your blog regularly (great job by the way) for more than a year. Your posts on the logistics / background on staging for the hurricane and the realities around how these things work are first-rate and info that, frankly, the MSM does a poor job of outlining.

However...as a regular reader it pains me to tell you that when you pull out your "the useless left" soapbox, your credibility (and worse, your readability) drops like a lead balloon.

As someone who prowls that empty quarter of politics - namely the middle ground - I find that continual tribal partisan hackery pretty much now permeates the blogosphere as well as the MSM. It tiresome, predicatable and frankly, most of the time treats its readers with contempt.

I hope you can continue to post smart, intelligent and experience-based content on your site and respectfully request that you try to contain the urge to tar anyone, right or left, with posts such as the one above.
 

Well Anonymous, despite taking flack over his over-rapid response last time he did the same thing here - declared the New Orleans area a disaster area before the storm even hit, freeing up Federal funds. Did the mayor and governor take advantage of that - No! Did the governor use the Guard assets (over 10,000 troops) at her disposal? Did the mayor mobilize all the school busses and transit busses to move those without cars ahead of the storm? Did he at least pre-position his assets on higher ground before the storm? The governor cried on TV and the mayor didn't even try to use his resources (like busses) and instead just stood by as his corrupt police force joined in the looting or deserted. The Feds will always be the biggest response but they'll never be the first, and if the local government IN A PREDICTABLE FLOOD ZONE can't do the minimum amount of planning and preparation (like, you know, actually stocking some supplies in the places that they designate as emergency shelters) then you're going to have a disaster and no amount of hand waiving will make it better.

And you don't see Bush out bagging on Blanco and Nagin, because that isn't helpful and won't get people to dry land any faster - but what is the mayor doing - is he trying to marshall whatever resoureces he has left and actually help his people - no, he's just abdicated all responsibility to the Feds and is now doing the TV circuit, whining like a little baby because mommy isn't there to wait on him hand and foot.

And as far as Jason criticizing the left/MSM goes, yeah that's what he's doing and it is richly reserved. He's not afraid to criticize or part ways with the right when they do something stupid, and he's generally a pretty fair critic.
 

From Fox News:

Here
 

Anonymous - and your point is? We all know how horrible it is there - but why is it Bush's fault that the idiot mayor didn't actually help anyone to evacuate after he gave the order and then directed everyone to go to a shelter with no food, sanitation or security? I guess what you're saying that the admin should automatically assume that any Democrat, inner-city, minority-dominated municipal government is incompetent and act accordingly.
 

The President is ultimately in charge of the Federal response. It has not occured to you, because you have clearly have a love for your President, that both the federal response, and the local response, may be flawed. It's called critical thinking. And when babies are screaming for milk, and people are falling ill, it is only right to ask why. I blame a combination of things instead of fishing around for excuses along partisan lines, like you seem apt to do.
 

Anon, dude, have you read ANY of the posts at this blog on logistics?

ANY?

Even one?

Apparently not.
 

Jim. The President is ultimately in charge of the federal response. Even if the mayor of New Orleans screwed things up massively, the federal response has still being unacceptable. EVEN THE PRESIDENT HAS SAID SO. Logistics is basically the planning, coordination and other details, of any large activity. The federal side was not adequate, and nor was the state/local government. Only those blinded by partisanship cannot see that, because they want to blame *only* one side or the other.

As for the plans above, NOT even the President was aware of them... as evinced during a certain TV interview. And he has the BEST advice in the world. If he wasn't aware of those plans nor were federal agencies because the President has *stressed* that he has being in constant contact with them. So if they knew they would have told him because it is politically important, and after all, otherwise vital information. A disaster plan that the federal government wasn't aware of wasn't much of a disaster plan at all.

It hasn't even occurred to anyone here that it is strange the feds weren't aware of the distaster plan... Just witch-hunting the major. Which is no better than blaming Canada.
 

Anon, then why is it that all I've heard from you and your fellow travelers (to and including the so-called mayor) is Bush-bashing? I've said, on this very site, kindly elevated to the main page by Jason, that the Federal response should have been more creative and flexible. It maybe could have been a bit faster too, but I won't commit to that without knowing more about the state of the routes leading into the city. I do know that from what I have seen, the city did ZERO to execute its own plan. Nevertheless, I would be more than happy to leave the recriminations for later, except for the massive anti-Bush pile-on initiated by the Dems and the MSM (same thing, I know). This has, naturally, engendered a reaction from those who support the President, or at least would like to see a little fairness in the discourse.
 

Holdfast, firstly, thanks you for your civil reply. I often avoid commenting on things like this because it devolves into name calling and bitching.

You've hit the nail on the head. What those of us in the middle think of as critical thinking you think of as Bush bashing because it disagrees with your politics. If people don't think critically, and I would agree that the Dems are equally guilty of blind obedience to their cause, things don't change.

And questioning doesn't equal dissent, because I have hoped and prayed that the mission goes well. But when I see reports like the Fox report above, I am not prepared to turn off my brain for politics. That goes for the left or right, Bush or Kerry, Republican or Democrat, Rock or R&B, or *anything* else. It's not about Bush, it's about people wanting things to go well, and questioning things when they don't go right. Bush isn't the point. Performance is and I cannot watch videos like the above and not feel a need to ask questions.

*Now*, I'll humor you, just say your hypothesis was 100% right. Those with bad mayors better be careful, because the federal government isn't going to be as effective as it could be and there's a lot of bad mayors. That is just as unacceptable. And the person who is ultimately in charge should still be questioned. That is common sense.
 

Anon, Thanks I know what logistics are.

Thing is you've said nothing that shows that things could have been done any faster or better by the Feds. That is, you've done nothing to show that the logistics posts of Jayson are wrong.

Bush said the response wasn't good enough? Well what do you expect him to say, that everything's peachy, and have the idiots at CNN, and yes Fox, jump all over him? He has no choice but to say that.

*Now* I'll humor you. Maybe your right and the feds screwed up the response. Mauybe they could have been in NOLA and the rest of the gulf coast a day before.

Problem is, we don't know that yet.. You don't and I don't.

From what the actual expert, Jayson says, it would've probably been very difficult for the Feds to get in any earlier.

It's a huge leap btw that you make from "bush being in contact with the fed agencies", to the feds nec telling Bush the details of any plan the locals and state might have had. This seems to be another things we just don't know. But you're making the leap nonetheless.

As for your last comment to holdfast:
Yes, it'd be a good thing if both individuals, and cities, understood that it takes time for the Feds to get there. If this is the lesson from all of this then absolutely freakin great. This is something that should have been understood before. That when an entire region is flooded/destroyed, it takes time for those outside to get in and start saving folks.
 

Er, that was me Jim in that last post.
 

Hm. "Witch-hunting" the mayor, eh?

Odd, that looks like what you and your pals are doing to the President. Liked how you handily brushed away people recommending that you look up the articles on this blog about logistics. There's a reason WHY it's up to the first responders to.... respond first. Because it takes time to get everything ready to go and little things like a hurricane blowing through the area tends to slow down outside aid.

Personally, I'm impressed that the USS Bataan managed to get into the area and start operations within about a day of the levee breaking.

But of course, it wasn't magically in place as you demanded so it's all Shrub's fault, right?
 

Jim, "Problem is, we don't know that yet.. You don't and I don't." Watch the Fox Video above, that is not acceptable. This is not a third world country. I am not prepared to give people the benefit of the doubt because I support them.

Patrick, the reason I said Witch-Hunting the major is that the above is in complete absense of any analysis of the overall situation. If someone discusses something without looking at the big picture it is quite reasonable to question their motives. The above is a rather tired attempt to divert attention from the big picture. As for the federal response, aid got to some of the worst flooded areas in Asia in two days. Despite Muslim militant activity in some places. Berlin style air-drops for the Asians thousands of miles away. Watch that video, is that acceptable? Do you think that has a single cause? Is it that simple for you?
 

I'll tell you from my perspective there were issues enough to go around.

The first is that the city's emergency plan was deeply flawed in regards to satisfactory arrangements to plan evacuation and shelter for their citizens outside of the effected area. And the other point was that the noted staging areas for shelter were not only not supplied, but not organized beyond a few national guard and not easily evacuated beyond that point.

What may have caused this is the expectation that the shelter would only be required for 24 hours or less until the storm passed. I'm not sure which, but the direction to evacuate was poor, was not well timed and was not very strong.

In a city where the mayor and even the governor had to know the condition of its citizens: poor and elderly. They do census there too and they did not take that in to consideration in making evacuation plans.

Then, the thing that they could not predict completely is the "triple failure" of redundant systems, such as phone lines, cell towers AND radios that could not reach the distance they needed to keep in contact with those personnel remaining in the city that could continue to act.

Now, the radios, considering the big bruhaha after 9/11, should have been addressed. Why a city of that size didn't have satellite communications for their emergency response command teams, I don't know.

In reality, the emergency planners did not think big enough nor think outside of the box. Once they experienced the triple failure of their com systems, they did not take advantage of national news organizations with satellite coms that were on the ground to pass information back and forth. Not for three days.

They did not have a liaison that was in constant contact with the media and passing information to them to tell the people in those locations what to do and what was going on.

You did not see that until three days into the disaster and even then it was not instituted by the outside emergency planners and organizers, but by reporters and the people still inside the city.

I didn't see any federal person doing that either once they were down there. That could have helped quell some of the unrest at these locations and throughout the US because (and I am a friendly person to the government) by day three I was asking myself where is the information? Where's the rescue effort? What's going on?

Now, I knew some of what was going on, but there was no one on TV or radio doing the same consistently. That is an important part of emergency response: leadership and direction, visible. yes, they were busy, but where was the spokesperson/liaison? Whoever that is stunk at their job and should be gone and if it was because no one appointed one, they should be fired.

Ray Nagin and Blanco did not help the situation because they were too emotional, they were unbalanced and they caused panic.

Learn something from that and make sure that you are electing people that are more than politicians, but are leaders, in your community or you will experience the same thing.

Then there is the issue of posse comitatus. The President cannot issue a directive to federalize an emergency and direct troops to that location (beyond the state national guard requested by the governor) and have federal government take over the rescue and relief until the governor issues that directive. At which point, it would take at least 24 hours for the first troops to get there and set up, much less begin rescue and relief effort. And then, when it is this big and the number of troops required surpasses the normal deployment, it is going to take another 48 hours.

It is quite obvious, without even reading or looking at statements, that the governor did not issue that request until at least 48 hours into the incident. Why? Who the hell knows? Maybe they were just completely stunned by the overwhelming disaster. Maybe they didn't want to ask for something when they couldn't see how bad it was and judge exactly what they needed (though, we could see it on TV and they had to have done so). Maybe they were thinking that the State could still get by cheap and rescue the citizens, thus maintaining their political position in the future, by insisting on using local resources first and then, finally realizing that they had no chance to pull it off with that plan, finally calling in the feds?

Now, I will say that the federal response seems to be correct in terms of logistics based on the time frame they were asked. It also in a current WAPO article that what I said about the state request for federal assistance not coming for 48 hours, even with the president and every other person in the universe asking the governor to declare it so.

Now, logistically, I'd say that the federal emergency planners may not have planned for anything this huge. It seems like the planning for shelter, food, water and medicine is still based on a plan to service many less citizens than it is forced to do in this disaster. Maybe they WERE relying too much on local response and the red cross to be able to move into the location? Who knows, but yes, the federal agencies need to review their plans immediately because it was lacking something this big and organized.

There's not enough medicine, food or water staged for this kind of action. There are a lot of hodge podge responses with every organization doing their own thing. Not until the command and control was centralized did actual and acceptable relief efforts begin. And, from what I understand of state vs. federal, this only came after the feds got control (wrested it) from the locals. Now, I figure that, had the president declared a national emergency and just over rode the governor and mayor, here would have been a serious outcry about the feds overstepping their bounds and not working with the state.

Though, from many voicing their opinions here, you would have found that perfectly acceptable. Fine. I would have too, but I'm not a lawyer or a politician making my living off of this kind of stuff.

In either case, however we point the finger (and blame seems big enough to go around), if your just focusing on the finger pointing and not getting down to some serious lessons learned about this catastrophe in relationship to where you live and what your local government has planned as an emergency response; if you didn't learn to make your own preparations because complete failure can occur if the disaster is big enough; if you haven't figured out that you in your local community, with your neighbors, need to have a plan at a very localized level to care for yourselves and the weakest among you; but instead think that you should leave it all in the hands of the city, state or federal government, your crazy.

The main failure here, and I know that it is not politically correct to blame the victims, but the failure that is most prevalent to me is the lack of preparation by individual citizens and the lack of common sense in the face of orders to evacuate the city (not everyone that didn't evacuate were poor or lacked transportation).

There are a lot of things we can learn from this and the one that I am most interested in is a more definitive campaign to educate people about emergency preparation in their homes. beready.gov not withstanding, federal, state, county, city, town, communities have failed this test along with the citizens.

Hopefully, some folks take this a little more seriously.
 

KAT: Damn local politicians doing nuthin'
 

"Those with bad mayors better be careful, because the federal government isn't going to be as effective as it could be and there's a lot of bad mayors."

Damn Right. Actually, the Federal Govt is NEVER going to be as effective as YOU seem to think it should be - and it's not going to save you instantly - the Federal response will always take time, because it is centralized, and people better learn to wrap their heads around that fact. The Federal government will NEVER know the local situation as well as the local government, which is why part of the job of the local government is to tell the Feds where to deploy their assets as they arrive. Instead the mayor is just running around looking for someone to abdicate responsibility to. There's a reason why Guliani is the hero of 9/11 (and not Bush, Pataki or the head of FEMA). If you have a retarded local government you ARE going to suffer for the first few days - that's supposed to be why we live in a responsible democrary - you get the goverment you deserve.

Citing emotional reporting from Fox or any other station does not really advance the debate - OF COURSE they were upset at what they were seeing, but just because a TV crew of 3 or 4 people, with an efectively unlimited travel budget can hire a chopper or boat to get onto the scene does not mean that an entire brigade of national guard troops can do the same. And if they did, they'd arrive without the fuel and other consumables necessary for effective operations. So far I have yet to see a single story on the routes that the Guard and other trucks have to take into the city, the problems getting large fuel supplies into place etc - instead we have the hyper-emotional reactions of the folks in New Orleans looking at suffering people without any context whatsoever.

There hsa also been very little coverage of the other parts of the Gulf Coast - why, because, although some of those folks are in a tough situation, they seem to have been at least minimally prepared with food and water, and because they have not been raping and shooting each other.

Finally and Again - the 10,000 Louisiana National Guard troops BELONGED TO THE GOVERNOR. She did not deploy them (or at least did not deploy them fast enough). How the F**K is this the Federal Government's fault - the only way is that it could be is if the Bush Administration looked at the situation, realized that the Governor was a hysterical little ninny that didn't even know that the largest city in her state HAD a disaster response plan, and that the mayor was nothing but a pompous, race-hustling, incompetent twit without even the ability to read his own city's disaster plan, declared Louisiana a Federal Military District, fired these dimwits, imposed true martial law and appointed a 3 star general as the temporary military governor of the state. I'm so sure that the Media and the Dems would have gone along with this plan. Instead we get reponses like "Bush hates black people" as the Democrat contribution to the debate.
 

What does the letter from the Governor on the 27th mean?
 

"What does the letter from the Governor on the 27th mean?"

It means what it says - and I belive that Bush DID do as the letter requrested within 24 hours of receiving it. That it no way exculpates the Governor from her reponsibility to moblilize and deploy her National Guard elements. Nothing new here.
 

So this line "Pursuant to 44 CFR § 206.35, I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster. I am specifically requesting emergency protective measures, direct Federal Assistance, Individual and Household Program (IHP) assistance, Special Needs Program assistance, and debris removal."

So you don't think this line was a bit of a clue as to what was coming next?

The last time a state government said this was in 1992. You know what big-Bush did next?
 

Uh huh - and does it also say that now the mayor and governor get to sit on their hands because it's all a Federal problem now?

And how does this explain the fect that the GOVERNOR didn't move her Guard troops fast enough? He has 10,000 FRICKIN TROOPS - more than enough to secure New Orleans until Federal help arrived - why the hell is it Bush's fault if she didn's use them?
 

It's a form letter, phrased the way it is because large sections of it are directly copied from the enabling federal law (in order to make sure all i's are dotted and t's are crossed with respect to legal requirements).

The English translation from the original Lawyerese reads as follows:

"A big hurricane is coming and I expect it to affect the following areas of my state. The following state agencies are going to be doing the following tasks*. Give me $9 million in federal disaster relief funds please. Someone named Art Jones will coordinate everything and answer any questions you have."

In particular, this does not say "I am hereby abdicating all responsibility to the feds, so get FEMA in here to take over" or anything like it. It also does not say anything about military authorization.

-----

* Please note in particular:
" - Louisiana State Police (LSP): Providing support for the phased evacuation of the coastal areas.
- Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (WLF): Supporting the evacuation of the affected population and preparing for Search and Rescue Missions
- Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD): Coordinating traffic flow and management of the evacuations routes with local officials and the State of Mississippi.
 

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