It seems that lately I've been taking a lot of shots at the New York Times. But when someone paints a bullseye 10 stories tall on themselves, it's kind of hard to resist. And the Times seems to enjoy associating itself with all sorts of disreputable idiots who feel no need to report facts.

In the case of Maureen Dowd today, I'm not even sure it's fair to call this an opinion piece. Speculation piece might be closer the target. Wild, drug induced, toxic fantasies would probably be just about on target. Of course Maureen, like every other looney liberal out there, is trying to find someone to blame for her perfect nanny state of New Orleans falling apart so horribly. After all, it couldn't have been the existing liberal social policy that caused the widespread violence and theft. The lack of law enforcement before all of this began surely couldn't have contributed to the rapes and murders that went on during the disaster. And lack of planning and action by the people who were actually in charge, the state and local government, wouldn't have had ANYTHING to do with the number of dead.

No, in Maureen's world, the fault lies with Dick Cheney. It's because he went on vacation and bought a house. Or maybe it's because he was late showing up. It's kind of hard to tell what exactly Maureen is trying to get at with her first paragraph. It took a while, but the president finally figured out a response to the destruction of New Orleans.

Later this week (no point rushing things) W. is dispatching Dick Cheney to the rancid lake that was a romantic city. The vice president has at long last lumbered back from a Wyoming vacation, and, reportedly, from shopping for a $2.9 million waterfront estate in St. Michael's, a retreat in the Chesapeake Bay where Rummy has a weekend home, where "Wedding Crashers" was filmed and where rich lobbyists hunt.

Oh, I get it now. The presiden't hasn't done anything but send Cheney down to New Orleans. He hasn't deployed 40,000 troops to the area to drop in food and water and rescue survivors. He hasn't gotten FEMA into the area to start renting houses and apartments and building temporary shelters for displaced persons. He hasn't had anyone coordinate a massive movement of people to other areas so they could get food, shelter and medical treatment. But wait, if he didn't do all that, who did? Or is it that the mainstream media is lying to us again and showing us old clips of people being rescued during Andrew just to make us think that Bush is doing something? Because after all, you know how the press is in cahoots with Bush. And Maureen would surely never lie, so if she says Bush hasn't done anything, than it must be true.

Maybe Mr. Cheney is going down to New Orleans to hunt looters.

I would certainly hope so. The police down there don't seem to be able to do a very good job of it. And whatever he does down there, Maureen, it will be a hell of a lot more than you've done so far. Let's see, what has Maureen done so far. She's sat on her fat ass and whined about Bush. I'm sure the people of New Orleans appreciate the hell out of that Maureen. Just as I'm sure they are putting Planned Parenthood's free birth control to good use.

The water that breached the New Orleans levees and left a million people homeless and jobless has also breached the White House defenses. Reality has come flooding in. Since 9/11, the Bush administration has been remarkably successful at blowing off "the reality-based community," as it derisively calls the press.

This is rich stuff here. Maureen doesn't even know who the "reality-based community" is. Let me give you a clue, Maureen. You're a member of the press and we would never accuse you of having anything to do with reality. Maybe Maureen needs to brush up on her Wikipedia.

But now, when W., Mr. Cheney, Laura, Rummy, Gen. Richard Myers, Michael Chertoff and the rest of the gang tell us everything's under control, our cities are safe, stay the course - who believes them?

This time we can actually see the bodies.

As the water recedes, more and more decaying bodies will testify to the callous and stumblebum administration response to Katrina's rout of 90,000 square miles of the South.

As opposed to when? When did we not see the bodies? Oh, that's right. We didn't see the bodies during the Mississippi River flooding. We didn't see the bodies during Andrew. We didn't see the bodies during the four hurricanes that Forida has endured this year. We didn't see the bodies during the mudslides and forest fires that wrack California and the midwest every year. You want to know why? Because local and state governments know that these things are going to happen and they plan for them. When these natural disasters occur, they get people out of harm's way. They don't leave 300 buses sitting useless while the poor try to figure out where they're going. They don't tell the people of their commuinty that "You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you." And here's another hint. It wasn't the federal governemnt getting these people out of the way. It was the state and local government. Anyone who says that this job was too big to be handled on the state and local level (and I've heard quite a few), needs to go take some lessons from Jeb Bush and his mayors. Or Rudy Guilliani. Or maybe even Ahnald.

The Bush administration bungled the Iraq occupation, arrogantly throwing away State Department occupation plans and C.I.A. insurgency warnings. But the human toll of those mistakes has not been as viscerally evident because the White House pulled a curtain over the bodies: the president has avoided the funerals of soldiers, and the Pentagon has censored the coffins of the dead coming home and never acknowledges the number of Iraqi civilians killed.

Is this dumb bitch actually going to say that we don't have counts of the dead in Iraq every single day on the news? Is she actually going to try to tell me that headlines have never read "7 soldiers and 10 civilians killed in car bombing." Why I'll bet I could find some of those headlines in a quick search of just the New York Times. Her statement is nothing but a flat out lie and anyone with any journalistic integrity should fire her on the spot for even attempting to print things like that.

But this time, the bodies of those who might have been saved between Monday and Friday, when the president failed to rush the necessary resources to a disaster that his own general describes as "biblical," or even send in the 82nd Airborne, are floating up in front of our eyes.

Which Monday through Friday is she talking about? Let's take a look at how things unfolded.

• Thursday, August 25: The hurricane hasn't hit. Nothing that Bush can do


• Friday, August 26: The hurricane hasn't hit, but it's getting closer. State and local governments have declared a state of emergency, but aren't yet moving anyone out. I suppose, Bush could have seen how the Governor and the Mayor were screwing the pooch and sent the 82d in to forcefully take over the town and handle the evacuation. That could be what Maureen is wanting here, but I doubt it.


• Saturday, August 27: The National Hurricane Center says that the hurricane is going to hit New Orleans within 24 hours. The Governor and Mayor finally start moving people out. Of course by now, the roads are jammed because 150,000 people are trying to leave in a short period of time. But I'm sure that Bush adding FEMA and/or federal troops to the mix would have made things a lot better. I guess they could have directed traffic.


• Sunday, August 28: As the hurricane hits, the Mayor finally orders mandatory evacuations. Bush declares a state of emergency and orders federal assistance. Of course the winds are hitting 160MPH, so flying resources in probably isn't going to work. And getting them over land takes way too long. But, as Maureen says, I'm sure Bush could have done something.


• Monday, August 29: Katrina makes landfall in two separate locations. Regardless what Maureen thinks, no one's going in or out of the area today. And for those of you not in the know, the hurricane doesn't have defined boundaries. We were still getting winds strong enough to down trees at my house which is 14 hours north of New Orleans. Flying anywhere near enough to make any difference would be very dangerous.


• Tuesday, August 30: The military starts to move in at the request of FEMA.


• Wednesday, August 31: Bush flies over the Gulf Coast. The entire region is declard a public health emergency. Evacuations begin.


• Thursday, September 1: Looting begins. The National Guard is mobilized.


• Friday, September 2: 154,000 people have been evacuated to Texas. More to other states. Bush signs a $10.5 billion disater relief bill.


• Saturday, September 3: Tens of thousands are evacuated. Utility copanies begin to restore power. ACOE starts to move in pumps and generators

Timeline courtesy CNN

So I ask you. What more did you want done? The one stage that I can see where things may have gotten screwed up is between the 31st and the 1st. It's possible that by deploying the National Guard earlier, some of the looting might have been stopped. But who could have seen that coming? We certainly haven't had it in any other city during a national disaster. And deploying those Guard troops is the purview of the Governor, not Bush.

But when people around the world look at Iraq, they don't see freedom. They see chaos and sectarian hatred. And when they look at New Orleans, they see glaring incompetence and racial injustice, where the rich white people were saved and the poor black people were left to die hideous deaths. They see some conservatives blaming the poor for not saving themselves. So much for W.'s "culture of life."

I don't know what people she's been talking to, but I'm certain that Iraq The Model would disagree with you. As would most anyone else I talk to. If the Iranians and Lebanese didn't believe we liberated Iraq, why were they asking us to do the same for their countries?

And the only racism I see coming out of this is from you and your fellow journalists. Who left them in the city? The black mayor. Is that racism? Didn't think so. Who's rescuing them? Everyone. So I don't see where you get that racism crap from except it, like the "they're going to take your rights away" argument comes out every time you want to discredit a Republican and don't have any hard facts or evidence.

She goes on to babble about how the war on terror didn't make New Orleans safer, but it's so detached from anything making any sense that it's not worth going over. All in all, Maureen just needs to go soak her head. For about an hour. Without taking a breath.

Posted by: Drew at 08:37 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
Post contains 1910 words, total size 11 kb.