9/3 Talking POINTS on Fox, towards the end of the talk on "The lesson
to be learned from Hurricane Katrina" says that if you want something
done, you do it yourself. You can't rely on the government for
anything, you must rely on yourself. Conservatism #1! Republican #1!!!
\_ Weird, I thought law and order was the one thing conservatives
think government is good for.
\_ Weird, I thought the one thing conservatives and libertarians
thought was a valid function of government was law and order.
\_ Conservatives believe in, first and foremost, *self-reliance*,
the "take matters with your own hands" attitude.
\_ oh, man, things were so much better when the states all
printed their own money.
\_ So you're saying that each state and local government
should invest billions of dollars in their own military
and civil infrastructure to defend themselves and deal
with catastrophic terrorist acts or natural disasters?
That sure makes a lot of sense economically. Why create
a single resource that can be shared amongst the entire
nation when you can just reinvent the wheel at the state
and local levels? Because we all need to be "self-reliant"
\_ I'm not saying that. It's what many Republicans believe.
\_ really? got a URL for any republican saying that
each state and local government should spend billions
of state/local dollars for their own military and
civil infrastructure to defend themselves and deal
with catastrophic terrorist acts and natural
disasters? oh. no. you don't. you just made that
up. welcome to the motd.
\_ Republicans are defending the federal government
and the president while blaming state and local
authorities for the NOLA fiasco. If you're
saying that it means that either (A) the state
did not utilize all the resources it had in
an effective manner or (B) the state simply
did not have the resources to handle the
disaster in the first place. But I think it's
clear from the scale of the disaster that the
only way to deal with this disaster is to have
an emergency response infrastructure that is well
beyond the scale and budget of any state like
LA.
\_ The world is not that black and white. Local and
state authorities have responsibilities that they
shirked. They didn't even approach a minimal
\_ You don't have any evidence of this other than
the rantings of right wing blogs. Do you still
believe the governor didn't declare a state of
emergency?
\_ How many school buses were left sitting
unused? What exactly was the evacuation
plan and did anyone even try to follow it?
I don't read *any* blogs, thanks for trying.
\_ So your evacuation plan would have been
to ferry 100,000 on these school buses
to be driven by all these school bus
drivers who would rather take care of
their own family and problems than to
drive a bunch of strangers around on
an already overcrowded I-10?
\_ nice way to ignore the rest. but yes
if you had read the plan you'd know
that the school buses they left to rot
were *part* of the plan to evac those
who couldn't get out on their own.
look, i'm sorry if the facts are
getting in the way of your agenda but
the fact remains that the locals have
responsibilities and failed. here,
let me save you the trouble of going
on, "gwb is evil, HALIBURTON!, oil,
Iraq, cheney is evil, scalia is evil,
dick morris is evil, HALIBURTON!, oil,
save the spotted owl, christians are
evil!". did i miss anything?
\_ I've never said anything in the
last 5 lines you wrote there but
nice of you to make assumptions
like that. I do think GWB is
pretty inept. What was the *full*
plan? I think the mayor calling
for a mandatory evacuation and
the governer requesting a state
of emergency is part of the plan.
I think the federal government
not acting on the request is
pretty criminal. If a state
governer requests resources for
evacuation and you don't act on
it that places the blame on
the federal government, not
state and local.
level of reasonable response or use the resources
they had in place prior to the event to prevent
a lot of the hardship we've seen in the last week.
Yes, of course the federal response could have
been better as the President already stated. The
federal response was slow and somewhat inept. The
state/local response borders on criminal. With
authority comes responsibility, something the
locals didn't understand and the people suffered
for it. It's all fun n games being Governor or
Mayor until people start drowning, starving, and
dying of dehydration. Then you just blame the
feds and start your re-election campaign early.
\_ How is the state and local response
"criminal"? The state and local govt have
limited resources. The federal govt has
much greater resources. If you exhaust your
state and local resources to capacity then
you've done everything you can. But if you're
a federal government with billions of dollars
at its disposal and you've done jack shit
at your disposal and you've done jack shit
then that's criminal
\_ see above.
\_ I thought that was more of a Libertarian plank....
\_ I think their definition of "self-reliance" meant something
like "give tax break to big business" and "relax
pollution standard so mercury is on everyone's dinner
plate."
like "give tax break to big business" and "relax pollution
standard so mercury is on everyone's dinner plate." |