Blancos' Actions
A segment of this:
Congressman Conyers issued the following statement:
"...it would appear that the Governor did take the steps necessary to request emergency and major disaster declarations for the State of Louisiana in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina. (p.11)" The report found that:* All necessary conditions for federal relief were met on August 28. Pursuant to Section 502 of the Stafford Act, "[t]he declaration of an emergency by the President makes Federal emergency assistance available," and the President made such a declaration on August 28. The public record indicates that severa additional days passed before such assistance was actually made available to the State;* The Governor must make a timely request for such assistance, which meets the requirements of federal law. The report states that "[e]xcept to the extent that an emergency involves primarily Federal interests, both declarations of major disaster and declarations of emergency must be triggered by a request to the President from the Governor of the affected state";* The Governor did indeed make such a request, which was both timely and in compliance with federal law. The report finds that "Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco requested by letter dated August 27, 2005...that the President declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period from August 26, 2005 and continuing pursuant to [applicable Federal statute]" and "Governor Blanco's August 27, 2005 request for an emergency declaration also included her determination...that 'the 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 disaster."
My favorite from the comments on this story.
Do you think this will have even a slight impact on the wingnuts? They have already convinced themselves of their own narrative, and no amount of facts or reality will dissuade them from it. On the other hand, the new NEW talking point ricochetting around wingnut land is, "Well, Bush SAID he takes responsibility, so what more do you want? An investigation? That's just blame-gaming! (And besides, Blanco and Nagin are DEMOCRATS! DEMOCRATS, gaddamnit! Do you hear me? DEMOCRATS!)" Sad what passes for thought over on that side of the reality divide.
posted by Ron at 8:59 PM
16 Comments:
Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows
By Jonathan S. Landay, Alison Young and Shannon McCaffrey, Knight Ridder Newspapers Tue Sep 13,10:00 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was
Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.
Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials.
White House and homeland security officials wouldn't explain why Chertoff waited some 36 hours to declare Katrina an incident of national significance and why he didn't immediately begin to direct the federal response from the moment on Aug. 27 when the
National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina would strike the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force in 48 hours. Nor would they explain why Bush felt the need to appoint a separate task force.
Chertoff's hesitation and Bush's creation of a task force both appear to contradict the National Response Plan and previous presidential directives that specify what the secretary of homeland security is assigned to do without further presidential orders. The goal of the National Response Plan is to provide a streamlined framework for swiftly delivering federal assistance when a disaster - caused by terrorists or Mother Nature - is too big for local officials to handle.
The Donkey could not make this up. Heck of a job, Brownie.
wow Conyers says its bush's fault not Blanco's big news I wonder what conyers thinks about Iraq and the bush presidency overall I have no idea he seems to be so level headed when it comes to the president. He is also the goofball who had the fake "hearing" in the basement of the house on the downing street memo. One of the witnesses to trestify at this "hearing" wa sthe great cindy sheehan (before the ditch sit in) I don't know about you but I don't tthink Ms. Sheehan is an expert witness on pre-war intelligence. Anywho you have to take conyers with a freaking pilar of salt is my point.
mark
Mark;
Do not you have enough to do with your other blogs? Why come here to a small local blog? What is it about this blog that attracts Freepers? People from all over this country find this blog, then invite other strange people to post here.
Do you really think that by posting anonymous, that the Donkey does not know what part of the country you are from. Read the small print in bloggers agreement. Any one who posts in this blog, has little privacy.
Conyers didn't just say it he asked for an investigation and report. If the report is false, prove it. I need facts! Please feel free to post here if you wish. Maybe we can recruit you to our of the people, by the people, for the people movement. It most certainly is a real american value. Let me tell you, when you start hearing the president say we need more federal control and military presence inside america, and that is the only way to fix this.....I am suspicious. More federal control would not be a conservative value would it? States Rights? More running of the show by the military is not something they will do without me making a BIG stink.
It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces, the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice.
The Donkey can not find fault with this statement. Will this be an excuse to take away guns from citizens? US marshalls, directing US military illegaly took away peoples guns. They also illegaly entered private propery and took people out of their homes. It is true that local and state police did the same thing. Why did Bush let this happen?
Yahoo News Headline:
Bush presses for reconstruction at prayer service (or something like that)
Whoa! Ironic that Bush should mention RECONSTRUCTION when you consider that he is the WORST President since Reconstruction (Grant,Hayes) and that his Administration is at least as corrupt and incompetent.
Leading Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi aren't too happy with his speech last night and neither is my idol, John Kerry, who says that giving out toll free numbers isn't leadership. You can bet that Kerry who, as a prosecutor in Mass., completely reorganized the county prosecutor's office so that there was up-to date equipment and additonal staff so the office would be run EFFICIENTLY, would've been on the job as far as the
New Orleans disaster relief efforts were concerned. And Kerry wouldn't have been such an idjit as to appoint the notorious Brown with NO experience in this field to be the head of FEMA. (Not to mention that Kerry would've picked someone like Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter to be U.N. Ambassador and NOT John Bolton.) Kerry has done a LOT of investigation work in The Senate. Let's put KERRY in charge of investigating what went wrong in New Orleans NOT BUSH!
The Bushies need to wake up to the fact that their guy chooses incompetent unqualified people for just about everything and that THEY chose someone incompetent, too, and need to get going on helping us get rid of him. IMPEACHMENT! IMPEACHMENT (for all of 'em)!
oh donkey you are scaring me so tell me oh wise one what part of the country am I from?
Mark
well I can agree with you on one point Ron, Bush did piss me off with his speech on thursday he is dead wrong with his plan to re-build the gulf coast. I don't know where he thinks all this money is going to come from. It almost seems to me he was trying to throw the people on the left a bone or something for his slow response by FEMA. The only way he can look good after that speech in my eyes is to propose a ton of spending cuts from the recent budget. I am not against re-building NOLA and the gulf coast but proposing that the federal government will take the lead in the effort seems like a great idea - not. "hey we screwed up the immediate response to the disaster so now let us take a majority of responsibility in the long term response" makes a lot of sense to me...
mark
Mark,
You are from the part of the country where people fear talking donkeys.
Oklahoma? I know they would hate it if donkeys could talk.
well I from a red state so i suppose you are right...I prefer donkeys and elephants for that matter to remain silent
Mark
For Mark and the resto of you who have not figured it out yet, Bush is NOT a small government conservative. His entire presidency has been about using the government to make sure his corporate campaign contributors find new ways to make money off we, the middle class taxpayers and our children and grandchildren. I say off our children and grandchildren, because his tax cuts for the rich ENSURE none of his wasteful programs can be paid for "as we go." He even wants to mandate mental tests on school children so his pharmaceutical corporate campaign contributors can make money off of prescribing medication (even through medicaid) to school kids.
Bush's entire presidency has had one goal: To make the rich richer. And to make sure they pay almost no taxes. And he has sacrificed the environment and the future well-being of all of us -- even that of the rich (although they don't realize it yet) to do it.
As an honorable Republican, Marlowe Cook said, "Lyndon Johnson said we could have guns and butter at the same time. This administration says we can have guns, butter and no taxes. God help us if we are not smart enough to know that is not true."
Lonna
To clarify my last post here:
I said Bush had sacrificed the future of all of us to make the rich even richer. Then I said he has sacrificed the future well-being of the rich as well.
What I meant by that is that the rich see their security to be socking away so much money they will be able to insulate themselves from whatever negative consequences their short-sighted greedy policies have on the environment and on our relationships with other countries.
Their money may insulate them for awhile, but, in the end, their money will not be able to protect them or their children from the environmental havoc their policies guarantee will happen. And the rich are as vulnerable as the rest of us in many ways in the event of a terrorist attack against this nation. Bush's policies have made both possibilities infinitely more likely.
AND, throughout history, when the rich get too rich, and the poor become both more numerous and poorer, resentment brings about revolutions. The poor ALWAYS win the revolutions in the end.
Lonna
Questions:
Do the Independent and Green parties also have animal symbols? Why not a cat of some kind for the independent party as cats are very independent animals?
Also, would a state where the vote was close in either of the last two elections be purple rather than either red or blue?
All I can see is that whenever I see a guest editorial from what I know is a red state in my local paper I can expect to end up seeing RED!! Pretty neat that the Dems color turned out to be blue as that is my favorite color.
Blue represents tranquility, calm, peace (?), and Heaven.
(RED is the color of WAR. Maybe that's why so many of the warhawks who support Bush, etc. live in RED states.)
Yeah, let's have a vote:
I vote for the black Cat for Independent.
I vote for the red dog for Repugs.
LMAO.
I'm OK for the black cat for Independents, but am thinking that the TRADITIONAL conservatives/GOP should take their party back from the far-right wingnuts who are not REAL Republicans just as Ron keeps pointing out, but corporate globalists (not to mention the religious fanatics who have overlooked the fact that the original fight between God and Lucifer was over people having free will as far as worshiping God).
I vote for the GOP to take their party back and for the neo-cons to have their own party. Their symbol can be a snake in the grass (a Bushmaster?), appropriate since Cheney, the head neo-con was born in the year of the snake.
As for the elephant, it is a shame that such a nice animal has to represent the "sheeple".
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