Barbara Bush on the refugee's & the NY Times on Bush

Mageboy25 · #1 09-08-2005, 06:20 AM

Im sure this got covered in the thread with 500 posts. However I do not feel like shifting through all of those. So lets start bitching here:

Barbara Bush: Things Working Out "Very Well" for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans

By E&P Staff / Editor & Publisher

NEW YORK -- Accompanying her husband, former President George H.W.Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated, "This is working very well for them."

The former First Lady's remarks were aired this evening on National Public Radio's "Marketplace" program.

She was part of a group in Houston today at the Astrodome that included her husband and former President Bill Clinton, who were chosen by her son, the current president, to head fundraising efforts for the recovery. Sen. Hilary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama were also present.

In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston."

Then she added: "What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Bush shows indifference, incompetence

By BOB HERBERT
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Neither the death of the chief justice nor the frantic efforts of panicked White House political advisers can conceal the magnitude of the president's failure of leadership last week. The catastrophe in New Orleans billowed up like the howling winds of hell and was carried live and in color on television screens across the United States and around the world.

The Big Easy had turned into the Big Hurt, and the colossal failure of George W. Bush to intervene powerfully and immediately to rescue tens of thousands of U.S. citizens who were suffering horribly and dying in agony was there for all the world to see.

Hospitals with deathly ill patients were left without power, with ventilators that didn't work, with floodwaters rising on the lower floors and with corpses rotting in the corridors and stairwells. People unable to breathe on their own, or with cancer or heart disease or kidney failure, slipped into comas and sank into their final sleep in front of helpless doctors and relatives. These were Americans in desperate trouble.

The president didn't seem to notice.

Death and the stink of decay were all over the city. Corpses were propped up in wheelchairs and on lawn furniture, or left to decompose on sunbaked sidewalks. Some floated by in water fouled by human feces.

Degenerates roamed the city, shooting at rescue workers, beating and robbing distraught residents and tourists, raping women and girls. The president of the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world didn't seem to notice.

Viewers could watch diabetics go into insulin shock on national television, and you could see babies with the pale, vacant look of hunger that we're more used to seeing in dispatches from the Third World. You could see their mothers, dirty and hungry themselves, weeping.

Old, critically ill people were left to soil themselves and in some cases die like stray animals on the floor of an airport triage center. For days the president of the United States didn't seem to notice.

He would have noticed if the majority of these stricken folks had been white and prosperous. But they weren't. Most were black and poor, and thus, to the Bush administration, still invisible.

After days of withering criticism from white and black Americans, from conservatives as well as liberals, from Republicans and Democrats, the president finally felt compelled to act, however feebly. (The chorus of criticism from nearly all quarters demanding that the president do something tells me that the nation as a whole is so much better than this administration.)

Bush flew south on Friday and proved (as if more proof were needed) that he didn't get it. Instead of urgently focusing on the people who were stranded, hungry, sick and dying, he engaged in small talk, reminiscing at one point about the days when he used to party in New Orleans, and mentioning that Trent Lott had lost one of his houses but that it would be replaced with "a fantastic house -- and I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever by a president during a dire national emergency. What we witnessed, as clearly as the overwhelming agony of the city of New Orleans, was the dangerous incompetence and the staggering indifference to human suffering of the president and his administration.

And it is this incompetence and indifference to suffering (yes, the carnage continues to mount in Iraq) that makes it so hard to be optimistic about the prospects for the United States over the next few years. At a time when effective, innovative leadership is desperately needed to cope with matters of war and peace, terrorism and domestic security, the economic imperatives of globalization and the rising competition for oil, the United States is being led by a man who seems oblivious to the reality of his awesome responsibilities.

Like a boy being prepped for a second crack at a failed exam, Bush has been meeting with his handlers to see what steps can be taken to minimize the political fallout from this latest demonstration of his ineptitude.

But this is not about politics. It's about competence. And when the president is so obviously clueless about matters so obviously important, it means that the rest of us, like the people left stranded in New Orleans, are in deep, deep trouble.

Bob Herbert is a columnist with The New York Times. Copyright 2005 New York Times News Service. E-mail: [email protected]

GODDESS6 · #2 09-08-2005, 06:36 AM

this is awful, but not surprising, i wonder would she say the same thing about the 30 elderly patients they just found drowned in their hospital beds, left by staff who fled for their lives?

~

Mari · #3 09-08-2005, 06:43 AM

yep, posted before, but it's worth posting. I actually don't really know what to say about anymore about all the news that keeps coming, but I'm still reading it.

SuzeQuze · #4 09-08-2005, 06:54 AM

The house minority leader Nancy Pelosi said that in talking with Bush she asked him what he thought went wrong last week and he replied he didn't think anything went wrong. She said, would he fire Brown, he said "Why would I do that?"

She said she felt he was dangerously in denial. I can't find her exact quote, it was more powerful than that.

He is grossly incompetent. His negligence during this catastrophe is criminal. How could he? I am glad the press keeps covering this and calling him out.

gldstwmn · #5 09-08-2005, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

The house minority leader Nancy Pelosi said that in talking with Bush she asked him what he thought went wrong last week and he replied he didn't think anything went wrong. She said, would he fire Brown, he said "Why would I do that?"

She said she felt he was dangerously in denial. I can't find her exact quote, it was more powerful than that.

He is grossly incompetent. His negligence during this catastrophe is criminal. How could he? I am glad the press keeps covering this and calling him out.

It was quoted in one of the other threads.
Isn't it time for him to be called on the high crimes and misdememanors? Hillary Clinton is asking for an independent investigation.

SuzeQuze · #6 09-08-2005, 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

It was quoted in one of the other threads.
Isn't it time for him to be called on the high crimes and misdememanors? Hillary Clinton is asking for an independent investigation.

I did catch that afterward. She said he is "oblivious". I hope Hillary gets her way, that is what is needed.

Nixxxed · #7 09-08-2005, 12:30 PM

SapphireSister · #8 09-08-2005, 01:02 PM

Do you guys think things would have been handled any differently if this had occurred during Clinton's presidency?

dissention · #9 09-08-2005, 01:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SapphireSister

Do you guys think things would have been handled any differently if this had occurred during Clinton's presidency?

I'm no fan of Clinton, but I'd venture a guess and say most definitely. The man was no slouch.

SuzeQuze · #10 09-08-2005, 01:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nixxxed

That really captures her essence, its fetching really.

SuzeQuze · #11 09-08-2005, 01:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dissention

I'm no fan of Clinton, but I'd venture a guess and say most definitely.

Can I get a, "Hell yeah!"? Clinton has more capacity for empathy in his pinky than the President has at all.

strandinthewind · #12 09-08-2005, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SapphireSister

Do you guys think things would have been handled any differently if this had occurred during Clinton's presidency?

Who can say for sure because there are so many different players. I do know this though, Clinton would have appeared far more humane in this. For example, he would not have said this was so important that he cut his five week vacation short by two days in an effort to look like he actually gave a shiitte.

SapphireSister · #13 09-08-2005, 01:12 PM

I keep saying to myself over and over "And this is the person (Bush) the American people chose to lead their country" (not me personally). It's quite frightening actually.

dissention · #14 09-08-2005, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SapphireSister

I keep saying to myself over and over "And this is the person (Bush) the American people chose to lead their country" (not me personally). It's quite frightening actually.

I'm still waiting for the people who said they were voting for him because he could protect us to come out of the woodwork.

SuzeQuze · #15 09-08-2005, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Who can say for sure because there are so many different players. I do know this though, Clinton would have appeared far more humane in this. For example, he would not have said this was so important that he cut his five week vacation short by two days in an effort to look like he actually gave a shiitte.

A. He would not have been on a 5 week vacation to begin with.
B. He would not have appointed someone like Brown to head FEMA, all his friends are smart.
C. IF he had been on vacation he would have come off of it immediately.

I can't prove any of the above since he is not the president. Would this have been handled differently had Gore been awarded the presidency that he won the popular vote for? Again, can I get a "Hell yeah!"?