Bush supporters' aftermath thread

No matter how well sourced, I doubt you would believe anything you didn't want to believe Moderate, and you're willing to believe anything negative about the GOP, about George Bush, or anything favored by the Right even if you have to make it up. Obviously.

Hurricanes, hatred and hypocrisy
Oliver North

September 2, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- At one time in the history of our grand republic, political discourse was a much more civil endeavor. While politicians have disagreed, debated, argued and even on occasion, fought on the floor of Congress, there has generally been a certain level of decorum between the two major political parties and among the three branches of government. Sadly, that no longer seems to be the case -- and it's hurting our country.

"Mr. President, congratulations. You're a tough adversary," Tip O'Neill said in a 1981 telephone call to President Ronald Reagan after Congress voted to approve the President's economic package. The very liberal Mr. O'Neill had strenuously opposed the Reagan tax cuts, but the speaker went on to say, "I want to wish you all the success in the world."

Who in today's Democrat party would offer such words to President Bush? Who on "the Hill" -- which liberal pundit -- what Democrat party leader -- would adhere to what once was an unwritten rule of mutual respect between political rivals? Extremists in today's Democrat Party are so full of anger that even the horrific devastation and human suffering brought on by Hurricane Katrina have failed to produce any discernible detente in their torrent of viscera.

Katrina has created a humanitarian crisis worse than any natural disaster in U.S. history. Yet, while hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast are mourning dead family and friends and trying to comprehend their losses in the flooded streets, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is blaming Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi, and the GOP for the devastation caused by the hurricane.

"Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged," read Kennedy's post on Ariana Huffington's anti-Bush website. The eco-evangelist went on to suggest to his disciples that God may have been offended by a memorandum Barbour -- former Chairman of the Republican Party -- had written to President Bush about flaws in the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on global warming. "Perhaps," Kennedy wrote, "it was Barbour's memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings (sic) for the Mississippi coast."

Set aside for a moment whether the people of New Orleans consider themselves "spared" the worst of Katrina. The Kennedy screed is not only theologically offensive -- it is at best, outrageously insensitive to the plight of countless Americans now searching through waterlogged rubble for the bodies of loved ones and treasured belongings. At worst, it ranks with Sen. Richard "Dick" Durbin's likening American soldiers to the armies of Hitler, Stalin or Cambodia's Pol Pot.

Regrettably, Kennedy is not alone in ignoring the humanitarian and refugee crisis occurring along America's Gulf Coast to further a narrow political agenda. On Wednesday, as government, Salvation Army and Red Cross officials were appealing for every possible kind of help, a coalition of liberal activists brushed aside the plight of Katrina's victims to demand media attention for their opposition to John Roberts, Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is the kind of press-prompted vitriol that has been evident for much of the summer outside the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Aided and abetted by the so-called mainstream media, Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, has been reduced to the role of center-piece for aging, '60s-era, anti-military radicals. Surrounded by a coterie of sound-bite savvy activists, she deviated from her "Get Out of Iraq Now" script this week to join Kennedy in blaming President Bush for the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

All of this in the midst of the Katrina crisis is enough to make one wary of what Washington will be like for administration officials when Congress returns from their month-long vacation next week. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has already been summoned to appear before the Armed Services committees to "answer questions" about the war.

Rumsfeld, a regular target of rhetorical abuse from the left, has been through this before. When he last testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on June 23rd, the defense secretary was subjected to a disgusting verbal barrage from Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., that was shamefully personal. Had it not taken place in "the world's greatest deliberative body," it could have been branded as "hate speech."

The record of the hearing is replete with rancorous character attacks against a man who has worked tirelessly to prosecute a war against enemies who behead hostages and kill innocents. Sen. Kennedy's hypocrisy was boundless: "I'm talking about misjudgments, gross errors and mistakes. Those are on your watch. Isn't it time for you to resign?" he shouted. "Our troops deserve better, the American people deserve better." The Massachusetts liberal concluded his diatribe with a comment that might have been introspective: "They deserve competency and they deserve facts. In baseball, it's three strikes and you're out."

Byrd was equally shrill and contemptible, but he may simply have forgotten that Mr. Rumsfeld once served as a naval officer and a member of Congress. "I've just heard enough of your smart answers to these people here who are elected. We are elected. You're not elected," said the West Virginia Senator who never served in any uniform except the white cloak of the Ku Klux Klan. He then ordered the defense secretary: "So get off your high horse when you come up here … Have a little respect for what we try to do."

As they used to tell us in the Marines: You cannot demand respect. You have to earn it.

God. Try a new tune, for God's sake. How many times are you going to post the same drivel, as if people don't understand your new big word.

Jeez. Go back to cut and paste.

LOL, you better put a salutation on that one Lash

I'll just refer you to all your previous post.

Very good BBB. Now can you convince Moderate of that? It's a lesson that could really benefit him and a few others I think.

I do apologize to him for getting personal a bit ago. I try not to do that in my posts, but sometimes the opening is soooo wide and sooooo inviting.

God. Try a new tune, for God's sake. How many times are you going to post the same drivel, as if people don't understand your new big word.

Jeez. Go back to cut and paste.

Lash wrote:

God. Try a new tune, for God's sake. How many times are you going to post the same drivel, as if people don't understand your new big word.

Jeez. Go back to cut and paste.

I didn't cut-n-paste a thing....

I have to wonder at the ignorance or just plain stupidity of some of you people.
Some of you are complaining that the NG cant help because they are all in Iraq.
Do any of you even bother to do a little research at all?
According to this site...
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/arng-la.htm

there are 11,500 members of the La National Guard.

According to this...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090101661.html

There are 3700 members of the La NG in Iraq.
That leaves almost 8000 members of the LA NG available to respond to the hurricane.
Now,since the NG answers to and takes orders from the governor of the state,why didn't the gov of La mobilize them before the storm?

Where are they?
Why didn't the Gov call them up and have them act?
Those 8000 people could have helped immensely,they could have been way ahead on evacuations,they could have secured the city and restored order.

The mayor of NO has been crying and blaming Bush,but he bears some of the responsibility.
In any disaster,the order of response is local,state,then federal.
Why didn't the mayor commandeer the city buses and the school buses to help get people out?
Why didn't the gov order the La NG to start evacuating people?

All of us know that the federal govt takes a few days to respond to anything,but when they do its with overwhelming resources.
We are seeing that now,with troops moving in with convoys of supplies,and with the firepower to restore order and maintain it.

So,I ask again...What happened to those 8000 members of the La NG that aren't in Iraq?
Whose fault is it that they weren't mobilized before the storm?