The President of the Czech Republic V�clav Klaus has a blunt, and timely message for Europe, and by extension, for all western governments and those who elect them.
The question is what kind of ideas is favoured by the intellectuals. The question is whether the intellectuals are neutral in their choice of ideas with which they are ready to deal with. Hayek argued that they are not. They do not hold or try to spread all kinds of ideas. They have very clear and, in some respect, very understandable preferences for some of them. They prefer ideas, which give them jobs and income and which enhance their power and prestige.
They, therefore, look for ideas with specific characteristics. They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator. That is not all. According to Hayek “the power of ideas grows in proportion to their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness”. Hence it is not surprising that the intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas. This is also the way of thinking, in which they have comparative advantage. They are not good at details. They do not have ambitions to solve a problem. They are not interested in dealing with the everyday’s affairs of common citizens. Hayek put it clearly: “the intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties.” He is interested in visions and utopias and because “socialist thought owes its appeal largely to its visionary character” (and I would add lack of realism and utopian nature), the intellectual tends to become a socialist.
In a similar way, Raymond Aron, in his famous essay “The Opium of Intellectuals”, analyzed not only the well-known difference between the revolutionary and reformist way of thinking but also – and this is more relevant in this context – the difference between “prosaic” and “poetry”. Whereas “the prosaic model of thinking lacks the grandeur of utopia” (Roger Kimball), the socialist approach is – in the words of Aron – based “on the poetry of the unknown, of the future, of the absolute”. As I understand it, this is exactly the realm of intellectuals. Some of us want to immediately add that “the poetry of the absolute is an inhuman poetry”.
[…]
Fifteen years after the collapse of communism I am afraid, more than at the beginning of its softer (or weaker) version, of social-democratism, which has become – under different names, e.g. the welfare state or the soziale Marktwirtschaft – the dominant model of the economic and social system of current Western civilization. It is based on big and patronizing government, on extensive regulating of human behavior, and on large-scale income redistribution.
In Canada, the “poets of soziale Trudeapia” are running amok.
Health Canada is calling for a change to the law that prevents peers and nurses in the city’s sanctioned safe injection site from helping people inject.
Health care workers can only supervise and offer medical assistance if a user hurts themselves and gets sick or overdoses.
If nurses help an addict shoot up, they could be charged with possession or trafficking.
“We need them to help,” said Ms. Tobin.
“And we need more places like the safe injection site. It’s so busy now, it’s being used all the time and people are sitting on the street, getting people who don’t know what they’re doing to inject them.”
In today’s modern, increasingly socialist democracies, nanny-state legislation (if it saves one life!) and cradle-to-grave “social safety nets” are the opiate of the middle class, while the politics of race and identity, envy, and “social justice” are the stock and trade of the economic underclass.
The net result is a society of entitlement that absolves the individual of personal responsibility and creates an illusion that consequences are made to be avoided. There is always “failure of society”, a previous generation, or corporate dynasty at whose feet the blame for personal failure lies, always someone else with more “ability to pay” to pick up the tab.
“They owe you” .
Consider a city built, unwisely, below sea level, protected by massive levies and powerful pumps provided by the state, maintained by the state, with all the apparent permanence of the state.
In the unthinkable event that those fail, experts and engineers plot strategies for worst case scenerios. They conduct disaster drills, with fake victims and fake blood. The state provides modern highways and mass transit, and communications systems and weather satellites.
Then, when the day comes that the unthinkable becomes possible, the planning and technology move into high gear. Government officials, with the assistance of private and public media, warn of a tremendous hurricane as it grows in strength. The images are available world wide as satellites track its path, and local TV records the destruction of those it has already battered.
Government officials and elected leaders urge the citizens to evacuate to save their lives. They warn of the scope of the impending storm and the potential of devastation. They mobilize and priorize. Hospital staff stay on duty to care for the sick and infirm. The doors to the largest facility available that may withstand the storm are opened in hopes that those who had no way of escaping, or somehow learned of them too late, can find refuge.
And tens of thousands ignore them and remain in their homes.
Many of them have cars parked in their driveways. Many who don’t are able-bodied and capable of walking. They ignore the warning and simply remain where they are, though they have children and elderly in their care.
With the storm passed, the waters rising faster than the heat, electricity failed and supplies running out, when the truth begins to dawn on the survivors – that the state is not all-powerful, that the mere human beings charged with coming to their aid,are, in fact, mere human beings who cannot come sweeping to their rescue like the cavalry over a Hollywood hill, that there are so many to rescue, because like they, so many have ignored the warnings – do they pool their resources?
Do they find strength in human dignity and sanctity of life? Do the strong come to the aid of the weak? Do they summon patience and resolve in the knowledge that help is on the way, if only they can find the courage to help themselves a little longer?
What is their response to this consequence that has befallen them, a consequence largely of their own making?
“You owe us” .
They take what others have failed to provide, those things required to sustain life – jewelry and television sets. And when taking isn’t enough (it never is), they devolve into predation and anarchy, abandon the weak, turn upon the innocent and each other – and all in a matter of days.
In former times entire nations found the strength to rise to the occasion, ordinary people understood that survival depended on their shared common decency and respect for their fellow citizen. That, by co-operating and persevering, they might create coping mechanisms through pooling skills and resources, and to be sure, the majority of those trapped in New Orleans will have done just that.
But, in former times, whole nations were not living in a time of entitlement, where all and any are provided for by an all-encompassing “social safety net”, funded by those faceless others with more, who have life easier, whom we have been trained to envy.
Those human failings, irresponsible and anti-social behaviors that once brought consequences in the community – shame, ostracization, and deserved personal deprivation – are today excused, assigned new and neutral nomenclature (all the better for medical diagnosis), prescribed “tolerance”, and if possible, assigned the politics of race or class, so that collective guilt may be mined to ensure that self-destructive behavior gains not only acceptance, but state funding.
The predatory violence and anarchy befalling New Orleans is not the result of a freak convergence of forces brought on by unnatural disaster.
It’s a warning.
(See also: American Spectator: Masques of Death)
I figured it wouldn’t be long before the Right began to blame the victims of the disaster. Classic. “Suz” read this piece just right: I have no idea what Kate’s little put-down was referring to. My own reading comprehension is just fine, thanks, and it was a hateful post.
A few gems, if that is the word:
“And tens of thousands ignore them and remain in their homes. Many of them have cars parked in their driveways.”
Far more of them did not. Nothing like telling people to evacuate when they have no means of doing so.
“But, in former times, whole nations were not living in a time of entitlement, where all and any are provided for by an all-encompassing ‘social safety net’, funded by those faceless others with more, who have life easier, whom we have been trained to envy.”
So the disaster and suffering were the fault of liberal ideology. If there is political parasitism in evidence, it’s the Rightists flailing away at the moment to find the victims at fault.
“The predatory violence and anarchy befalling New Orleans is not the result of a freak convergence of forces brought on by unnatural disaster.”
Starvation doesn’t exactly bring out the best in people. But the writer’s compassion, in any case, stands out a a model for the rest of us to follow. As does the warm fellow-feeling of others here. What a lovely bunch.
Look, Dr. Dawg – watch your adjectives and don’t go into the extravagant imagery.
The people in NO were/are NOT starving; being without substantive food for three days is not starvation. Limited food and water supplies – yes. But not starvation, which is more accurately a result of several months of severe lack of food. Use your definitions correctly. I know that your agenda is to incite emotional horror, but, even if you want to do that, please do your inciting properly.
Genuinely starving people – as in Africa, as in Stalingrad during the war – don’t get involved in stealing televisions, breaking store windows for guns..
The people were ordered to evacuate the town; they didn’t – and watch your definitions – No, it is not accurate to say, as you are, that ALL who did not evacuate were without cars, that ALL had 80 year old grandmothers and so on. Quite a few had neither, and chose, chose, chose, to stay. That included the famous ‘Fats’..who had to be rescued by air (cost??).
As pointed out, the first and most important zone of self-governance, is the local zone. The personal and then, the community. You don’t sit back and wait for the Top-Down Centralist gov’t or God. You work from the contextual zone first; that’s your immediate env’t..the zone that you have the most control over, and, which has the most control over you.
You, of course, have an agenda. Blame Bush. Others have an equally simplistic and self-serving agenda. Blame the people because they have sinned; God is punishing them. And, then, there are those who want to blame The Whites, who have, somehow set this up to Harm the Blacks.
All such bivariates – simplistic reductions – are fallacious. But, they are easy to use, require no data just assumptions..and..heck, you can get quite the emotional surge from your assertions of Who Hates Whom; and Who Is Evil.
By the way, there’s a good analysis of the political response to Katrina on Captain’s Quarters.
The National Guard is activated by the Governor. Not Bush. The US is not a dictatorship; the powers of each of its political authorities are checked and balanced. Captain’s Quarters lays the blame for the National Guard not being there – on the Governor.
Evacuation of those who either were unable or refused – the blame for that must go to the City. That’s the duty of that by now infamous mayor who is now hysterically busy flinging blame at everyone but himself. Poor planning – with assumptions that the Dome would only be used for 48 hours at most; no proper evacuation plans etc.
Planning for ‘what to do in our domain’ has to, and MUST, remain with the ownership of those who live in that domain. A gov’t mustn’t move in and take the power to define and control their lives away from the people. People are not, as in a communist socialist society, reduced to powerless obedient sheep. The point of a democracy is that you, the people who live in a local area, retain control over that area.
Instead, the City politicians – rejected this control. They didn’t plan. Same with the State government. They didn’t plan.
And now – they blame..the feds..and particularly..Bush.
It’s the same everywhere; people always blame others rather than taking responsibility for their own failures. They want power, but, no responsibility.
Come on, ET, you’re flailing.
Being without food or water for several days is starvation, especially for babies and young children and old people. What do you suppose the people were dying of? Bad attitudes? (I referenced over at my place an old man on a median dead in a chaise lounge, and an old woman dead in her wheelchair nearby. There were many, many others.)
“No, it is not accurate to say, as you are, that ALL who did not evacuate were without cars, that ALL had 80 year old grandmothers and so on.”
I said nothing of the kind. This is what I did say, with reference to “cars parked in the driveway”:
“Far more of them did not. Nothing like telling people to evacuate when they have no means of doing so.”
And they did not. They were not in the Superdome and the Convention Centre out of choice.
I don’t think that you’ll find my own piece completely “bivariate,” although it points to the utter failures of the administration and the big racial elephant in the room. You will like my next post less. The response here and elsewhere in the right half of the blogosphere to the human tragedy unfolding in New Orleans makes me realize, once again, why I’m not of that persuasion. You people simply lack empathy. End of story.
I saw a teary mini-telethon hurricane relief plea with Harry Connick JR and Mike Myers last night. It added so much validity to Kate’s assessment of the nanny state-induced entitlement mentality.
They had some guy in the studio who they say they rescued from the New Orleans disaster area, all he did when they gave him a microphone was rant on about how “gummint” was too slow providing him and his pals with a new place to live….that this was on purpose because they were black and finally; that GW Bush “hates” Blacks because he wasn’t “doing enough”….then they cut the feed from his mic off abruptly…frankly, I don’t know how Mike Myers kept a straight face ( he was standing beside this comical, welfare state Black Panther) without cracking one of his timely jokes on zany human foibles.
I sat in rapt awe of the attitude this guy had…he lives in a place prone to natural disaster, he probably didn’t have any of his property or possessions insured accordingly and in all likelihood had not provided for himself with emergency savings for such an unforeseen catastrophe….he placed ALL his responsibility for personal security and welfare with the government…and when the fecal matter hit the rotating oscillator he was openly bitching out the nanny state for not providing for his immediate needs and long term housing requirement. �We need a new place to live� was his demand.
FDR’s introduction of American socialism has bred generations of these dependent entitlement addicts in the core of all major US urban centers. This is the permanent underclass that the American intellectual left has milked to expand the socialist state…this is their “plantation”….the inner cities. We note that their social welfare policy never diminishes the number of “poor” who are the left’s reliant sold voting block.
Hayek in his tretiste “the Intellectuals and socialism” stated that the illuminati who promote and run the social welfare state never see social/economic policy failure as a matter of not working…just a matter that their policies need to be expanded to work fully…this is evidenced by the left’s penchant to simply raise tax and throw more money into losing causes…it is their first reaction to policy failure in the welfare state…just as Hayek had predicted. It also displays the intellectual vacancy of the socialist intellectual.
It stands to reason if welfare state wealth redistribution worked to relieve society of the �poor�, we should see less �poor� after 72 years of �new deal� socialism.�but we don�t�.because without a welfare reliant �poor� class we would have no need for socialist intellectuals or their ever expanding fallible welfare state bureaucracy.
Dr. Dawg
It is not that we do not care about those poor souls in NO . Most of the posts are in response to the crazy blame Bush for everything crowd that seem to want to take advantage of a natural disaster.
The underlying tone in most of the left seems to me to be that the FEMA and National Guard were deliberatly slow to maximize poor and black deaths. Is this you’re contention also? If so I have nothing but contempt for you.
Houston Responds
In the midst of all the insane media coverage of Hurricane Katrina, there are a few stories that need to get out. The city of Houston is helping in every way it can. I found this comment on Jeff Goldstein’s site; where the political ramifications of th…
WL
That was a a Rapper that went off on Bush last night during the fund raiser. Kanye West I think.
Just named by Time mag. as one of the smartest men in Rap music.
“The underlying tone in most of the left seems to me to be that the FEMA and National Guard were deliberatly slow to maximize poor and black deaths. Is this you’re contention also? If so I have nothing but contempt for you.”
“Deliberately?” That would be stretching the point. The response to this crisis was a lackadaisical one, compounded by FEMA’s incompetence. What we saw here was a lack of caring, not a deliberate extermination plan. But the victims are just as dead.
The socialist policies of AdScam Martin,left liberal son of Chretien, at work.
Get your free taxes, free socialism, free utopia, free everything, for free, yes free, from the socialist left liberals.>>>>>
Canadians’ standard of living slips further behind U.S.
Eric Beauchesne Sound Off
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Canada’s economy and living standards will continue to fall further behind the U.S. over the next few years, a Bay Street think-tank says.
“Over the 2003-2006 period, growth in Canada will fall short of that in the U.S. every year, and cumulatively this will add up to about 3.3 percentage points of growth over the four-year period,” Global Insight said. “That is more than one full year’s worth of growth over a four-year period. As a result, Canada’s standard of living will fall from 87 per cent of the U.S. level in 2002 to about 84 per cent by the end of 2005.” more>>> http://www.rapp.org/url/?2ANMW5HO
Ottawa Citizen Business
Excellent post, Kate, and I’m linking to it on my site. I took it as warning, too. I live in So Cal and realized that it’s finally time to face reality and get my earthquake kit together.
Suz said: “My goodness, how unkind and hateful you are. How judgemental, in your cozy home with your fuzzy slippers and a coffee cup nearby. Perhaps the folks who did not evacuate New Orleans were plain old POOR. Perhaps they had only $7 in gas money and no credit card for a hotel. And if they left, they’d have to take Granny in her wheelchair and the babies, too, cause they couldn’t take one generation and leave the others, could they? And how would they all go in one beat up car? And where would they go? The Storm Center said get out but who would take them all in?”
Suz — there’s a photo on Yahoo news of — what appears to be — 100s of school buses up to their roofs in water in New Orleans.
Why couldn’t the Mayor have used those to move as many residents who “didn’t have gas money”, “a car”, to move them at least out of an area that was below sea level?
I’m sorry that many of the 67% of New Orleanians elected this Mayor, and that N.O. has a police force that is so corrupt that the FBI was nearly called in (before the hurricane) to run the department. But, if you accept the premise that it was likely that the city would flood in this event, then the Mayor COULD have taken some City resources (now, proven to be sitting in water from Lake P.) that are obviously capable of transporting people. If you don’t accept the premise, then you can’t blame people up the governance food chain — unless it is their job to protect NO from incompetant mayors.
“The response to this crisis was a lackadaisical one, compounded by FEMA’s incompetence. What we saw here was a lack of caring, not a deliberate extermination plan.”
You’re nuts if you think caring had anything to di with it. Honestly, why do so many people place somuch emphasis on politicians feeling their pain? If a politician is running around claiming he’s felling your pain, he’s a fucking liar. And even worse instead of working to fix the problem he’s going around schmoozing people. Next time the politicians tell you they feel your pain, kick them in the ass. You’re not a child. You don’t need them to feel your pain.
Your post is excellent. I must point out that the Mayor of NO did not use his local resources to help his constituents. There is a photo on many US websites of hundreds of school buses in NO parked in a lot and underwater. Did anyone in the local government of NO think to use these buses? They abandoned their poor and now blame the federal government. I am sickened by what happened in NO but even more sickened by the blame game that goes on in the media and on the internet. My only wish is that maybe, just maybe, we will see the light and stop life long welfare which has turned generations into herds of human veal.
Oh, yeah, the schoolbuses. Proof that it was the Mayor’s fault.
Think about this for a moment, if you have time. Schoolbuses require drivers. The drivers were no doubt among the fortunate evacuees who left before the levees broke. How many of the people remaining could drive a bus?
Honestly, sometimes people on the Right seem to allow their self-righteousness to completely overwhelm their cerebral functions. Give your heads a shake and stop pushing this schoolbus meme. It won’t get Bush off the hook.
The left is already maneuvering to spin Katrina into a platform from which to shout that America is still a vile, racist nation that does not care about blacks. Its all about the caring, as manifested in a paternalistic nanny state accompanied by a healthy dose of identity politics.
The relentless eye of the media spotlight shows us the grim results of the welfare state run by the politically-correct. We can now ask ourselves: do we want more of the same, or do we want to ask some hard questions w/r to what exactly has 30 years of identity politics done for blacks in America.
the mayor…the governor could have called in the National Guard or requested volunteers..sure, that may not have given every bus a driver but it would have been better than doing nothing at all, unless of course you like to sit around and blame other people for their inaction. The response of FEMA is a federal problem and I have no problem laying blame at the foot of the administration for that. The fact that the mayor nor the governor used their resources to help their own people astounds me to no end. If we’re lining up people to blame, they should be first in line.
The Dawg said: “…sometimes people on the Right seem to allow their self-righteousness to completely overwhelm their cerebral functions.”
Look who’s barking. 🙂
If you know how to drive a car, driving a bus is very similar. A pro-active mayor may have deputized 250 citizen to be bus drivers but I’m sure the mayor’s legal staff would advise him that if there was an accident, the mayor would by liable.
Just thinking outside the box.
“Thinking outside the box” is something the left seems completely unable to do.
Dr. Dawg said “The response to this crisis was a lackadaisical one”
What do you call the response to the evacuation warning giving two days before Katrina hit?
Blame Bush for the hurricane. Blame Bush for the flooding. Blame Bush for the anarchy.
BLAME BUSH! BLAME BUSH! BLAME BUSH!
It’s so easy isn’t it? Doesn’t even take much thought. Just rolls off the tongue. Repeat it fast enough and it turns into LAME-MUSHE.
Oh..this post was cute! I love when Canadians think by pandering to the worst elements of American dogma that they somehow magically become Americans too. And before any of you rail off, I’ll preface..I AM AN AMERICAN AND CANADIAN (and Albertan!). Can any of you challenge me based on real-life experience and not something you read in a book or the Fraser Institute told you? No. I doubt it but I’d love to see it. I’d love even more if someone wanted to contradict me based on it.
Of course, it’s also funny when Canadians bash Americans for no real reason but you fall into the former so I’m concentrating on that. Does Canada definite itself through the US all the time or just 98% of the time?
Now, I suppose I probably won’t be able to cut through the orgy fest of backpatting here but let me just say that this post, more than any I have seen, shows a complete lack of comprehension of the American dynamic today. You’re honorary US Citizenship is NOT in mail so don’t get all excited. It’s much easier to blame the victims when they don’t look like you, or talk like you and you have never lived like they have been made to.
I’m not really going to comment on the rest of the spew here other than it’s just more examples of how people use the internet to say things they have no balls to say in public.
I’d love to tell you you’re wrong..but then you’d blow me off. I’ll let life do that instead.
Blame Bush? Yes..and the rest of the Republican hegemony that’s lied to the American people for the past 30 years. They’ve been in power the longest and this America that’s “faltering” has done so sqaurely on their watch.
Colin is correct. The left refuses to comprehend that the state absolutely cannot do absolutely everthing for everybody all the time. Even in socialist Canada, hardly anything ever gets done by the state for the people, the gargantuan tax grab notwithstanding. Funny the Cdn left won’t blame Paulie. Must be all the candy he keeps giving them. And all the dope he lets them smoke.
Yes, the left the world over won’t take responsibility for its own stupidity, therefore it’s only too easy to blame Bush. Never will they blame themselves. I delight in exposing their attitudinal ‘nads. I will continue to do so, as humanity desperately needs a new, positive direction.
I bet now they’re going to get out their flamethrowers…
No, Stephen, I’m going to get on my knees and pray for you. That one day you won’t be killed when karma comes and bites you so hard that your life will never be the same. It sounds like you have it coming to you, bless your heart. God bless you, Stephen, and all the rest of you on your lofty perches.
Dr. Dawg- you are really str-e-tch-ing for excuses.
Now, you inform us that The Reason that the Mayor didn’t get those buses loaded with people and sent off, was Because All the People Who could Drive had already left.
Wow- that’s quite a meme all done up by yourself.
Now, if you could provide even one snitch of proof that there were NO, NO people able to drive…that all drivers had left…Just one teensy bit of proof…
No, I’m not flailing; you are; you have one agenda and only one. Blame Bush.
Starvation is not a result of three days. Check out the definition.
Those people who died; you provide two examples of senior citizens – might have died due to the trauma even of being moved from one site to another – and this had nothing to do with any lack of food/water..or Bush. You then inform us that there were ‘many many others’. Sorry, that’s unacceptable. You have to be specific. “Many many’ is empty rhetoric. Useless.
What I find interesting, is your certainty; you state that people did not leave because they had no cars. Proof? What if they didn’t leave because they didn’t want to; because they didn’t believe ‘it could happen to them’…?
The problem with your type of rhetoric, Dr. Dawg, is that it rests on Nothing. Pure talk. You provide us with no evidence, no proof, just opinion after opinion after opinion. Do you know what opinions are? They are worthless.
Equally, your charges of racism are fallacious; they are an example of ‘special pleading’ and that’s a fallacy. Why, you can come up with a special pleading tactic for anything! All you have to do is select some characteristic; say, without proof, that it is ‘unaccepted by The Evil Authorities’ and then, claim it as causal. Hey- get your logic in order.
By the way, isn’t Ms Rice, the Secretary of State, appointed by Bush, whom you claim ‘hates blacks’..isn’t she…ummmm??
And no, Dr. Dawg, ’empathy’ is irrelevant. That’s yet another fallacy you have fallen into; called, in English, an ‘appeal to pity’. You can’t merely say, when someone refutes your illogical and unsubstantiated claims that the people who criticize you ‘lack empathy’, for empathy doesn’t validate anything. Because one feels empathy for the people in NO, and we do, is NOT the topic of discussion. The topic of discussion is – who/what is to blame for the incomplete evacuations and the looting?
You haven’t addressed these – except to Blame Bush. What we are criticizing, Dr. Dawg, is your utter and complete lack of rationality, your indiffence to empirical facts and your open agenda – to Blame Bush.
That’s the problem; and it’s your problem, Dr. Dawg. You see, you have an a priori agenda (Hating Bush) and therefore, no matter what happens, you jump in..to satisfy that agenda. Rather like a drug addiction..
Suz said: “It sounds like you have it coming to you, bless your heart. God bless you, Stephen, and all the rest of you on your lofty perches.”
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Lofty perches? So little you know about me. You’ve no idea. I bet YOU have a far loftier perch than I. And I don’t ask anyone to kneel before me, unlike Candyman Martin. You may pray for HIM. He needs it. HE has it coming. Karma and all that.
My karma will run over your dogma. 🙂
“Now, you inform us that The Reason that the Mayor didn’t get those buses loaded with people and sent off, was Because All the People Who could Drive had already left. Wow- that’s quite a meme all done up by yourself.”
It’s as good or better than the one you guys thought up: “The Mayor forgot about them.” Mine is a reasonable piece of speculation, in fact: I have driven for decades, but I couldn’t drive a bus to save my life, no pun intended. And most of the folks left in NO were likely without driving experience, being “welfare bums” and all.
“You then inform us that there were ‘many many others’. Sorry, that’s unacceptable. You have to be specific. “Many many’ is empty rhetoric. Useless.”
What, I have to prove to you that there were more than two corpses in New Orleans? Do your own homework. I can’t believe you’re serious.
You are placing much on the precise definition of “starvation”: when up against it, the Right always runs desperately to the dictionary. Being without food for several days does, in fact, begin the starvation process (I have nowhere claimed that lack of food for a few days causes death, except in the vulnerable). Let’s add to that, thirst; exposure to high temperatures; stress. Better? Does it improve your point any?
My reference to lack of emapthy was not an argument, but an observation, incidentally. As to your reference to the fallacy of special pleading, I beleive you have this wrong. I am not arguing exceptions here. Finally, this is just a Comments section. You’ll have to go over to my place if you want references. I’ve posted a ton of ’em by now.
“The topic of discussion is – who/what is to blame for the incomplete evacuations and the looting?”
Why, the people you have “empathy” for. Right?
25% of people in NO live below the poverty line. Many people simply did not have the means to get out of town (cabbies were apparently charging upwards of $1,000 to take people to the airport from down town on Saturday) or more importantly anywhere to stay if they did leave. As Suz pointed out, riding out a category 4 hurricane in the open is not a wise idea and they would had to of gone a long way out to avoid it. (Although not the strongest hurricane on record by any means, the hurricane was largest in terms of actual size ever recorded.) The mayor realized this and provided shuttles to bring people to various shelters (e.g., the Superdome).
�They take jewelry and TVs.�
Who are �they�? NO African American community who just so happened to make up 68% of all people living there?
�In former times entire nations found the strength to raise to the occasions ��
Such as and where are you going with this? Look, NO is not a third world city. The citizens of NO had every reason to believe that Federal and State governments would act in a timely and efficient fashion to prevent civil unrest, to evacuate the sick, old and very young and to provide them with a basic level of comfort. By �reason� I am not talking about a sense of entitlement, but rather a expectation that government would act in a certain manner based upon reasonably well grounded beliefs. The various levels of government did not act as people thought they would and not surprisingly things quickly degenerated. You seem to think that a sense of entitlement was the problem. You have things ass backwards. It was because people lost faith in the government�s ability or willingness to act that things started to degenerate. In other words, it was when people started to feel like they were abandoned and that they must fend for themselves and families that they started to do what only you would hope for, viz., namely take matters into their own hands. Many people started doing things that they would never otherwise do, (e.g., loot goods they felt they needed). (To be sure, the roving bans of young men rooming the streets taking anything that was not tied down implanted the idea in people�s minds. I doubt people would have started to loot grocery stores as quickly if this was not the case. As the old saying goes, when in Rome �.) All of this led to some rather strange situations in which some looters would go to pains to show reporters they were not stealing anything other than necessities and surreal site of women of child baring age carting away armfuls of diapers.
Here is the “solution” from the left liberal/socialists:
More state control/regulation/coercion/central planning: free advice from Jack & Jilles. Back off, commissars!**********
Duceppe calls on Ottawa to deal with soaring oil prices
MONTREAL (CP) – Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe has joined the NDP’s Jack Layton in calling on the federal government to do more to regulate skyrocketing oil prices…
canoenews.ca
Dr. Dawg (and what’s the basis for the ‘Dr’? What are you a doctor of?).
I am very serious. No, you cannot expect us to accept your reason that ‘All the people who could drive had left’. You have to provide proof for that claim. And, you can’t claim that we should accept it, because you claim that it’s better than ‘the Mayor forgot about them’. That’s only your opinion and I’m not overwhelmed by the logic or rationality of your opinions. You cannot claim that ‘most of the people left in NO couldn’t drive because they were ‘welfare bums’. That’s fallacious; You cannot, cannot, cannot link those two variables: ‘Being on welfare –>not able to drive.’
And what does ‘welfare bums and all’ mean? What does ‘and all’ mean?
The other reason – that the Mayor ‘forgot’, which implies an ignorance about the size of the population in his city, and implies an ignorance about the activities of the population in his city also requires proof.
What we know, is that the municipality, which is has the FIRST responsibility to the citizens, failed to evacuate the full population. That’s a failure of the municipality, of the mayor.
Starvation? Yes, you have to use the correct terms. This has nothing to do with ‘left’ or ‘right’ perspectives; it has to do with validity. You see, if I misuse a term, and, for instance, call you a ‘racist’ because you are always focused on ‘poor blacks’ and ignore ‘poor hispanics, poor whites, poor..’..then, I might be misusing the term of ‘racism’.
So, if you inform the readers of this and other blogs that ‘many many people’ starved to death in NO, then, your misuse of the term misleads the reader. And no- it’s not up to me to find the proof of YOUR STATEMENTS. It’s up to you, the writer, to provide them. Otherwise, you are engaged in propaganda, in rabble-rousing, in specious empty chatter. Why?
Yes, if YOU, YOU, YOU, inform readers that ‘many many people’ died, then, you have to provide proof. Otherwise – you are not merely misleading the readers; you, you, you – are lying, you are deliberately manipulating facts, to provide a false scenario of what is really happening.
Therefore- I have to ask you – why are you deliberately distorting reality? Why are you presenting a misleading scenario? Why are you misleading the reader? What’s your agenda?
Here’s your statement on starvation. Remember, you are the one who brought up the theme of starvation and claimed that the people were starving. Then, you go on:
“Being without food or water for several days is starvation, especially for babies and young children and old people. What do you suppose the people were dying of?”
Now- that’s pretty clear. You’ve defined starvation as ‘being without food or water for several days is starvation”. OK?? That’s YOUR definition.
You then move on to deaths. And you claim that they were dying of this starvation. OK?
So- your new claim that it doesn’t cause death ‘except in the vulnerable’ is false. Why did you bring it up in the first place? Your first post didn’t add any values to it (babies, children, old people); it just claimed that the people were starving. When I criticized your use of the term, you moved onto claim that this set of people (babies, young children, old people) were dying of starvation. I criticized this, asking for proof. So far – you haven’t supplied any proof. You are saying that ‘in the abstract’ people can die of starvation. So???? What about in reality, in NO, – did it happen???? You claim it did. I say you are lying and misleading the readers.
You ARE arguing exceptions. You are trying to make a case that ‘right treatment’, has been denied to the ‘poor black people of NO’. You do not provide us with any information about this denial, for it is complete speculation on your part. You provide absolutely no evidence. It’s as bad as ‘the witch on the hill caused my disease’. No proof. You ignore the rest of the population, including poor whites, poor hispanics, and..the middle class blacks and so on. Did they receive ‘right treatment’? Did they look after themselves? Did they expect others to look after them?
Oh- and why, why, why, do you insist that Bush is at fault? For what???? I know, according to you, he caused the hurricane. But really…
Your last sentence ‘the people you have empathy for’..doesn’t make any sense. You haven’t answered my question. I said that ’empathy’ is irrelevant. So, why do you bring it up? What is relevant is – the lack of municipal and local planning and activity. That’s what is at fault in this scenario. AND, the culture of ‘expecting others to do everything for you’ – the ideology of socialism, is the other half of the problem.
Open invite to Dr Dawg and Suz:
Come on down here and help out. Or put your money where your mouth is. Being here within a 10 minute walk of the Astrodome in Houston, I am getting to see first hand what is happening to the 25,000+new neighbours down the road. They are actually turning away volunteers right now. Many of the displaced are out and about the area looking a heck of a lot better with some clean clothes, shower, sleep and food. Most I’ve met are glad they are here but concerned about loved and missing ones.
Yep, the mayor and governor of LA did indeed blow it big time. The post mortum will show that. Dawg probably didn’t hear that one of the first busses to arrive here was driven by a 15 year old who drove 70 souls 300 miles to safety. Imagine that, someone who did something for his fellow man rather than waiting to see who would take care of him. That lad will go far in life.
This is not over by any means so if you can, the Salvation Army, Red Cross and all those other organizations can still use cash.
Last line of this excerpt grabbed & held!! SDA reported this story; in the blogosphere. Figured out by SDA; no editors, no reporters, no MSM to assist. Just a little/big blog telling the story.>> Blog on!
Excerpt:
“An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
Sep 02, 2005 by Robert Tracinski
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. “The projects,” as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night’s television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of “the projects.” Then the “crawl”–the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels–gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city’s public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city’s jails–so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations–that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit–but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals–and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep–on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters–not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell…”>>>>>>> SDA reported this!!!!
more: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1476662/posts
Dawg just had his nose rubbed in his own droppings. [:
Incredible/incroyable! The left socialists are nuts/bats/mad/bonkers/evil & cunning: Doc Whacko conscripts his mental patients as supporters. It’s Cancer Ward, PQ. Is Nurse Ratchit on the loose, too? >>>>>
OK, Doc, get up here on this couch:>>>>
Cormier quits PQ leadership race
By RH�AL S�GUIN
Saturday, September 3, 2005 Updated at 8:28 PM EDT
QUEBEC — Hugues Cormier, who became an official candidate for the Parti Qu�b�cois leadership only last Tuesday, dropped out of the race yesterday after allegations that he attempted to recruit mental patients to support his leadership bid.
The 51-year-old psychiatrist, who is a professor at the University of Montreal, was suspended on Aug. 19 by the Honor�-Mercier Psychiatric Clinic at the Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital in Montreal for allegedly soliciting the support of patients. The hospital said the practice posed serious ethical problems….>>>>>
googlenewscanada
Wow- maz2. What an excellent article. And yes, that is the story that no-one is reporting.
Instead, what we are seeing is what I long ago called ‘Fictional Sociology’ – where pundits present the world with completely fictionalized narratives of the world. They’ll select bits and pieces from reality, and then, twist and weave them into a Story, a Narrative that embodies their own personal values. In so many cases, these values are: Bash Bush. But- he’s not responsible for the municipality and state; those are governments, on their own, with their own mandates. That’s what I find so confusing – why do these leftists blame Bush? Why do they expect him to have meddled with (and that’s what he would have been rebuked for doing)..the mandated responsibility of a State Government and a Municipal Government?
Why don’t these Bush-Bashers blame the major and governor? Are these people Democrats? Is that the reason?
These two governments, the municipal and the state, failed the people. And, the leftist, socialist, democratic ideology, which has enculturated a generation of welfare-dependents, set up the people to reject self-dependency.
This extract from the above article is exactly what Saddam Hussein did just prior to the liberation of Baghdad/Iraq.
Saddam Maddas Hussein allowed convicts/murderers/rapist/denizens of the underworld to walk/run/slither away from prisons in Iraq; these monsters then moved to slaughter other Muslims, including women and children, the aged. Evil abounds; good shall triumph.>>>>
“…early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city [New Orleans, Louisiana] had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city’s jails–so they just let many of them loose.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1476662/posts
Maz2, A real – time example of exactly what ET and I outlined at sept 2 – 3:46pm & 10:04pm. above.
What a perfectly timed example of the total lack of integrity of Professors and overly ambitious research *experts*.
There was a recent poll done under the professional guidance of a university professor. I promptly called it for what it was…. pure BS.
When a professor does a poll for a group, you can bet it’s because his *expertise* will guarantee the exact result paid for. 73s TG
ET, you’ve lost it.
“Yes, if YOU, YOU, YOU, inform readers that ‘many many people’ died, then, you have to provide proof. Otherwise – you are not merely misleading the readers; you, you, you – are lying, you are deliberately manipulating facts, to provide a false scenario of what is really happening.”
So your claim is that no one but a handful of people died of exposure in NO. I won’t call you a liar: you’re simply delusional.
**************************
“Among those who underestimated the storm was this newspaper. While her lust for blood will still fall far short of the Asian tsunami to which we’d cautioned people against drawing comparisons, Katrina will kill many times more than the few hundred people we predicted. In Mississippi alone more than 100 people are known dead; in New Orleans the number could be in the thousands. That includes not only people killed by the storm herself, but by the terrible conditions of starvation, dehydration and disease Katrina leaves behind.”
http://www.hendersondispatch.com/articles/2005/09/03/news/opinion/opin01.txt
***********************
“Therefore- I have to ask you – why are you deliberately distorting reality? Why are you presenting a misleading scenario? Why are you misleading the reader? What’s your agenda?”
Telling the truth as I (and so many others) see it. While you’re doing the equivalent of Holocaust-denial, they’re burying a whack of people in NO. They didn’t all drown. Do your own homework, like I said before: screaming “liar! liar! liar!” just makes you look foolish.
My speculation about the non-use of schoolbuses is–speculation. I didn’t claim it was anything more. It was far more informed, though, than the one explanation you people are inventing–that the Mayor was too stupid (no doubt because he’s Black) to figure out they could be used in the evacuation.
Maybe I’ll prove to be wrong on this. You will certainly prove to be.
Here’s brilliance:
“Here’s your statement on starvation. Remember, you are the one who brought up the theme of starvation and claimed that the people were starving. Then, you go on:
“”Being without food or water for several days is starvation, especially for babies and young children and old people. What do you suppose the people were dying of?”
“Now- that’s pretty clear. You’ve defined starvation as ‘being without food or water for several days is starvation”. OK?? That’s YOUR definition.
“You then move on to deaths. And you claim that they were dying of this starvation. OK?
“So- your new claim that it doesn’t cause death ‘except in the vulnerable’ is false. Why did you bring it up in the first place? Your first post didn’t add any values to it (babies, children, old people); it just claimed that the people were starving.”
You quoted me, correctly, as noting that the very young and the very old were susceptible. Now you want to quibble about the word “starvation,” because you don’t have a leg to stand on. But mere bluster won’t do. By all means, add to “lack of food,” lack of water, excessive heat and stress. I don’t have a problem with that; I said that earlier. Now, are you still going to sit there and tell me nobody died? Bush is lucky indeed to have acolytes like you.
“You ARE arguing exceptions. You are trying to make a case that ‘right treatment’, has been denied to the ‘poor black people of NO’. You do not provide us with any information about this denial, for it is complete speculation on your part. You provide absolutely no evidence.”
Oh, bullshit. I invited you over to my place, where the references are provided. You’re just blowing smoke: as when you refer to the hispanic population of NO–all 3.1% of them. Or the whites, so visible in all the crowd scenes. You simply don’t know what you’re talking about.
“Your last sentence ‘the people you have empathy for’..doesn’t make any sense. You haven’t answered my question. I said that ’empathy’ is irrelevant.”
Which about sums it up. That’s where I came in, as I recall.
No, Dr. Dawg – I made and make no claims about how many died in NO. For whatever reason.
YOU are the one who has made the claim. Your claim is that ‘many many died’. I’ve asked you to provide proof. You are simply unable to do so.
The newspaper article by Henderson is not proof; it is speculation. It says that the death toll ‘could be’..That’s speculation. Do you know the difference between speculation and FACT? Don’t you know how ignorant and illogical it is – to use ‘speculation’ as ‘fact’???
YOU are the one who provided a specific cause – starvation. And YOU are the one who provided an evaluative term for those who died – and starvation was your main causality. Your term was ‘many many’ HAD died. I asked for specific data (how many) and proof of causality. Still – you are unable to provide specific factual data or proof.
No- you are NOT telling the truth. You are writing a Narrative, a Fictional Story. In order to be accepted as truth, you have to be specific, you have to provide specific actual data, and you cannot, ever, resort to the fictional tactics of evasive terminology. These include terms such as ‘many many’; this includes your insistence that the cause was starvation; this includes your new ambiguous term of ‘burying a whack of people’. First- provide NUMBERS; be specific. ‘Whack’ is a meaningless term. Then, provide causality. OK? If you can do those simple tasks – you might be moving out of the purely fictional..and becoming ACCOUNTABLE for what you say. At the moment, your story is fiction.
No- don’t start with an ad hominem attack against me – ‘holocaust denial’. How juvenile. Stick to YOUR problems – which are that you are refusing to provide FACTS and instead, are writing STORIES.
And – no, I’ve never, ever said that no-one died. But, I’m not into writing stories and expecting people to accept those stories as FACTS. I haven’t, for example, claimed that the people who died – died of starvation. You have.
I checked out your site. References to other fictional tales are not acceptable. That’s like one individual, who claims witches cause diseases, attempting to ‘prove’ their case by citing another reference to another claim that ‘witches cause diseases’. That’s invalid.
Your references are not factual, are not empirical, and provide NO EVIDENCE AND NO PROOF. Your references are not facts; they are just more story-telling.
Again- YOU informed us all, that many many people had died of starvation. You still haven’t been able to provide one single iota of proof for your claim.
Empathy- is not relevant to your lack of proof. Again, you are using a fallacious tactic. My or your, or anyone’s empathy or lack of it – has no relationship to your fictional tales, and your inability to provide factual evidence to support your fictional tales. Are you seriously suggesting that I should ACCEPT your stories, just out of empathy for the people in NO???? Are you seriously suggesting that anyone who does not accept your fictional tales, as truth, lacks empathy?? Wow – that’s quite a Truth-Requirement. In order to be a ‘person of empathy’, I must accept your fiction as truth. If I do not accept your fiction-as-truth, then, I lack empathy. That’s so illogical it’s unreal!! How do you come up with such claims???
I’ll only accept your stories when they cease to be stories and become factual. So far – you haven’t been able to supply a shred of proof for your claims that ‘many many people died of starvation’.
Nor have you been able to provide any proof that ‘it’s all Bush’s fault’. I’ve pointed out to you, that the failures are LOCAL. The mayor the the city has a mandate to govern that city; he failed, disastrously. The governor of the state has a mandate. The President can’t walk over the authority of the state or mayor. Why, you democrats would be freaking out if he did (and you are obviously an American Democrat who hates Bush).
What puzzles me – is why you ignore the mayor and governor. I’d bet they are democrats; are they? Is that what it’s all about?
As for hispanics and whites – they count too. And whether the MSM chooses to portray them or not – is not the point.
So, Dr. Dawg (I asked you if you had a doctoral degree???)… you are writing Fiction. How about moving out of fiction, and insisting, all by yourself, that your writing provides empirical facts, specific data, and logic. Hmmm?
Here is the best post I have read so far to explain the cluster-jerk that is NO.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2005/09/president_is_no.html#comments
Oh, Dr. Dawg..and now you are changing your story about ‘the schoolbuses’. Here’s your original claim:
“Think about this for a moment, if you have time. Schoolbuses require drivers. The drivers were no doubt among the fortunate evacuees who left before the levees broke. How many of the people remaining could drive a bus?
Honestly, sometimes people on the Right seem to allow their self-righteousness to completely overwhelm their cerebral functions. Give your heads a shake and stop pushing this schoolbus meme. It won’t get Bush off the hook.”
You are not speculating; you are very clear in your causal link. The reason that the buses weren’t used was because the drivers had all left. As you say, there was ‘no doubt’ about this. It’s not speculation. And, you chide us who don’t share this opinion as not thinking, as having problems with our ‘cerebral functions’.
Now – you are changing your story. Here’s your latest:
“My speculation about the non-use of schoolbuses is–speculation. I didn’t claim it was anything more.”
Oh really??? I didn’t notice that you informed us that is was ‘speculation’. You were quite insistent that it was due to your ability to think, and that we, who did not share this reason, had ‘cerebral troubles’.
Then – you continue:
“It was far more informed, though, than the one explanation you people are inventing–that the Mayor was too stupid (no doubt because he’s Black) to figure out they could be used in the evacuation.”
Wait – isn’t your ‘speculation’ an ‘invention’? So, why are you using the term ‘invention’ when your original explanation, the ‘all the drivers have left the sinking ship’…didn’t imply invention, didn’t imply speculation..but..insisted that it was the result of THOUGHT. Not invention, not speculation, but..having functional cerebral processes. Well??
And no- who has suggested that the Mayor was ‘too stupid because he’s black”???? Please provide this link: stupid-because-he’s-black’. Show us. Who said it? Who implied it?
I, for instance, have no idea and don’t care, about his skin colour. He failed to organize the city – and who cares what colour his skin is?
But- you care. And you are claiming that we who are criticizing him, are defining him as stupid (I think we are defining him as incompetent) – and that we are relating his ‘being stupid’ to his ‘being black’. Again – YOU are the one who has said this. YOU made the connection. Prove it.
You’ve used one of your favourite phrases – no doubt’. So, no doubt you’ve got the proof that we, who are criticizing the mayor, for incompetence, are in reality defining him as Stupid-Because-He-Is-Black.
Prove the link. You are the one who said it.
ET
It seems Dr. Dawg is a mind numb troll and it is best just to ignore him, for your own well being at least.
A short course in dawg logic:
Our perception is our reality.
Dawg logic further requires that if reality contradicts perception, then reality itself must be in error
Division by zero is also useful.
Common sense says the people living below sea level should have an out. Or am I being presumptious?
I always have to smile when others tell me about what “poor people” are and aren’t capable of doing for themselves.
I lived my first five years in a single floor dwelling that measured 24′ by 24′, with no running water. Which was a good thing, as any water in the house froze at night during the winter.
‘
Compared to the previous residents – a family of 13, it was rather spacious for five. I still remember looking out the kitchen window one morning to see the backhoe (?) digging the basement of the new house. We lived in that basement for 5 years too, until there was enough money saved to put up a shell above ground.
I can also remember visiting neighbors who couldnt’ afford to bring electricity to their farm, and watching them play cards with my parents and grandparents by oil lamp.
So, prattle on about how this poor person can and can’t do this, and about how it’s my fault, or his fault, or Bush’s fault, or the Rethuglicans fault, but I can tell you one thing as sure as I’m sitting here – if a human being is alive and sound of mind and body on this continent, the first person they need to confront about their chronic state of poverty and dependancy is the one in the mirror.
“Common sense says the people living below sea level should have an out. Or am I being presumptious?”
Common sense also says you need a port at the mouth of the Mississippi: trains, planes and automobiles notwithstanding, most of the world’s material commerce still moves by water.
Common sense when Bienville and Iberville founded the city is EXACTLY why it is where it is: where the river’s still deep enough to bring ocean-going vessels; where access by land was limited to a few choke points to prevent attacks by the British, the Spanish or the local Indians; where the crescent bend makes attacking from the water extremely difficult and the lake gives you a third avenue of retreat; and where the tides from the Gulf and the currents from the river bring a supply of seafood in abundance and variety.
If putting New Orleans there was stupid, the same exact thing could be said of Venice, or indeed of almost the entirety of the Netherlands. Much of the logic behind it may not be there any more, but it was hardly irrational at the time.
But common sense is also far from common, in Louisiana particularly. I can’t blame the president: he pleaded with the governor and the mayor to get people out earlier. I blame scores of local politicians for whom protecting their constituents was never a top priority and, while I do love New Orleans dearly, I absolutely blame its shortsighted “laissez les bons temp roulez” attitude.
Dawg said “While you are doing the equivalent of holocaust-denial”
(clap clap clap)
Now THAT is brilliance! Pure genius! You must have been just itching to use that one.
littlegreenfootballs.com>>>
Blanco Refused to Act
At the Washington Post, in a story with a headline that gives no indication of the important information it contains, we discover that federal officials were desperately trying to get Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to do something about the disaster in New Orleans�but she refused to act: Thousands Remain To Be Evacuated. (Hat tip: efuseakay.)
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state�s emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. �Quite frankly, if they�d been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,� said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.
Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.
�The federal government stands ready to work with state and local officials to secure New Orleans and the state of Louisiana,� White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said. �The president will not let any form of bureaucracy get in the way of protecting the citizens of Louisiana.�
Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state�s victims and hired James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort.
I don’t want to be mean or anything towards Dr. Dawg, as he believes he means well, but he does need some constructive criticism.
I’ve been following the discussion above, particularly the back-and-forth between Dawg and ET. I realize the Dawg *believes* he is making *arguments*, but really he isn’t. He’ll certainly “argue” against this point, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that if he was in fact trying to argue, he failed. His unquestioning belief in leftist dogma prevents him from seeing the erroneous illogic and irrelevance of the supposed points he proffers.
As I said before in the fairly recent thread with the left-right divide theme, the Dawg is merely being a master baiter (forgive any imaginary vulgarity). He is only trying to drive us nuts to the point we say something he’ll misconstrue for his leftist purposes as proof that we have red skin, horns, a pointed tail and a pitchfork, all of us who refuse to surrender to the malicious dogmatism of the ultra-far-left, which everyone knows has been responsible for the deliberate murders of well over a hundred million innocents just to preserve its evil doctrines from independent thinkers and challengers who see its inherent dangers. I actually like the Dawg, but feel he needs constructive criticism, as such provision is not malicious but rather proof of caring born of genuine humanitarianism. I wish the left would someday learn the lessons I have and proceed to better themselves rather than try to steal ever more from those of us who work for what we have, however little or much be it.
To the leftists: I don’t speak from a “lofty perch”. I’m probably lower on the socioeconomic ladder than many of the arrogant leftist dogmatists on this thread. Although I have a BBA degree with honors and an info tech diploma with a 93% avg, I am not rich in any sense of the word, financially. The left told me to get all that higher education and society would automatically reward me via “affirmative action” (I’m hearing impaired, you see), but there has been NONE. That’s right; affirmative action is a LIE. Sure, we see all kinds of target group members working for gov’t and the private sector. But why, then, has the response whenever I had interviews been along the lines of: “Your qualifications are impressive. Our organization could really use you, but, unfortunately at this time, there is no need for anyone of your specific education and experience. If anything comes up, we’ll call you. Thank you very much.” Nevertheless, I today run a tiny specialty coffee factory singlehandedly and have proven my worth very well, thanks a lot. Oh, and btw, I’m 33 and with all the debt I accumulated pursuing the education prescribed by the left, I still haven’t the financial wherewithal to move out of the family home. STILL I KNOW THE LEFT IS WRONG. So any leftists who suggest I’m rich, privileged and spoiled compared to them and therefore look down on them for those reasons, I say to them, please fuck off. You never know what you’re talking about anyway. Let me know when you’ve had an epiphany and acheived enlightenment born of learning to think for yourself based on reality.
BTW, since finishing my IT diploma in 2002 and realizing there was practically no really financially rewarding opportunity after all where I live in NB, I actually felt quite down and disillusioned. I almost surrendered, brainlessly, to the left in the hopes of getting some patronage appt. for my syncophancy. But I was too strong. I still saw how horribly, dangerously stupid the left was, especially with Durban, the Intifada, 9/11, Iraq and now Nawlins. Fortunately I stumbled upon the blogosphere and people like Kate, who is a real inspiration.
So I have no lessons to learn from the left, nor do I owe them anything.
ET:
“Your claim is that ‘many many died’. I’ve asked you to provide proof. You are simply unable to do so.”
No, I was unwilling to do so, given the hundreds of news reports that are as accessible to you as they are to me. Here’s one today:
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/index.html
“More than 40,000 exhausted, overheated and angry refugees were finally ferried to safety from this storm-savaged city yesterday — a long overdue rescue that left an untold number of residents lying dead because help came too late.”
This is duplicated all over the place. I didn’t want to play to your disingenuousness. Here you’ll seize on the word “untold.” Next you’ll be asking me for names.
“Still – you are unable to provide specific factual data or proof.”
The proof is in the many reports now coming out of the Superdome–people slumped dead in wheelchairs, that sort of thing. The specific factual data is unknown to anyone at this point.
(Here I must ask parenthetically what your point is. The “claim” of mine that you have been rabbiting on about was that “many” people died of “starvation.” I was quite prepared, as I said before, to amend that to “starvation, thirst, heat and stress.” The fact that many people died from those causes is simply beyond dispute.)
“Holocaust denial” was way over the top. I apologize. What I was getting at was your apparent refusal to admit that people had died of the causes noted above, waiting for rescue. I found that quite upsetting, in fact, given the stream of reports to the contrary, many from eyewitnesses. There’s a fair bit on this in the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen and the New York Times today–for example.
On the question of speculation, you’re doing quite a frenzied little dance on that one, so let me simply respond that I advanced an explanation for the non-use of schoolbuses that could be objectively described as pure speculation (“a message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence”), but which made more sense than the “Mayor screwed up” one that keeps going the rounds of the right half of the blogosphere.
You have quoted me as saying “It’s all Bush’s fault.” That is a barefaced lie. He obviously bears great responsibility–the buck does stop with him–but he was not the only player in this mess, and I’ve never claimed otherwise.
As for my academic credentials, they are irrelevant to this discussion. Calling me an “American Democrat,” though, gave me my first good laugh of the day. Thank you.