The Saturation Point

I've reached it. I knew I would. The Hurricane Katrina coverage, the absolute hatred of the Left and their blame-game, the endless op-eds....I'm done. At some point I would imagine when the postscript of this debacle is written, they'll be plenty of blame to go 'round. But for now, Bush is taking almost all of it, quite unfairly and due to abject ignorance on the part of his critics. Worse than all this is that while the crisis was still very critical, all the Left could do was open up the guns and attack Bush for his admittedly flat-footed response to this disaster, conveniently leaving out the fact that the federal government nor its agencies are rigged to be "first responders". Those close to the situation are supposed to be those that are supposed to be on the scene first. As the panic-stricken and incompetent Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco dithered, there was no federal back-up to save their bacon. Thus, Bush has received the lion's share of the blame for the failure to act on matters that were the duties of the local and state authorities. I believe in time, when this investigation is concluded, Nagin and Blanco will get some serious political (and justified) political whiplash. The vehemence with which the Left has attacked Bush and conveniently left out an incompetent, Democratic black mayor and a choke-artist, Democratic woman governor is almost comical were it not so unbelievable. Bush will, without a doubt, lose some political capital over this, and on some level, rightly so. FEMA wasn't there quick enough, and again, his rhetoric and that of his administration officials did not instill confidence that they were on the ball. But if one cannot contrast Nagin or Blanco with Giuliani and Pataki (and I think one could, mind), one could certainly contrast the behavior and the results of Nagin and Blanco to, say, Haley Barbour of Mississipi, who got hit harder by the hurricane than Louisiana did. Biloxi, Mississippi has been wiped clear off the map, yet the chaos that followed New Orleans, admittedly a bigger city, did not appear in Biloxi, Ms., or even Mobile, Alabama, which also got hit hard. New Orleans and Louisiana on the whole are not the only places that got walloped by this hurricane, but they're clearly the ones where the organizational abilities, as well as the crisis management of the local officials, was superior. In the end, the Left have landed some pretty nasty punches on Bush, some of which were justified, most of which weren't. But as I've said in an earlier post, when this is all hashed out, the state and local authorities in New Orleans and the greater state of Louisiana are going to have a lot to answer for. And screaming "racism!" or "witch-hunt" isn't going to protect them. The manner in which our government is based on is federalism; the states and cities take care of their back-yard, and the feds only come in in the most extreme circumstances, and only after the fact. A president can't send out the National Guard of any state unless it is under the most extreme circumstances (and would have to invoke the Insurrection Act to deputize the National Guard, which has only happened once, during the Civil War; one can only imagine the cries of "fascism!" if Bush did that. Proof once again that he's subject to intense criticism no matter what), and he can't call out the buses to evacuate a city. The comedy of errors on this chain didn't begin at the White House, it ended there. It began in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

I'll try not to blog on this further. It's too excrutiating.