The article is written by a Canadian whose other writings can be found at http://www.davidwarrenonline.com. Some of you will unthinkingly attack the story rather than its substance because its author gives Bush credit where he can. Kipling's poem, quoted in the article, makes sense.

I'd like to know if any of you take exception to the following statement which is excerpted from the article? If so, what is your source for the point of view?

Consult any authoritative source on how government works in the United States, and you will learn that the U.S. federal government's legal, constitutional, and institutional responsibility for first response to Katrina, as to any natural disaster, was zero.

Blame throwing

There's plenty wrong with America, since you asked. (Everybody's asking.) I'm tempted to say, the only difference from Canada, is that they have a few things right. That would be unfair, of course -- I am often pleased to discover things we still get right.

But one of them would not be disaster preparation. If something happened up here, on the scale of Katrina, we wouldn't even have the resources to arrive late. We would be waiting for the Americans to come save us, the same way the government in Louisiana just waved and pointed at Washington, D.C. The theory being, that when you're in real trouble, that's where the adults live.

And that isn't an exaggeration. Almost everything that has worked in the recovery operation along the U.S. Gulf Coast has been military and National Guard. Within a few days, under several commands, finally consolidated under the remarkable Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, it was once again the U.S. military, efficiently cobbling together a recovery operation on a scale beyond the capacity of any other earthly institution.

We hardly have a military up here. We have elected one feckless government after another, who have cut corners until there is nothing substantial left. We don't have the ability even to transport and equip our few soldiers. Should disaster strike at home, on a big scale, we become a Third World country. At which point, our national smugness is of no avail.

From Democrats and the American Left -- the U.S. equivalent to the people who run Canada -- we are still hearing that the disaster in New Orleans showed a heartless, white Republican America had abandoned its underclass.

This is garbage. The great majority of those not evacuated lived in assisted housing, receive food stamps and prescription medicine and government support through many other programmes. Many have, all their lives, expected someone to lift them to safety, sans input from themselves. And the demagogic mayor they elected left, quite literally, hundreds of transit and school buses parked in rows to be lost in the flood, that could have driven them out of town.

Yes, that was insensitive. But it is also the truth; and sooner or later we must acknowledge that welfare dependency creates exactly the sort of haplessness and social degeneration we saw on display, as the floodwaters rose. Many suffered terribly, and many died, and one's heart goes out. But already the survivors are being put up in new accommodations, and their various entitlements have been directed to new locations.

The scale of private charity has also been unprecedented. There are yet no statistics, but I'll wager the most generous state in the union will prove to have been arch-Republican Texas, and that nationally, contributions in cash and kind are coming disproportionately from people who vote Republican. For the world divides into "the mouths" and "the wallets".

The Bush-bashing, both down there and up here, has so far lost touch with reality, as to raise questions about the bashers' state of mind.

Consult any authoritative source on how government works in the United States, and you will learn that the U.S. federal government's legal, constitutional, and institutional responsibility for first response to Katrina, as to any natural disaster, was zero.

Notwithstanding, President Bush took the prescient step of declaring a disaster, in order to begin deploying FEMA and other federal assets, two full days in advance of the stormfall. In the little time since, he has managed to coordinate an immense recovery operation -- the largest in human history -- without invoking martial powers. He has been sufficiently Presidential to respond, not even once, to the extraordinarily mendacious and childish blame-throwing.

One thinks of Kipling's "If --" poem, which I learned to recite as a lad, and mention now in the full knowledge that it drives postmodern leftoids and gliberals to apoplexy -- as anything that is good, beautiful, or true:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise...

Unlike his critics, Bush is a man, in the full sense presented by these verses. A fallible man, like all the rest, but a man.

The author of this article is spot on with his assessment.

gunny- that is so true Canada's Dem. Party is almost identical to what our Dem.party has become.

sully:

no it ain't.. it's worse..

Good article. I'm right there with ya on that one.

Mindinspired;Is that your picture posted as your avatar?
If so.....you're HOT!!

Boy Rocketeer that is pretty bad I have a Brother-Inlaw in Edmonton he sure is disatiefied.I went up there a lot before my Wife passed away in 2001 she was from B.C. I went up there just before the US went to Iraq and parked across the street at the High School while waiting to pickup my Neice's Daughter and someone scraped the American Flag off of my PU bumper.

Found this on another forum.....A little scathing if you ask me.

Moral poverty cost blacks in New Orleans

Posted: September 21, 2005

1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson

(c) 2005 WorldNetDaily.com



Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. Two questions:

What would you do?

What would you do if you were black?



Sadly, the two questions don't have the same answer.

To the first: Most of us would take our families out of that city quickly to protect them from danger. Then, able-bodied men would return to help others in need, as wives and others cared for children, elderly, infirm and the like.

For better or worse, Hurricane Katrina has told us the answer to the second question. If you're black and a hurricane is about to destroy your city, then you'll probably wait for the government to save you.

This was not always the case. Prior to 40 years ago, such a pathetic performance by the black community in a time of crisis would have been inconceivable. The first response would have come from black men. They would take care of their families, bring them to safety, and then help the rest of the community. Then local government would come in.

No longer. When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results.

Enter Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Jackson and Farrakhan laid blame on "racist" President Bush. Farrakhan actually proposed the idea that the government blew up a levee so as to kill blacks and save whites. The two demanded massive governmental spending to rebuild New Orleans, above and beyond the federal government's proposed $60 billion. Not only that, these two were positioning themselves as the gatekeepers to supervise the dispersion of funds. Perfect: Two of the most dishonest elite blacks in America, "overseeing" billions of dollars. I wonder where that money will end up.

Of course, if these two were really serious about laying blame on government, they should blame the local one. Responsibility to perform - legally and practically - fell first on the mayor of New Orleans. We are now all familiar with Mayor Ray Nagin - the black Democrat who likes to yell at President Bush for failing to do Nagin's job. The facts, unfortunately, do not support Nagin's wailing. As the Washington Times puts it, "recent reports show [Nagin] failed to follow through on his own city's emergency-response plan, which acknowledged that thousands of the city's poorest residents would have no way to evacuate the city."

One wonders how there was "no way" for these people to evacuate the city. We have photographic evidence telling us otherwise. You've probably seen it by now - the photo showing 2,000 parked school buses, unused and underwater. How much planning does it require to put people on a bus and leave town, Mayor Nagin?

Instead of doing the obvious, Mayor Nagin (with no positive contribution from Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the other major leader vested with responsibility to address the hurricane disaster) loaded remaining New Orleans residents into the Superdome and the city's convention center. We know how that plan turned out.

About five years ago, in a debate before the National Association of Black Journalists, I stated that if whites were to just leave the United States and let blacks run the country, they would turn America into a ghetto within 10 years. The audience, shall we say, disagreed with me strongly. Now I have to disagree with me. I gave blacks too much credit. It took a mere three days for blacks to turn the Superdome and the convention center into ghettos, rampant with theft, rape and murder.

President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans' black community taken action, most would have been out of harm's way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves.

All Americans must tell blacks this truth. It was blacks' moral poverty - not their material poverty - that cost them dearly in New Orleans. Farrakhan, Jackson, and other race hustlers are to be repudiated - they will only perpetuate this problem by stirring up hatred and applauding moral corruption. New Orleans, to the extent it is to be rebuilt, should be remade into a dependency-free, morally strong city where corruption is opposed and success is applauded. Blacks are obligated to help themselves and not depend on the government to care for them. We are all obligated to tell them so.

The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is founder and president of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, and author of "Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America."

This is a great read, I have heard Rev. Peterson on the radio before and he is a great leader for the black people who infact was and has been threatened by the wrong Rev. J. Jackson when he (Peterson) questioned Jackson on how much money he has stolen from the white big buisness's was beening spent on the black people.

It is funny how race becomes an issue on both sides of the political divide. One side is as guilty as the next of taking advantage of this issue to push a political agenda -- so be it. I find it interesting that since some family members still do not know where each other have ended up but we have statistics on what percentage of these people were on government assistance. Are we going to keep beating this dead horse?

How can race not be an issue?
It is the essence of who we are.You cannot seperate the color of your skin from ANY equation.
When Farrakhan states that white people destroyed levees ,the government is oppressing African-Americans because they are black,and the MSM gives these views wide spread publicity,how can race EVER cease being an issue?

Now that calmer heads have prevailed and the ' real' situation has emerged..the cries of rape and torture and murder at the sportsdome have proved to be spurious if not outright false.. some 10 people died, mostly older folks, sadly neglected or forgotten, only two of whom the police and forensics consider possibly killed by others..no kids raped, no gangs extorting from the downtrodden, nothing but the usual grumpy, cramped and cold/hungry folks kept in the dark by authorities who, because of electrical failures and other communication blackouts couldn't co-ordinate with each other [ a telling miscalculation on its own which just shows up the pitfall of relying on cell phones and such which need towers, power and recharging...]

To be sure, the transportation issue was f**ked up..

The big problem was fear and poverty..
the people who stayed behind [ black and white ] were the underbelly of society, not necessarily immoral or hoodlums, just poor..many had no TV's radio or other amenities to tell them what was going on, how to get to rescue spots, etc.. and, given that they had very little in the first place were resolved to ' save' as much of that as they could by doing the only thing they could - staying behind to guard it.. they had no cars to get out with, no money to go and stay in hotels[ however cheap ] no friends or relatives elsewhere to descend on..
what did people expect..
what Katrina has shown more than anything is the disconnect among people and society.. where, in earlier times there was a community support network, however informal, through neighbourhoods, church and company.. now folks are divorced from all that by no workplace security and unemployment, no community in the sense of friendships on the street, and no church since, for many religion is a non issue .. even those who were ' churched' [ i.e. the gospel, born-agin types ] were small groups, local groups, unaffiliated with others and distrustful of those ' not with them in the Lord ' so there was a further breakdown in trust, much less contact..

Don't blame government at any level for not providing a means [ though they share some culpability obviously ] blame the ' breakdown' in society in a insulated, isolated area rich in employment and hope...That , more than any race issue, was what did New Orleans in.. At a time when oil prices were soaring and petrodollars were filling the coffers of big business, Louisiana had one of the highest levels of people out of work and unable to find work, no sponsored programmes for retraining or anything to give its people the chance to get out from under.. Naturally the first thing they did was simply hunker down and hold onto what ever little they had...

This reality, this fact is what has brought out the wrath, the accusations, the shaking of heads around the world - that the richest, most powerful country in the world could harbour this emptyness , this disregard, this absence of fellowship in its midst..

Denigrating Islamic belief in the Middle East as an uncaring faith, while not living up to the blatent espousing of its own Christian tenet to " love thy neighbour " made America look mighty small and just a bit hypocritical in the eyes of many..

that's the greatest tragedy in all this.. not racism, not politics, not rapacious business [non]ethics..

[ stepping down from my pulpit now.. thanks for listening ]

Yeah - that's me in the avatar. I work in the rocket industry...for the Gov't, but I didn't really know what else to pick to represent me.

I enjoy this site so much because I see people really getting into the issues and talking about them intelectually. Actually, I don't post that often because I usually spend my time reading. As I just did.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mindinspired,

A great many of the people who “minister” to the very poor live much better and not very near them. They have cars and live in nice houses with money they collect in the poor churches. This is well documented. No one says that they have to suffer but there certainly were no vows of poverty or any suffering with the afflicted. They are simply too disconnected with the poor as many of us are.

As for the poor in the three effected states – it is about 50 percent black and 50 percent other (mostly white) but the white people are more dispersed throughout the states and not concentrated in an urban area as are the blacks.

Throwing money at these people will not help them and we all know that but putting the onus on them for the situation they were place in because of a storm is hardly a way to help them or us for that matter. The adults may well be beyond our help but their children are reachable and we cannot give up on them.

quote:

Originally posted by Mindinspired:
Yeah - that's me in the avatar. I work in the rocket industry...for the Gov't, but I didn't really know what else to pick to represent me.

I enjoy this site so much because I see people really getting into the issues and talking about them intelectually. Actually, I don't post that often because I usually spend my time reading. As I just did.