Right Minded Online

I have long contended that Democrats made such a fuss about Hurricane Katrina was rooted not in its compassion for the victims, but merely to score political points against George W. Bush by blaming him for something that was in no way his doing. Now we have proof that that was indeed the case. From The Rush Limbaugh Show last Thursday:

This is a story in the Denver Post today. They’re outta money at the Democrat National Committee and their convention. They have a host committee out there in Denver, and the host committee was responsible for raising $40.6 million in private cash donations by June 16th, and they spend the money for things like transforming the Pepsi Center into a convention hall, media facilities in and outside the hall, and hosting all of the parties. However, the Denver host committee had banked only $25 million by the end of May, so they’re $15 million short. So guess who’s coming to the rescue? A charity. They’re going to wipe out all of the parties that normally take place. They’re going to do one huge greeting party at the Denver convention center, the Colorado Convention Center where all the delegates arrive, 56 state delegations. So they’re going to have one giant bash at the Colorado Convention Center, and you know who’s paying for this? A charity called Friends of New Orleans. Do you know what the Friends of New Orleans charity does? It is a charity formed to help New Orleans recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. They are paying for the big party and for a concert with New Orleans-style food at the Fillmore Auditorium afterward for the 6,000 delegates and their guests on August 24th. This is the Sunday before the convention opens.

So a charity which raised money to help the poor victims of Hurricane Katrina and the wrath of George W. Bush is forsaking those victims, and is instead giving a wad of cash to the Democrats for their convention in Denver, which is a long way from New Orleans. As I’ve said many times before, liberals don’t care about the poor. They care about government and acquiring power.

It has been two years since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, and Democrats are still trying to gain political points from that disaster.

Let’s begin with Barack Obama, who was in the Big Easy last Sunday to deliver a sermon, or a political speech, depending on your perspective.

Speaking at the First Emmanuel Baptist Church, Senator Obama referenced Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, remarking “He said, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on a rock.” Obama then transitioned from the Sermon on the Mount to political attacks by asserting “Something was wrong in America. Our foundation wasn’t built on the rock.”

From there, the senator criticized government response to the disaster, calling for, among many things, improved health care.

(A brief aside: Why is it that Democrats can go campaigning in black churches on Sunday mornings, and it’s no big deal, but let James Dobson go into an evangelical church for a marriage rally, and suddenly liberals get righteous about mixing politics and religion?)

Time magazine ran a story on August 27, “Healing Katrina’s Racial Wounds,” noting that “Far from helping ease the tension, politicians have sought to exploit it. Mayor Ray Nagin has tended to downplay racial tension in his few public comments on the subject. But many blame him for exacerbating racial disharmony during his successful bid for reelection last year by alluding to unnamed power brokers who were seeking to prevent displaced black residents from returning and, most famously, in his vow that New Orleans would once again be a ‘chocolate city’….”

Nobody has been criticized more for the disaster than George W. Bush. He’s the only Republican the Democrats had to blame. The governor of Louisiana is a Democrat, so you can’t blame her, and the city of New Orleans is run lock, stock, and barrel by Democrats, so you can’t blame them, either, including Mayor Ray “School Bus” Nagin.

Really, there are about as many Republicans in the Big Easy as there are penguins, which means everything that’s happened has happened with Democrats in power. You’d think with Democrats in charge, New Orleans would have been a Garden of Eden. But it isn’t. It’s a long way from paradise, which shows how ineffective Democrats are when they’re in power.

On August 29, the Associated Press ran a story on the two-year anniversary, quoting one displaced resident, who remarked “Bush was down here again making more promises he isn’t going to keep. The government has failed all of us. It’s got to stop.” The AP also described a march that began in the Lower 9th Ward in which protesters carried signs accusing the Bush administration of murder.

There wasn’t much said about it in the mainstream press at the time, but a famous aerial photograph of a parking lot full of empty school buses that could have been used to evacuate citizens, but were instead standing in water, circulated widely among conservative websites. The obvious implication is that despite all the criticism heaped on the federal government for stranding the citizens of New Orleans, the city failed its citizens miserably, but escaped blame because the city is run by Democrats.

John “Two Americas” Edwards, who is also running for President, was in New Orleans in April, presumably on his poverty tour, where he slammed the subprime mortgage industry for “shameful lending practices” that, in his words, threaten millions of working-class homeowners. “While Washington turns a blind eye, irresponsible lenders are pulling a fast one on hard-working homeowners,” he remarked.

Yet in 2005, the perfectly-coiffed Edwards, perhaps the biggest hypocrite in American politics, went to work for Fortress Investment Group LLC, a subprime lender that paid Edwards $479,512 in 2006 for part-time work. (Not a bad gig.) It was recently revealed by the Wall Street Journal that Fortress, in whose funds Edwards still has about $16 million invested, has filed foreclosure suits against 34 New Orleans homeowners.

If John Edwards were a Republican, this revelation would have been covered wall-to-wall by the mainstream press, but because Edwards is a Democrat, his overt hypocrisy was quietly buried.

When confronted with the fact that Edwards worked for and is invested in a company that has foreclosed on New Orleans homeowners, the Democrat claimed he was going to divest from any Fortress funds that have a stake in the subprime lenders that filed the foreclosures. “I will not have my family’s money invested in these firms.”

He cares about the poor. Really. He does.

The people of New Orleans have been shortchanged by the people they keep voting for. For instance, Congressman William “Cold Cash” Jefferson (D-LA) was indicted last June on corruption charges after $90,000 in alleged bribe money was discovered in his freezer. Jefferson supporters played the tried and true race card, and Jefferson won re-election last November. You get exactly what you vote for.

The political fallout from Hurricane Katrina, which the Democrats continue to exploit for their own gain without actually helping anyone recover from the disaster, isn’t about results, but about blame. And Democrats have mastered the art of blame. Even in places where Democrats are in power they still manage to deflect criticism onto Republicans. When the truth of New Orleans is laid out, however, one finds a voting block that is beholden to the Democrat Party, which has failed its voters at every conceivable turn.

The reason is simple. Democrats teach their constituents that government is the solution to every problem, and when you train people to rely on government, they become less self-reliant and more dependent on politicians and bureaucrats. And when government fails, which it is prone to do, you are left with a citizenry that has been rendered helpless.

I’ve enjoyed watching the liberals over at Nashville Is Talking blame President Bush for the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. This is what’s called “shooting blanks.” Look, the mayor of New Orleans is a Democrat and the governor of Louisiana is a Democrat. Louisiana is still controlled by Democrats. Things like this should never happen where Democrats are in power, given that Democrats are supposed to create a Garden-of-Eden-like utopia when they’re in charge. But Hurricane Katrina DID happen, and you don’t see conservatives running around blaming Democrats down there for it. That’s because conservatives, despite being caricatured as witless Neanderthals compared to our highly cerebral and nuanced liberal counterparts, do have the smarts to know a natural disaster when we see it.

By the way, NIT liberals, the Associated Press is now reporting that Governor Blanco assured the Bush administration the levees were safe:

In the hectic, confused hours after Hurricane Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast, Louisiana’s governor hesitantly but mistakenly assured the Bush administration that New Orleans’ protective levees were intact….

So, the governor of Louisiana, who was much closer to the scene of disaster than President Bush, assured the president the levees were intact as the hurricane was ongoing, yet in some alter-world inhabited only by liberals, it’s still President Bush’s fault those levees failed. Sheesh. The lengths some people will go to in order to create political capital. It used to be that a natural disaster could occur in this country, and even liberals could accept it for what it was. Now they just look for a Republican to blame.

Meanwhile, Senator Harry Reid and Representative Nancy Pelosi are asking once again for an independent commission to investigate the federal response to the hurricane. Fine. Let’s do it. And be sure to put this on page one of the final report:

Here’s what’s really going on. Democrats weren’t able to destroy the Bush administration the first time we debated government response to Hurricane Katrina. They weren’t able to destroy the Bush administration on those wiretaps. They weren’t able to destroy the Bush administration on Scooter Libby’s testimony. They weren’t able to destroy the Bush administration on Dick Cheney’s hunting accident. They’re not going to be able to destroy the Bush administration on the port deal. So liberals are doing what they do so frequently; they’re running a play that has already proven a failure to see if it might succeed the second time around. It won’t. The quarterback has already been sacked.

One can honestly say with respect to the carnage of Hurricane Katrina that “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” In the hours and days following the storm, we discovered just how bad it could be. It seemed the disaster had brought out the worst in everyone, with looting, stealing, and relentless political accusations dominating early news coverage. It was enough to make one question our own humanity.

But this is the United States of America, and it was inevitable that stories of amazing survival and benevolence would emerge. And they have.

The world is full of ordinary people. What separates America apart from other nations is that our ordinary people often do extraordinary things. Our freedom and our abundance encourage it. While government and bureaucracy at all levels have been characteristically slow, awkward, and marred by red tape, individuals and private organizations acting on their own accord and using their own resources have proven themselves to be, well, quintessentially American. And many more stories show that despite widespread human tragedy, God is still firmly in control.

For example, three boys in Pearland, Texas, near Houston, raised $1,005.20 in two days from a lemonade stand. The boys, aged 9, 9, and 6, set up at a highway intersection last Saturday and raised $400, then decided to do it again the following Monday. The mother of two of the boys, Nancy Gohlke, said “We were amazed. People just started stopping and giving them $5 bills and not wanting the change. People from Louisiana would stop and tell them how much they appreciated what they were doing.” The money was turned over to the United Way Katrina Fund.

At a meeting at Second Baptist Church in Houston, representatives of Christian denominations and other faiths, including Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Bah’ai, and Unitarians, pledged their support to feed thousands of hurricane victims housed in the Astrodome. Church member Jack Little remarked “There is no money to do this, folks. There is no federal money available to handle this emergency in Houston.” One month of meals will run almost $4 million. Second Baptist alone sought to raise $1 million among its 40,000 members in one weekend. Pastor Ed Young challenged church representatives “All those sermons and passions you’ve generated, now’s the time to put up or shut up for every faith or religious community here. Are you willing to coordinate and cooperate with other people and other denominations? If you’re not, sit down.” No one sat.

In Nashville, the Red Cross has appealed to the religious community to adopt various shelters in the area. The shelters are designed to operate up to six months, and the Red Cross is seeking congregations who will send volunteers. Pastor Enoch Fuzz of Corinthian Missionary Baptist Church addressed a gathering this way: “We shouldn’t miss this moment. In this room are blacks and whites, and Catholics and Protestants, Muslims, Hindus and Jew, young and old. This is a sign that God has brought us together….”

Students and parents at Friendship Christian School held a bake sale last Saturday to raise money for hurricane relief. The sale, held at Wal-Mart and Kroger in Lebanon, raised $2,865.75. The money has been sent to the Church of Christ disaster relief organization.

One of the most remarkable stories in the whole aftermath was reported by the L.A. Times on September 5. Grab some tissue.

“In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.”

“They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.”

“Late Saturday night, they found Deamonte’s mother, who was in a shelter in San Antonio along with the four mothers of the other five children. Catrina Williams, 26, saw her children’s pictures on a website set up over the weekend by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. By Sunday, a private plane from Angel Flight was waiting to take the children to Texas.”

In a separate story, one rescuer reports “These five guys were on the last boat out of the neighborhood at sundown. They were incredibly grateful and mentioned numerous times ‘God is going to bless y’all for this.’ When we got them to the dock, they offered us an Allen Iverson jersey off of one of their backs as a gesture of gratitude, which was literally probably the most valuable possession among them all.”

Finally, the Shreveport Times reported on September 1 “Hours before Hurricane Katrina stormed ashore in southeast Louisiana, Lester Jackson’s tight-knit family hit the highway — their vehicles pointed in all directions.”

“Miraculously, the family — all 57 members, 12 different vehicles and no means of communication — will wind up in the same place today: Bossier City’s Hooter Park.”

“‘This is how awesome God is,’ said Lester Jackson. ‘We couldn’t locate none of them, but God brought us all together. It blows my mind. When you let go, and let God, he never fails you. He’s always on time.’”

The Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, had this to say about racism and the response to Hurricane Katrina:

The truth is black people died, not because of President Bush or racism, they died because of their unhealthy dependence on the government and the incompetence of Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco.

And Star Parker adds:

What we are witnessing is a well-honed black political public-relations operation geared to obfuscation, stoking hatred and fear, and nurturing helplessness and dependence among black citizens. Such efforts keep black politicians powerful, diversity businesses prosperous and blacks poor.

Well, the Democrats don’t see it that way, as they continue to blame President Bush for things he has no control over, such as:

Senator Mary Landrieu on those stranded buses: “…[T]his administration did not believe in mass transit. They won’t even get people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out.”

Cindy Sheehan: “The people of New Orleans are collateral damage to the war in Iraq.”

Tom Matzzie of MoveOn.org: “He and his team don’t want an effective government that can protect people who work hard and pay taxes. Instead, they want to give huge tax breaks to wealthy Americans. The result is that there is no effort left, or there is no ability left for the government to respond to the needs of its citizens, especially in times of crisis.”

Harold Ford, Jr.: “I can guarantee that if the majority of the people who had been caught in this hurricane had’ve been rich, the response would have been much faster.”

And Michelle Malkin points out a glaring example of mainstream media bias on Hurricane Katrina profiteering.

Meanwhile, Pat Buchanan is prodding President Bush to stand up to them:

Nine days after 9-11, Bush gave the most powerful speech of his career and rallied a nation. Today, he sits atop a government whose agencies — FEMA and Homeland Security — are synonyms for bumbling in the worst disaster in American history. Democrats sense Bush may be assaulted with impunity. He can’t or won’t fight back.

Thus, Hillary hits four morning TV shows to denounce his handling of the Katrina disaster. Nancy Pelosi, after Bush rejects her demand in a private call that he fire FEMA head Michael Brown, reveals the content of the call and declares the president to be “oblivious, in denial, dangerous.”

Remember what Bill Clinton said: “No attack ever created a job or educated a child, or helped a family make ends meet. No insult ever cleaned up a toxic waste dump or helped an elderly person.”

There used to be a time in America when natural disasters were seen as natural disasters. But that time is fading. We have arrived at the place where we no longer view natural disasters, and the human suffering that invariably follows, as “acts of God.” Indeed, once upon a time phenomena such as Hurricane Katrina were simply attributed to unavoidable, unpreventable natural occurrences, and the focus was spent on relieving the human suffering.

Now, certain elements of our society (Democrats and liberals, to be specific) use such events to lay blame at the feet of political opponents (namely George W. Bush), ignoring that natural disasters have ALWAYS occurred and ALWAYS will, regardless of who happens to be in office at the time. (Yes, hurricanes and flooding occurred when Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were president, too. We just didn’t blame them for the weather.)

For starters, Jeffrey Kluger of Time Magazine noted on August 29 that “The people of New Orleans are surely not thinking about wind vortices, the coriolis effect or the dampness of the troposphere as they hunker down during hurricane Katrina this morning. They’re mostly thinking about the savage rains and 140 mph winds that have driven them from their homes. But it’s that meteorological arcana that’s made such a mess of the bayou, and to hear a lot of people tell it, we have only ourselves — and our global-warming ways — to blame.”

That same day, Newsmax pointed out that “A handful of liberal bloggers have wasted no time politicizing the Hurricane Katrina disaster, alleging that the Iraq war has stripped New Orleans of National Guard protection and blasting President Bush for not dealing with global warming.”

Here’s exactly what some of those liberal bloggers were writing just on August 31: “Bush took one more night of vacation last night while chaos and disaster ruled the lives of those struck by Katrina. Officials are suggesting that if not for Bush’s cuts to hurricane and flood control projects, the damage might not have been so great.” — Tennessee Guerilla Women

“The water is still rising because there are breeches in the levees that they haven’t figured out how to repair. Why are there breeches in the levees? Because Bush cut the budget for shoring up the edges of Lake Pontchartrain and cut the budget for doing research into preparations for a category 4 or 5 hurricane hit on New Orleans.” — Aunt B.

Now, on September 4, the L.A. Times concluded “What a powerful hurricane could do to New Orleans and the area’s critical transportation, energy and petrochemical facilities had been well understood. So now, nearly a week into the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, hard questions are being raised about Washington officials who crossed their fingers and counted on luck once too often. The reasons the city’s defenses were not strengthened enough to handle such a storm are deeply rooted in the politics and bureaucracy of Washington.”

On the saner side, Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics correctly asserted in a September 1 commentary piece that “The willingness to blame Bush for random occurrences, acts of terror like 9/11, and acts of nature like the one just witnessed in the Gulf is symptomatic of a partisanship so severe it borders on a psychosis.”

Ironically, the political left sees George W. Bush as a moron who can barely read and write, while on the other hand attributing supernatural powers to him in its expectation that he single-handedly lessen the impact of hurricanes by adopting its energy policies, and single-handedly alleviate human suffering with the stroke of a pen.

Folks, Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it has left behind is not the fault of any one person, or group of persons. Most certainly, those in charge of various government organizations, ranging from President Bush to the Democrats in charge at various levels in Louisiana, can all probably see in hindsight where they could have done things differently. But in reality, how many Hurricane Katrina’s have any of us been able to learn lessons from?

Wasn’t it Bill Clinton who said “No attack ever created a job or educated a child, or helped a family make ends meet. No insult ever cleaned up a toxic waste dump or helped an elderly person?”

As one fellow blogger notes, “Blame is not the hallmark of leadership. It is the adolescent response to tragedy.” And that pretty well sums up the state of the Democratic Party.

Indeed, Democrats and liberals are relentless in their use of human suffering for political turnabout. They will use the plight of the misfortunate to exact political retribution against George W. Bush, ensuring that when unity is most needed, disunity will instead be sown.

1. Have we come to the point that we no longer view natural disasters as natural disasters? It used to be that hurricanes and other “acts of God” — and the human suffering that invariably follows — were simply attributed to unavoidable, unpreventable natural occurrences, and the focus was spent on relieving the human suffering. Now, certain elements of our society use such events to lay blame at the feet of political opponents, ignoring that natural disasters have ALWAYS occurred and ALWAYS will, regardless of who happens to be in office at the time. (Yes, hurricanes happened when Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were President, too.)

2. On the one hand, the political left sees George W. Bush as an uneducated buffoon who can barely read and write, while on the other hand attributing supernatural powers to our President in its expectation that he single-handedly lessen the impact of hurricanes by adopting its energy policies, and single-handedly alleviate human suffering with the stroke of a pen.

3. The political left also routinely criticizes the President for acting pre-emptively in Iraq, and for not acting pre-emptively in New Orleans.

4. Democrats and liberals are relentless in their use of human suffering for political turnabout, instead using the plight of the misfortunate to exact political retribution against George W. Bush, ensuring that when unity is most needed, disunity will instead be sown.

5. Senator Mary Landrieu has threatened President Bush with physical violence. Of course, if a GOP senator had made the same threat against a Democrat president, the mainstream press would have shifted into overdrive. As it is, the media will sweep this one under a rug.

6. Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard says “bureaucracy has committed murder.”

7. And then there’s Tennessean columnist Dwight Lewis, whose column on Sunday more or less blames George W. Bush for the looting. Writes Lewis, “It’s no excuse to steal, but I wonder how many of those people we saw on television and in the newspapers stealing stuff from stores and others places in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina were among the poverty ranks.” Further down, Lewis adds “‘The four-year increase in poverty under President Bush is the worst since his father was in office. The poverty rate rose for five years from 1989 to 1993, as it had from 1979 to 1983.’” Lewis then works the right side of the equation this way: “And we wonder why we see some people on television running into stores and taking whatever they can get their hands on.”