Too Few Rs

As I watch and listen to the coverage of the Katrina recovery I’m struck by the horrible problem that arises when there aren’t enough Republicans in the chain of command in a situation. As I’ve said before, I actually think that the media coverage of Republicans would be pretty good if it was the same coverage that was given to Democrats. Situations like New Orleans and Mississippi show how different the coverage really is. We need a lot of government watch dogging, it just needs to be bi-partisan … neither party can be trusted to do a good job without watching (and likely only a marginal one WITH close watching).

The Mayor of New Orleans, Raqy Nagin is Democrat, as is the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux. They have been mentioned, usually complaining, and but one could instantly look at this situation and realize that no matter what FEMA does, there is a TON of blame to be applied to local or state government. I could tell right away they had to be “D”, because things looked bad and there was no “R” visible next to their names. A group of friends and I have a lot of fun with media stories off CNN … if it is a rare positive story and there is no political designation next to the elected official, we know it is an “R”, and for certain, if things look bad an there is no “R”, it is ALWAYS a “D”.

Since the whole chain to the federal level in the Kristina story for New Orleans/Louisiana is “D”, all blame for everything … evacuation, response, maintaining order, looters getting mosquito bites, etc all has to flow directly to the first “R”. I understand this is a special case since Bush hatred is the leading Main-Stream Media (MSM) sport, so they view this as just another target opportunity.

One doesn’t hear nearly as much bad news and complaint out of Mississippi whose Governor is an R. Very strange, they actually took more of the brunt of the storm, but nobody is shooting helicopters over there, and in fact people are being evacuated there from not only Mississippi, but Louisiana as well. The REALLY sterling example is Texas. Public radio kept trying to find some hole in how refugees from New Orleans could possibly be handled in Texas. Strangely, Texas had cots, portable showers, kits of toiletries, and an entire preparedness plan for dealing with 10s of thousands of hurricane victims. Why? They have a few coastal cities … Galveston, Corpus Christi, etc. and practice every year for a hurricane like Katrina. Texas was highly prepared, current Governor J. Richard Perry, previous governor George W Bush. There can’t be anything GOOD over there, too many “R”s, so the MSM treats it as if emergency preparedness is some sort of accident that somehow just failed to happen in Louisiana.

The MSM does everyone in the country a disservice with the huge level of bias since with the exception of the 20% and growing of the angry left, MOST people want things to work as well as possible with as low a cost as possible in tax dollars. When a local community is below sea level, has no reasonable evacuation plan, and certainly no plan to house people displaced by the storm, that would mean that the local government is extremely screwed up, and it needs to be reported. The Superdome with no bottled water, portable toilets, portable generators, etc? Who were they kidding? That wasn’t a “plan”, it was at best a bad idea. How can 150 school busses be sitting out in the flood waters in New Orleans with people complaining “I had no way to get out”? Did the city have no plan to use public means to evacuate people? How can you live below sea level in a hurricane area and not have a solid evacuation plan?

New Orleans and Louisiana have both inept and corrupt government, but since it has a “D” next to it we have to try to blame the Federal Government and the story gets lost. I’m not going to go do the research myself to try to compare Katrina response with ND Floods in ’97, Andrew in ’92, or Mississippi River Flooding in ’93 when many towns in MO and IL were in flood conditions for over 100 days. I’m sure however that if the handling of those disasters had significantly better handling by FEMA, we will find out, which is GOOD. If FEMA has gone down hill and it is Bush’s fault, it OUGHT to be pointed out and dealt with. I live here, I want both parties to do a good job and poor results to be pointed out when they actually happen. There is no way to evaluate the FEMA performance at this stage. We have never had to deal with a city below sea level that failed to evacuate, had no plan to deal with the situation once it happened, and had residents shooting at the rescue personnel.

To see the MSM media absolutely ignore what is certainly and abysmal performance on the part of the elected officials in New Orleans and Louisiana with attempts to “blame it on FEMA” is even more reprehensible that their usual left wing nut performance. Ineptitude and corruption of local officials have proven to be a lethal combination here. To see some elements of the MSM and a decent portion of the angry left bleating sheep just see it as another opportunity to “blame Bush” shows that for many, partisanship is all that counts. I have no problem blaming the federal government and Bush if the failure of the local government is handled badly, but we at least need to recognize that the local governments in the New Orleans case could scarcely have done worse.