Of course. There will be no independent investigation into why Americans died in the street of New Orleans while the federal government dithered.
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September 14th, 2005
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Hey, no problem.
The President says he’s going to lead an investigation into what went wrong. And he wouldn’t hold anything back, he’s the President.
Hooray for the Republicans. Like a bunch of wind bag senators would solve anything. Too bad they didn’t have the nads after 9/11. I can just see some sanctimonious ideologue like Kennedy: “We need a fair investigation. We’ve got to figure out how and why George Bush let all those people in New Orleans die.” Let the liberal media shed crocodile tears for a few days. Could care less.
Dugger
There will be an independent investigation. Just not on the CarpetBagger’s terms.
Uh huh. The president is focused, resolved, determined, and…and…what’s that Mr. President? Yes, you can go potty now.
What’s more, I’d like to know what FEMA is hiding.
Dugger, the right-wing trolls have spent the last two weeks telling us that the Democrats (Blanco and Nagin) are the ones actually responsible for this mess, and that Bush is blameless. So why exactly would the Republicans pass up the opportunity to have an “independent” investigation if it was going to result in Democrats taking the fall? I would think that they would be falling over themselves to hold such an inquiry. Perhaps the Republican Senators know something about who is truly to blame that you don’t Dugger?
Ask most Americans what Kanye West thinks about Bush, and they’ll tell you.
Ask most Americans about FEMA, and they’ll tell you a story about the time their grandmother fell down the stairs.
Dugger,
That’s an ironic comment for you to make. The reason the Republicans opposed the “independent commission” is because they want a joint House-Senate investigation instead. In other words, the Republicans want “windbag Senators”, including possibly Kennedy, to grandstand. The independent commission would have brought in outsiders and not current politicians to investigate. No investigation would be perfect. But why should I trust an investigation by people with a vested interest in protecting one of the sides under investigation over a more detached panel removed from the partisan wars. That’s not to say there wouldn’t be partisans on the independent panel. It’s just that not ALL of the members of the independent panel would be hardcore partisans. And that would be much better than what the Republicans are proposing.
No, we don’t need an independent investigation. It’s not like, you know, we would want to explore what went right and what went wrong, so we could, I don’t know, fix the problems just in case a disaster of this magnitude happens again.
It’s MUCH more important that potential political damage to the White House be mitigated. After all, they are just human lives, they are making more everyday. /sarcasm
I’ll tell why we don’t need an independent investigation, Loopy. Because it wouldn’t be independent. What was independent about the 9/11 commission? Democrats / Liberals tried to blame the Bush administration; Republicans tried to blame Clinton. Outcome: no real change.
Why would this commission do any better?
Kind of interesting the difference between the right/left mindset, btw.
The right is black and white: The investigation would be flawed, so let’s not have one.
The left is grey: The investigation will not be perfect, but let’s see what results.
And in the process, Frankie, we found out a lot of things we didn’t know about 9/11. That is the point of an investigation, not so that we can find out who to blame (although that may result), but how we can not have this happen again.
9/11 commission came up with lots of recommendations for preventing a similar occurence. A lot of the legislation mandating that the agencies collaborate came from those recs.
Why do we need to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a Federal “investigation” and “hearings” that will mostly tell us what we already know?
Let reporters, bloggers, and investigators from private companies sort out this mess. They’ve already uncovered a tremendous amount of malfeasance and incompetence at all levels of government. Besides, their careers won’t be on the line for reporting what they find.
I don’t know if Louisiana has a recall election process, but that would certainly be the most effective way of dealing with problems at the local level. As for problems at the Federal level … well, that’s part of the magic of bureaucracy, isn’t it? The number one goal of bureaucrats has always been protecting their own careers and keeping their agencies funded. The only way to shake up a bureaucracy is to threaten its funding, but that will never happen within the Federal government.
Any “investigation” conducted by the Federal government would only result in a thick book of “findings” and “recommendations” that could have been put together at a fraction of the cost by any group of intelligent people with access to an Internet search engine.
If only you cons had your phobia about investigations when Clinton was president.
Loopy: Described properly, you should say, “Since it won’t accomplish anything,” say Conservatives, “why bother?’
Liberals would say, “We might find out something that will be useful in some small way, and since we can advance our political agenda to get “free” this and that, and whatever from the government, and revisit the stuff we already tried to saddle Bush with unsuccessfully, and see if we can do it again; well, then why not have a commission”?
I guess it isn’t worth it to cons to find out how we can handle disaster response better. It’s only poor people’s lives at stake, after all.
It’s not like investigating a land deal and a BJ- that is WORTH investigating and spending $80million in tax payer money right?
elrod,
Good point! My congratulations of the Rs was unwarranted in larger context. Nevertheless, a Congressional investigation, even if it were all Repub, is a waste of time and money. ALL the senators grandstand and solve zilch. I hope the whole thing dies.
Dugger
Loopy, we have all the disaster experts we need. Their job was already done. Predictions were made, plans were made, everything was in place.
But to give you a metaphor for what happened. The Mayor of New Orleans, and the Governor of Louisiana, each had the tools and the instructions to “handle” the disaster (as much as a Type 5 hurricane can be “handled”).
But, they turned out the lights, so they couldn’t see what they were doing, threw away the instructions, and mixed up the tools.
We don’t need new disaster management, we need a new NO Mayor and a new LA Governor.
Finally, people die in hurricanes, quite a few of them, for many reasons, least of which is that they are poor.
It’s obvious to me that you know nothing about emergency preparedness. And before you ask, I do have such experience. You don’t have to believe me of course, but my evaluation of your comment still stands: completely uninformed.
Well. then I guess that ends it. You have unspecified, unnamed qualifications which permit you to tell me that I am completely uninformed.
By the way, yes I am taunting to reveal those qalifications, just to be a pain in the ass.
It still remains the height of arrogance to make a statement like, “I do have such experience. You don t have to believe me of course,” and then tell me I’m totally uninformed.
Let me put it another way, then:
1) Predictions were made as to the path and potential for destruction of Katrina, well before it hit land, were they not? Were those predictions wrong? If so, by how much?
2) Plans for hurricanes are always in place for places that are vulnerable to hurricanes, like the Gulf Coast, are they not? The Mayor of New Orleans knows about those plans, does he not? The Governor of Louisiana knows about those plans, does she not?
3) Everything was supposed to be in place in New Orleans and Louisiana, was it not? If it was not in place, why not? Which part of the federal government plan was supposed to be in place (according to that selfsame plan) and was not? If not, why not?
Now, whether you are minimally or maximally qualified, please answer any part of these questions. Then I will be informed, too.