I linked to the idiot’s rant after Phile reminded us that:

“Well, the media spent weeks telling us that  witnesses were claiming that the moon was made of green cheese, while everyone lapped it up like so much pabulum. Point-by-point rebuttals, like the article you linked, enlighten us with the facts, while folks like you actually prefer the easy-to-digest pabulum.”

Guess who were the bigest pablum eaters of the media’s distorted coverage of the Superdome? Right wingers because the distortions fit their previously established stereotypes. This guy’s idiotic rant was based entirely on distorted reporting. Much like how you were so easily deceived about the practice of female genital mutilation: The lie fit with your stereotypes about Muslims. BTW, you’re doing an admirable job of overlooking how completely and utterly wrong you were on that subject. I admire the thickness of your idiot shell.

I should know better than to expect consistency from you by now…

J.

Oh yes and you, Jay, are of the Grey Tribe and all of us liberals here are of the Pink Tribe. It’s majestic, solemn, dignified Grey against the sissified, weak, comprimising Pink. Talk about pablum. “Oooo, I’m a Grey sheepdog not a Pink sheep.” Daddy will be so proud. What are you four years old?

A sheep dog? More like Pavlov’s Dogs. This guy hears reports that the Superdome “is a refinery of horror” and immediatley pens a rant about if white guys like him were in there it never would have been like that. Naturally, of course, this has nothing to do with him being white but it does have everything to do with the people in the Superdome being black BECAUSE HE INSTANTLY ACCEPTED EVERYTHING REPORTED AS TRUE BECAUSE THEY WERE BLACK. We all saw how the news portrayed blacks as “looters” and whites as “looking for food.” This guy bought into that bullshit hook line and sinker because he reinforced his idea of how blacks and white behave. Much like your AUTOMATIC ACCEPTANCE that ONLY Muslims practice female genital mutilation depsite readily accessible facts proving the contrary. You’re both idiots.

That has nothing to do with me being white. If the blacks and Hispanics and Jews and gays that I work with and associate with were there with me, it would have been that much better. That s because the people I associate with  my Tribe  consists not of blacks and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal.

Whittle is saying that the elements that make or break a situation as desperate as the New Orleans flooding transcend race, and the breakdowns are not by arbitrary elements such as race, sex, or ethnicity, but by the choices we make in who and what we are. It is our behaviors, or ethics, our decisions, our actions that define how we act in a crisis — not the shallowness of simplistic thinking as “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” or that crap. Whittle was answering the race-based arguments from both sides by rejecting it entirely. To coin a phrase, his
‘tribe” is not based on the color of one’s skin, but the content of one’s character.

The key colors in Whittle’s essay are grey and pink. The key images are sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. The rest is garnish and seasoning.

J.

Again, it’s just like a total moron writing something like this:

“Find me another group of people so afraid of women s sexuality that they need to cut off their clitorises to preserve their own fragile egos.”

Idiot.

Naturally you would because you’re just the kind of idiot who goes all weak in the knees when another idiot praises white people as the most civilized people on the planet. Factcheck lays it out nicely. They guy makes an incredibly racist statement then spends the rest of his essay explaining why its not racist.

It’s a lot like some dipshit writing something such as:

“The quote  Muslims mutilate female genitals is, whether or not you like it, is accurate. If they said that all Muslims, or even a majority of Muslims, practice it, you would have a case. But the mutilators are, to the best of my knowledge, exclusively Muslim.”

Despite the fact that Christians and other religious sects engage in it as well.

The rest is pablum puking bs.

Oh, and there is this:
“It’s always such a pleasure to have Germans enlighten us on the best way to move large groups of sick, downtrodden people by rail. The only motivation I can ascribe to such behavior is that same one that propels young dim boys to tear the wings off flies.”

I’m sure Crazy Jay and JayIDTea will join me in condemning this use of Nazi imagery and use of ad hominem arguments.

He might as well have said that Colin and Kindasleezy are “One of the good ones.” He did use the “Some of my best friends…” bit.

“Only a few minutes ago, I had the delightful opportunity to read the comment of a fellow who said he wished that white, middle-class, racist, conservative cocksuckers like myself could have been herded into the Superdome Concentration Camp to see how much we like it. Absent, of course, was the fundamental truth of what he plainly does not have the eyes or the imagination to see, namely, that if the Superdome had been filled with white, middle-class, racist, conservative cocksuckers like myself, it would not have been a refinery of horror, but rather a citadel of hope and order and restraint and compassion.

That has nothing to do with me being white. If the blacks and Hispanics and Jews and gays that I work with and associate with were there with me, it would have been that much better. That s because the people I associate with  my Tribe  consists not of blacks and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal. My Tribe consists of people who know that sometimes bad things happen, and that these are an opportunity to show ourselves what we are made of. My people go into burning buildings. My Tribe consists of organizers and self-starters, proud and self-reliant people who do not need to be told what to do in a crisis. My Tribe is not fearless; they are something better. They are courageous. My Tribe is honorable, and decent, and kind, and inventive. My Tribe knows how to give orders, and how to follow them. My Tribe knows enough about how the world works to figure out ways to boil water, ration food, repair structures, build and maintain makeshift latrines, and care for the wounded and the dead with respect and compassion.”

The racist element was introduced by another, one Whittle quotes, and then he shreds it. But all frame wants to cite is the racist part.

Forget the migrant workers, farmers should hire frame. He’s gotta be the world champion at cherry-picking.

J.

J.

And one of the biggest pablum eaters turned out to be this idiot:
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000129.html

“…. if the Superdome had been filled with white, middle-class, racist, conservative cocksuckers like myself, it would not have been a refinery of horror, but rather a citadel of hope and order and restraint and compassion.”

This guy’s rant sprad through the right wing blogosphere like wild fire. It was a freakin pablum orgy.

1) Feel ashamed that the country one loves has allowed her citizens to suffer in such a way. Investigate the disaster, study the ways we were wrong, study the ways to improve response or to ensure the disaster does not happen again; or
2) Make excuses for what happened because the ruling class happens to share your political ideology.

It will be to the eternal detriment of conservatives and the Republican Party that, in disaster after disaster since 2000, they have reflexively opted for choice two.

“Monday, Jan. 10 – Federal officials say they paid $12 million too much to about 3,500 people who applied for assistance because of hurricane damage. The Federal Emergency Management Agency blames the problem on a computer glitch and says officials are working to recoup the money. Dan Craig, director of FEMA’s recovery division, says the problem occurred throughout Florida but he downplays the error, saying the agency processed 1.2 million applications statewide. Craig also defends allegations that FEMA paid millions in fraudulent disaster aid claims in Miami-Dade County, which missed a direct hit by a hurricane by 100 miles. FEMA paid about $30 million to more than 12,500 residents. ”

“Tuesday, Feb. 1 – Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown defends his agency against criticism that it gave hurricane relief money to Miami-Dade County residents who didn’t need it. “Those who claim we paid out claims erroneously are just wrong,” Brown tells about 100 members of the Florida Emergency Preparedness Association. Miami-Dade County missed a direct hit by a hurricane by 100 miles. FEMA paid about $30 million to more than 12,500 residents. Brown says claims in Miami-Dade County were made by people who really needed the funding. Some of the areas that were hit were the poorest areas of the county with substandard housing, he says”

” Thursday, March 3 – Florida lawmakers call for a congressional hearing into how the Federal Emergency Management Agency dealt with damage claims resulting from last year’s hurricanes. In a letter to Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the five lawmakers say local governments have been frustrated by delays in FEMA’s response while, at the same time, it paid more than $150,000 in allegedly fraudulent claims to residents of a county largely spared by the storm. … A night after getting an earful from 1,000 Pensacola residents still awaiting resolution of hurricane insurance claims, Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher says he wants a personal accounting of the problem from five insurers. He said 90 percent of the complaints he heard at Wednesday night’s “town hall” meeting related to only five companies, leading him to call for face-to-face meetings with executives from the five: Capital Preferred Insurance Company, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, First Protective Insurance Company, Universal Property and Casualty Insurance Company, and Vanguard Fire and Casualty Insurance Company. Among them, they write fewer than 9 percent of the residential policies in the state, but have accounted for 20 percent of the “service requests,” in which homeowners have asked the state for help resolving a complaint.”

Again, not surprisingly, you missed (or more likely completely ignored) the whole point of the piece. If you even read it, which I doubt.

Perhaps you can quote the passage of the article that says “an awesome job was done in New Orleans”…? Never mind because you can’t.

Dolinar takes EVERYONE to task – FEMA, Bush, Blanco and Nagin. In case you missed it: “There were problems, true: FEMA melted down. Political leaders, from the Mayor to Governor to the White House, showed “A Failure of Initiative”, as a recent House report put it. That report, along with sharply critical studies by the White House and the Senate, delve into the myriad of breakdowns, shortages and miscommunications that hampered relief efforts.”

The point of the piece was to show how the media ran wild with unsubstantiated – and later prove totally false – reports of rapes, sniper fire, numbers of dead, corpses in freezer trucks, letting blacks die etc. while ignoring the myriad of activities that were saving thousands of lives.

When you have millions of people living in a city BELOW sea level, on the coast, protected ONLY by tenuous levees and a CAT 4 125 MPH hurricane comes barreling through, what the hell do you people expect is going to happen? The fact that less than 2,000 people were killed is nothing short of a damn miracle.

Dolinar also says,”And there were screw-ups. The lead-up to Katrina took decades and cut across party lines. More resources could have been put in place in the few days before the hurricane struck. More could have been done to evacuate, particularly for the sick and elderly. But once the levees burst on Monday, it is hard to make a case that many more lives could have been saved – and that’s the bottom line in any disaster.”

He’s right, of course.

But never mind – let me let you get back to your demogogging…

Funny how FEMA was well-equipped and much praised to handle disasters in the 1990 s.

Just like they were one year earlier when Charley/Frances/Ivan/Jeane went after Florida.

#2, and even a non-Clinton fan like myself will acknowledge that FEMA was better run under Clinton than under Brownie, but, and here’s the big thing, THERE WASN’T A STORM OF THIS MAGNITUDE UNDER CLINTON.

And #3, since you say in the 1990′s and i’m sure you don’t mean under Bush 41, I just wanna remind you that Clinton isn’t president anymore and by decree of liberal commenters and liberal bloggers everywhere, he’s not allowed to mentioned anymore.

Funny how FEMA was well-equipped and much praised to handle disasters in the 1990′s. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they dealt with some poor leaders on the local level then also. But in Bushworld, there is no personal responsibility, just “Not our fault” and finger pointing.

Explain to me why the other states that were hard hit by Katrina did not fall into chaos. The role of the Federal government in such a disaster is to provide support to State and Local authorities, in the form of FEMA. This support structure crumbles if the State and Local authorites neglect their duties, and are generally incompetent. FEMA, despite its many problems, is NOT a first-respoder, and should therefore not be criticized as such. That is why we only ever hear about Katrina’s effects on Louisiana, and rarely about it’s impact on Mississippi, or Florida – states that properly prepared for, and dealt with the storm.

-phil