Pres. Obama's Weekly Address

Pres. Obama's weekly address is about Hurricane Katrina and the lessons learned and how he is trying to right the wrongs and continue the recovery. I saw a piece this week where even Gov. Jindall is singing his praises about how he has helped the people and the city of New Orleans much more than the former occupant.

That's high praise indeed from Kenneth, I mean Bobby Jindall, who doesn't care for Pres. Obama and has always taken shots at him before for everything even when given the chance to answer a direct question.

Today is the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina... if you can call it that.. certainly not a happy anniversary. But it is a day of remembrance.

I am sorry I am late posting this.. .got caught up in the Kennedy services and really forgot it was Saturday and the president's address would be up...Just being ignorant and dumb on my part.. I do apologize.

Now, while we are grieving for Teddy, let us also take some time to remember the victims and the horrendous damage that was done to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. They still need us and our support even now, because the ball was dropped and so little was done.

The victims of New Orleans were the exact people Teddy would have been the champions for. The downtrodden, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, and the ones just left behind. Those are the same people he tried everyday in his legislative life to help.

Now, here is the President...

Stephen Colbert Shows Glenn Beck's Real Side

Stephen Colbert shows what Glenn Beck is really all about as he mocks his program and his 9-12 project.

Stephen launches his own 10-31 project to counter Beck's and uses Beck's words against him. Remember when Beck said this about the family's of the 9-11 victims and survivors: "This is horrible to say, and I wonder if I'm alone in this, you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims' families? I don't hate all of them. I hate probably about 10 of them. But when I see a 9-11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up!' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining. And we did our best for them." That was on Sept. 9, 2005.

A year.. it took him a year to start hating the victims and their families.. I am sorry, how can you hate them? All they did was go to work that day, or show up to do their job as firefighters and police officers and he hates them after a year. What kind of sick bastard is he? I am sorry, but he really makes me ill. So, yes I love that Stephen Colbert is calling him out on this crap he is putting out and I hate that the NY Times wrote a puff piece on him over the weekend and never once asked him about this.

Oh, and the day he made the stupid remark about the 9-11 victims, was the day they were giving the ATM cards to Hurricane Katrina victims and he was incensed over the fact they were getting anything to help them out. Yeah, real sensitive guy there Glenn, go cry again why don't you.

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Bobby Jindal Lied

It looks like the "story" that Bobby told us about Katrina was just that... a story.

According to Politico, a spokesperson for Jindal is now saying the story the governor told Tuesday night was just that, a tall tale. It didn't happen the way he said it did.

Of course, it wasn't that he lied, or that he misspoke or told a tall tale. It was just we misunderstood what he meant. I am not sure how you misunderstand "During Katrina". But that is what it says.

Of course, lets look at a few other things. The sheriff in question was also on Larry King's show, on Sept. 11, right after Katrina and for some strange reason he didn't seem to mention Congressman Jindal in his narrative of what happened.

So, what we have here is just another case it looks like of a lying republican. Gosh, the fun just goes on and on.

Change of pace for this post...update on Katrina

Yesterday while I was out, I bought a USAToday paper. Mostly I bought it because of the picture on the front and the headline:

Dawn of 'a new era'

Well worth the dollar with a picture of our new president and first lady walking down Pennsylvania Avenue waving at the people lined up in the cold to see them. How exciting for everyone to actually see them walking.

But, I want to talk about something else. I turned inside to read the "rest of the story" as Paul Harvey always says and on page 3A just above the fold there was a story that caught my eye.

43 Katrina victims still a mystery

You can also find it online. But in seeing that headline I was struck by the fact that here we are over 3 years from Katrina, and the man who just vacated 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. was so adament about how the federal government handled Katrina.

Remember his statement the other day... how forceful he was..how we all were just in shock that he could be so deluded about the real facts.

Well, here is some of the proof.

Here, in these mausoleums, are 43 bodies of unidentified victims — people whose fingerprints, dental records and DNA were not enough to shed light on who they were. Three-and-a-half years after the torrential floods killed 1,500 people across the Gulf Coast and put 80% of New Orleans under water, workers in the city's forensic center are still trying to close the book on Katrina's final chapter.

Chilling isn't it? To think there are still these victims waiting on someone to claim them, still people working trying to find out who they were, that they care enough to give the time and the effort even though this:

By summer 2006, however, the federal teams had pulled out of the effort, funding had dried up and the DNA analysts were going home. The bells and air horns had slowed from a few each day to one every other week, McGill said. It was getting harder to identify victims, even as more were being discovered around the city.

So, tell me again former occupent of 1600, how well was the federal response to Katrina?? How did that "Heck of a job, Brownie" work for you?? Because I sure don't think it has worked for me. And I don't believe it has worked for a lot of others either.

I was struck by this item in here...by the scope and magnitude of this and by the dedication of these people. I commend them for doing their job, for sticking with it through it all. They truly are the unsung heroes here.

"We haven't given up," says Julia Powers, a forensic investigator leading the effort. "That's the goal: to have everyone identified."

Hurricane Katrina sparked one of the largest and most complicated forensic efforts in U.S. history. Unlike the terrorist attacks of 9/11, where victims generally died at work, Katrina wiped out hospitals, homes, dental offices — and their records. That's made it hard to match DNA samples, said Dr. Louis Cataldie, who was appointed lead medical examiner after the storm.

"I was a coroner for 10 years, and I'd never seen anything like that," Cataldie said. "Nothing prepared you for what we saw during Katrina."

Shortly after Katrina barreled ashore on Aug. 29, 2005, state officials in Baton Rouge created a team to process the torrent of bodies being brought in from across the state, mostly from New Orleans. All together, more than 900 bodies were discovered in and around New Orleans, said Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard, who helped with the effort.

Headed by Cataldie, the team also included members of the FBI, dentists, DNA experts and members of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT), a federally-funded group that identifies disaster victims.

Counselors were brought in to help the forensic teams. "That was a life-changing event for me," Minyard, 72, said. "I lost a lot of joy in my heart."

The team made progress. By December 2005, only 220 bodies remained anonymous. A team of DNA analysts set up shop in another Baton Rouge warehouse, sifting through the DNA samples and comparing them to a growing database of reported missing persons, said Kelly McGill, a forensic scientist from Kansas who worked with the team.

Each time a missing person was found alive, a bell would ring in the warehouse, she said. An air horn signaled each time a body was identified. Either sound drew an eruption of applause and cheers from the scientists, she said.

"I felt grateful," she said. "I know I was doing what I could to help."

These people really need to be respected for doing a great job, and a terrible job. To have to deal with the horrific remains they had to, some of the remains were in water for days and weeks. Some were unable to be identified by any normal means. Yet, they have worked tirelessly for over 3 years to try to identify everyone of these people.

How dedicated and loyal are these people to their fellow citizens of New Orleans and of Louisana.

Julia Powers, gave up her job in New Mexico to stay with it because she just couldn't walk away.

Powers, a volunteer member of DMORT, asked her boss at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque for more time to keep identifying bodies. When she was refused, Powers, 47, quit her job as a researcher and moved to New Orleans. Now employed by the Orleans Parish coroner's office, she helped whittle the number of unidentified victims from 200 to 80 to 43, mostly by talking with families, running down leads and gumshoe investigating.

As I said, this is another part of the legacy of the former occupent of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I am sure as time goes on we will be seeing more and more of these kinds of things.

I am so thankful that we now have someone in the White House who can help set these things right. Here is the statement from the White House web site pretaining to Katrina:

Katrina
President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.

President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush Administration's "unconscionable ineptitude" in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims. Obama visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region. He worked with members of the Congressional Black Caucus to introduce legislation to address the immediate income, employment, business, and housing needs of Gulf Coast communities.

President Barack Obama will partner with the people of the Gulf Coast to rebuild now, stronger than ever.

It looks like they will finally have the help they need to rebuild and get back to where they were.

Thank goodness, we finally have a grown up in the White House. Isn't it wonderful!!!

Fact Checking Bush's Presser

President Bush gave his Exit Presser Monday, January 12, 2009. In doing so he gave his accounting of his take on his term, and how it looked from his perspective. He had much to say, some good, some bad, some angry, some just plain dumb.

I want to look at some of the things he said, and then point out the truth, now I didn't do all of this, I had some help. But some of them I did do. I also want to put in a picture of his faces during the presser I think is pretty funny.

President George W. Bush claimed to have inherited a recession that in fact began on his watch in a legacy-polishing news conference Monday often at odds with his record. A look at some of the president's claims in his final news conference, and the facts:

BUSH: "In terms of the economy - look, I inherited a recession, I'm ending on a recession. In the meantime, there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth."

THE FACTS: There have been two recessions during Bush's time in office. The first was a relatively mild downturn that began in March 2001 and lasted eight months, ending in November 2001. Since the first one did not begin until after he took office in January 2001, it is not strictly accurate to say he "inherited" it.
The second downturn began December 2007 and has already lasted longer than any recession in a quarter century. If it does not end until the second half of this year, which many economists believe is likely, the current recession will have surpassed in length all other downturns of the post World War II period.
As to his claim of 52 months of uninterrupted job growth, that is factual, although perhaps misleading in what it says about overall job growth during his term. Job growth after the 2001 recession did not resume on a sustained basis until September 2003, continuing until January 2007, a period of 52 months.
However, jobs have declined in every month since then. A staggering 2.6 million jobs disappeared in 2008, the most since World War II, and unemployment hit a 16-year high of 7.2 percent in December.
Overall, during Bush's eight years in office, a net total of 3 million jobs were created. In the two terms of his predecessor, President Clinton, roughly 21 million jobs were generated.
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In a side note to this, here is a link to a story that was done by Rachel Maddow, and by Anderson Cooper,(who was there, on the ground every day in the water) and he has a different memory than Bush does too.

Also check out my friend Enigma4Ever @ Watergate Summer she has a lot of stuff on Katrina. It is something her and I discuss and she has blogged on it. Bush is such a jerk for saying these things when he knows it is just an out and out LIE..and yes I said it was a LIE!!!!!!!!!!

BUSH: Asked about the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Bush said, "You know, people said, well, the federal response was slow. Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed... That's a pretty quick response."

THE FACTS: The president's defense is based on one very narrow measure in the 2005 storm's immediate aftermath. He ignored numerous other facets that depict a more sober picture.
There were 9,000 Louisiana families still living in trailers as of last Sept. 1, and more than 30,000 residents of Gulf states receiving disaster housing assistance. Five of 23 acute-care hospitals in the New Orleans area remain closed. The city's bus system carries less than a third of its pre-storm passengers. Many neighborhoods remain largely vacant.
Bush noted that $121 billion in federal aid was approved. But much of that went to rescue operations and other short-term needs. The Louisiana Recovery Authority estimates that about $15 billion has been spent on rebuilding in the state.
Bush said New Orleans schools have improved, which is true. But of 125 public schools in New Orleans before Katrina, only about 85 remain.
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BUSH: Predicted that Israel and the Palestinians will eventually make peace more or less on terms he outlined early in his tenure, and said his administration "worked hard" to advance peace by defining a goal of two peaceful countries and working to strengthen Palestinian security forces.

THE FACTS: Bush's 2002 speech calling for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel did mark a surprisingly explicit and detailed endorsement of that idea by an American president. But he didn't mention that in those early years his administration put active peacemaking in a deep freeze and only tried to restart negotiations late in his term. In the years between, Israel expanded Jewish settlements on land claimed by the Palestinians for an eventual state, with only mild complaint from the United States.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said the administration waited until the timing was better, meaning until after the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the election of a moderate leader to succeed him. Bush wrote off Arafat early on, with advisers saying the PLO chief was corrupt and probably incapable of delivering a deal that Israel and its U.S. backers could live with.
But by the time the U.S. made Mideast peace a diplomatic priority conditions were changing again. Bush pushed Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, to hold elections in early 2006 that he feared, correctly, would legitimize his rivals in the Islamic Hamas movement. Those rivals are now in control of the Gaza Strip, splitting the territory and people Abbas theoretically governs.
Bush sponsored a high-level peace conference in late 2007, and visited Israel and the West Bank in early 2008. Rice stopped by often to check on secret negotiations between Abbas' West Bank leadership and Israel.
Hamas is now at war with Israel in Gaza, in the most intense fighting in years. Israel may succeed in wounding Hamas leadership and its ability to fire rockets into Israel, but it probably cannot defeat the well-organized group outright. In the meantime, civilian deaths in Gaza erode Palestinian support for negotiations.

Now that we have fact checked some of Bush's statements of his pressers and you can see that he wasn't quite on the mark, I am sure you have others you can add. Feel free.

One other little thing he had to say I found odd... The president declined to talk about any plans to issue further pardons, but he did talk about what he'd do after Obama takes over, saying he'd likely start working again immediately. "I'm a type-A personality. I just can't envision myself [with] the big straw hat and Hawaiian shirt sitting on some beach," Bush said. "Particularly since I quit drinking."

I sure hope he doesn't issue any more pardons, I worry he will issue a blanket pardon for himself and Cheney before he leaves office. But I wonder about the quitting drinking part. Sometimes I think that's the only thing that explains some of his behavior.

Dick Cheney Gets a Shout Out From the Crowd.

While visiting Watergate Summer earlier I noticed she had a post up about Katrina and how everyone has kinda forgotten it. We have so focused on the Iraq war and torture and how Bush & Co has done so much there and how betrayed we feel over it, and his criminal behavior there, we seem to have forgotten Katrina.

Well, maybe not forgotten, but at least pushed it aside to a certain extent. So, I made a commitment to her that I would make some posts about it too. As I was looking at some things on You Tube, I found this one vid that just about summed up what I think most people feel about at least Dick Cheney. Actually there are 2 here. So that you see it from both perspectives so to speak. It's pretty good. So take a look at this and see what you think. I will do more later on. This is just for now.

Now the language is a little rough...well for Cheney it isn't... He believes this is appropriate for the floor of the Senate. But this isn't safe for work or young ears. So be careful now.





Hope you enjoy...

Bush Refuses To Interrupt His Final Vacation As Middle East Crisis Escalates

In an effort to “prevent Palestinians from attacking towns in southern Israel” with rockets, Israel today undertook its third day of offensive military airstrikes in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, raising the death toll to more than 300. The Palestinian casualty numbers have been described as the highest over such a brief period since the 1967 Six-Day war. Scores of Israelis have been wounded — and at least one killed — by rocket attacks fired by Palestinians. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the situation “all out war.”

While Bush has been briefed on the situation by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, he has opted not to interrupt his final vacation as president to make a public statement on the crisis. For someone who has enjoyed the most vacation days as sitting president — including days spent relaxing in comfort during Hurricane Katrina and in the lead-up to 9/11 — it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that Bush prioritizes vacationing over crisis management.

Even an emerging crisis in the Middle East, one he pledged to resolve just 13 months ago, has not drawn President George W. Bush from his final vacation before leaving office. Despite his personal pledge at Annapolis last year to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinians before 2009, this weekend Bush sent his spokesmen to comment in his stead.

Since departing Washington for Crawford on Friday, President Bush has made no attempt to be seen in public. In fact, he has yet to leave his ranch.

Today, in a press briefing delivered from the “Western White House” in Crawford, TX, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe was asked what is on Bush’s schedule today. In addition to receiving “updates on the ongoing situation,” Johndroe said, “I expect he’ll probably ride his bicycle today and spend time with Mrs. Bush.”

President-elect Barack Obama has also been monitoring the violence from his vacationing spot in Hawaii, staying in contact with Bush and Rice. “President Bush speaks for the United States until Jan. 20 and we’re going to honor that,” Obama adviser David Axelrod said.

One senior Bush administration official told the Washington Post that he thinks the Israelis acted in Gaza “because they want it to be over before the next administration comes in” and because “they can’t predict how the next administration will handle it.” Indeed, Bush has become fairly predictable in how he manages these sorts of crises.

On ABC's This Week yesterday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) expressed his hope that removing Bush's hands-off approach may help address the situation. "I'm hopeful that as this transition comes, as we look to January, that strong presidential leadership can make a difference here."

Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, speculated that Israeli leaders synchronized their retaliatory attacks to political calendars in both Israel and the U.S. More moderate politicians running in the Feb. 10 national election needed to appear strong against Hamas, and it was perhaps better to strike before Bush left office on Jan. 20 because they weren't as sure what Obama's reaction would be.

"I think Obama will be supportive of Israel, but will bring a little more skepticism to it," Alterman said. "I think Obama will start from premise that Israel is an ally, but that we have to look at this fresh."

This is taken from two different sources. Part of it is from Think Progress and another is from a story by the Associated Press.

Some of what is happening in the Middle East is hard for me to justify. I understand both sides, yet it is hard to get news here that tells the true story of what is really going on. We are told mostly only what is happening from the side of the Israli's because they are supposed to be the good guy's, yet from what I can see, I am not sure they are right now.

Oh, I know, Hamas is bad, they are supposed to be a terrorist organization. But, really are who are they hurting lately?? That's my question. Maybe I am just naive, and just haven't been paying close enough attention to what has been happening. This is just my opinion, but right now it looks like the big boy is beating up on the little boy...and I really don't like that.