posted on September 6, 2005 10:09:40 AM new
Yep, your guy won the election. As I have said many times, it doesn't matter who won the election, what is important is how they conduct themselves and how they improve the quality of life for all Americans. The Bush Administration continues their downward spiral with their rediculously slow response to Katrina, and rising gas prices will surely see those approval ratings dip under 40% over the next few weeks. Bush continues to be an embarrasment for America and even many of those who voted for him are seeing the joke in the oval office. I am sure the entire Administration needs another vacation because of all the hard work they have put out there...playing guitar, shoe shopping, watching Spam-a-lot, sitting on their butt in Wyoming, and so on...
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Hurricane fallout hurts Bush, could hurt Republicans By Alan Elsner
Hurricane Katrina delivered a heavy political blow to President George W. Bush, potentially crippling his second-term domestic agenda and undermining Republican prospects in next year's congressional elections, political analysts said on Tuesday.
"There's going to be significant and long-term damage to Bush, especially because this disaster comes on the heels of a slow bleeding of his approval ratings over the past year that accelerated over the summer," said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Before the hurricane struck, Bush's approval ratings had fallen to some of the lowest of his presidency -- 45 percent in Fox News and Gallup polls taken at the end of last month and 41 percent in a CBS poll. Voters were expressing growing disenchantment with the war in Iraq and high gasoline prices.
Now, those prices have skyrocketed and Americans face a winter of high prices at the pump combined with heating oil prices that are double or higher what they were last year.
"If gas prices and heating oil remain where they are, every elected official in Washington, D.C., is going to be in trouble. It's unacceptable to people because many won't be able to bear the cost," said one senior Republican congressional staffer, who asked not to be named.
Bush has certainly proven himself a resilient politician in the past and some Republicans believe he can recover his standing by ensuring that hurricane cleanup and recovery efforts go smoothly after the initial failures.
But the images of a city drowning while the government stood by, seemingly unable to help desperate people, will not fade quickly, said pollster John Zogby.
"Those scenes are not going to go away. Bush can recover a bit through damage control but those early impressions could be devastating for him and could hurt his party," Zogby said.
The pictures struck at Bush's most important political asset -- his image of being a strong, decisive leader.
At the least, Bush's domestic agenda is now thrown into disarray. His Social Security reform plan already seemed dead but Republicans in Congress were about to make tax cuts enacted in Bush's first term permanent. Also looming was a difficult and divisive debate about immigration reform.
The effect may be to accelerate the process by which second term presidents turn into lame ducks in their final two years.
"The hurricane and its aftermath will overarch all other agenda items for the rest of this year and maybe beyond," said Tom Rath, a prominent Republican activist in New Hampshire.
MAKE IT RIGHT
"The one thing the administration can do is concentrate all its efforts on getting things right along the Gulf of Mexico. They must grab hold of the situation and make it right. That's the right thing to do and it's also the right political thing to do," he said.
As the immediate emergency fades, Congress is likely to hold hearings and possibly appoint a commission to investigate the many failures that took place before and after the hurricane hit. Many individuals and organizations are likely to come under criticism, but as President Harry Truman famously noted, "The buck stops here."
The congressional staffer said: "This event affected four states. Who else could have been in charge but the president?"
Added Rath: "There will be plenty of blame to go around but if you take credit for the sunshine, you also get blamed for the rain."
Democrats so far have been slow to criticize, but that is sure to change. Setting the tone, House of Representatives Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday that Bush displayed a "failure of leadership," as the crisis unfolded.
"What is needed in a response like this is one that minimizes death and disease, which minimizes the front assault that this makes on the livelihood of the American people," Pelosi said, "If there's any lesson to be learned, it's that this response was not appropriate."
Looking forward to the November 2006 mid-term elections, even before the hurricane many analysts said the political environment was looking unfavorable for Republicans.
But Republican political consultant Rick Davis said voters would not be thinking of what happened in 2005 when they entered the ballot box.
"It depends more on what's happening a year from now, on whether the administration has met peoples' needs," he said.
posted on September 6, 2005 10:33:02 AM new
Why does it seem people want to overlook the response from the Democratic Governor of LA?
She is no less culpable if the blame game is to begin. FEMA was slow. But as a leader one has to allow subordinates to attempt to do their jobs before stepping in.
President Bush has already said the response was unacceptable.
posted on September 6, 2005 02:05:34 PM new
oh and rusty - your statement that 41% of America(ns) are complete morons doesn't hold true to the stats.
Only 42.45% of all those eligible to vote, actually voted. Please know what you're talking about before posting FALSE stats.
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Interesting facts about our 2004 election.....you know, the one that was going to change since he stole the 2000 one.
George W. Bush became the first candidate since his father "George H. W. Bush, elected in 1988" to receive a majority of the popular vote.
It also marked the seventh consecutive election in which the Democratic nominee failed to reach that threshold.
Although Bush received a majority of the popular vote: 50.73% to Kerry's 48.27%, it was "percentage-wise" the closest popular margin ever for a sitting President; Bush received 2.5% more than Kerry; the closest previous margin won by a sitting President was 3.2% for Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
In terms of absolute number of popular votes, his victory margin (approximately 3 million votes) was the smallest of any sitting President since Harry S. Truman in 1948.
At least 12 million more votes were cast than in the 2000 election. Based upon 2000 census figures, 42.45% of the U.S. population voted in the 2004 election. and the number who actually voted was: 122,293,332.
The record turnout "the highest since 1968" was attributed partly to the intensity of the division between the candidates and partly to intensive voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts by both major parties and their allies.
The counties where Bush led in the popular vote amount to 83% of the geographic area of the U.S. (excluding Alaska, which did not report results by borough/census area, but had all electoral districts but one of the two in Juneau vote for Bush).
Only three states picked a winner from a different party than they had in 2000. Bush took Iowa and New Mexico (combined 12 electoral votes), both won by Democrat Al Gore in 2000, while Kerry took New Hampshire (4 electoral votes), which Bush had won. All three were very close states in both 2000 and 2004.
As in 2000, electoral votes split along sharp geographical lines: The west coast, northeast, and most of the Great Lakes region for Kerry, and the South, Great Plains, and Mountain states for Bush. The widespread support for Bush in the southern states continued the transformation of the formerly Democratic Solid South to the Republican South.
Minor-party candidates received many fewer votes, dropping from a total of 3.5 percent in 2000 to approximately one percent. As in 2000, Ralph Nader finished in third place, but his total declined from 2.9 million to 400,000, leaving him with fewer votes than the Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan had received in finishing fourth in 2000. The combined minor-party total was the lowest since 1988.
The election marked the first time an incumbent president was reelected while his political party increased its numbers in both houses of Congress since Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 election. It was the first time for a Republican since William McKinley in the 1900 election.
The entire House of Representatives (435 members) and approximately one-third of the Senate (34 of 100 members) were also up for election. The Republican Party increased its majorities in both houses of Congress.
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Just to keep the stats straight....for those who may be confused by rusty's numbers. The total population of the US is currently about 296,000,000.
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"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
[ edited by Linda_K on Sep 6, 2005 03:16 PM ]
posted on September 6, 2005 03:06:08 PM new
Yep, you are absolutely right Ron. So, ask the governor what happened to a large chunk of Louisiana's National Guard and their equipment? Or perhaps you should ask the President, because he was the one who uprooted them from their home state and transplanted them and their equipment in Iraq to fight an unjust war, or are you just plain stupid not to see the problem?
posted on September 6, 2005 03:11:14 PM new
And just to show, different people see who they judge the morons are too.
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Not much traction with the abuse
September 6, 2005
George W. finally gets it -- in more ways than one. The tardy president was back on the Gulf Coast yesterday, bucking up the spirits of the damned and stiffening the resolve of the slackers.
He's getting it as well from his critics, many of whom can't believe their great good luck, that a hurricane, of all things, finally gives them the opening they've been waiting for to heap calumny and scorn on him for something that might get a little traction. Cindy Sheehan is yesterday's news; she couldn't attract a camera crew this morning if she stripped down to her step-ins for a march on Prairie Chapel Ranch.
The vultures of the venomous left are attacking on two fronts, first that the president didn't do what the incompetent mayor of New Orleans and the pouty governor of Louisiana should have done, and didn't, in the early hours after Katrina loosed the deluge on the city that care and good judgment forgot.
Ray Nagin, the mayor, ordered a "mandatory" evacuation a day late, but kept the city's 2,000 school buses parked and locked in neat rows when there was still time to take the refugees to higher ground. The bright-yellow buses sit ruined now in four feet of dirty water.
Then the governor, Kathleen Blanco, resisted early pleas to declare martial law, and her dithering opened the way for looters, rapists and killers to make New Orleans an unholy hell.
Gov. Haley Barbour did not hesitate in neighboring Mississippi, and looters, rapists and killers have not turned the streets of Gulfport and Biloxi into killing fields.
The drumbeat of partisan ingratitude continues even after the president flooded the city with National Guardsmen from a dozen states, paratroopers from Fort Bragg and Marines from the Atlantic and the Pacific. The flutter and chatter of the helicopters above the ghostly abandoned city, some of them from as far away as Singapore and averaging 240 missions a day, is eerily reminiscent of the last days of Saigon.
Nevertheless, Sen. Mary Landrieu, who seems to think she's cute when she's mad, even threatened on national television to punch out the president -- a felony, by the way, even as a threat.
Mayor Nagin, who you might think would be looking for a place to hide, and Gov. Blanco, nursing a bigtime snit, can't find the right word of thanks to a nation pouring out its heart and emptying its pockets. Maybe the senator should consider punching out the governor, only a misdemeanor.
The race hustlers waited for three days to inflame a tense situation, but then set to work with their usual dedication. The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, our self-appointed twin ambassadors of ill will, made the scene as soon as they could, taking up the coded cry that Katrina was the work of white folks, that a shortage of white looters and snipers made looting and sniping look like black crime, that calling the refugees "refugees" was an act of linguistic racism. A "civil rights activist" on Arianna Huffington's celebrity blog even floated the rumor that the starving folks abandoned in New Orleans had been forced to eat their dead -- after only four days. New Orleans has a reputation for its unusual cuisine, but this tale was so tall that nobody paid it much attention. Neither did anyone tell the tale-bearer to put a dirty sock in it.
Condi Rice went to the scene to say what everyone can see for himself, that no one but the race hustlers imagine Americans of any hue attaching strings to the humanitarian aid pouring into the broken and bruised cities of the Gulf. Most of the suffering faces in the flickering television images are black, true enough, and most of the helping hands are white.
Black and white churches of all denominations across a wide swath of the South stretching from Texas across Arkansas and Louisiana into Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia turned their Sunday schools into kitchens and dormitories. In Memphis, Junior Leaguers turned out for baby-sitting duty at the city's largest, most fashionable and nearly all white Baptist church, cradling tiny black infants in compassionate arms so their mothers could finally sleep. The owner of a honky-tonk showed up to ask whether the church would "accept money from a bar." A pastor took $1,400, some of it in quarters, dimes and nickels, with grateful thanks and a promise to see that it is spent wisely on the deserving -- most of whom are black.
The first polls, no surprise, show the libels are not working. A Washington Post-ABC survey found that the president is not seen as the villain the nutcake left is trying to make him out to be.
nutcake lefties - maybe the same as morons to others???
Americans, skeptical as ever, are believing their own eyes.
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Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
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"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
posted on September 6, 2005 03:13:54 PM new
Apparently I am more intelligent than you on this subject, why are you being blind to the fact the Louisana Governor did nothing to help at the beginning irregardless of what was going on with a few National Guard? All of LA's Guard was not in Iraq and a true leader would of known what to do.
Apparently LA's governor is not a true leader.
Blame President Bush if you want, but don't overlook where it should start.
posted on September 6, 2005 03:20:27 PM new...they've been waiting for to heap calumny and scorn on him for something that might get a little traction. Cindy Sheehan is yesterday's news; she couldn't attract a camera crew this morning if she stripped down to her step-ins for a march on Prairie Chapel Ranch...
Linda, I have to laugh at that one! She sure lost media darling status fast in lieu of this adreline pumping hurricane story! lol!!
posted on September 6, 2005 03:23:10 PM new
Apparently so??? That's an UNDERSTATEMENT if I ever saw/read one. Of course you are.
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Even normal, reasonable dems can see and comprehend who has failed in this situation. Even they have the ability to see there's lots of blame to be shared....but the President had to CALL her and tell her what he thought should be done. Did she do it all on her own? Nope....no leader there.
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
The Governor of Louisiana took the proper steps August 28 as specified by law.
Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act.
http://www.fema.gov/library/stafact.shtm
posted on September 6, 2005 04:12:13 PM new
yep, we see just how much Ron knows about what was done. Perhaps Linda or Ron can shed some light on why the President wasn't making the necessary preparations before the hurricane hit, but rather chose to stay on vacation. How about GW's little music stint playing guitar while those along the coast were suffering? Perhaps they can explain Condi's behavior of shoe shopping and seeing a Monte Python play when she should have been at work dealing with the crisis, or perhaps they can shed some light on why Cheney was unresponsive to the situation, choosing to stay on vacation in Wyoming?
They both want to defend the National leadership by pointing at others who were actually dealing with the crisis, but neither can step up to the plate and have a valid explanation when it comes to the lack of integrity and respect for human life that their "Christian leaders" failed to show. Behavior only a conservative would hold value to.
posted on September 6, 2005 04:33:29 PM new
Oh how I wish Bush and Cheney could run again. That way people like Linda_K and defogger would finally see what the majority of Americans think of them.
The 2006 elections can send Bush to the ranch QUACK,QUACK,QUACKING LIKE A DUCK. YES!!!
posted on September 6, 2005 04:35:16 PM new
So a form letter and an SOP is supposed to change my mind? I don't think so.
What did she do on Monday? Nothing.
I have already agreed that FEMA director needs to be freed up for new oportunities (fired).
I didn't vote for the man, but I will give him the benefit of a doubt. No one knew or could of known the full effect until it happend, but afterwards where was the Governor's action then? One form letter, which is standard procedure is supposed to relaease her of any responsibility? No wonder this country is so f'd up.
No it the tragedy began at city level and rose upward. Federal government is not squeaky clean over this but lets place some of the blame where it belongs.
posted on September 6, 2005 04:40:59 PM new
Since when is the President in charge of evacuation of the people in any city or state. Thats the responsiblilty of the mayor & govenor in that state.
Each General in charge of a states National Guard answers to the govenor of the state NOT TO THE PRESIDENT.
And until the govenor REQUESTS aid from the Fed government, none will be provided.
P.S. Rusty, your gumbo is still a quart low
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Poll: Bush Not Taking Brunt of Katrina Criticism
Hurricane Preparedness Is Faulted; Fewer Blame Bush for Problems
Sept. 4, 2005 — Americans are broadly critical of government preparedness in the Hurricane Katrina disaster — but far fewer take George W. Bush personally to task for the problems, and public anger about the response is less widespread than some critics would suggest.
In an event that clearly has gripped the nation — 91 percent of Americans are paying close attention — hopefulness far outweighs discontent about the slow-starting rescue. And as in so many politically charged issues in this country, partisanship holds great sway in views of the president's performance.
The most critical views cross jurisdictions: Two-thirds in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say the federal government should have been better prepared to deal with a storm this size, and three-quarters say state and local governments in the affected areas likewise were insufficiently prepared.
Other evaluations are divided. Forty-six percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the crisis, while 47 percent disapprove. That compares poorly with Bush's 91 percent approval rating for his performance in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but it's far from the broad discontent expressed by critics of the initial days of the hurricane response. (It also almost exactly matches Bush's overall job approval rating, 45 percent, in an ABC/Post poll a week ago.)
Similarly, 48 percent give a positive rating to the federal government's response overall, compared with 51 percent who rate it negatively — another split view, not a broadly critical one.
When it gets to specifics, however, most ratings are worse: Majorities ranging from 56 percent to 79 percent express criticism of federal efforts at delivering food and water, evacuating displaced people, controlling looting and (especially) dealing with the price of gasoline. In just one specific area — conducting search and rescue operations — most, 58 percent, give the government positive marks.
posted on September 6, 2005 04:42:44 PM new
That way people like Linda_K and defogger would finally see what the majority of Americans think of them.
LOL peepa, ya finally made a funny!
The majority of Americans dont care bout politics. They have enough problems and concerns of their own think about. Most have long lost faith in politics.
The only majority you are obviously familiar with is the one in your own backyard. How you continue to profess to keep speaking for a majority,is beyond ridiculous,imo.
posted on September 6, 2005 05:57:15 PM new
Yes Bush wants to investigate himself but first he'll have to finish the investigation of the Plame outing.
posted on September 6, 2005 09:03:09 PM new
Rusty, I think the President is not so much a moron as a happy idiot.
Having said that, I don't think the people who voted for him are morons either, at least, not most of them. I think quite a few of them voted their fear, as was skillfully planned by his handlers.
The title of your post is as inflammatory and one sided as the ridiculous nonsense posted here by the other side. This kind of baiting is unproductive no matter what side of the fence you're on.
Just my opinion, what do I know anyhow.....
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Fue por lana y salió trasquilado...
posted on September 6, 2005 10:17:45 PM new
You notice the neocons here debating symantics about approval ratings? They again try to change the focus... Bush's ratings are falling, and falling, and falling. It kind of reminds me of those Walmart advertisements of "dropping prices".
posted on September 6, 2005 11:15:28 PM new
Rustygumbo, I am sure that those who voted for President Bush in the last Presidential Election will not vote for him again. Now you feel better?
[ edited by dblfugger9 on Sep 6, 2005 11:07 AM ]
yep, that's them, dbl.
The total population of the US is currently about 296,000,000.