No to New Orleans
By Ari Kaufman (03/02/06)
I am opposed to the rebuilding of the city of New Orleans for social, political and financial reasons. I was not against it from the onset, but logic, the inept and negligent local leadership in the Crescent City, and the accusatory Democratic Party have made me change my mind.
In our current America, as Rush Limbaugh recently opined, "one party says you can do anything you want in life, and the other one says you can't, life is unfair, and you are being kept down, so blame others." For the sagacious among us, I don't need to explain which party is which. And for those who doubt the relevance of Limbaugh's words, they should read the first 65 pages of Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White Liberals." T! he evidence and historical examples are staggering.
The "blame and wait mentality" of the local politicians and many of the displaced people of New Orleans is appalling. It is easy to take cursory glance at your local paper or the videos of Katrina and have empathy, but the statistics and factual evidence of what did not occur prior to the Federal Government's evacuation warning to the city and its brass oftentimes tells a deeper, different story that many apologi! sts simply do not want to hear, nor entertain.
Simply put, before Katrina hit, had the local politicians obeyed the evacuation order from Washington, there would have been very few people to rescue. We later saw this during Hurricane Rita in Eastern Texas. Had Mayor Ray Nagin ordered people in New Orleans to man buses, those without transportation would have at least been able to utilize the buses found sitting in the storage yard.
The left and their leaders make a case that the Federal Government ignored the city of New Orleans. And yesterday, six months since the hurricane, the AP, in the slyest of ways, was ecstatic to release the biased and insignificant "news story" about Bush's warning meetings days before Katrina's wrath made landfall.
But somehow, these partisan news organizations and agenda-driven politicians have never had much concern over the devastation and destruction of the coasts of Alabama and Mississippi. Most likely, the New York Times' continued exposes on the topic, solely focusing on New Orleans, as if the eye of the storm actually hit there (it didn't), may have to do with that. Not that the elites of New York, DC and Los Angeles are scrambling to book a flight to the red states in the South anytime between their auditions and power lunches.
Revisiting Limbaugh, while listening to a speech by President Bush on February 17, Rush noted Bush's optimism toward all Americans and their potential to succeed. Many would characterize Bush's words as fifth grade jargon, but in their arrogance, they typically ignore! the ethos of the matters.
After Limbaugh explained the Democrats' lack of interest in giving concrete reasons and opportunities for all to succeed, he stated his credo about the three types of people in our world:
"There are those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happened."
The modern liberals - especially the elite among them - want to keep certain people a part of the latter, even though they know that most successful people (like them) are part of the first group.
That is amazingly improvident of them. And as Larry Elder often muses, "why don't these people preach what they practiced?" It is interesting how many successful Democratic leaders, regardless of race, actually did work hard to achieve their status, but somehow do not wish the same success nor ethics for future generations.
Thus, I am against the rebuilding of this city, not only due to its precarious location, but for all the socio-political reasons I've noted above. I don't think the demagogues who defame the Feds for their delay in rebuilding ($400 million in funding is delaying, it seems) genuinely want to rebuild either. But at least if we did, with the help of the Army Corps of Engineers, they would have one less thing to be enraged over.
But there are ancillary issues at work, which unfortunately make folks like me extremely hesitant to show support for the clean up and financial commitme! nt to New Orleans. With CNN, The Times and other spurious sources far too eager to publicize the unfair beating the President took along racial lines in the aftermath of the hurricane (perceived mostly by the disingenuine likes of Jesse, Al, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Howard Dean, Kane West and Lou Farrakhan); the issue again augmented by CNN's cameras, many moralistic folks cannot be blamed for their lack of interest in aiding the situation. Blame the folks who found a way, not surprisingly, to politicize a natural disaster, not us.
These apologists, purporting Bush to (falsely, of course) be a racist, might note that President Bush won 42% of the national Latino vote (57% of the Texas Latino vote), and the average group-think man or woman would be surprised to find out that the GOP has three African-American on statewide ballots this November: Ken Blackwell for Governor of Ohio, Lynn Swann for Governor of Pennsylvania and Michael Steele for Senator from Maryland.
Swann's impact, especially in Western Pennsylvania, has been palpable enough to cause the Democratic incumbent, Ed Rendell, to vote against the 2006 Voter Protection Act, the bible of the Left after their petulant complaints in the past two presidential elections. I guess since his party won a few races in 2005, this former DNC Chairman is optimistic enough to decide his party might not need to protest the 2006 results, so why let the GOP have an equal opportunity?
As Christopher Hitchers first noted in the summer of 2004 when Michael Moore released his fraudulent failed film, the Democrats want to have it both ways. Well, Mike actually wanted it three ways; forgive him, he's a corpulent fellow.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060302/ap_on_go_pr_wh/katrina_video
http://americandaily.com/article/11770
http://www.kenblackwell.com/
http://www.swannforgovernor.com/
http://www.gov.state.md.us/ltgov.html
http://www.therant.us/staff/phyrillas/03012006.htm
http://www.slate.com/id/2102723/?GT1=3584
Blog: http://indeed.blog-city.com/
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