Reviewer takes a swipe at DEMOCRATIC response to Katrina?

[globalvillage]

Three snips from a review of Spike Lee's film trash Dem's response.

Worth A View: Spike Lee's Katrina Film
snip
Where were Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton when it was clearly time to criticize the Bush administration's response?
snip
Yet Lee seems to have heard more outrage from the Rev. Al Sharpton and Harry Belafonte than I've ever heard from prominent Democrats.
snip
Indeed, where the hell was the government? But, for God's sake, where were the Democrats?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/22/opinion/main1...

:wtf:

[uppityperson]

1. Gore has helped a lot, Edwards organized a huge volunteer spring break

thing. Not sure about Kerry or Clinton, but seems Gore and Edwards have been vocal AND actively helping.

[karynnj]

9. Kerry has done at lot personally and as a Senator

Kerry was in Iraq when Katrina hit. From Iraq, he put out messages with links to the Red Cross and other aid organizations to his list, and he started work on a bill to aid Small businesses hurt by the storm.

He and Teresa sent planeloads of needed supplies to Mississippi where Trent Lott coordinated the distribution. Lott, who lost his home, said that the Kerrys were the first to call to help. This was done quietly and without fanfare - and is known only because Trent Lott thanked Kerry in one of his Senate speeches.

Kerry coordinated an effort that helped Massachusetts companies donate stuff and have it shipped to LA. He also assisted a town in MA in pairing with a town in Mississippi to help the Mississippi town.

In addition to the work that Kerry, Snowe, Landrieau and Vitter did on a comprehensive bill to aid the small businesses that employ a large percent of people, Kerry has been the strongest critic of the poor job done by the now former head of the SBA.

In addition, Kerry was an early critic, who spoke of Katrina pulling the curtain so that people could see the incompetence of the Bush administration. I heard Kerry speak on September 10 in Morristown NJ, where he was furious about how little help was given.

Here's a link to a September 19th speech at Brown University. The media in fact covered the speech - only to say that Kerry was too harsh in his Bush criticisms.
http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2005_09_19.html

"Katrina stripped away any image of competence and exposed to all the true heart and nature of this administration. The truth is that for four and a half years, real life choices have been replaced by ideological agenda, substance replaced by spin, governance second place always to politics. Yes, they can run a good campaign -- I can attest to that -- but America needs more than a campaign. If 12 year-old Boy Scouts can be prepared, Americans have a right to expect the same from their 59 year-old President of the United States.

Katrina reminds us that too often the political contests of our time have been described like football games with color commentary: one team of consultants against another, red states against blue states, Democratic money against Republican money; a contest of height versus hair - sometimes. But the truth is democracy is not a game; we are living precious time each day in a different America than the one we can inhabit if we make different choices."

<snip>
This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed, and beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. It is about the betrayal of trust and abuse of power. And in all the often horrible and sometimes ennobling sights and sounds we've all witnessed over the last two weeks, there's another sound just under the surface: the steady clucking of Administration chickens coming home to roost
<snip>
Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job - Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished” and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done."

One minute spent using google found this article that speaks of Kerry, Edwards, and Bill Clinton speaking out - which should refute the charge that big Democrats didn't speak out.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901427.html

[uppityperson]

10. thaks for that.

[karynnj]

13. You're welcome - I edited to add

A link to Kerry's Brown speech on Sept 19 and to a WP article at the that time that spoke of Kerry, Edwards, and Clinton speaking out. These added to more directly refute the comment that big Democrats didn't speak out.

[Pirate Smile]

2. What a friggin idiot! Here is where Al Gore, private citizen was:

Al Gore leads Charity Hospital airlift
From: Democrats TableBy bar2bar2 | bio
THE FASTERCURES AIRLIFT FROM NEW ORLEANS

Greg Simon
President
FasterCures

On September 3, FasterCures worked with a small dedicated group of people to airlift approximately 270 medical patients and evacuees from the New Orleans airport to hospitals and shelters in Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee. This is the story of how it happened.

On Thursday, September 1, my friend Jill Chozen of San Francisco called to ask if I could put someone in touch with Al Gore. Dr. David Kline, the father in law of Jill’s friend Denise Kline, was stranded in Charity hospital in New Orleans. The situation was dire and becoming worse by the minute – food and water running out, no power, four feet of water surrounding the hospital and alligators eating corpses outside. David is a neurosurgeon and needed to take his patients out of the hospital as soon as possible. David asked Denise to find Al Gore for help because David knew Gore from operating on Gore’s son after a life threatening auto accident nearly 16 years ago.

-snip-
None of the airlines involved required a contract or any written guarantee of payment before sending their planes and volunteer crews – the first time Steve Davison had ever witnessed that in 15 years of chartering planes for political campaigns and other events. One official said if Gore promised to pay, that was good enough for them.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/7/164747/4155

Al Gore airlifts Katrina victims out of New Orleans


By Duncan Mansfield / Associated Press

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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son.

Gore criticized the Bush administration's slow response to Katrina in a speech Friday in San Francisco, but refused to be interviewed about the mercy missions he financed and flew on Sept. 3 and 4.

However, Dr. Anderson Spickard, who is Gore's personal physician and accompanied him on the flights, said: "Gore told me he wanted to do this because like all of us he wanted to seize the opportunity to do what one guy can do, given the assets that he has."

An account of the flights was posted this week on a Democratic Party Web page. It was written by Greg Simon, president of the Washington-based activist group FasterCures. Simon, who helped put together the mission, also declined an interview.

On Sept. 1, three days after Katrina slamed into the Gulf Coast, Simon learned that Dr. David Kline, a neurosurgeon who operated on Gore's son, Albert, after a life-threatening auto accident in 1989, was trying to get in touch with Gore. Kline was stranded with patients at Charity Hospital in New Orleans.

"The situation was dire and becoming worse by the minute -- food and water running out, no power, 4 feet of water surrounding the hospital and ... corpses outside," Simon wrote.

Gore responded immediately, telephoning Kline and agreeing to underwrite the $50,000 each for the two flights, although Larry Flax, founder of California Pizza Kitchens, later pledged to pay for one of them.

"None of the airlines involved required a contract or any written guarantee of payment before sending their planes and volunteer crews," Simon wrote of the American Airlines flights. "One official said if Gore promised to pay, that was good enough for them."

He also recruited two doctors, Spickard and Gore's cousin, retired Col. Dar LaFon, a specialist in internal medicine who once ran the military hospital in Baghdad.

Most critically, Gore worked to cut through government red tape, personally calling Gov. Phil Bredesen to get Tennessee's support and U.S. Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta to secure landing rights in New Orleans.

About 140 people, many of them sick, landed in Knoxville on Sept. 3. The second flight, with 130 evacuees, landed the next day in Chattanooga.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://www.detnews.com/2005/nation/0509/09/nat4-309467.htm&h=99&w=290&sz=14&hl=en&start=18&tbnid=g8MheRnLlEwsPM:&tbnh=39&tbnw=115&prev=/images%3Fq%3DAl%2BGore%2BKatrina%2BNew%2BOrleans%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26rls%3DGGLG,GGLG:2006-05,GGLG:en%26sa%3DN

[Greeby]

16. Photo of Gore on the ground

[EstimatedProphet]

3. Repubs only control all 3 branches of government? Why hold them to task?

The Democrats should be blamed for Bush's failure! They didn't push him enough to make him do something!

This time I'll use the :sarcasm: tag

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. Some people talk just to hear their head rattle. Gore was in NOLA

evacuating people. Not that is matters much. :banghead:

[librechik]

5. Pres Clinton flew back from Australia, and beat Bush to NOLA

so wtf? We have to be blamed for this too???

[globalvillage]

6. My response

"Where were Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton when it was clearly time to criticize the Bush administration's response?"
Well, Al Gore was busy air lifting Katrina evacuees. He did make a statement critical of the administration response at a speech in San Francisco on 9/9.
John Kerry was in Iraq, although he made many statements, e-mailed his supporters to donate to relief funds, flew supplies to the Gulf, proposed the Small Business Hurricane Relief and Reconstruction Act, and repeatedly criticized the administration's response (Brown University speech on 9/19 is a good example). Where was the media coverage of this?
Who did Republican Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi thank by name on the floor of the Senate for their assistance? John and Teresa Kerry. The audio is on Lott's website.
Edwards and Clinton made appeals for assistance for the gulf and criticisms of the administration's response. I won't post them, but Google works.
Where were the Dems? How about this - where was the media coverage of what the Democrats were doing and saying?
And where were Bush, Chertov, Brownie, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove, McCain and the rest of the so called 'compassionate conservatives'?
Shoe shopping, baseball game, birthday party, golf, guitar photo op ...
http://www.thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline
That's not to say there weren't good Republicans working to help Katrina victims, but to criticize the Democratic response is either dishonest or uninformed.

[babylonsister]

8. Excellent response, globalvillage!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[globalvillage]

11. Thanks. Remember these?

"Leadership isn't a speech or a toll-free number. Leadership is getting the job done. No American doubts that New Orleans will rise again, they doubt the competence and commitment of this Administration. Weeks after Katrina, Americans want an end to politics-as-usual that leaves them dangerously and unforgivably unprepared. Americans want to know that their government will be there when it counts with leadership that keeps them safe, not speeches in the aftermath to explain away the inexcusable." (Kerry 9/15)

"Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown - or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job - Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to "Mission Accomplished" and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done. This is the Katrina administration." (Kerry at Brown University 9/19)

You can only post a 1500 word response at that site, or I would have included these quotes. Sen Kerry's criticism of the admin response was very strong. Most leading Dems responded to Katrina both with aid and compassion to the region and with harsh words for bush*.
That's why this article struck me.

[karynnj]

14. In fact the media, trashed Kerry on the harshness of

his criticism. I saw him comment on Sept 10 in Morristown, NJ (where he was supporting Corzine's run for Governor) his face reflected the horror he obviously felt about the poor response.

It was Kerry who first used the Wizard of Oz imagry of pulling aside the curtain so people could see what the Bush admistation really was.

Here is a WP article that seemed to think Senator Kerry was being mean to Bush.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901427.html

[jumpoffdaplanet]

17. Don't forget to add

That while mere citizens were refused entry into the area to help with rescue/relief, Gore was able to push into the area to do rescue and relief.

Our own government wouldn't allow people to help, but Gore couldn't be turned back.

[Hubert Flottz]

7. Trent Lott and Bush were VERY upset about Trent's mansion...

getting trashed, I will give them credit for that!

Bush's mom was worried about the folks who came to Texas too.

[killbotfactory]

12. I guess they didn't grandstand enough for people to notice

no fancy photo-ops, unlike King Bush.

[twenty4blackbirds]

15. on the mark

"...no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo-ops in the world." - Colbert, White House Correspondents Dinner (2006-4-29)

[karynnj]

18. Senator Landrieau seemed to be everywhere as well

She did a great job forcing some of the media to really see how much beyond a normal hurricane or even the flooding from a levee break elsewhere on the Mississippi this was. She was also working with Senator Kerry within days on the small business refief package. They were working before he even returned from Iraq.

A year later, this morning on This Week, in addition to describing the slowness of the recovery and the need for disaster relief to be better anywhere in the country, she spoke of how the levees weren't repaired as quickly as and that work needed to be done on the coastal erosion. New Orleans was less protected than it had been decades ago because the coastal areas below New Orleans that historically were rebuilt each year from silt from the Mississippi have eroded because the Mississippi was diverted and this silt mostly goes elsewhere. The need for stabalizing that area was known before Katrina and was in fact a major environmental issue for Kerry.

[Beelzebud]

19. Gee maybe it has something to do with the Dems not being the majority....

What a fucking pile of shit that review was...

If Democrats had the majority of the fedgov during Katrina we NEVER hear the end of the fuck ups.