posted
I'm pretty sure a lot of votes cast for both Bush and Kerry were unenthusiastic ones - the "this one scares or repulses me a little less" variety.
quote:OLBERMANN:Yesterday, the Gallup seemed to suggest that the criticism of the president was split entirely along party lines. but these most recent ones from CBS and Zogby, which closed yesterday, are suggesting the opposite. What did we miss that may have changed things and when did we miss it?
FINEMAN: I think what's going on here is not the job approval number that is sinking, because that is divided along partisan lines, but another number that pollsters are always asking about, which is, do you think the country is going in the right direction or the wrong track?
And those numbers are cratering big time, as Dick Cheney might say. I talked to a Republican pollster today who said that his numbers on that show that the American people think that the country is on the right track 32 percent, on the wrong track, 62 percent. He said that number is worse than any that he has seen for any president since the dark days of Bush I's presidency.
And that's what dragging these other numbers down. People are looking at television, both out of New Orleans and out of the White House pressroom. They're seeing arguing. They're seeing bickering. They're seeing a lack of leadership. They're seeing a lack of progress. And that is emblematic of their fears about the economy, about oil prices, about the war in Iraq. You name it. The American people are in a very dark mood and, eventually, that takes down the standing of the president.
To top things off, Cheney didn't have a very good day, either. The crisis forced him to go into a public and uncontrolled situation for a photo op in Mississippi. It was disrupted by a disgruntled citizen using the same type of language Cheney himself used in expressing unhappiness with a Senator once. Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
It's more amazing that 32% American people think we are on the right track. The press is just a constant drum beat of bad news first. If there is anything positive that occurs you can bet it will be immediately followed by several "ifs" that "might" happen to make the alleged good thing a total failure. Things are never as bad as the press makes them out to be.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Or you may not be getting it. I haven't seen the poll, but saying the country is not on the right track does not mean the President is not on the right track. They could very well mean the COUNTRY, both parties, is not on the right track. Look at what happened after Katrina, Democrats came out out of the woodwork to bash Bush. It seemed more important to blame him for everything instead of trying to get people help. Lots of LA government officials were quick to start screaming at Bush, yet they were the ones who should have been acting. There is a ton of blame to spread around, but the Democrats and Bush haters wanted to blame Bush so the press dutifully took up the call for everyone to blame Bush. Now that more and more info is coming out, it looks a lot more like local and state officials are to blame, but now it's 'lets not play the blame game', unless you want to blame Bush, in which case go right ahead. I think most Americans are just fed up with Politics as a whole. The constant 'they said\they said' arguements, half truths from everyone, never knowing what is true or not true, just takes its toll.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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as has been said by many others, it's not only Democrats that have been calling Bush and his administration to task. There's been a lot of criticism from Republicans as well.
Good news is going to be hard to come by over the next couple of weeks. FEMA just turned the debit card giveout into a fiasco - after the announcement they would be handed out, it turned out it would happen only at the Houston Astrodome, where they had a limited amount of them. Luckily, the Red Cross is coming through on this issue. Here's a link to a story on the debit card confusion
quote: BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 8 - After a day of confusion and complaints, officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday that the agency would not expand a trial program to distribute debit cards worth $2,000 to victims of Hurricane Katrina for immediate living expenses.
A FEMA official in Washington said the cards would be distributed at the Astrodome in Houston beginning on Friday.
Reports that the debit cards would be distributed on Thursday morning at the Astrodome, a temporary shelter, brought several hours of mayhem to the complex, attracting a crush of cars and pedestrians that caused the police to shut the gates, locking out thousands of residents in the 90-degree heat.
Meanwhile, in Baton Rouge,David G. Passey, a FEMA spokesman, said he did not know why the program had been discontinued.
And body retrieval hasn't really even started in New Orleans.
There is good news - and people take notice. Gas prices have come down a bit. Survivors are being welcomed and supported in many areas in the country.
But none of that really reflects back on the administration or anyone in political office, for that matter.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote: There is good news - and people take notice. Gas prices have come down a bit. Survivors are being welcomed and supported in many areas in the country
There have been no big banner headlines about those topics as compared to the doom and gloom of certain destruction. It makes political sense to say "hey, I don't like this so I am going to call for an independant panel to review just what went wrong". I'm not sure how Bush can be blamed for much when Louisana is the one truly at fault. They stopped the Red Cross from giving food and water to the people at the Superdome. I don't hear many people reporting on that issue. Nope, just more of blame Bush and blame FEMA. Not hearing too much about the millions and millions of dollars diverted from the levees for 'other projects', just that Bush cut funding. Why not put the blame on the local politicians who misspent all the money for the last decade or two that was supposed to go to levee upgrades? Why? Because you are told to blame Bush and you do just what you are told. NO had an evacution plan that they simply did not do. The state and local officials completely failed in their duties and now are crying that Bush didn't do enough to bail them out of the crisis that they put themselves into.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
quite frankly HERE we've been reading much more blame of NO and LA officials. national news has many Bush Blamers.
I like how when one doesn't like that Bush is getting a bunch of criticism it's all "the Democrats coming out of the woodwork" and not helping.
Not really immune to making assumptions based on prejudice either are you.
Yes, Democrats HAVE been helping and HAVE been concerned about this disaster. JUST about EVERYONE has, even as they leveled complaints or praise, you bet they were sending off donations, or volunteering.
Is it NECESSARY to demonize people you don't agree with, instead of acknowledging your points of contention?
All this pain and suffering and people are STILL calling each other names. Both Dems and Reps are doing it, cons and libs.
posted
"There have been no big banner headlines about those topics as compared to the doom and gloom of certain destruction."
There haven't been? I've seen headlines and news reports on those good things. Front page of CNN.com right now, the first place I looked:
quote: 'Most of them are out'
The sweep of New Orleans to get voluntary evacuees out is nearly complete, and far fewer bodies than expected or feared have been found. "I think there's some encouragement in what we've found in the initial sweeps that some of the catastrophic deaths that some people predicted may not have occurred," said Terry Ebbert, New Orleans homeland security chief.
The full story that headline links to covers the progress of evacuation, good and bad.
quote: New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has said up to 10,000 could be dead in that city alone. State officials have ordered 25,000 body bags
quote: Decaying corpses in the floodwaters could pose problems for engineers who are desperately trying to pump the city dry.
quote: As searches for the living continued, the grim task of retrieving corpses intensified under the broiling sun.
quote: Between 5,000 and 10,000 residents are believed left in the city, where toxic floodwaters have started to slowly recede but the task of collecting rotting corpses and clearing debris will likely take months
This article is just proving my point
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
So, what, it's all sunshine and happiness in your world? This is a terrible situation. It's not going to produce a lot of good news.
Posts: 1357 | Registered: Mar 2002
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none of those quotes have anything to do with blaming anyone.
Or do you mean about the gloom and doom?
A massive hurricane hit, a city was drowned. people died. A BUNCH of people died. People were left homeless with NOTHING, even the clothes on their backs smelling of sewage.
It IS gloom and doom. What do you think is going to be reported now when we are still very near the beginning? It is not time for parties. People still need to be rescued, bodies need to be recovered, water must be emptied.
WHAT is it you want?
There is good news, there are so far fewer bodies than expected. It was in the headlines. That really doesn't stop the situation from being grim.
*edit for spelling and grammar
Posts: 772 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
I don't know what your point is, really. The news is really bad. The fact that thousands of corpses lie waiting to be collected is real. We even got a glimpse of the face of the dead in the recent story on the nursing home where about 30 dead people were found. The dead will come in every shape and color - but the numbers of the old, elderly, disabled and poor (pick your combination) will be a large percentage.
The news is bad. Is it the media's duty to make up some good news so people will feel better?
quote:BATON ROUGE, La. - Amid harsh criticism of federal relief efforts, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff announced Friday that Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is handing over Hurricane Katrina relief duties to a Coast Guard official and returning to Washington to oversee the national office.
“Other challenges and threats remain around the world,” and Brown is needed to prepare for those, Chertoff said at a news conference in Baton Rouge.
Oops. I stand corrected. I'm sure Katrina survivors will be relieved to hear someone else will be in charge now. But I am not really all that comforted to know he's going back to Washington to bring the same skill and care to "other threats and challenges" that he brought to Katrina.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote: quite frankly HERE we've been reading much more blame of NO and LA officials. national news has many Bush Blamers.
Thank you for helping illustrate my point. You are correct, national news has many Bush Blamers. That is my point.
quote: I like how when one doesn't like that Bush is getting a bunch of criticism it's all "the Democrats coming out of the woodwork" and not helping.
Nagin could have gotten those people out, LA's FEMA could have fed and given water to the people at the Superdome, but they didn't. Why? Who told them not? The Governer of LA.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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You've got nothing to be ashamed of. You haven't let anyone down. You voted for what you thought would be quite different from what you got. He has let you down, and the apologize should in a perfect world flow in that direction-not from you to everyone else.
I can empathize. I certainly cringe sometimes when I look at the past and the present...and realize that all I've really got left is that I'm still convinced Kerry would've been worse. And that's just guesswork. All I can really say now is that I wouldn't vote for either of them-then or now-for local dogcatcher.
quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has said up to 10,000 could be dead in that city alone. State officials have ordered 25,000 body bags --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Decaying corpses in the floodwaters could pose problems for engineers who are desperately trying to pump the city dry. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Between 5,000 and 10,000 residents are believed left in the city, where toxic floodwaters have started to slowly recede but the task of collecting rotting corpses and clearing debris will likely take months --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is not reporting facts, but doom and gloom predictions about what might happen.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Did you miss the part where I said "The full story that headline links to covers the progress of evacuation, good and bad." ?
You claimed that good news was not being reported. The article put the good news up front in the headline, focused on what had been accomplished so far and then covered what still needs to be done. That sounds like a good "progress report" type news report. If they ONLY reported on the good it would sound like "There was a hurricane but everything's fine. Don't worry about it."
quote:Thank you for helping illustrate my point. You are correct, national news has many Bush Blamers. That is my point.
If you're going to be snide about it, next time I won't acknowledge when I agree with you. Fair?
quote:Nagin could have gotten those people out, LA's FEMA could have fed and given water to the people at the Superdome, but they didn't. Why? Who told them not? The Governer of LA.
Which has NOTHING to do with whether all democrats have been doing is criticizing Bush and not helping at all, as was your accusation in an earlier post.
Nagin has nothing to do with what other democrats have been doing to help with the situation.
I don't CARE who is to be blamed for what! That is for later. there are still people who need help, who need to be taken care of. And leveling accusation and making sweeping generalizations about all Democrats or Liberals, or Republicans, or Conservatives doesn't really help, and is, frankly, dishonest.
I have to go for a while. We are busy putting together bookbags with school and art supplies for some of the children among the 6000 evacuees coming to our state. It is a useful thing to do.
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There have been no big banner headlines about those topics as compared to the doom and gloom of certain destruction.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote: Which has NOTHING to do with whether all democrats have been doing is criticizing Bush and not helping at all, as was your accusation in an earlier post.
Nagin has nothing to do with what other democrats have been doing to help with the situation.
I do apologize for generalizing and lumping all Democrats together
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by DarkKnight: This was my claim..
There have been no big banner headlines about those topics as compared to the doom and gloom of certain destruction.
And the big banner headline on the front page was "Most of them are out" which sounds pretty positive to me. The "no big banner headlines" was the part I was disagreeing with.
From your later post objecting to the "could be" and "might pose a problem" I can see your point more. I don't think it's unreasonable to provide estimates of upcoming issues, or a body count estimate when a definite number has not yet been reached. But I can see how you can object to that as not being facts about the present, and predictions have more room for spin either way.
My big complaint about the media in general is the bias towards sensationalism. Sometimes that leads to biases left or right, good or bad. In general, natural disaster coverage has always seemed to be, IMO, focused on the large scale devastation and on the small-scale "human interest" individual good.
posted
I guess I am wound up a little too tight about this stuff as well. I think are more on the same page about the reporting Enigmatic...
Lines like "Decaying corpses in the floodwaters could pose problems for engineers who are desperately trying to pump the city dry." bug me because it should be "Debris in the floodwaters could pose problems for engineers who are desperately trying to pump the city dry." which would be far more accurate and lot less sensational. Of course I expect to hear BUT they are decaying corpses in the floodwaters. True, but there is a lot more 'garbage' debris that will pose problems for the pumps than decaying corpses.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Here's an example that I'm interested in hearing people's takes on, since we're talking more about media coverage now than the original BB story. I don't have a link, unfortunately. It was in the local paper a few days ago.
One of the front-page headlines was about hurricane evacuees coming to the twin cities. That's St.Paul/Minneapolis Minnesota, and from the way the headline was phrased I thought "Wow, that's a long ways to go. I thought most of them were going to Texas and other southern states much closer." Then when I read the article it turned out to be about one family who had relatives here in MN, and drove up to stay with them. They left before the hurricane hit. There was an interview and all, talking about how weird it was to think that their house was completely gone now, but mostly focusing on the positive: They were happy to have gotten out safely and to have family that they could stay with.
The question I throw out to everyone: Is this worthy of being front-page news?
To me it seemed like a local interest piece, reaching at straws to find a local connection to a national news story. Nice to know they're okay and with their family, but overall a very small piece when there were much bigger issues to cover at the time.
posted
Today's column in the Washington Post: Where to Point the Fingers, does an excellent and concise job of laying blame squarely on where it belongs: everybody, to varying degrees.
Me, I'm hoping for calm and dispassionate people to assess the current situation -- without trying to score points off anybody -- and determine what needs to happen to avoid this as much as possible in the future.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I think you should be both be a little ashamed. Don't go sticking a knife in your throat, but I think you voted with fear of the unknown instead of casting your ballot from courage in your wisdom, and this is the result.
When we get a chance to vote for Obama, I hope the country doesn't make the same mistake.
Then again, I'm a believer in shame. I think that people who are willing to trade in their character for the illusion of safety should have nightmares about it. Oh sure, it wasn't that clear cut last November, but it was clear cut enough. Be a little ashamed.
I just finished "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," and this passage sticks with me,
quote:"Miss Brodie had led her new class into the garden for a history lesson underneath the big elm. On the way through the school corridors they passed the headmistress's study. The door was wide open, the room was empty....They clustered round the open door while she pointed to a large poster pinned with drawing-pins on the opposite wall within the room. It depicted a man's big face. Underneath were the words 'Safety First.'
'This is Stanley Baldwin who got in as Prime Minister and got out again ere long,' said Miss Brodie. 'Miss Mackay retains him on the wall because she believes in the slogan "Safety First." But Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first. Follow me.'
quote:Me, I'm hoping for calm and dispassionate people to assess the current situation -- without trying to score points off anybody -- and determine what needs to happen to avoid this as much as possible in the future.
Amen, Chris.
I don't like shame, as dictated by my peers. It is much too often used to manipulate.
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posted
John Kerry was hardly an unknown, Irami. And you're right to say it wasn't as clear cut as the situation in the quote.
I don't know if I would've voted for Dubya again-better than even chance not-but I still would not have voted for Kerry.
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posted
I wasn't afraid of the unknown. I was afraid of Kerry. There's a world of difference there.
If Obama had been running, I would definitely have voted for him. That still goes for if and when he's up for presidential election.
Posts: 1903 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Okay - I know this ship has sailed but, what was so wrong with Kerry? He was a lousy candidate, but could have made a good president. He is, at least, aware. Anyone who bothered to examine the issue knows that his position on Iraq (although, sadly, not the same as mine)didn't actually change. And if it had - well, being able to change your mind when you learn stuff is a GOOD thing.
I did get to vote for Obama. TWICE in fact.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Obama may be head and shoulders better than a *lot* and I voted for him. But I'm skeptical about him being clean as the driven snow particularly since his political career originated in Chicago. As discussed on other threads "nice guys" tend to be fantastic people but ineffectual politicians. I think Obama is too good of a politician. However if he's dirty, it doesn't seem to be as bad as most, and probably the right *kind* of dirty for the job.
posted
So I was walking out of the room today when I heard someone at a microphone discussing the policy of not photographing the corpse removal. He was saying to think about the families. Something along the lines of "imagine if you were in Houston watching the news and saw your (insert family member here) being picked up."
Perfectly valid point. He's right. There is something undignified about the whole thing. And horrifying. Imagine being a refugee and seeing a dead parent or child on the news.
But what really disturbed me was what I was thinking.
See, I was thinking "I bet someone in the West Wing said that they shouldn't let reporters film them collecting bodies because it would be a PR nightmare worse than what they are facing now. And I bet someone sent a group of people to some out of the way room to investigate legal ways they could keep the press at bay and this is what they came up with."
I'm sick of being disappointed with our leaders. I'm sick of thinking/expecting the worst from them. I didn't believe Clinton for a second. I think the first Bush was just as bad as this Bush. I never trusted Reagan. Carter I liked, but he was a terrible President. Great guy,I was 10 what the hell did I know? And I don't know if it was that he was a really bad President of if what he was left was just really bad, since Ford and Nixon were so bad. Not that Johnson was rose water or anything. I was 10 what the hell did I know? ( I mean, people keep saying that Clinton shouldn't get the credit for the good things that happened while he was President because they were set in motion by Bush I and Reagan, and that Bush II shouldn't be blamed for all the bad things that happened during his tenure because it was all set in motion by Clinton, so I'm not sure why Carter is seen as ineffective and a bad President when Bush II seems to be doing fine.
I'm just tired of bad, sleazy, ineffective, unaware leaders that I don't believe or trust. Or any combination of bad, sleazy, ineffective, and unaware.
I think it's dangerous to have them running our country.
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That still goes for if and when he's up for presidential election.
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