We all saw the video of Bush being warned that the Levees could break during Katrina as he sat there reading
My Pet Goat... oh wait, my bad. I'm getting my decisive moments of leadership confused. Where was I? Oh yes,.... as he sat there looking (in the immortal words of Johnny Rotten) pretty vacant. This video was the last thing Bush needed. His ratings were already worse than those of a 2AM infomercial for
Abs of Steel. Needless to say, this was overkill.
So, how do they handel this? The same way they always do: blame someone else.
This time however, the spin isn't working as usual for Bush. His official scapegoat, "Heck of a job" Brownie was exhonerated by this same video. So that puts it into the hands of the archetect, Karl Rove. Unfortunatly, Turd Blossem's
Sit and Spin seams to be pretty much worn out.
More down there...
Once upon a time, Rove would have preplanted fake documents ahead of time in order to diffuse a bomb like this. (And taken out Dan Rather permanetly to boot). But personal issues seem to have taken Rove off his game. In the past, I'd have been shocked to see
The Washington Post pull a stunt this lame. But as we well know, standards have fallen. Check this out.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
Video Shows Blanco Saying Levees Intact
BY LARA JAKES JORDAN and MARGARET EBRAHIM, Associated Press Writers Fri Mar 3, 6:12 AM ET
WASHINGTON - As Hurricane Katrina loomed over the Gulf Coast, federal and state officials agonized over the threat to levees and lives. Hours after the catastrophic storm hit, Louisiana's governor believed New Orleans' crucial floodwalls were still intact.
"We keep getting reports in some places that maybe water is coming over the levees," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said shortly after noon on Aug. 29 -- the day the storm hit the Gulf coast.
"We heard a report unconfirmed, I think, we have not breached the levee," she said on a video of the day's disaster briefing that was obtained Thursday night by The Associated Press. "I think we have not breached the levee at this time."
Here's a perfect example of just how the right wing media works. Bush is blatently caught being forwarned a day in advanced. He has been on the record for several months saying "No one could have anticipated the Levees being breached." So in order to minimize the impact, the Republicans try the same twisted logic here that they have been using in their feeble attempts to link Harry Reid to Jack Abrahmoff. Find any far fetched example, interpet it as oppertunisticly as possible, and spin it. The title of this article, "Video Shows Blanco Saying Levees Intact" insinuates failure upon the part of the Democratic govenor. Upon closer look however, it just shows how desperate the Rethugs really are.
In the Aug. 29 video, Blanco is not shown in the video but is heard as a disembodied voice speaking from an emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, La., to 11 people sitting around a table at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington. She sounds uncertain about the reliability of her information and cautioned that the situation "could change."
Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher said Thursday that "our people on the ground were telling us that there could be overtopping and breaching, but it was hard to tell" by the noon briefing.
Another official who was heard but not seen on the video was then-Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, who was at the federal emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, La. He implored officials to "push the envelope as far as you can," noting that he had already spoken to Bush twice that day and described the president as "very, very interested in this situation."
Brown has criticized the White House for miscommunications that led to some delays. But he said in an interview Thursday he never blamed Bush. He also said there was confusion among officials over whether levees were breached at the time of the noon video conference call. But he said he was convinced of the breach by 1 p.m.
The video shows weather forecasters predicting the storm's path and also briefly cuts to White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin asking Blanco about the status of the levees and the situation at the Superdome in New Orleans.
This video has Blanco giving a general assesment without having yet recieved any official word that the levees had been breached. I don't find any problem here. And I see no reason why the White House should either considering when they themselves finally verified it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
# 10 am CDT (1500 UTC) - Hurricane Katrina makes a third landfall near Pearlington, Mississippi, United States with 120 mph winds after crossing Breton Sound.
# 11 am CDT (1600 UTC) - New Orleans: 10 feet of water in St. Bernard [31].
# 10 am MST (1700 UTC) President Bush appears at the Pueblo El Mirage RV Resort and Country Club in El Mirage, Arizona for a Medicare event as the hurricane makes second landfall. [32] He adds, "I want to thank the governors of the affected regions for mobilizing assets prior to the arrival of the storm to help citizens avoid this devastating storm." [33]
# 2 pm CDT (1900 UTC) - New Orleans officials publicly confirm 17th Street Canal breach [34].
There it is, right there. City officials, the people who are in a position to make the call on the levees don't make a statement about it it until 2:00PM, two hours after Blanco's video statement. There is no reason why anybody with half a brain should find any fault with Blanco in this scenerio. The Washington Post itself can't come up with any criticism of Blanco. Yet, three days after first breaking the story, the insinuating headline for this unimportant non-story is still front paged at their web site. Meanwhile the Bush video, which leaves no questions about his ineptitude whatsoeve, is buried.
In the past, no one in the media would compramise their own integrity by running crap like this. I don't know how much of it is right wing media bias or how much is the Democrats failure in not calling out people who pretend to take this seriously. I guess it comes down to us doing to/for the press what the Constitution expects the press to do for government: Keep it real.