Hello, Kossacks:
Last week, I posted a diary about the Dallas Morning News beginning to question Bush. Many of you read it and posted opinions -- most skeptical -- that our famously right-loving rag was actually shifting it's position on Bush.
With an editorial today, they clearly have thrown in with Anderson Cooper and Paula Zahn, adding their voice to all of the other right-wing critics of this administration. The death and destruction in New Orleans appears to be the final straw.
Excerpts below:
The title alone says it all:
Who Is in Charge? Response too little, too late for New Orleans
The lead, then, minces no words:
A gut-wrenching disconnect between the nation's top leaders and the unfolding tragedy in New Orleans revealed itself yesterday.
They then compare and contrast the federal response to the situation on the ground:
As a federal official in a neatly pressed suit talked to reporters in Washington about "little bumps along the road" in emergency efforts, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued an urgent SOS. The situation near the convention center was chaotic; not enough buses were available to evacuate thousands of survivors, and the streets were littered with the dead.
Then, they head for the Shrub:
Moments later, President Bush took center stage and talked at length about the intricacies of energy policy and plans to keep prices stable. Meanwhile, doctors at hospitals called the Associated Press asking to get their urgent message out: We need to be evacuated, we're taking sniper fire, and nobody is in charge.
They then list the atrocities, speculating on the reaction of the evacuees lucky enough to make it out on what they're seeing now:
...Imagine their anguish as they read on NOLA.com about desperate pleas for help from St. Bernard Parish, where 30 people died in a nursing home before another 30 could be evacuated. Or from a church on Willowbrook Drive, where more than 300 people were reported trapped in sewage up to their necks. These accounts carry a familiar refrain: We've called for help, and no one has come.
Then, they ask the money question:
Who is in charge?
And another:
...How is it that the U.S. military can conquer a foreign country in a matter of days, but can't stop terrorists controlling the streets of America or even drop a case of water to desperate and dying Americans?
Then, they bring it home:
President Bush, please see what's happening. The American people want to believe the government is doing everything it can do - not to rebuild or to stabilize gas prices - just to restore the most basic order. So far, they are hearing about Herculean efforts, but they aren't seeing them.
Folks, a new day is dawning. Anybody with any sort of a brain or soul is beyond horror at the human suffering on the ground in NOLA today.
When the death toll is finally in, every one of those deaths is going to reverberate at the polls in 2006.
And if our elected Dems don't start stepping up to the plate immediately, they're going to go down with this rapidly sinking ship.
