Gulf Coast Isn't the Only Thing Left in Tatters; Bush's Status With Blacks

[jsamuel]

Gulf Coast Isn't the Only Thing Left in Tatters; Bush's Status With Blacks Takes Hit

By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: September 12, 2005

WASHINGTON

From the political perspective of the White House, Hurricane Katrina destroyed more than an enormous swath of the Gulf Coast. The storm also appears to have damaged the carefully laid plans of Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, to make inroads among black voters and expand the reach of the Republican Party for decades to come.

Many African-Americans across the country said they seethed as they watched the television pictures of the largely poor and black victims of Hurricane Katrina dying for food and water in the New Orleans Superdome and the convention center. A poll released last week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center bore out that reaction as well as a deep racial divide: Two-thirds of African-Americans said the government's response to the crisis would have been faster if most of the victims had been white, while 77 percent of whites disagreed.

The anger has invigorated the president's critics. Kanye West, the rap star, raged off-script at a televised benefit for storm victims that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in Miami last week that Americans "have to come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not."

At the White House, the public response has been to denounce the critics as unseemly and unfair. "I think all of those remarks were disgusting, to be perfectly frank," Laura Bush said in an interview with the American Urban Radio Network, when asked about the comments of Mr. West and Mr. Dean. "Of course President Bush cares about everyone in our country."

<more>
http://nytimes.com/2005/09/12/politics/12letter.html

[texpatriot2004]

1. Is that why the city guy is in the photo? n/t

[JohnnyRingo]

2. I expect Buxh to attach himself to the Sec Of State for a few days.

She polls well by African Americans, and she doesn't seem to mind playing herself as a tool to promote the administration.

[cap]

3. condi has no black political base

and blacks have suffered too much to be taken in by a photo op.

If you notice, photo ops with black people show pretty unethusiastic folks. Even the kids know they're props.

[China_cat]

4. Condi's black? Not so you'd notice.

[Conservativesux]

21. Condi's an "Oreo": Black on the outside and White on the inside.

[AndyTiedye]

26. ...

[noonriser]

33. Condi was out buying expensive shoes while blacks were dying

She's got no compassion for her own people, southern or black. She makes me sick.

:puke:

[mtnester]

20. Or vice verse

wonder which appendage Condi will be attached to?

Just sayin.

[yellowcanine]

25. "to attach himself to the Sec Of State" - unfortunate mind picture you

raised there. Might want to think more about the word choice next time.

[leftchick]

5. 77% of whites disagreed?

That shocks me! I thought it was obvious to everyone except racists who won't admit the truth. :(

[Solly Mack]

6. Made me wonder just who they polled

Because it was obvious - an in your face, under your nose, nudging you kind of obvious

[melody]

29. I doubt the 77% number is true

I think what they respondents might have meant was that it was more an economic issue. I don't think the Reptilicans intended to target African-Americans either (especially after their cynical jerking around of the moderate black vote), but to ignore poor people. Because black people are disproportionately poor, that's where the racism fell in. The racism had a secondary primary cause, imho.

[donco6]

46. Surprises me, too.

Way too high.

[izzie]

7. Well Ya black rich people.

I once read that Bush told his college teacher that if you were not rich you were lazy.Greed will do us in yet.

[truthisfreedom]

8. lazy is as lazy does. bush didn't come in from vacation to watch the news

and that shows America just how lazy an east-coast family's coke-head-boy can be.

[newswolf56]

9. Was Bush indifferent to the debacle of New Orleans as long as he...

thought the victims were just poor folks -- their poverty devoid of racial implications? Note this quote from the story: Bush began moving to provide relief "...after an initial misunderstanding, some of the president's advocates say, of the racial dimension to the crisis." In other words, Bush provided relief only after he understood that withholding it would become a racial issue, damaging to the administration's plans for co-opting the black vote.

In a sense, this is the most damning information yet.

[ninkasi]

18. That was the way I saw it, too

Bush didn't act sooner because he figured that with so many of the victims being black, and poor, it really didn't matter as much. He thought he could get away with it. Because he doesn't care, and the people around him don't care, he assumed that nobody cares.

Indeed, until this tragedy put a spotlight on the suffering of the people, many people really ddn't care. Otherwise, he would not have been able to get away with slashing funds for so many programs designed to help the poorer members of society. His tax slashing rampage was bad, but he was poised to go for another round of cuts.

Those cuts would have come from the people we saw stranded in the toxic waters flooding New Orleans. Cuts to Medicaid, and other safety net type programs. Seeing the people, their desperation, and realizing that Bush had been ready to make their lives even more hopeless, was an error that his handlers must surely have explained to him would be a mistake.

Bush will be forced now, if not to care about them, because I don't think he's capable of it, but at least pull back the most odious of his attacks against poor and middle class Americans. Maybe, just maybe, the rest of America will wake up from the stupor of the past few years, and see that we need to come together, and dedicate our laws and our thinking to helping each other, instead of harming many to benefit a few.

We should start by immediately withdrawing from Iraq. Why cause so much misery and carnage there, when so much cries out for attention here?

[calimary]

23. True. True. True. bush only got up off his own LAZY ass when the

PR started to turn against him, and evidently he couldn't ignore his staffers anymore, either.

So here comes "Captain America" keeping us safe again and riding to the rescue - of his own reputation.

Look at him and concentrate for a moment. What you see is simple. That's what someone who's going to Hell when he dies looks like. Same thing for Mr. "Go Fuck Yourself" - the man who singlehandedly puts the "vice" in Vice President. I feel a sense of deep revulsion even saying their names.

BTW, nobody in that survey polled this particular Anglo female, either.

Sure seemed obvious to me.

Dear God, I hope he pays for it.

PLEASE, DU brothers and sisters, let's us ALL help him pay for it.

IMPEACHMENT!!!

NOW!!!!!!!!

[graphixtech]

10. It’s Not JUST New Orleans That Needs Rebuilding

It’s Not Just New Orleans That Needs Rebuilding
By Bryan Sacks
(more)
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050904221329705

So now, horribly, we know what it takes to stir disgust and outrage directed at the federal government, in the hearts of the corporate press corps. It takes a catastrophe of biblical proportions unfolding right before their eyes, right here in America, right in front of their cameras and camera crews, amid the stench of rotting corpses and a heaving mass of literally thousands of sick and dying.

Katrina’s aftermath has exposed the ‘most powerful country in the world’ as literally powerless to address the most basic needs of the most highly visible suffering people on the planet. This monstrous failure could literally be paradigm-shifting in its effect on the public consciousness.

(excerpt)
While the scope of the tragedy in New Orleans grows, its immediacy will make comparisons to past government-sponsored failures seem inappropriate, and that's understandable. But when enough time has passed, perhaps this colossal failure will enable the public to entertain the similarities between the Administration's failure to respond to Katrina, and its orchestrated failure, represented by the omissions and distortions of the 9/11 Commission Report-- to answer the questions gnawing at victims' family members and millions of other Americans for years now about the true scope of the attacks. The victims of Katrina deserved better, and likely thousands have died because of a cataclysmic failure to respond in time. There should be a full investigation and a complete accounting of the tragedy with consequences for failure and malfeasance. To our great detriment, that is exactly what has thus far been denied all citizens regarding the aftermath of September 11.

(excerpt)
The horror of Katrina's aftermath, even more than 9/11, may prove to be a monumental political turning point. We must work to ensure that, unlike with 9/11, it's a turn for the better. Getting the truth out, both about the scale and disproportionate impact of this tragedy as well as the facts about 9/11 cover-up, has never been more important. The dead and dying in the South, and the dead in New York demand it.


http://www.911truth.org/index.php

[brooklynite]

11. Perhpas THIS is why his reputation in in such trouble...

(from the same article:

Three days later, on Mr. Bush's next trip to the region, the president appeared in Baton Rouge at the side of T. D. Jakes, the conservative African-American television evangelist and the founder of a 30,000-member megachurch in southwest Dallas.

Bishop Jakes, a multimillionaire and best-selling author, is to deliver the sermon this Friday at the Washington National Cathedral, his office said, where Mr. Bush will mark a national day of prayer for Hurricane Katrina's victims. The bishop's style of preaching is black Pentecostal - he roars and rumbles in performances that got him on the cover of Time magazine as "America's best preacher" in 2001. More important to Mr. Rove, he has become a vital partner in the White House effort to court the black vote.
- - -
Perhaps if W spent some time with blacks who weren't fellow millionaires and political cronies, he's have abetter understanding of what people in New Orleans were going through.

[trogdor]

27. What would Martin Luther say...

...about ministers who get rich from their ministries? Not particularly Christ-like, is it?

[formercia]

12. Mehlman hasn't been seen much lately

last time I heard anything, he was trying to convince black voters how much the GOP cared about them.

[Catfight]

13. "what went wrong in New Orleans?"President Bush 2005. That's

how much he cares.

[Roy]

14. This says it all....

""I said, 'Grab some black people who look like they might be preachers,' " said the supporter, who asked not to be named because he did not want to be identified as criticizing the White House."

[Barkley]

15. You know its bad when...

South Africans call you racist

"Africa says slow Bush response to Hurricane Katrina was 'racist'"

Africa has slammed the Bush administration's slow response to the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, a poor and mainly black area, saying it revealed the "racist" character of American society.

"Washington, in a bizarre display of uncaring aloofness in their hour of need, appeared unable to respond to the crisis until days later," the Johannesburg-based The Star newspaper said in an editorial Tuesday.

"The disaster also revealed the racial fissures in American society. Most of the hapless survivors who filled New Orlean's Superdome were black, with the more affluent white residents able to flee in their SUVs (sports utility vehicles) before Katrina brought her misery," it added.

http://www.publicenemy.com/pb/viewtopic.php?t=18738&sid=1

[Barkley]

16. Pickles: "Of course President Bush cares about everyone in our country...

that earns over $1 million per year"

[barb162]

19. you beat me to it

[Barkley]

17. Condi: "the president, would have [not] left people unattended on the

basis of race." - Condi

Here's some (Native) Americans that were left unattended on the basis of their race:

"The fact that Bush preempted his vacation to say something about Ms. Schiavo and here you have 10 native people gunned down and he can't take time to speak is very telling," said David Wilkins, interim chairman of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the North Carolina-based Lumbee tribe.

"He has not been real visible in Indian country," said former senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.). "He's got a lot of irons in the fire, but this is important."

From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."

"Native Americans Criticize Bush's Silence"
Response to School Shooting Is Contrasted With President's Intervention in Schiavo Case

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64317-2005Mar24.html

[underpants]

22. OVER

put a fork in all their efforts to date.

[yellowcanine]

24. Who cares what Pickles thinks?

[Javaman]

28. I just want to say, I'm NOT part of that 77%....

Moron* is a racist, plain and simple. He's* also plain and simple.

Getting the information, like everyone else on here and reading the reports and paying attention, it only lead me to believe that his* lack of responce was completely racially motivated.

colossal racist failure*.

[Raster]

34. Neither am I. There is NO DOUBT in my mind that race AND economic

status was a major factor in the handling of the situation. Pickles can be disgusted all she likes, it doesn't change a damn thing.

[MrBenchley]

30. Grab some black people who LOOK LIKE they might be preachers'

Don't that sum up the GOP?

Wonder if that advice came from Armstrong Williams?

By the way, Bumiller is the imbecile who once said in public that it was "scary" to ask the pResident hard questions.

[submerged99]

31. That was my reaction as well

I thought that was pretty crass advice to be giving. This supporter could have advised him to get aid down there asap. Instead, their main concern was Bush's political standing and they started giving him PR advice. Disgusting.

[MrBenchley]

32. You've got it exactly....

[Moderator]

35. kick

[sabra]

36. Poll finds blacks, whites see hurricane relief effort differently

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/politics/12626957.htm

Poll finds blacks, whites see hurricane relief effort differently

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - The plight of largely black New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is reopening the divide over how black and white Americans react to racially charged events.

Two-thirds of blacks nationwide say the federal government would have responded faster if most of the hurricane victims had been white. Three out of four whites say the federal reaction would have been the same.

"Blacks draw very different lessons from the tragedy," concluded Andy Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan Washington think tank that found the racial chasm in a new poll.

...


One factor that might have aggravated that reaction: Several comments from prominent Republicans appeared blunt or insensitive about the plight of the poor from New Orleans.

[pitohui]

37. this is a comment on our segregated society

i'm white, i know someone who died, i know multiple somebodies whose homes are a complete loss, i know of white areas that were also abandoned by fema, i know of white ppl still missing

if you're black, then you're going to know your black friend or family who have died, black ppl who have lost homes, black areas abandoned by fema. black ppl still missing

fact is, the feds don't give a damn abt any of us, black, white, vietnamese, whatever

they abandoned us all

but it's an unfortunate fact of our segregated society that we only see one piece of the puzzle, our piece

to me, i think the media is responsible for fanning the flames & trying to create a race war at a time when we should all be pulling together

so i feel it ain't abt black or white, it's abt green

but it's no mystery why other ppl might see it a different way

this country has issues

[Caution]

38. Not this white.

I think they are dead on, though i think it is more to do with the poor than blacks specifically.

[bullimiami]

39. The question is not that they are black alone. Its that they are poor,

very poor and heavily black. I dont think there is a corresponding white dirt poor concentration comparable to the minority poor in the large cities.

This couldnt have happened to a group of whites this size in the u.s. only blacks, latinos, or some mixed poor minority group, non minority whites are mixed in, just in smaller numbers.

The poll itself is a bastardization of reality.

[clichemoth]

42. But it basically did. . .

The mostly white outlying areas of south Louisiana that are also completely gone weren't all enclaves of the super-rich. The same goes for coastal Mississippi, which contains some of the poorest counties in the U.S.

The perception that race was the deciding factor comes from the fact that NO, being the major city in the region, received basically all the media coverage. While the majority of the people who were stuck in Katrina were black, an even greater majority were poor.

Bushco doesn't care about poor people period (unless they're recent illegal immigrants* willing to stack the ballot box for Republicans, anyway)

*: Of course, they don't fall for it again after 2 years of seeing American corruption become worse than the nations they left, so Bush has to keep them coming for new batches of dubious votes in AZ/NM/TX/FL/etc.

[shugah]

40. well they didn't ask me!

but that is a poll that can never be accurate anyway. there are too many white people in the US that are racist and know that it is wrong so they pretend they don't "see" it, others that feel guilty about it and bury the fact deep so they don't have to "feel" it, and still others who like to pretend that racism doesn't exist.

[Megahurtz]

41. If the New Orleans blacks were wealthy,

they would be there to help in a heartbeat.

Bush&Corp. lives and breathes for$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[demo dutch]

43. Which "whites" did the Pew poll people interview?

[Lucille]

44. One third of all Americans say Bush doesn't care about Black Americans

There have been a number of polls on race and the hurricane response, and Gallup has done their own polling that boiled the essential question down to "Does George Bush care about Blace Americans?" AS with the Pew poll, most pundits and news reports have commented on the "racial divide," in which Blacks see themselves as the victims of racism and Whites hear and see no evil. Dan Froomkin of the WP gives his peers in the press a little well deserved smackdown on their conventional take on these polls, saying that any way you slice it, this devestating news for the president, and he suggests that only a punditocracy that doesn't care about black Americans would look at these poll results as anything but alarming for the ENTIRE country. Think about it: ONE THIRD OF AMERICANS THINK GEORGE BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT BLACK AMERICANS!!!


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html

--snip
The latest Gallup cuts to the chase and asks: "Do you think George W. Bush does - or does not - care about black people?"

Among blacks, 21 percent say he does and 72 percent say he doesn't.

Among whites, 67 percent say he does and 26 percent say he doesn't. Overall, 62 percent say he does and 31 percent say he doesn't.

Obviously, that's a pretty dramatic rift. But consider the absolute numbers: Three out of four blacks, one out of four whites, and one out of three people across the country regardless of race actually believe that President Bush doesn't care about black people.

Sorry, but the question: "Does the president of the United State care about black people" should be a no-brainer. Of course he does should be the overwhelmingly common answer.

Here's a question for Washington's punditocracy: What percentage of people believing that the president doesn't care about black people should be considered alarming?
--snip

[deadparrot]

45. Was his relationship with the black community ever *not* in tatters? nt