Bush Says He May Need More Power In Disasters

[smb]

He wants Congress to look into whether presidential authority should be expanded in times of catastrophes like Katrina

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday urged Congress to examine whether the White House needs stronger powers to deal with catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina.

Bush's backing for the congressional inquiry raised the possibility that lawmakers might expand presidential authority to:

• Order mandatory civilian evacuations

• Dispatch U.S.-based armed forces for emergency search-and-rescue operations

• Grant wider leeway for active-duty U.S. military personnel to carry out law enforcement operations....

Personally, I think he needs more brains, not more powers.

[Skarbrowe]

1. More brains, less power! More brains, less power!

When will this nightmare end?

[liberalnurse]

2. Fuck NO!

He is already in a lame-duck term.......

[skooooo]

3. that should go over like a lead balloon

[Walt Starr]

4. That's his answer for all of his screwups

He has more power than any other human being on the face of the planet, yet every time he screws up royally, his answer is, "give me more power, cap'n, I can't hol her, she's breaking up!"

[Horse with no Name]

5. Hey Bush

When you completely utilize the power that is given you to the full extent...THEN we can talk about more.
I figured they had an angle for this.
The fucker wants to completely take the states over if there is a disaster.:scared:

[whirlygigspin]

10. all hail the great and powerful Oz

All he needs is the power to hold up a newspaper or turn on a tv, fuckin retarded bastard.

[texpatriot2004]

6. He's isn't responsible with the the power he has now.

He can direct the Congress - they have the authority to act - we just need a president who can figure out when it's not a good time to be on "vacation."

NO MORE!

[FourStarDemocrat]

7. He's already powerful in disasters, he causes enough of them.

That's why he should always be known as the Disaster President.

[BlueEyedSon]

8. so he can FUCK UP even more???

[Murdock]

9. Sadly....

Right on schedule... abolish Habeus Corpus, Check.. The blueprint for dictatorship is almost done..

And people here seem to think Bush is a lame duck, hardly. He'll get all the power he wants and then some.

[TheFriar]

you are right

The dems will hurry to abdicate all power to the fascists.

I have no party :cry:

[meow2u3]

11. Any excuse to try to make himself dictator

STP to GWB: we ain't buying what you're selling!

[EnfantTerrible]

12. And those"Disasters"

would be his Presidency.

[Raster]

13. reward a serial incompetent with more power and control?

I'd rather stick pins in my eyes. No fucking way. In the reality-based world we don't reward failure and tragic incompetence.

[msrbly]

14. Seriously, is this man on crack?

[Verve]

15. God no!

No more power for you. You can't handle what you've got.

[charlie]

16. I accept responsibility

but my hands were tied. That's his angle. That, and another Republican-bcked lurch toward authoritarianism.

[GayCanuck]

17. Doesn't sound unrealistic to me

A teaching assistant friend of mine at McGill wrote this and I don't find it too off base on just how evil bush and his cronies are:


We progressives must look at the root causes for the Katrina disaster to decide of the proper course of action. Throughout the history of humankind there have been natural disasters; from the destruction of Pompeii to the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 to the tsunami in Indonesia earlier this year. They are unavoidable and are displays of the awesome power of the natural forces of our fragile earth. Many respected scientists worldwide accept the fact that our earth is in turmoil, particularly as it relates to global warming. Most scientists agree that global warming is not a natural phenomena but a human created one. The earth’s atmosphere is getting warmer and the consequences of this new condition we face is one we can not survive unless we act now. There is no more important issue facing the human race. Those that chose to do nothing are nothing less than criminal and should be labeled genocidal. Our newest disasters are no longer natural phenomena, they are symptoms of global warming brought about by the greed of a few. I take it a step further; I believe the latest disasters such as Hurricane Katrina are engineered by an elitist group of multinational companies in the oil business with their bidding done by unscrupulous politicians like the Bush family, Tony Blair, the House of Saud and the likes of Kenneth Lay of Enron infamy. Every drop of oil we squeeze from the earth’s depths moves us that much closer to our own destruction. Newton’s law bears this out “for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction”; we are seeing that now. The earth has been thrown completely out of balance, beginning with the industrial age, exacerbated by the immoral and illegal dropping of atom bombs on Japan and the destruction of fragile desert lands in the mideast through oil drilling and illegal wars. Never before have we witnessed such destruction on earth and the unusual number of hurricanes we have experienced is no coincidence. I believe as many others do that the diabolical forces here on earth in the form of evil, radical capitalists have learned to take advantage of global warming and actually produce and direct “natural” disasters to specific places they so chose. It’s no coincidence that Katrina struck New Orleans; it was directed by these evil forces to strike a very poor and exploited population in the United States. Why? New Orleans is a gateway city for oil production; most of the oil produced in the Gulf and from all over the world makes it’s way through the Mississippi river delta, specifically through the port of New Orleans. The capitalistic oil criminals have chosen New Orleans as their base camp and to spread their illegal influence throughout the Gulf region. The first step was to rid, through genocide the population there, something they have no problem with given most of the population is African American. Racism is part of the collective fabric of oil capitalists and genocide the likely offshoot. They are killing an entire city. Within three years the demographic makeup of New Orleans will be white and Republican. How did they create such a storm and direct it’s genocidal path to one of the poorest cities in North America? The secret is kept but environmental investigative scientists say it’s completely possible. By strategically seeding the Gulf Stream with massive amounts of toxic supercarbons and overheating the ocean it is possible to create so many storms, many of which turn into full blown hurricanes and then it is just a numbers game; create enough and cities like New Orleans become fair game. It’s no wonder our coral reefs in the Atlantic and Caribbean are dying; they are being mass poisoned to create these storms. The Bush administration, of course, is behind this project. We never saw this many storms under any other administration. The Bush regime is the new evil empire, but never before have we witnessed, even in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan such a plot on such a massive scale to wipe out whole segments of society through capitalism and racism gone out of control. So the root cause of Katrina is obvious, it is a massive genocidal plot engineered by some of the most evil men in history for pure greed and hate.

[TahitiNut]

24. I don't believe it's reasonable ....

... to confuse an excellence in exploiting an event for narrow advantage with some inferred precipitation of that event, lacking other tangible evidence. I think it's clear, for example, that the corporatist reich engaged in activities that exacerbated the conditions giving rise to the events of 9-11. Those events were foreseeable, both in general and in the vague specifics. Indeed, the very foresight of such events informed the deliberate exacerbation and observed exploitative acts.

In the aftermath of Katrina, it's absolutely assured that the corporatist reich will again attribute its own inaction to the very shackles the Constitution wisely attached to the appendages of government. It's the repeated variance on the same theme: more power, more power, more power. The demon in the bottle is indefatigable in using seduction and coercion to gain its unhindered freedom. It's an age-old threat, spoken of in both history and myth - a siren song inviting death upon the rocks.

[havocmom]

26. Ahem, 'we progressives...'

don't think the 'root cause of Katrina' is anything but weather. The cutting of funds for levee repairs and rescue/relief problems and snafus however, are symptomatic of policies of greed and hate.

:popcorn:

[newyawker99]

35. Hi GayCanuck!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[stellanoir]

18. He wants the power to ignore a unprecedented crisis

for more than three days ???

[wryter2000]

19. "capability"

In his mea culpa yesterday he said the the federal capability wasn't what it should have been. There was plenty capability. It wasn't used because of incompetence and indifference.

[Ready4Change]

20. Why? He didn't use the power he already has during Katrina.

If you only use one hand to swing a baseball bat, getting a bigger bat won't help.

Unless you have other plans for the bat.

[tabasco]

21. Yeah, I see his point.

The President of the USA really doesn't have that much power.

Stupid fkkking incompetent jackass !

His old man didn't need more power to deal with Hurricane Andrew. I was active duty military out of Fort Drum, NY and I was on the ground in Homestead two days after Andrew hit, along with thousands of active duty troops.

Bush's problem is not enough power - it's not enough leadership ability, humanity, and intelligence.

[Coastie for Truth]

23. Coupled with a thoroughly political AGENDA -- N/T

[Coastie for Truth]

22. He has the statutory power - he lacks the competent people!

Bush does not need more statutory power. He already has it -- just read Titles 5, 10, and 50 of the United States Code. The statutory power and authority is there.

What he needs is the cadre of (apolitical, nonpartisan, bipartisan) competent and dedicated people. That is what he lacks - those are the very people that he purged. Those are the very people that he replaced with people who would swear personal loyalty to Georgie.

It did not begin with the battle over collective bargaining in DHS. It was much earlier - when Reagan crushed the Professional Air Traffic Controller's Union.

It continued with the "collective bargaining" (more correctly, "no collective bargaining") provisions of the DHS law.

It continued with incompetents like Alpaugh and Brown and Rhode in FEMA.

The issue is NOT statutory power and authority. The issue is competent, dedicated PEOPLE.

"Coastie"
Lieutenant, United States Coast Guard (Honorably Discharged)
Coast Guard Haz Mat Officer, New Orleans LA
Red Cross Disaster Assistance Team Captain/Mass Shelter Supervisor
Amateur Radio Emergency Operator (RES/RACES/Extra Class License)

[Bernardo de La Paz]

25. Good catch. Important to stop power grabs. Nominated.

[WiseButAngrySara]

27. This is why he claimed responsibility for Katrina, IMO. Not to protect

Brown, but to request greater powers for his WOT. FEMA's incompetence was planned and was intentional, and allowed him to request an increase in power while pretending to accept blame. Understandinglife had an excellent thread yesterday on the intentionality of FEMA's Katrina response...I'll find the link.

[WiseButAngrySara]

31. Here's the link to USL's thread. It's excellent. Please read.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4760655

See Post #41...

[Rob H.]

28. Correct me if I'm having a tinfoil hat moment

But isn't allowing him those three specific options just a sneaky way of giving him the power to declare martial law without coming out and calling it martial law?

And notice that it says, "Bush's backing for the congressional inquiry raised the possibility that...." Does that mean he'll withdraw his support from his sham investigation of himself if they don't give him what he wants in the way of expanded presidential authority?

:tinfoilhat:

Agreed, too, that if he doesn't use the powers he has now--to say nothing of using them responsibly--the answer is not to give him even more.

[kentuck]

29. No way....

Kids should not be permitted to play with matches.

[buzzard]

30. I don't think it is a bad idea for the president to have more powers

when it comes to major catastrophes especially if it would allow for real cooperation between the different facets of government that normally have to follow a set protocol. The problem here is it is Bush that is in control and he doesn't make the best decisions.

[rman]

32. The Fed govt has plenty power,

all it needs to do is use it at the right time, instead of waiting several days. And of course, make sure the various agencies do what they are supposed to do, instead of the opposite (FEMA).

[Orsino]

33. We need more president in disasters. n/t

[mtnester]

34. Told ya so...link to where I said it too

not very coherently as you will see, cause I was pissed, but here ya go:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4757603&mesg_id=4757935

It WILL get worse kiddies.