February 5th 2009
Obama’s Katrina
P
eople – mostly poor, rural white folks – have been dying and suffering in Kentucky and adjacent states in a natural disaster, and Barack Obama’s FEMA is pretty much just letting them die – without a peep from the media that was so ready to bash Bush following Katrina.
There’s a difference in scale of mortality here – 50 or so vs. 1,800 or so, including 700 in New Orleans, the center of the media storm – but aside from that, the ice storm and hurricane catastrophes and the federal responses to them are remarkably alike. People, particularly the poor, are suffering over a large area. Access, especially in the days immediately following the storms, is challenging. Infrastructure for which the federal government has oversight responsibility is down – the power grid now, levees then. And FEMA is nowhere.
This week, Joshuapundit’s entry in the Watcher’s Council blogfest, Obama: “Screw Kentucky,” details this situation and questions the response:
And where is President Obama? Hosting his Superbowl party and relaxing in his nice warm office while women, kids and old people are freezing to death.
I can’t help but ask the question…is the fact that these people are mostly white and predominantly GOP voters have anything to do with the president’s decision to ignore this disaster?
That might come off as shockingly harsh, but check out some of the background JP provides:
Local officials grew angrier at what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In Kentucky’s Grayson County, about 80 miles southwest of Louisville, Emergency Management Director Randell Smith said the 25 National Guardsmen who have responded have no chain saws to clear fallen trees. He said roads are littered with fallen trees and people shivering in bone-chilling cold are in need. (source)
And:
“I’m not saying we can’t handle it,” Smith said. “We’re handling it. But it sure would have made life a lot easier.” ~ Randell Smith, Kentucky Emergency Management Director.
The excuse given by FEMA spokes woman Mary Hudak was, “We have plenty of folks ready to go, but there are some limitations with roads closed and icy conditions.”
Were the media and the Congressional Dem leadership buying it when FEMA pleaded flooded roads as an excuse for slow and sloppy response after Katrina? Of course not! Questions were asked, accusations were flung. But not this time around; Hudak got a pass, as JP is quick to point out:
If this had been the Bush Administration and the residents were primarily black, do you really think that sort of excuse would wash? Or would this story be front page headlines throughout the nation,and rife with accusations from the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Julianne Malveauxand their ilk of racism?
I know these small towns and their people. I lived very happily in Kentucky for five years and enjoyed many road trips through the countryside, stopping in small towns like Grayson and Glasgow, where the people were friendly, the food tasty and the scenery beautiful. They are just as deserving of federal assistance as the people in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, but they had to suffer day after day without power, without heat, and far too many died while Obama did nothing.
He still sits in Washington, not bothering to take a helicopter tour, not interested in dropping some of this trademark hope on a people who need it. And he has gotten virtually a complete pass for the atrocious performance of his FEMA and himself.
Speaking for the pro-Obama media, AP conjures this story out of nothing more, really, than hope and cover-up:
FEMA gets decent marks for its ice storm response
EDDYVILLE, Ky. (AP) — In the first real test of the Obama administration’s ability to respond to a disaster, Kentucky officials are giving the federal government good marks for its response to a deadly ice storm.
Yet more than 300,000 residents remained without power Monday and some areas had yet to see aid workers nearly a week after the storm, a fact not lost on some local authorities.
“We haven’t seen FEMA. They haven’t been here,” said Jaime Green, a spokeswoman for the emergency operations center in Lyon County, about 95 miles northwest of Nashville, Tenn.
How do you get “decent” marks when you haven’t even been seen? Life and death emergencies aren’t the school classrooms of today, when even abject failures get passed along to the next level with a “decent” grade.
Or perhaps they are just that under Obama, as long as it’s rural whites who are dying.
