The Centralia Chronicle nails it: Democrat's claim of Bush racism is ludicrous

Democrats, generally, delight in blaming Bush for everything imaginable. It's much like their "default mode."

"Katrina happened," many democrats believe,"so let's blame everything about it on Bush!"

And, of course, that includes... PLAYING THE RACE CARD!

It is so obvious... so blatant. I watch this and I ask myself, "do minorities actually buy into this crock of horse pucky? Do they honestly BELIEVE this nonsense?"

I see it as a sign of desperation, not unlike democrat efforts that have and will lead to the spilling of American blood in Iraq.

We are viewing partisanship at it's worst. Nothing gets run through the "good of the Nation" filter before it's puked out for the world to walk through. Those who make their allegations, whether it be a comparison of American military forces to NAZI's or, in this case, Berendt's malicious stupidity in furthering the preposterous idea that this President, who has the highest minority percentage in the Executive in the history of this Country, would engage in a race-based relief effort.

Neither side can afford to put the betterment of their political position ahead of the betterment of the Country.

Yet our local democrat whacko party chair, Berendt, insists on this kind of garbage?

The Chronicle nailed it when they nailed Berendt. Should we hold our breath until the MSM of this state follows suit?



Thursday, September 15, 2005
Democrat’s claim of Bush racism is ludicrous

No surprise that the chairman of the Democratic Party in this state, Paul Berendt, was happy to join other hacks in his party to blame President Bush, a Republican, and only Bush and his administration, for shortcomings in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, particularly related to New Orleans.

It’s also no surprise they just can’t bring themselves to be fair and also assign some accountability to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. The reasons for that are that Blanco and Nagin are fellow Democrats and it wouldn’t be politically correct as a Democrat to go after a woman (Blanco) or black (Nagin).

Berendt is highly partisan, and one can’t expect such people, in either party, to always be fair, or be fair at all.

Louisiana U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, wasn’t fair either the other day on Fox News Sunday when she just couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge any fault with the way Blanco and Nagin handled the response in New Orleans, yet was quick to blame Bush and the Republicans, going back to the Reagan administration, for what happened in that city.

She did this after just having said she wasn’t going to get involved in the blame game. Such hypocrisy.

But what is even worse is the race baiting in which some white liberals, such as Berendt, are engaging. Berendt said this week the response to Katrina in New Orleans showed “a big racial divide in this country.

‘‘The images from New Orleans were a horrible public relations disaster for the Republicans. It just showed that the federal government wasn’t going to go in and rescue poor black people.”

But the U.S. Coast Guard is part of our national government, under President Bush as commander in chief. The Coast Guard was very visible in its immediate response to the hurricane, flying hundreds of dangerous rescue missions to pluck mostly poor black people off their rooftops, mostly in New Orleans.

These were poor black people that Nagin, for whatever reason, as mayor of the city did not ensure were evacuated even as a category 5 hurricane, the worst, neared his city that was protected for only a category 3 storm. Had he done so, including with a large fleet of city buses that sat idle, he could have spared tens of thousands of poor blacks the deprivations and misery they suffered when more than 80 percent of the the city was flooded in Katrina’s aftermath. Surely, any responsible evacuation plan would have designated and properly provisioned temporary shelters outside the city to house these unfortunates, unable to get out on their own.

And these are the same poor blacks, stuck in the misery and squalor of the inadequately provisioned Superdome and convention center in the city after the flood who Gov. Blanco could have helped earlier than she did. She could have seen to it that the Red Cross and Salvation Army in staging areas nearby were able to go in to provide temporary relief for these people, but at a critical stage she misjudged in stopping them.Instead of helping to close what racial divide remains in this country, Berendt with his nasty racial smear of Republicans and the Bush administration helped to widen any such divide. Does Berendt imagine such irresponsible, totally unfounded allegations (which regrettably are commonplace among too many so-called black leaders in this country) help race relations?

The notion that the Republican Bush administration was motivated by racism in its response in New Orleans is patently untrue, preposterous and insulting in the extreme. Berendt ought to be ashamed of himself. Apparently he is one of those white liberals who seek to continue to instill in blacks and other minorities that they are victims of white racist Republicans and that Democrats are their saviors. They bestow this victimhood and dependency status in order to preserve the minority vote for themselves and their agenda.

Blacks in New Orleans should totally reject such insulting, patronizing condescension and ask themselves if white liberals truly care about helping them become independent, self-reliant and self-sustaining Americans instead of welfare wards.