Comparing Louisiana's response and Mississippi's response to Katrina.
 

Let's compare Louisiana's response and Mississippi's response to Katrina.
One major principle of the United States government is federalism. There are certain powers that belong to state and local governments, and there are certain powers that belong to the National government. Local officials are charged with preparing for local emergencies. The national government comes in to help states at the request of state officials. With this in mind, I submit that state and local officials in Louisiana and New Orleans have completely failed the people of that state and city. Compare the response of Louisianna officials to the response of Mississippi officials, and the contrast couldn't be greater.

The following article is from http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2005/0...louisiana.html.

"I read Gov. Blanco's (D-LA) statement too with some weird bemusement. What's been lost in all the blather over New Orleans is that it was really Mississippi that took the big hit. The buildings in New Orleans are still standing; the Gulf Coast of Mississippi basically has been scrubbed, like God took out a pencil eraser and just erased it. (Up in the northern hemisphere, since storms spin counterclockwise, the worst part of a hurricane is the "right-front" quadrant - because the wind is going with the momentum of the storm's movement, plus the wind pushes the storm surge along. The center hit basically at the MS/LA state line, so MS was on the bad side.)

I really don't like to find fault at times like this, but one thing that was missing was a quick recognition that in such a situation the potential for civil collapse is nearly 100%. Once the weather settles, you need to immediately declare marshal law and send in the MPs. That's basically what Haley Barbour did in Mississippi - there were a few early problems but very quickly the MPs were patrolling what was left of Biloxi and Gulfport and keeping a lid on things. Back on Tuesday when I put on the news and we all saw Kathleen Blanco bursting into tears, I knew that was the wrong message and would bring trouble. Louisiana and New Orleans basically have those touchy-feely, "I'm okay, you're okay" soft-leftie types in charge. Their education took a few days and has been expensive.

So I hope you're Watching Mississippi. Highly recommended - we may have found our next President out of this (you heard it here first).

Amidst all the hyperventilating that's going on, it's actually a good time for a civics lesson, particularly watching the competence of the people in Mississippi and the gross incompetence of almost all concerned in Louisiana. Who was responsible for what?

- The mayor of NO has been a good hyperventilator, but one thing became obvious quickly. NO is below sea level and it was inevitable that someday The Worst was going to happen. NO didn't even take the worse possible hit (MS did), but it was clear that no one in NO had ever planned for The Worst. Last weekend, the mayor said, "Everyone get out of town." It's obvious that lots of people weren't able to just load up the car and go - folks with no transportation like that, the incapacitated, patients in hospitals, etc. There was no plan to really evacuate the city, and it's the local officials (over decades) who were responsible for that.

- Why wasn't the National Guard called out sooner to maintain order? Responsibility with each state's National Guard contingent in situations like this (where they operate within state boundaries) is the responsibility of each state's governor. To put it bluntly, the responsibility for calling out the NG in LA rested with the governor. If it didn't happen on time, that's HER failing.

Mississippi got hammered much worse than Louisiana but is barely in the news because the leadership has been much more competent. Ms. Blanco is clearly way out of her league in this situation.

This was a good reminder that LA has for decades been our worst managed and most corrupt state. I briefly caught a bit of the News Hour last night, and David Brooks pointed that out; he also pointed out something that's pretty obvious - for the most part, the South has been booming for the past 25 or so years. The major cities went from backwater jokes to leading cities - Atlanta, Raleigh, Dallas, all of Florida, etc. The "hole in the map" in all of this has been Louisiana - it's like the last 25 or 30 years of southern growth have passed it right by. Get away from the gussified tourist areas and NO is a pretty awful city.

He also asked why we were so good at quick response halfway around the world in Banda Aceh while we seemed so unable to handle something right in the country. That's actually pretty obvious to me. Indonesia was a piece of cake because there was no bureaucracy out there - "What have we got over near there?" "The USS Lincoln battlegroup." "Send 'em in and let the Navy people on site to run the show." Inside this country, you have multiple interlocking bureaucracies that just don't know what to do on their own, let alone when they try to interact...

The most effective response to NO probably would have been to just turn the project over to the Navy immediately and tell everyone else to leave them alone. But of course that wouldn't happen because then all those bureaucracies would be forced to admit that they are much worse than useless when the crunch comes..."

Nice post. I'd add that the television media won't do much in regard to covering this--Katie Couric and her ilk are too busy acting like they predicted this, and had explicit plans in place.

Repeat after me: It's all Bush's fault....

I watched a news interview with Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore today. The reporter was telling him how messed up and unprepared the federal leaders were and until he showed up things were out of control. The reporter said that FEMA should have sent the General there earlier.

The General told him that he was wrong and that they were ready to go in as soon as the storm ended but that the early responders were becomming victims themselves and he could not go on any earlier.

I have heard interviews with General Honore several times recently and he seems to have a lot of credibility.

While I think all levels of government were sadly unprepared for impacts of Katrina, the federal government's response seems especially curious.

For example, it took Washington 5 days to complete the paperwork to send New Mexico's National Guard to Louisiana (from Sunday, the day before Katrina hit, to Thursday, three days afterwards). The same is true for paperwork for several other states.

It's understandable that N.O. didn't anticipate the collapse of its own police force, and the magnitude of the looting. But it's not understandable to me why Washington would take 5 days to approve Blanco's requests for more Guard units.

In any case, this is now a bipartisan question, with republicans Chuck Hagel and John Warner joining the chorus of voices calling for a Congressional investigation into the actions of Washington post-Katrina.

Heres a ref:

Well said, Aladdin Sane. I couldn't agree more. Blaming the Feds for this is like blaming them for a local bank robbery.

I just have one question.

The mayor of NO and the gov of LA stated that the superdome would be able to house up to 30,000 of the city's poorest during the storm. 9,000 came during katrina and 15,000 were there after the storm. The superdome couldn't house 15,000 people for 2 days! Didn't have enough food, water, security. How many days were they expecting to house 30,000 people? 3/4 a way through the storm? The gov and mayor definately dropped the ball on this. their first priority should be to protect their citizens and they did NOTHING.

Governor Blanco, on the day before Katrina hit, asked Bush to declare a national disaster, and requested federal assistance to "save lives", stating specifically that Louisiana did not have the manpower to deal with the likely impacts of the hurricane. This was on August 28. The letter that she sent him is on her website in PDF.

It wasn't until Thursday, September 1, that Washington finally completed the paperwork to send in the manpower that Blanco requested five days earlier. What I'd like to know is: why should it have taken 5 days? That doesn't make any sense to me.

While I agree that there were several balls dropped, by practically everybody including Bush, I don't agree that the gov and mayor did nothing.

Where'd you get the 5 days from?

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=12

----

But I did hear, for the first time today, that a New Orleans newspaper printed an article 7 weeks before the hurricane hit, letting the residents know that the city and state is not prepared to evacuate the poor and those without cars if a major storm hits and those residents should begin preparing now for an evacuation if one is ever needed.

add: Go figure, I hear about the story - then go to drudge and he has it there. whaddya know?

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3kt.htm

I'd have to see the exact quote, but it sounds like you're answering your own question, but you can't see it. The answer is, "the superdome would be able to house up to 30,000 of the city's poorest during the storm." Apparently, they didn't anticipate people still being there five days *after* the storm (whether that was their fault or not) and they didn't anticipate water and electricity being *nonexistent* after the storm, and they didn't ancitipate the security problems after the storm.

So who do we have to elect to anticipate these things?

Scroll up to post #4 in this thread.

They did not indeed anticipate that the federal manpower necessary to manage the post-hurricane chaos would not arrive until days late.

I believe they told all people going to the super dome to bring food for X days. It would be safe to assume the people who showed up after the hurricane hit didn't have this.

Rekna is right, if I remember correctly. Anyone retreating to the Superdome was asked to bring food (and drink?) for...I think it was 3 days.

I remember hearing, on NPR I think, the factoid that the Louisiana state contitution does not even allow for martial law to be declared. If that's true, it was never an option.

I think i heard the same thing, martial law has all kinds of wierd laws in order to be enforced

There's the rub. You can't really elect people to anticipate these things, you have to hire them. Apparently, plenty of people were hired at the local, state, and federal levels who understood this event would occur. The problem is, very few elected officials actually listened to them, and the ones that did, apparently couldn't actually *do* anything about it.

There will be plenty of opportunities for blame-laying in the post-mortem. Nobody's hands are totally clean in all this, from the federal government all the way down to the people who are still there who refuse to leave.

Yep. Here in Miami, we're told that we need to take our own food and drinking water to the shelter. That is not supplied by the government unless a federal disaster area is declared, and then military helicopters come in and airdrop supplies. The day after Andrew, military helicopters flew down here and dropped cold coca cola.

The ball was rolling in washington before katrina hit the gulf states

http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18447

Everything that went on: http://www.fema.gov/news/eventnews.fema?id=4808

There were problems at the local level that prevented FEMA from being as effective as it could have been immediately after the storm. FEMA did no less with katrina than it has done with any other storm.

As far as I can see, there is nothing in your links to support this assertion.

President Bush himself is on record saying that the federal response to Katrina was "unacceptable" and that he intended to correct the problem.

Follow the links, look at other disaters on the site and you will wee no less action taken by FEMA for katrina than with any other hurricane. They are all on there, look around.

What do you want bush to say? "the federal response to katirna was perfect"

FEMA fucked shit up. thats for sure. They were directing truckloads of water to towns that couldn't be reached because they were 15 feet under water, so there are truckloads of water trapped on a road just miles from the people that need it. The coordination was horrible - thats not the president's fault, thats falls on the shoulders of the administration of Louisiana and NewOrleans - they coordinate with FEMA, not the president. Bush actually urged that NewOrleans call for mandatory evacuations on saturday (the storm didn't hit until early am monday). He urged that everyone leave. Mayor Nagin didn't call for an evacuation until 18hrs before katrina hit. Nagin did nothing for his citizens. He could have evacuated the poor, but instead he left these buses to flood.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...vo220/capt.jpg
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b252/stevo220/bus.jpg

Good point. I agree 100%.

Ya know.....raveneye.....you have highlighted the curious phenomena that I've posted about before, when I see it happening. Like <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=1872087&postcount=24">here....</a>, also to stevo.......

I point out to people who give Bush not only an automatic unquestioning pass, no matter what the evidence is of shortcomings in his or his administration's performance, policies, or statements, but defend him and them to an extent similar to what you observe here.....they seem "more Bush, than Bush"!!!.

This is the reason that signifigant numbers still believe that there are WMD still hidden in signifigant quantities in Iraq, or spirited away to places like Syria, or that Saddam collaborated with Qaeda/Bin Laden, even after Bush or Scott MCcLellann went on record denying that they expected Iraqi WMD would be found, even outside Iraq, or that a claim could be made that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda.

This is Bush's base. It empowers and enables him. They wanna believe.....
no matter whether it requires dismissing Plame's 20 years of patriotic service by siding with Rove's machinations and false and misleading white house statements, and by asserting almost with one voice that "she wasn't really an "operative", to parroting any personal "smear" OP directed towards anyone critical of this executive branch, or of candidate Bush, even if the individual attacked has an exemplary record of public service.....or has been highly decorated by the military for past service. Facts be damned.

Yes, facts be damned.

Apparently that is what you think when presented with facts from others, ignoring them like you whine about when others ignore you.

LMAO, the only "fact" that everyone reading politics can see is a small handful of TFP members can't seem to go through a single day without personally attacking host.

Riiiiiiiggght! Because correctly pointing out the hypocracy of ignoring facts when you complain about facts (which are actually just bloated opinions) being ignored is an attack.

Welcome back, btw, Smooth. :thumbsup: How have you been?

-bear

So is it bush's fault the mayor of new orleans decided not to use those buses to evacuate his poor, huddled masses, yearning not to drown??

No, but nothing that the mayor failed to do excuses Bush or anybody else up the line for what they failed to do.

I don't hear FEMA or Bush saying that they weren't still obligated to do the best they could for those drowning people, because it's the mayor's fault they were there.

The state and local culpability is becoming clear
 

It becomes clearer by the day that the local and state governments in Louisianna are mainly responsible for the delayed help in the aftermath of Katrina.

The Red Cross is confirming that it had prepositioned water, food, blankets and hygiene products for delivery to the Superdome and the Convention Center in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, but were blocked from delivering those supplies by orders of the Louisiana state government, which did not want to attract people to the Superdome and/or Convention Center.
(http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html).

Furthermore, as I type this the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisianna are revealing their ongoing confusion by publicly disagreeing over the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. The Mayor has ordered it and the Governor is saying he can't do it without her permission.

Alladin, I assume you just forgot to post the entirety of the Red Cross link.

Some of us are not too lazy to follow a link. Homeland Security is keeping out the Red Cross, as well, for very good reasons as their website states.

Sheesh.

Shame on you for not realizing that Bush should have personally gone to NO and taught every resident to read.

Sounds amazingly siimilar to Rove's latest "OP", Alladiin Sane.......
NY TIMES will make the following unavailable in the next few days, so forgive me for posting all of it. Just making the point that you all seem to repeat the same message, at the same co-ordinated time.....every time.....
And many still don't have the perspective that Reagan was an "B" movie actor, delivering his lines....not a brilliant leader and statesman, as he was so carefully and thoroughly portrayed.

You can follow exposure of Rove's newest "OP".....smear Louisiana's political leaders, to prop up Bush's shakey rep......here:
Compare the posts on this thread to the NY Times description of Rove's new "OP". Some posts, and the first post in this thread, seem like they could be written by Rove himself or by PR staff at RNC headquarters.

I want you to think....ask questions.....verify or refute.....via your own research, the reliability of what I've presented here. Smear filled talking points aimed at local Louisiana politicians of democratic party affiliation are no subtitute for what this POTUS and his administratiion are really all about.....
all sizzle, no steak!

So because we sound alike none of us can think for ourselves? Go back and read ALL my posts in ALL threads concerning katrina. Find the date of the earliest "OP" and "talking points" and keep skirting the issue with a shit-load of articles.

and my [poor taste joke about the dead deleted] wasn't a joke.

Its amazing, this liberal utiopia of Louisiana and New Orleans run by liberals and democrats for the last half a century couldn't protect its own citizens and now its bush's fault. *laugh* *choke*

I was not addressing you, stevo. I was pointing out the remarkable similarity between Alladin's quote, that I highlighted.....and the theme he chose for his thread, when compared to the NY Time article that detailed the Rove "OP", which has come to pass, and can be observed, when taken in context with the examples of the "OP" in action.......backed by all the links contained in the "shitload of articles" (four.....aside from the NY Times piece....)that I posted.

You, yourself "attack" in a partisan manner, and you criticize the amount of content that I posted, but you refuse to address any of the specifics. It's the same almost all of the time. I post content, worthy of discusssion and rebuttal, those who respond, do so by denigrating me or the way I post, mostly by talking out of their @sses.

I've made a well documented case that Rove is running his usual attack and smear campaign against critics, this time in a time of crisis. Bush's base is predictably behaving as Rove's choir. Why not rebut some specifics in the NYT artiicle, or in the other four articles?

Is this not the way Rove always operates? Is it not a smear? Why is the press facilitating it? Is it fair? Is what Rove is planting, even true? I believe that his talking points are not true, I backed my point with foour artiicles that contain numerous links to usually reliable, MSM sources. What does your response consist of ?

Lets try this.

Rove doesn't attack, he reacts. All that is heard from the left day in and day out is attack attack attack the bush administration. Rove reacts to these attacks and defends.

You just cant' get over the fact that for the last half a century the dems had the power and now they can see it slipping away. The only thing they know how to do is attack attack attack. It really is quite amusing.

But I can play the post the article game too. Here's one that spells out why the levee's weren't improved and who's really to blame, since the blame game is so much fun

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.as...20050907a.html and another one

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007219
Please tell me again how this is bush's fault and rove is just an attack machine, because I'm just to thick-headed to understand the liberal POV

I really wish people would stop using this disaster to further their political agenda. All I see anymore on this forum and other places is whining about "well the left did this", or "the right does that." Step out of this box that you have put yourself in, and you may realize that this has nothing to do with left vs right, dems vs repubs, Bush vs everyone else. Our government as a whole failed the people of NO, and we need to stop playing the blame game, and figure out what the hell went wrong.

I'm sorry it went that way. But if you want to figure out what the hell went wrong read the two articles I posted. They clearly show what went wrong.

stevo, Bob Williams, author of your second article, is a conservative commentator for a newspaper known for its partisan bias and unflinching support for Bush. This is a link to comments from readers about William's article. The article and the responses all seem like Rove's talking points choir:http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/...e_id=110007219

Your first article, is written by Jeff Johnson. The results of this google search indicate that he is more of a partisan hack than an MSM news reporter....
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

Your citations back the reporting of the NY Times that Rove is overseeing a thoroughly orchestrated attack on local N.O. officials. Williams and Johnson seem always ready to write on any Rove attack theme.

I posted an article by news reporters ADAM NAGOURNEY and Anne E. Kornblutt of the NY Times. They may be too partisan for your liking, but they are professionals who work for the newspaper of record in the U.S., not known for blatant bias that WSJ is famous for.

this is a politics thread. If what Nagourney and Kornblutt report is true, the main white house effort is cynical, self serving, malicious, and lacking any of the compassion which Bush attempts to project to all of us. Rove is at work, it needs to be pointed out now, while we can observe the execution of the smear "OP" in progress. Watch the "Plaming" of Louisiana's political leaders, we have a branch of it in the creation of this thread and in some of the poster's Rovesque comments.

So are you saying the articles I posted were blatant lies, totally untrue? Is that what you are saying. I don't understand. So rove invented all this. He invented the mismanagement of the funds to reinforce the NO levees for the last decades and he invented local government responsibilities after the fact. Is that what you are saying? Did rove make the hurricane as well? Did he steer it directly into New Orleans to kill as many poor and black people as he could? Is that what you are saying? Because these claims are about as outlandish as yours.

Rove didn't write these articles. He has nothing to do with any of this. I think possibly your deep hatred for Karl Rove is that you secretly are in love with him, totally attracted to him, and don't know how to admit it to yourself. Other than that there aren't many other reasons for your seething hatred of this man who has nothing to do with the hurricane or the local, state, or federal response.

That's pretty funny...

But I think you are too quick to assume that Rove is not madly working some spin behind the scenes. I don't know if the articles you posted are a direct result of Rove's efforts, an indirect result of the same or just a coincidence. Even those who are quick to support Bush can recognize that Bush has been taking a beating in the mainstream press and ultimately did not come out of Katrina looking so hot (regardless of whether or not he did the right thing).

If Rove wasn't busy trying to spin the story to repair some of the damage done to his boy's image he wouldn't be doing his job.


(I've said it elsewhere on this board but will say it again, Bush and his handlers missed a very solid opportunity to build support for their side. Regardless of what he was supposed to do or who was supposed to be in charge, Bush should have at least looked like he was doing the right thing. The photo OP with him playing guitar should *never* have happened. He should have had his ass on the plane to DC as soon as possible and been at least looking like he was trying to make things happen).

Bravo, host. Karl Rove and his band of "thugs" couldn't have smeared any better. Do you have any of your patented references to back up your smear attempts? You provide them to 'legitimize' your opinions, but what about your smear attempts?

Why are your 'sources' are any more valid than stevos?

What is the operational difference between your hitman tactics and those you accuse your friend Karl Rove of?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but, my understanding is that Governor Blanco refused Bush's offer to nationalize FEMA's efforts. Right or wrong, the governor decided to retain control and in so doing, she directs the Louisiana State Homeland Security department, not the federal department of the same name.

Last night FOX News Correspondent Major Garrett reported that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco denied the help of the Red Cross. Tonight, Garrett digs deeper in what looks to be a cover-up and finds out Blanco also denied The Salvation Army. I hope there is a Part 3 to this investigation.

DOWNLOAD and view video here. http://thepoliticalteen.com/video/mgarrett2.wmv

So tell me host. Did Karl Rove invent these stories. Fox new reported on them, no one else did. IS that because Fox isn't news? or because the LEFT controls the media?

Note: The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security is run by the Governor's Office, i.e. Kathleen Blanco (D)

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7000060641 http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2...7/235423.shtml

I thought it might be interesting to just compare Mississippi and Louisiana to start with. As has been mentioned previously, this is a pretty big difference

*************************************************
Mississippi:

Lowest Point:
Gulf of Mexico at Sea Level (source: U.S. Geological Survey)

Louisiana:

Lowest Point:
New Orleans at -8 feet, located in the county/subdivision of Orleans
(source: U.S. Geological Survey)

*************************************************

I think that may be related to the huge difference in the aftermath of the the Hurricane in these two places: The state of Mississippi and a good bit of Louisiana vs The City of New Orleans.

Y'all can now return to arguing about who has better facts and who is more partisan.

stevo, do you ever read or quote any references from MSM print media sources, i.e. those generally regarded as newspapers "of record" in their geographic regions.....NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, or of the original TV network news sources, CBS, NBC, ABC? These six sources are not impeccable, and they do make mistakes and misreport, too often, but they do not seem to fall to the low standard of integrity and impartiality that one of your recently cited <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=1885038&postcount=34">sources</a>, "Cyber News Service", http://www.cnsnews.com/, does.

Background:
stevo, I don't have the nerve or the narrowvision to cite a "news story" by this guy, Bozell's 'Cyber News Service' as one of only two sources that you posted to strengthen your argument. You and your defender who posted followups, conveyed, in the jist of your opinions, that all "sources" and "facts" are equally weighted....and, in effect, cancel out each other. Do I have that right? Is this close to a description of your opinion on the citing of news reports and of other third party sources, in our posts here?

Are you content to receive your "news" filtered by organizations run by Bozell,
Murdoch, Rev. Moon, or philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife?

stevo, get some perspective on how much your own political philosophy and POV has been "shaped'" by Scaife funded "projects". Your talking point about the "LEFT controls the media" is a result of Scaife funding ingraining it into the culture of the right........
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...main050299.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...main050399.htm

stevo, <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/primer.html">more</a> on Bozell, Scaife, and Ruddy.....founder of "newsmax", a source you linked to on your recent post that I am responding to now......

finally, Fox "reports" on N.O. as they relate to assigning "blame" are not news.
They are Rove directed propaganda designed to re-shape public opinion of Bush and Fema, via the usual smear of critics, this time the governor and other political leaders in Louisiana......

So host, you complain about the impartialtiy of stevo,s sources, and then within paragraphs post from this site: http://mediamatters.org/etc/about.html?

Wow...

I do not expect you to like it, but if you bother to research what the article from
mediamatters.org outlines in it's analysis of Fox News coverage of the Red Cross
"controversy", which Fox, itself seems to have contrived and self-promoted, you will notice that every statement, is backed by a link to a source that can be further examined.....the Red Cross website, describing it's federal charter and it's mission, as well as transcripts of all of Fox media personalities misleading statements, and MSM reporting that contradicts the statements broadcast by Fox.

You do not have to like what David Brock has done in just over a year, but you do have to grudgingly accept it. It has become mainstream, with it's articles cited and challenged, more often than not, by columnists and pundits on the right. If mediamatters was not perceived to be credible and effective in challenging the Scaife and Murdoch propaganda that Rove depends on to broadcast his smears, why would it get so much resistance from the right?
It is perceived to expose the falsehoods in the ceaseless stream of misinformation that eminates from Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, et al, because it is successful at doing so.

I cite the articles because they are so rich in links to supporting sources, and they usually do a more thorough job of debunking crap like Fox's fake investigative reporting by it's Major Garrett that Alladin and stevo have offered to this thread as some kind of 'break through journalism", than I could.
You can see for yourself on http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ne...nG=Search+News that associated press member newspapers, TV and radio, are not covering Fox news brilliant report Garrett's investigative "news" about the Red Cross being blocked from providing aid in N.O.

Show me an instance where anyone on the right would make accusations like these against Fox, the Washington Times, or the WSJ, for example.....

Thank you for completely missing, or worse, ignoring, my point host.

I also did some research on Media Matters and Duncan Black and all I can say is that I find the source...questionable. From what I read it seems they put as much left spin on things as the right does. The other side of the Rovian coin, as it were.

Anyway, I would encourage everyone to investigate them on your own and make up your own mind.

I wasn't going to comment, but what the heck. While I may agree with many of host's positions, I think it will be difficult for him or anyone else to make a claim that mediamatters.org is anywhere near non-partisan. I don't think host ignored that claim, entirely...but it would seem a little side-stepping was involved, which I take as a tacit admission of their bias.

I think it's great what they do...which I actually perceive to be less of applying Liberal spin, as much as it is to selectively point out Conservative bias....but I would prefer that they, or another organization, applied the same research accross the board of the political spectrum. I don't know if the Independent Media Centers come closer to this objective or not.

Exactly. My point was that he can't call someone out on their sources when he used sources at least as biased. Especially when he uses one in defense of his calling-out statement.

An awesome AP Katrina pic from today:
funny pic of kid...had to remove...lebell
Caption said she was waiting in line with family, but I'm betting she found tfp's Katrina threads. :D

His first claim seemed to be, biased or not, mediamatters sources their claims.
Regardless of bias, readers are able to follow the links and make up one's own mind.
In that respect, political bias is irrelevant to the factual items they reported on.

The second point host seemed to make was that mediamatters does investigate "left" papers, such as, the NYT.
In respect to bias, at least from the snippets he posted, mediamatters is at least less funnel visioned than rightwing commentators/reporters who would rarely, if ever, question conservative news print.


That's just how I interpreted his reply.

I hear you, and I'm not saying they're the Daily World News or anything. I love Mediamatters...but they specifically say in their about page, linked above, that they exist to excise conservative bias from news stories. I think that inherently gives them a bias. I just wish they would hammer everyone.

edit : In addition, I didn't make the comment concerning the validity, per say, of the sources...only that it seemed that host might be implying that stevo's argument was a little weaker because his sources are biased. Fact is, mediamatters is biased too. If you read through my posts on this subject, you'll find I generally agree with host's position.

i am unclear about what the "media bias" accusation amounts to in this situation: all media sources are "biaised" one way or another--it is useless to hold up some (fictive, absurd) notion of "objectivity"----there is no way around having to read critically.

and i am not sure at all that a simple statement of some (almost inevitably unfounded) notion of the general political line of a nonconservative press outlet, as such, amounts to anything analytically---what is does do is provide conservatives a rationale for beyond avoiding consideration of information that does not jibe up front with their predispositions--the non conservative press, unlike its rightwing correlate, encompasses a wide range of political positions and needs to be read with that in mind.

with the right press in the states, the matter of political line is easier to see and to deal with because the co-ordination of line is such an important part of how right media operates as a whole. the zones are not symmetrical: conservative media is not like other types of media.

the matter of "objectivity" in an information environment which for 20 years or so has been shaped to a significant degree by think tanks/industry groups buying science, buying pollsters, etc. and disseminating ideologically saturated information without acknowledging that saturation does nothing to resolve the problems---many of which are created by decisions taken to corrupt information in the interest of blunting critique. quite the opposite, in fact--in the contemporary press, "objectivity" operates to legitimate often inane conservative positions (for example) because the feature of objectivity that seems to matter these days amounts to the adoption of a kind of he said/she said game: if there is an argument from one "side" it has to be balanced with one from the other "side"--nothing in this even starts to address questions of quality of information--it is a paordy of balance.

holding to it generally benefits the right because it places their arguments on the same level as others. there is little doubt that the right benefits politically from this and that the various groups that operate within its purview have long since figured this out and adapted how they produce information to it. think about the coverage of antiwar demonstrations: you can have a demo of 200,000 people against the war and 35 people for it and the coverage will come close to placing them on an equal footing. he said/she said.

so like i said before, i am not clear at all about what this type of argument about bias, played out at a general level, resolves for you folks, but then again you make your own political bed and who am i to ask you why you do it the way you do? i just do not understand.

but such is the media climate that has been made for us, that somehow we swallow, that somehow--against all judgement--manages to structure opinion. it is a sorry state of affairs.

i would think it would be a nice idea for the folk on the right here to consider host's posts in more detail and maybe even repay the effort he puts into assembling them with a serious reading. it is also a sad state of affairs that this almost never happens. i would imagine that, after a while, he might grow tired of this space. i certainly would understand if he did. i have.

=====
so it is....
for what seem to be obvious psychological and political reasons, what should be a traumatic situation that has unfolded in new orleans--one that can and should function as a wholesale condemnation of the america way of doing class warfare in general (this implicates both "sides" within the reactionary oligarchy that is the united states--a single party state with two right wings) and in particular provides a demolition of everything about the right's conceptions of the role of the state gets diverted into a pissing match about what can and cannot be pinned on george w bush and his band of incompetents. the problems raised by the disaster in new orleans run well beyond this kind of trivia, and it seems to me that there is no way to see this bickering as anything more or less than damage control, not just on the part of folk like karl rove--whose motives and tactics at this point should be transparent to anyone who looks (consider the sequence of fake photo-ops for bush in and around nola, with phantom work crews that are busy busy busy for the duration of the photo op and then disappear, never to return)--but also for individuals around the country, who, for their own reasons, seem to use such bickering as a way pretend to be talking about something fundamental while in fact they work to avoid even beginning to confront what new orleans shows us, and the world, about what the united states has made of itself...the image of america presented across the disaster in new orleans is ugly indeed: better to run away.

but whatever--if the united states were even as democratic as any parliamentary system is, the bush squad would be facing a no confidence vote--one that they would in all probability loose, even given the republicans control of all things legislative. but no--so it is that in the absence of democracy in america, the miserable reign of george w bush continues---and now with the added treat of two supreme court nominations thrown in as if the cosmos was geared around playing an enormous joke on us all.

better not to think about it too much: continue as before.

Thanks Roachboy. That was well written and it pulled me out of the mental death spiral that was reading this entire thread. It should also probably be posted as it's own thread... I can only imagine how that thread would turn out.

Welcome back, Roachboy, even if your return consists of one post.

Man i fell real dumb reading roachboys posts

You might want to do some research before asking that question.
He is a professor, and a well educated one at that.

Sorry for interrupting.

Ch'i , my post #52, here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...09#post2118609

.....continues my expose on L. Brent Bozell III and the gulf that his thinking and influence contributes to the growing political polarization in the U.S.

Wow, that is a strange coincidence.