THE ENTERPRISE
In the rush to crucify the Bush administration for everything short of "original sin" there are many factors that get purposely covered up by the mainstream media. Of course the insular Bush administration's poor handling of so many areas (like the Cheney hunting incident) makes it a target rich environment for Bush critics--in the media and in BOTH parties!
Somehow, amidst the low point of his administration popularity-wise, I get the gnawing feeling that there are things we either don't understand or have been misled about. I also get the feeling that Bush's very senior (close) advisor group, including VP Cheney have become guilty of a sort of senioritis and a hubris that states "we know what's best for the US and you don't--end of discussion."
The result of such behavior on their part leads to misguided decisions like the Dubai Ports matter, poorly handled incidents which become larger than life media circuses, like the "Hunting Incident" and a raft of real, serious matters that seem to be weaving from progress to misdirection to mishaps (Like Iraq, the budget deficit, the "eavesdropping" incident and more). Somebody in the White house has a tin ear. And there are few administrations that can successfully operate through one and a half terms with few or no major staff changes. The pressure and accumulated "missteps" are just too great.
It is time for Bush to replace a few of his advisors. It is time for Cheney to recognize his limitations and either change his tune or tender his resignation because of his health. This kind of pressure has to be harmful to a man with his kind of heart condition. A while back, there would have been a slate of VP replacement contenders. Now it might be hard to give the job away.
In any event, running a country is different that running anything else--especially a country as big, complex and divided on policy as the US. Being right is not enough. You have to also appear to be right--at least some of the time. And nobody is right all the time--or even most of the time--when it comes to the Presidency. I sincerely hope that somebody who has George W. Bush's ear, and his trust, will tell him that it is time to "re-boot."
All that said, one of the tragedies of recent times was the Katrina disaster. It was mishandled by the elephantine bureaucracy called The Homeland Security dept., and the eviscerated FEMA, led by a mediocre crony. Add to that the total ineptness of the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana, and the natural disaster became an unnatural one; a human debacle. I was as shocked as most at the pictures, many of them on CNN (the Democratic cable news network) and CNBC (its closest contender for that title.). The repeated films of the same people wailing and lamenting "help me" or demanding shamelessly, "HELP ME, DAMMIT," made me sad, disgusted and a bit ill.
Now I have another perspective to share with you, these many months later.
Here is the message as I received it from a friend:
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I don't know the man who wrote this, but I looked at his picture and read it with my mouth hanging open. He says things here that no white man could ever write and keep his job as a writer, and he speaks the truth.
Moral poverty cost blacks in New Orleans
Posted: September 21, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson
Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. Two questions:
---What would you do?
---What would you do if you were black?
Sadly, the two questions don't have the same answer.
To the first: Most of us would take our families out of that city quickly to protect them from danger. Then, able-bodied men would return to help others in need, as wives and others cared for children, elderly, infirm and the like.
For better or worse, Hurricane Katrina has told us the answer to the second question. If you're black and a hurricane is about to destroy your city, you'll probably wait for the government to save you.
This was not always the case. Prior to 40 years ago, such a pathetic performance by the black community in a time of crisis would have been inconceivable. The first response would have come from black men. They would take care of their families, bring them to safety, and then help the rest of the community. Then local government would come in.
No longer. When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results.
Enter Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Jackson and Farrakhan laid blame on "racist" President Bush. Farrakhan actually proposed the idea that the government blew up a levee so as to kill blacks and save whites. The two demanded massive governmental spending to rebuild New Orleans, above and beyond the federal government's proposed $60 billion. Not only that, these two were positioning themselves as the gatekeepers to supervise the dispersion of funds. Perfect: Two of the most dishonest elite blacks in America, "overseeing" billions of dollars. I wonder where that money will end up.
Of course, if these two were really serious about laying blame on government, they should blame the local one. Responsibility to perform legally and practically fell first on the mayor of New Orleans. We are now all familiar with Mayor Ray Nagin the black Democrat who likes to yell at President Bush for failing to do Nagin's job. The facts, unfortunately, do not support Nagin's wailing. As the Washington Times puts it, "recent reports show [Nagin] failed to follow through on his own city's emergency-response plan, which acknowledged that thousands of the city's poorest residents would have no way to evacuate the city"
One wonders how there was "no way" for these people to evacuate the city. We have photographic evidence telling us otherwise. You've probably seen it by now the photo showing 2,000 parked school buses, unused and underwater. How much planning does it require to put people on a bus and leave town, Mayor Nagin?
Instead of doing the obvious, Mayor Nagin (with no positive contribution from Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the other major leader vested with responsibility to address the hurricane disaster) loaded remaining New Orleans residents into the Superdome and the city's convention center. We know how that plan turned out.
About five years ago, in a debate before the National Association of Black Journalists, I stated that if whites were to just leave the United States and let blacks run the country, they would turn America into a ghetto within 10 years. The audience, shall we say, disagreed with me strongly. Now I have to disagree with me. I gave blacks too much credit. It took a mere three days for blacks to turn the Superdome and the convention center into ghettos, rampant with theft, rape and murder.
President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans' black community taken action, most would have been out of harm's way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves.
All Americans must tell blacks this truth. It was blacks' moral poverty not their material poverty that cost them dearly in New Orleans. Farrakhan, Jackson, and other race hustlers are to be repudiated for they will only perpetuate this problem by stirring up hatred and applauding moral corruption. New Orleans, to the extent it is to be rebuilt, should be remade into a dependency-free, morally strong city where corruption is opposed and success is applauded. Blacks are obligated to help themselves and not depend on the government to care for them. We are all obligated to tell them so.
---The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is founder and president of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, and author of "Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America."
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My purpose in reprinting this is to show how the images and impressions that are delivered to much of America as not always accurate, seldom fair and often--downright wrong and misleading. When Bill Cosby made similar observations at a large NYC gathering, he was greeted with stunned silence and even some reproach. But he, too was right.
The same goes for Iraq and many other sad, painful and controversial situations. I often get the question from my contacts who are in positions to KNOW what is happening in Iraq: "How can the new images in the US portray a conflict in which we are losing ground when we are, in fact, making so much progress. The answer is: A FREE, BUT BIASED MEDIA. Nothing in our Constitution guarantees anything about the accuracy of Free Speech. It assures freedom of speech but not truthfulness or objectivity. Thank God there are others telling the truth. At least we can find it IF we look for it--and hope it really is the "truth."
Thank God no one chronicles the crime and murder that goes in on our own Washington, DC (and other major US cities) with the rigor that Baghdad is covered. We would be shocked and alarmed--but that is not news--at least it doesn't portray the part of the news that supports the "agenda" that the (mostly liberal) media has established. The same goes for our Colleges and Universities, where liberal, often extreme left wingers, outnumber conservatives by 7:1, 8:1 or 10:1.
Because of this, people like me feel compelled to write articles like this, in hopes of keeping some kind of balance, adding a different kind of truth (perhaps in my similarly flawed opinion). Does this make the Bush Administration's performance much better? No, probably not. But it might help us perceive it in a different, more balanced light and find that everyone connected with the White House is neither evil nor stupid. They are just "too committed" to their own (too insular?) viewpoints. There are worse errors than this--such as the poll driven policy vacillation of Bush's predecessor, which made him famously popular, but left him standing for everything and nothing particular.
I hope this commentary will stimulate thought, reopen issues that have been pre-ordained, and make everyone a more thoughtful citizen. Forming our own viewpoints, considering varied inputs and then acting accordingly--that is the American way--isn't it?
Best, John
PS: Remember, you are all "leaders"--either by your words or your behaviors, and those are based on your beliefs. Proceed carefully, but lead wisely.
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