Blame Game Again
by Kevin McCullough

For anyone who had any questions on the matter, the entire pathetic response to the suffering people of Hurricane Katrina was entirely President Bush's fault. Or so they would have us believe.

Two days before Hurricane Rita was to make landfall somewhere west of New Orleans, Minority Leader Reid picked up where the others left off in the post Katrina non-sense. This time Reid was criticizing the effective response of the administration.

"It's nice to have the Bush administration recognize the importance of a federal response to Rita, but why weren't they proactively mobilizing and organizing like this for Katrina," read the statement from the Senator's office.

Liberals, completely unable to deal with the reality, are still trying to swallow the kool-aid that it was Bush's fault for the complete, abhorrent, lack of leadership following Katrina that caused New Orleans to become the crisis of historic record.

Sean Penn calls Bush's actions criminal. Bette Midler implies Bush still has a drug problem. At my broadcast studio headquarters the President's biggest critic won't even concede that he could be a born again Christian. But they do so dishonestly.

Be mindful that it was the inarticulate and incompetent mayor of New Orleans that defied the standing Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation Plan guidelines and left 1500 buses sitting in a school yard - when two days before Katrina hit he could have swept the low lying neighborhoods and evacuated hundreds. Perhaps even the 400 plus people, who turned up in the subsequent sweeps of those same low-lying neighborhoods, who did not survive, could have been rescued . Four hundred dead and 1500 buses speak volumes of incompetence or negligence, but either way , how can it be Bush's fault?

Then, Democrat Cedric Floyd, a suburban chief administrative official for the area was cuffed and his property seized when it was discovered that he had in fact been hiding four truckloads of donated relief items in his own home instead of distributing them to the displaced families he was responsible for. The report indicated that other city officials would soon be indicted as well. The attorney general cited what a horrible discovery this was - as victims of Katrina had literally been begging for these items.

The fed response to Katrina was not in all aspects perfect - or even close to it. It broke my heart to see my fellow Americans stranded and in such pain. But consider, how can the feds work with local leadership if it is incompetent?

It appears the Rita and Houston/Galveston evacuation and civil preparedness plans were well ahead of where they were at that same time in relationship to Katrina and New Orleans. Why?

Competent local officials and good cooperation between local, state, and federal authorities?

That coupled with the fact that the local mayor, chief administrative officials, and other city workers, weren't hoarding the goods to make the poor suffer even more than they already had.

But then again , I guess that's President Bush's fault too. Yes such astounding proof pretty much settles it...

Kevin McCullough is heard daily in New York City, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware on AM 570 WMCA and AM 970 WWDJ from 1-4pm. Adding stations in Chicago, Boston, and 16 more markets soon. Read KMC daily on his web-log at http://kmc.crosswalk.com.

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