Tag Archives: Katrina

Videos

Who is better at handling wars and natural disasters? Bush or Obama?

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Here’s the poll from Louisiana voters described in the leftist LA Times.

Excerpt:

Former President George W. Bush showed more leadership in dealing with the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina than President Obama has shown in handling the oil calamity in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a poll of Louisianans released Friday.

Obama, who will make his 10th trip to the gulf when he travels to New Orleans on Sunday, will seek to reassure residents that he remains committed to rebuilding a region still feeling the effects from Katrina’s deadly landfall and flooding. Obama will also reassert his administration’s commitment to the cleanup from the BP oil well leak, the nation’s worst oil environmental disaster.

But a poll of Louisianans by Public Policy Polling shows those reassurances may have a hard time. Just 32% give Obama good marks for his actions in the aftermath of the spill, while 61% disapprove.

By contrast, those polled said that Bush’s leadership on Katrina was better than Obama’s on the spill. A majority,  54%, said that Bush did the better job of helping Louisiana through the hurricane crisis compared to the 33% who chose Obama, PPP said on Friday.

That 21-point spread was more than when PPP asked the same question in June and found Bush ahead by 15 points.

Louisiana is a purple state – half red and half blue. They’ve been trending red lately under the governance of the highly competent Bobby Jindal, but they still have a ton of Democrats in high positions.

Who was right about Iraq? Bush or Obama?

Here’s a video that shows who wanted the surge, and who opposed the surge. (H/T Hot Air)

The surge worked. We won. Our troops are coming home. The total cost for both wars (about 700 billion) was far less than the 3 trillion dollars in deficits that Obama has run up since he was elected. And remember, Obama spent that money on studying Chinese prostitutes and on building tunnels for turtles, and similar projects to reward the people who voted for him. That’s why unemployment is still so high.

My previous post showing (with videos) who was responsible for the housing bubble recession, and who tried to stop the recession.

Who’s really extreme?

I found this video at Peter Sean Bradley’s blog.

Remember in November!

UPDATE: Gallup poll finds that more Iraqis approved of US leadership under Bush than under Obama.

UPDATE: More fatalities in Afghanistan under two years of Obama than under eight years of Bush.

Videos

Reason TV investigates school choice reforms in Louisiana

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First, here’s the story from the libertarians at Reason TV.

Before hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, New Orleans had one of the worst performing public school districts in the nation. Katrina forced nearly a million people to leave their homes and caused almost $100 billion in damages. To an already failing public school system, the storm seemed to provide the final deathblow. But then something amazing happened. In the wake of Katrina, education reformers decided to seize the opportunity and start fresh with a system based on choice.

Today, New Orleans has the most market-based school system in the US. 60% of New Orleans students currently attend charter schools, test scores are up, and talented and passionate educators from around the country are flocking to New Orleans to be a part of the education revolution. It’s too early to tell if the New Orleans experiment in school choice will succeed over the long term, but for the first time in decades people are optimistic about the future of New Orleans schools.

And then the videos.

Part 1:

Part 2:

School choice works – let’s hope they can keep the unions and bureaucrats away from the kids long enough so that they can get an education. I’m not a big fan of libertarians, because they are often lousy on social issues and foreign policy. But I agree with them on school choice.

Don’t miss the previous story about Governor Bobby Jindal’s pro-life reforms in Louisiana.

News

BP bused in 400 temp workers to clean an area for Obama’s photo-op

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Yahoo News reports. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Perhaps you saw news footage of President Obama in Grand Isle, La., on Friday and thought things didn’t look all that bad. Well, there may have been a reason for that: The town was evidently swarmed by an army of temp workers to spruce it up for the president and the national news crews following him.

Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts, whose district encompasses Grand Isle, told Yahoo! News that BP  bused in “hundreds” of temporary workers to clean up local beaches. And as soon as the president was en route back to Washington, the workers were clearing out of Grand Isle too, Roberts said.

“The level of cleanup and cooperation we’ve gotten from BP in the past is in no way consistent to the effort shown on the island today,” Roberts said by telephone. “As soon as the president left, they were immediately put back on the buses and sent home.”

Roberts says the overnight contingent of workers was there mainly to furnish a Potemkin-style backdrop for the event — while also making it appear that BP was firmly in command of spill cleanup efforts.

[…]News of 11th-hour spruce-up brigade spread rapidly Friday afternoon and infuriated locals. One popular radio host, WWL’s Spud McConnell, suggested that the Coast Guard and the White House may have been involved in setting up the “perfect photo op.”

Obama was more interested in public opinion than in actually doing something. He cares about being elected – not about doing anything useful.

Obama connections to BP and big oil

Barack Obama was the top recipient of contributions from BP over the last 20 years.

Excerpt:

BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Donations come from a mix of employees and the company’s political action committees — $2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals.

On top of that, the oil giant has spent millions each year on lobbying — including $15.9 million last year alone — as it has tried to influence energy policy.

During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.

[…]Former [Democrat] Rep. Jim Turner, now a lobbyist for BP with Arnold & Porter, formerly represented the 2nd District of Texas, which includes a large piece of Gulf shoreline. And at the Podesta Group, BP lobbyist David Marin was formerly the lead Hill staffer for Congress’s Select Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina.

And worst of all, Hot Air notes that Obama proposed down-sizing the Coast Guard crisis center 3 months before the spill.

Remember: it’s not just big oil, it’s big bankers, too

Obama gets lots of contributions from big banks.

Excerpt:

The world’s top-earning hedge fund managers have bankrolled almost exclusively Democratic campaigns.

The top 10 highest-paid hedge fund managers in 2009 have dished out campaign contributions almost only to Democrats.

Over their lifetimes, those managers have given almost $33 million in campaign contributions to Democrats, according to research by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and that is based on data maintained by the nonpartisan CQMoneyline.

The same managers gave roughly $600,000 to Republicans, according to the research. The contributions went 98 percent to Democrats and two percent to Republicans.

Democrats and big corporations are two peas in a pod.