Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Partisan Sniping

When Republicans do it, it's partisan. When Democrats do it, they're trying to improve government.

Here's an example of when the Democrats, in what can only be described as partisan sniping, were clearly wrong--as evidenced by Hurricane Katrina. I wonder if they'll cop to it.

Actually, no, I don't wonder at all. I already know the answer.

4 comments:

Wulf said...

Nice find. Sad but so true.

Darren said...

Actually, Walter, I think I will. Thank you :)

Anonymous said...

I read the first few of the links in the referenced article, (there's quite a few, and to be honest, I couldn't be bothered to read all of them...) and found that they didn't say what they were purported to say.

There are three separate things attributed to Tom Ridge which are discussed, namely:

1) storing 3 days of food + water, and a bunch of other stuff

2) buying duct tape and plastic sheeting to defend against a gas attack

3) color coded "terror level"

one of these (the first one) is perfectly sensible. The other two are a complete waste of time, and one of them is actually quite dangerous. Notably, neither 2) nor 3) would have done anybody any good at all in New Orleans this past week and a half.

In all of the links I followed, I didn't see a single one mention anything negative about suggestion 1). What I did see is a bunch of people ragging TR about the duct tape and plastic sheeting suggestion (which was, and remains, useless and dangerous) and the "terror alert" system, which honestly doesn't do anything useful given there's nothing actionable for the general public to draw from it. One of the links in the article is directly misrepresented, saying that it's protesing how stupid 1) is, when in fact it talks only about 2) and 3). So what gives?

How was Tom Ridge's point on either those last two issues somehow proven with Katrina?

Regards
Krill

Darren said...

Krill, saran wrap and duct tape wouldn't have helped in this particular case. The complaints against Ridge were more global--that preparation, including having some munchies on hand, was a ridiculous concept.