Ben Stein is still ticked off!

Ben Stein has another go at those who seem to believe that George Bush is the cause of Katrina. He says the real story is that "the mainstream media rioted." Here is his main point:

They used the storm and its attendant sorrows to continue their endless attack on George W. Bush. Wildly inflated stories about the number of dead and missing, totally made up old wives' tales of racism, breathless accounts of Bush's neglect that are utterly devoid of truth and of historical context -- this is what the mainstream media gave us. The use of floating corpses, of horror stories of plagues, the sad faces of refugees, the long-faced phony accusations of intentional neglect and racism -- anything is grist for the media's endless attempts to undermine the electorate's choice last November. It is sad, but true that the media will use even the most heart breaking truths -- and then add total inventions -- to try to weaken and then evict from office a man who has done nothing wrong, but has instead turned himself inside out to help the real victims.

Read the whole thing here.

Five Days with Katrina

Alvaro R. Morales Villa has a great slide show of almost two hundred photos of New Orleans entitled Five Days with Katrina. There's a caption with each photo giving a nice visual and written history of what Alvaro witnessed over his last five days in New Orleans.

What really piqued my interest was a photo (somewhere around the 180th) of the MSNBC reporter. The caption says what anyone who’s been around reporters in the field knows and what every one else should know:

I don't know her name, but she works for MSNBC. My apologies for my wordage, but this wench didn't know what the hell was going on. She made up 75% of what she was saying and exaggerated about 95% of everything that she did know. The message: do you want to be a reporter? All you need to do is have a pretty face and buy a Thesaurus!

(H/T: Sir George Turner at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler)

Logistics Primer for the Left Wing Media

Here is a good one in its entirety from Teflon:

As a former Air Force logistics officer, let me clarify the following for the idiots in the Left Wing Media:

1. Things can get destroyed far more swiftly than they can get fixed.

2. The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.

3. You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.

4. We do not yet have teleporter nor replicator technology like you saw on "Star Trek" in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grownups actually engaged in the recovery effort today were studying engineering.

5. Getting people out of the stricken areas is the most pressing concern, since we cannot get enough supplies into it to safely sustain them.

6. Getting the airport, bridges, and roads repaired is the next priority, since the supplies and people needed to fix levees, drain the city, and repair the infrastructure cannot be transported via aircraft. You need to truck them in.

7. Once the infrastructure is repaired, it is vital to get the ports in working order. Equipment and supplies can only be moved into the area in large quantities by sea.

8. Only then can recovery efforts begin in earnest.

9. The above will take weeks and months, not days or hours.

10. No amount of yelling, crying, and mustering of moral indignation will change any of the facts above. Facts are facts. Opinion is cheap.

11. You could do more help actually keeping your damned satellite trucks out of the way of the folks doing the real work.

12. If you must vent your indignation, how about targeting the Louisiana officials who did absolutely nothing to protect their constituents? At least you can help ensure the populace doesn't elect these clowns again.

While Officials Jabber, Jabbar Acts

While Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Terry Ebbert (head of New Orleans' emergency operations) whined, complained and blamed, a young man named Jabbar Gibson did what local officials were too incapable and too incompetent to do -- he took matters into his own hands.

Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.

"I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a bus."

The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there.

You can read about Jabbar Gibson and what he did here, here, here and here.

Jabbar Gibson (also spelled as Jabbor and said to be twenty in some articles) "stole" a school bus and carried between 60 and 100 people to safety by driving them from the streets of New Orleans to the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. In fact, he and his passengers were the first group of refugees to arrive there, beating out the thousands of evacuees from the Superdome. Young Mr. Gibson may also be in a bit of trouble since technically he did steal the bus. If he had been stopped in New Orleans, he probably would have been arrested! But one thing is clear -- Jabbar Gibson is a man of action. He may have saved some lives, but he definitely prevented days of suffering for the passengers on the commandeered bus. In my book, Jabbar Gibson is a hero!

Ben Stein is ticked off!

Ben Stein, writer, economist, lawyer and actor, has a go at those who seem to believe that George Bush is the cause of Katrina and the shameful aftermath to the catastrophe. Here is just a sample of the truths for "those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:"

1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.

2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.

3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.

4.) There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people. If global warming is a real phenomenon, which it may well be, it started long before George Bush was inaugurated, and would not have been affected at all by the Kyoto treaty, considering that Kyoto does not cover the world's worst polluters -- China, India, and Brazil. In a word, George Bush had zero to do with causing this hurricane. To speculate otherwise is belief in sorcery.

5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.

6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.

7.) George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue.

Here are some of the "More Mysteries of Katrina" that Mr. Stein has recently updated in his article:

Why is it that the snipers who shot at emergency rescuers trying to save people in hospitals and shelters are never mentioned except in passing, and Mr. Bush, who is turning over heaven and earth to rescue the victims of the storm, is endlessly vilified?

What church does Rev. Al Sharpton belong to that believes in passing blame and singling out people by race for opprobrium and hate?

What special abilities does the media have for deciding how much blame goes to the federal government as opposed to the city government of New Orleans for the aftereffects of Katrina?

Your can read the whole thing here. On a personal note, I met Mr. Stein a couple of months ago at a financial seminar. Unlike his screen and television persona as a seemingly monotone robot, he is a very nice guy and quite knowledgeable. When he found out that my son is serving in the military, he asked some very detailed questions about his job and showed genuine interest and care about the troops.