The Sunday Morning Talk Shows - review
starring Joe Biden or Mary Landrieu
By Mark Kilmer Posted in Special Features — Comments (14) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Sunday, August 27, 2006
On MTP, Hizzoner Ray Nagin explained that he was just comparing sites which took time to develop. When he said "hole in the ground," he meant: "an undeveloped site as yet." FEMA Director David Paulison explained that his agency has no control of money it gives to victims after it has been given; Russert complained that victims were spending targeted relief money on soda pop and condoms.
On TW, Brownie said that it was all Chertoff's fault and that his disaster consulting business was doing so well because he knows what works and what doesn't. Mary Landrieu walked around New Orleans and neither cried nor threatened to assault the President of the United States. Gulf Coast Rebuilding coordinator Don Powell said that money had been allocated for Katrina relief, but that they were waiting for the bills.
On FNS, Joe Biden told Wallace that while he was sure that General Abizaid, who said last week that Iraq was "nowhere near" a civil war, had a pretty good idea how things were going in Iraq, Generals Casey and Chiarelli had told him that we're all going to die. Biden said that he does not want to partition Iraq; rather, he said, he wants the Iraqi provinces to have the same rights and powers as does South Carolina.
On FTN, Bob Schieffer talked to Harry Smith in New Orleans, and Smith said that no one trusted the government and was on their own. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour then explained how, unlike what Harry had opined, it was not a per se economic class issue. Some wealthy homes by the beach were not able to rebuild while less well off neighborhoods a few blocks inlands were rebuilding apace. FEMA director Paulison addressed Smith's snideness by saying that everyone should be responsible for themselves, but that FEMA was prepared to help.
On LE, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's translator was speaking into a tube, but the prime minister seemed to indicate that the Iraqis should be ready to take care of their own security within the next year.
Also of note, and not mentioned in the show-by-show review below, is that CBS News' Harry Smith told FTN host Schieffer that a woman in St. Barnard's Parish in New Orleans cried for 45 minutes about her home which had been damaged by an oil slick. They wouldn't be able to build. Standing in the parish with George Stephanopoulos last week in a tape show on TW, Senator Mary Landrieu boasted about how St. Bernard's Parish was the greatest example of the rebuilding effort. She spoke in glowing terms.
Mary Landrieu last year sat that the President was "out of touch." Go figure. (She says that the Bushies are still out of touch. Gulf Coast Rebuilding coordinator Don Powell displayed that this was a fraudulent supposition on FOX News Sunday this morning. Landrieu's mind is lost on the Moon, and there is a slight pun there.)
Read on for the complete, show-by-show review:.
NAGIN ON MTP. Tim Russert was back hosting NBC's Meet the Press, ending the David Gregory nightmare, but his first guest was New Orleans Mayor Ray "Hole in the Ground" Nagin. Hizzoner promised us that the evacuations plans had been updated and they were set to evacuate should Tropical Storm Ernesto strike the Big Easy.
Russert asked him about the bus drivers, along with the police and other first responders, and Nagin said that the plane was in place. New Orleans was coordinated, he said, with the State government and the National Guard troops.
He promised that we would not see a repeat of last year "as long as I am mayor of New Orleans."
Russert asked him about his "hole in the ground" comment in reference to Ground Zero, New York, New York. Nagin said that he should have referred to it as "an undeveloped site as yet." He's "very sorry for" bothering the families of those who died on the site, but he was trying to compare as yet undeveloped sites.
Nagin boasted that New Orleans had sent trucks to New York after 9-11 and that New York had sent trucks to New Orleans after Katrina. He added that there needs to be a memorial built at the as yet undeveloped site New York.
Russert asked Nagin if New Orleans would ever grow back to the population that it had pre-Katrina. Nagin thinks so, but he pointed out that it would be a "five year build cycle."
Russert played a clip of a speech Nagin gave in which he said that the government would not have been so slow in responding had this happened to Orange County, California. Nagin insisted that he was talking about socio-economic class, not race, but Russert would have none of it. It was about race, Russert insisted. The feds moved more slowly, the host contended, because the victims were "poor people and black people."
BROWNIE ON TW. Host George Stephanopoulos next spoke with highly paid disaster consultant Michael "Brownie" Brown, former FEMA director. Brownie complained about Mike Chertoff, saying that Chertoff wanted him to respond to the disaster from his office while he wanted to be on the ground.
DHS is too big, Brownie insisted, and FEMA should not be in it. FEMA, he argued, should be an independent agency with independent access to the White House.
Why is he a highly paid consultant when he had botched things so, Steph asked. Brownie responded that this was because he knows what works and what doesn't work. Steph then asked Brownie one of those most snide questions I heard, a cleaned-up version of: "You've been so utterly humiliated, why haven't you killed yourself?" (More of a paraphrase: You've been trashed by Congress and the media. How do you keep going?") Brownie answered that it's because he knows what is in his heart.
LANDRIEU ON TW. Steph next drove around the city with Senator Mary Landrieu. She showed narrated scenes of rebuilding and of continued devastation. Steph asked her to rate some people, and for Brownie, she offered: "Disaster." For Nagin, she responded: "Hit and miss." She isn't sure about the President, as she still thinks he does not understand the "magnitude of the devastation." She said that although the President has slotted all sorts of money, New Orleans sees only a fraction of it.
POWELL ON TW. Next on TW, Gulf Coast Rebuilding coordinator Don Powell told Steph that the money was there but was waiting to be spent. He likened it to depositing your paycheck in your checking account. The money is there, but you wait until you receive your bills to draw it down. He said that the President knows that there has been progress, but we're not done. We will work, he said. Until we're done.
Steph showed a national poll conducted by someone, and X-percent think someone is not doing something right.
PAULISON ON MTP. FEMA Director David Paulison was Tim Russert's next guest over on MTP, and he said the we're ready for Ernesto, which is probably going to track up through Florida. Russert countered with a poll that showed that most Americans surveyed said that the Federal government was not ready. What does he have to say about that, huh? (*I'd say that the media misinforms the American public.) Paulison explained that they have studied their "Action Reports," what went right and what did not.
"We are doing the right thing," Paulison offered. Russert asked him how come so many people who received Federal aid were allowed to spend it on soda pop and condoms. Paulison answered that they give the money for a specific person, but how it is spent "is a personal decision."
DON POWELL ON FNS. On FOX News Sunday, host Chris Wallace spoke first with Gulf Coast Rebuilding coordinator Don Powell. Powell assured that they were prepared and that he thought the levees could hold. Chris asked Powell if he were satisfied with the progress that was made in New Orleans, and Powell detailed the enormity of the problem, using examples, which stands in contest to Mary Landrieu's partisan assertion that the President does not understand the size and scope of the disaster in New Orleans. It shows that her statement was meaningless and false.
Wallace asked if we weren't just spending our federal money to build the same, disaster-prone New Orleans we had pre-Katrina. Powell said that there had been a lot of progress.
JOE BIDEN ON FNS. Chris next let Joe Biden have his say from "the campaign trail in Charleston, South Carolina." Biden said that the release of Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiiig indicated that not everyone associated with Hamas was all that bad.
Chris showed the stats that the murder rates across Iraq had been greatly reduced and mentioned that tribal leaders had signed off on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's reconciliation plan. He asked if it were possible that the President's plans were finally starting to work. Biden said that he prays that it is starting to work but that it was impossible for anything to work in Iraq until the Sunni's get a "buy-in with a piece of the oil, the deal with the insurgency," and Maliki has to take care of the "competing elements" among the Shi'a. To "take control of the militias."
Wallace cited Joe Biden's WashPost op/ed from Thursday in which he said that the Bushies had no strategy. He played a clip of General Abizaid saying that although there is a chance of a civil war in Iraq, the country was "nowhere near it." Wallace asked Biden if it were possible that General Abizaid has a better sense of what's going on in the ground in Iraq that does Joe Biden. A magnanimous Joe Biden allowed that he was "sure" that Abizaid had a "great sense of it." He seemed to hold that he had a better sense of what's happening in Baghdad than does General Abizaid, and to back this up, he said that he was in Baghdad four weeks ago, and General George Casey and General Chiarelli told him that Iraq was in bad shape and that the unity government had not slowed the insurgency "in any way." He said that there had been a "considerable increase in the number of people joining the militias, because there are no jobs at all." He said we do not have enough troops. He said that he could go on and on.
Joe Biden said that our troops had to go back into Iraq to make this happen, and that our troops are taking the lead even though they say that they do not.
Wallace asked Joe Biden about his plan to partition Iraq. He showed a poll of Iraqis showing that the Iraqis do not want it. Biden backed down and said that he does not want to partition Iraq, but he wants the Iraqi provinces to have the same rights and powers as U.S. States.
Wallace asked Joe Biden about Iraq and sanctions. Joe Biden answered that "it's a really bad situation." We have to "hold this coalition together to increase gradual sanctions." He said that this is a "serious test for the United Nations." If the U.N. fails, he said, we have to get regional powers together and contain Iraq until we can fix Iraq and get the flexibility to deal with Iran.
Wallace asked Joe Biden how much of a chance a "northeastern liberal like Joe Biden would stand in the south if you are running in Democratic primaries against southerners like Mark Warner and John Edwards." Joe Biden answered proudly: "Better than anybody else. You don't know my State [Delaware]. My State was a slave State. My State is a border State. My State is the eighth largest black population in the country. My State is anything but a northeast liberal State."
Wallace asked if Joe Biden thinks he can "go into the lions den." Biden smiled, all cocksure, and stated: "I know I can."
BOB SCHIEFFER AND HALEY BARBOUR. After he talked to Harry Smith for a while, Schieffer turned his attention to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour: "Most of our State is way past the recovery stage... and into rebuilding." He said that some of the richest neighborhoods, the ones by the beaches, are not yet rebuilt while inland a few blocks, neighborhoods are rebuilding back to life. There are a "variety of reasons" for this, he said.
He said that about 37,000 families live in FEMA trailers on their property, waiting for loans and grants. He pointed to the slowness of the bureaucracy and the lack of labor. The labor, he said, flocks to the big projects, not to the individual homes.
Schieffer suggested that Mississippi got more aid that Louisiana because Barbour and Mississippi's Senators are Republican while Louisiana is run by Democrats and get less. Barbour pointed out that the block grants were Mississippi's idea, but Louisiana is getting more of that money. He dismissed the statement without calling it the mindless partisan hog slop that it is.
If Ernesto goes back on the track it was one, he said, they will begin evacuating on Tuesday. If it had stayed on its track, he was prepared to issue the mandatory evacuation orders tomorrow.
PAULISON ON FTN. Schieffer next spoke to FEMA directory David Paulison, pointing out that unlike Brownie, Paulison "had credentials for the jobs." He was a fire chief. Schieffer quoted Mary Landrieu as saying that FEMA is a shell of what it was during the Clinton regime, stripped of all authority and effectiveness. While stating his respect for Mary, Paulison said that he disagreed.
Paulison said that Mississippi has a good evacuation plan and is doing the right think.
Schieffer cited Harry Smith from earlier in the show, his opinion that tragically, no one trusts the government and feels that they're on their own. Paulison noted that everyone should take responsibility for themselves but that FEMA is prepared to help.
"Katrina was a wakeup call" for everyone, Paulison intoned.
Schieffer speculated that the repaired levees might not hold for "another Katrina." Paulison said that they might, but that it doesn't matter. Everyone will be out of there.
Schieffer asked why it is taking so long to get the money to the people to rebuild. Paulison said that it takes time. They've released money to the State which has to get it to the local level. He said that decisions have to be made locally before money can be spent. He cited Haley Barbour and Mississippi as making the decisions and getting the money. He said that Mayor Nagin has some difficult decisions to be made.
Schieffer said that a metaphor for the Federal government's failure was the slew of trailers in Hope, Arkansas, which we're paying $250,000 to keep there but don't know what to do with. Paulison said that they were there in case a storm hit and they were needed in the future.
NOURI AL-MALIKI ON LE. On CNN, Late Edition host Wolf Blitzer first talked to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, asking him first how long U.S. troops would have to say. Maliki said that "this process will not be long," as the Iraqis were taking over the provinces. Wolf asked him for a date certain, and Maliki said that it was not a question of time, but of ability of the Iraqis to take over. By the end of the year, they should have all the provinces.
Wolf asked him if the Iraqi forces will be able to take over security in his country if the international forces were to department within the next year. Maliki answered: "Yes."
Blitzer cited Chris Shays as saying that the only way we can encourage the Iraqis to do anything is to set a specific deadline for when the Iraqis have to take over for themselves. Maliki said that it was important to make sure that when the troops withdraw, their mission would continue.
Blitzer said that the Iraqis see the Americans as occupiers and things would be better if we'd leave. Does Maliki agree? Well, Maliki's translator was speaking into a closed tube, and I'd have done better if I had heard the Arabic from Maliki's mouth and simply translated with my imagination.
But Maliki said he didn't want to commit to a timeline, but he does want to try to reduce the time the U.S. has to be there to a year or so.
He said that "Iraq will never be in a civil war."
Wolf showed the number of civilian deaths increasing of late and posited that the Sectarian violence was getting worse. Maliki's translator relayed his answer into the tube, but he said something about terrorists.
Blitzer cited The Economist as blaming Iraq's economic conditions for the sectarian violence. Into the tube, of course, but Maliki talked about "what has been accomplished in the new Iraq" and the "previous regime." They still have a "lot of the legacy of the previous regime" to repair.
At this point, my head exploded.
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At this point, my head exploded.
Mark, as I've said many times before, this is the kind of service that only the toughest and most dedicated can endure week after week. And I will make another donation to RedState next week because of your determination to bring us these commentaries, come all the h*ll or high water, inane drones and nattering nabobs of negativism, each and every Sunday. I can't grant you sainthood, but I can say that you deserve a RedState Medal of Honor.
May we call you Lieutenant Kilmer now? ;) [With apologies to actual Lieutenants and to Streiff]
I am a hawkish warmonger with a crusty demeanour and a heart of steel. But I have a softer side.
I'll be gauche. With all the money that has been earmarked for the rebuilding of New Orleans and Louisiana and the Gulf Coast in general, does anyone but me think that the reason we're still seeing wrecked houses and Nagin talking about "holes in the ground" is that everyone in Louisiana is holding out for more?
I mean, with the sympathies this weekend's New York Times and Washington Post are aimed at generating, this is a *continuing* crisis, and the government *must*, simply *must* being spendthrift if there are still demolished houses down there waiting to be carted away.
What's holding up the progress? Is it the money, or is it that the money hasn't been spent so that it draws out the destruction for the cameras and Nagin can complain about irrelevancies like "not being able to notify the property owners." Last time I checked, damaged buildings that posed a threat to public health could be cleared away by any municipality, even if the property owner was unreachable. Seems like some of the ones Nagin was standing in front of when he chastised the reporter there would have qualified. So why doesn't Nagin want to knock them down?
I am a hawkish warmonger with a crusty demeanour and a heart of steel. But I have a softer side.
I've known several people who are on the Boards of Health of their townships, and when a property owner lets the buildings on the property decay to the point that they pose a public health risk, the city usually has the prerogative to come and demolish them. Yet in New Orleans, we see this pitiful photomontage of lingering destruction that Nagin doesn't seem to have the gumption to clear away.
Actually, if Nagin were being honest, he would have talked about how the "hole in the ground" was a vast improvement over the enormous piles of twisted wreckage that occurred as a result of 9/11. How long did it take NYC to clean that stuff up?
It seems, at least to me, that Nagin wants to keep those demolished homes there as long as he possibly can for the cameras. How many billion dollars has the federal government allocated? Where is the money going?
I am a hawkish warmonger with a crusty demeanour and a heart of steel. But I have a softer side.
and as Bob Schieffer pointed out on FTN, some are arguing that this is because they received more federal assistance because their governor and Senators are Republicans. Governor Barbour pointed out that Louisiana was getting more help than Mississippi. He didn't say, but I will, that Mississippi doing better that Louisiana because the governor is sane and sets sound policy. He does not do this because he is a Republican; rather, he is a Republican because it is how he wants to do it.
>>Mississippi doing better that Louisiana because the governor is sane and sets sound policy.
And would make a fine President.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
When one of our two major politcal parties didn't view creating public policy disasters as a viable election strategy.
legacy of corruption that LA politics does.
I also think we sometimes foget the the eye of the storm hit Mississippi-and that places other than New Orleans got destroyed.
That despite the money in the bank, there seems to be this lack of action. I remember being in Chicago the morning Mayor Daley, citing terrorist concerns, simply decided unilaterally to close down Meigs Field airport (the small airport located in the inner harbor of Chicago about 2 miles from the Sears Tower.) He ordered a fleet of construction trucks onto the field early in the A.M. hours and simply *ripped up* the runways and blocked them off, citing his prerogative as Da Mayor to prevent Meigs from being used to launch a terrorist attack.
Now, that case is different, I admit: it was extreme, and Daley caught a lot of flak for it, and there were other politics involved in that decision because Daley had wanted Meigs closed to bolster his Grand Plan for the expansion of O'Hare (by forcing the executives who primarily used Meigs to fly into O'Hare).
But nevertheless, the executive power of Da Mayor in that instance was enough for him to unilaterally declare that he was simply going to destroy an entire airport just because he could. So I'm growing increasingly skeptical about Nagin, et. al., and any arguments he might make about how his "hands are tied." It seems to me that if the money is there and the organization and the plan are actually in place and functional at the local level, we'd be seeing more action and progress on the ground, unless there's something else going on.
I am a hawkish warmonger with a crusty demeanour and a heart of steel. But I have a softer side.
I have no doubt that Senator Biden would walk into a lion's den.
But ordinary activities such as crossing the street probably pose a greater risk.
scares me with what he thinks is appropriate and inappropriate.
Delaware, the great border state.
Great report. You didn't mention the round table on MTP with Russert, Bob Novak, Kate O'Beirne, Albert Hunt, and Eugene Robinson. Understandable, as I expect you were in the process of ripping your eyes out of your head after the Nagin segment. Short relevent excerpts from the round table transcript linked below.
Novak focused on conservative dissatisfaction with spending and immigration:
"I don’t think it brings back the disaffected conservatives who may stay home on Election Day. That’s the real problem. Not that they’re going to vote for the Democrats, but they may stay home because all my reports indicate that there’s two issues. They’re still very unhappy with the president about immigration and government spending, and they see no improvement on those scores."
Russert then brought the discussion back to shrinking conservative support for Iraq:
"MR. RUSSERT: Kate O’Beirne, hearing Bob Novak and looking at the cover of your magazine National Review, “Last Chance for Iraq,” and looking at the comments that the founder of your magazine, William F. Buckley Jr., who said, “One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.” And then listening to George Will, conservative commentator, who said, “It is not perverse to wonder whether the spectacle of America, currently learning a lesson - one that conservatives should not have to learn on the job - about the limits of power to subdue an unruly world, has emboldened many enemies.” This is remarkable. Conservatives saying that Iraq has failed and that perhaps it may be emboldening our enemies.
MS. KATE O’BEIRNE: Tim, it’s, it’s actually not so that there have been all these uncritical cheerleaders who support the war for years. We had at National Review had a cover on Iraq before the November ‘04 elections called “What Went Wrong?” And most recently, of course, we have a collection of, of people, very sympathetic with the aims and goals in Iraq, answering the question of whether or not it’s lost. The administration hasn’t done a very good job of addressing those concerns on the part of conservative supporters of the war. The symposium we have in this, in this issue, the first thing they reject, unanimously, is the administration line that things are better than they look. They’re not buying that argument, and yet the administration keeps making it...
MR. HUNT: "Kate, the problem, however, is that look, Bob, I somewhat disagree. You can make the McCain case—we might agree or disagree—but you can make the case that we need to really escalate over there. We need to send more troops, not just take troops from Mosul and send them to Baghdad, but really go and, and, and cut off the Iranians, and, and make a full-fledged effort, and say, “We’re going to be there for years, folks.” Or you can say we’re going to be in a staged withdrawal. We’re going to go to an enclave period and try to create some kind of partition in that unnaturally created country. The one thing that’s not credible, as the National Review pointed out, is stay the course. Bush’s policy is the one policy that’s absolutely not credible. So I think that makes it very tough for Republicans today."
"The maxim of civil government being reversed in that of religion, where it's true form is, 'divided we stand, united we fall." - Thomas Jefferson
There's way too much to comment on effectively, but I do want to thank you for the work you do.
OK, one little thing: FEMA Director says they're ready, and Dem Russert quotes a poll: the All-knowing, All-seeing American People (or "most" of 983 of them, anyway) don't believe they're ready. Dares his guest to say the public could ever be wrong about anything, or that the MSM is full of deceivers like Dem Russert.
I don't know how you sit through it all, Tivo or no Tivo.
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More brilliance such as that can be found at the Academy. And yes, I know how pretentious I sound.