“Health Law Rollout’s Stumbles Draw Parallels to Bush’s Hurricane Response” reads the headline over a New York Times “news analysis” piece (11/15/13) by Michael Shear, which is great example of how a stupid idea can form the basis for an article so long as someone in power is advancing that stupid idea.
Is this…
But start from the very top:
Barack Obama won the presidency by exploiting a political environment that devoured George W. Bush in a second term plagued by sinking credibility, failed legislative battles, fractured world relations and revolts inside his own party.
That makes it sound like the Bush’s second term was attacked (“devoured”!) from some outside force, or “environment,” and not the result of policy decisions made by the president. (“Fractured world relations” might have something to do with invading Iraq, for instance.)
Shear’s point, though, is to draw a pretty straight line between catastrophes caused by the two leaders:
President Obama is now threatened by a similar toxic mix. The disastrous rollout of his health care law not only threatens the rest of his agenda but also raises questions about his competence in the same way that the Bush administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina undermined any semblance of Republican efficiency.
Now, to some people, a new law that is running into technical problems with a poorly designed website is not really the same as a massive disaster in one of America’s iconic cities that killed almost 2,000 people.
…really similar to this? (cc photo: Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA)
So who actually says this? Shear writes:
Republicans readily made the Hurricane Katrina comparison. “The echoes to the fall of 2005 are really eerie,” said Peter D. Feaver, a top national security official in Mr. Bush’s second term. “Katrina, which is shorthand for bungled administration policy, matches to the rollout of the website.”
OK, so a former Bush official says so! And guess what, Democrats say this is nonsense:
The president’s top aides vehemently reject the comparison of Mr. Obama’s fifth year in office to the latter half of Mr. Bush’s second term. They say Americans lost confidence in Mr. Bush because of his administration’s ineptitude on Hurricane Katrina and its execution of the war in Iraq, while Mr. Obama is struggling to extend health care to millions of people who do not have it.
One side says A—which forms the premise of the article—while the other side disagrees; it’s the very worst kind of media “balance.”
Oh, and to make things worse, there’s also this line:
Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear arsenal have set off bipartisan criticism.
There are currently no negotiations over “Iran’s nuclear arsenal” because the country does not actually have one, and no one is asserting that it does—other than the New York Times.
Even if the analysis were not in comparison to Katrina, there is a fundamental problem with the claim about Obama’s win in 2008. Namely, Bush was not running for another term. Was the reason Obama won due to Republican Part in-fighting? I doubt it.
Let’s get real here. Both parties got zillions of dollars from the same deep pockets who control everything on earth, so we can eliminate that as any sort of comparative factor. The Democrats tried to blame Bush for Katrina, but failed. No, Obama won because his campaign did a better job of convincing voters to believe his promises than Romney did to convince voters to believe HIS promises. The presidential race is a big show, nothing else.
But ObamaCareless victims are the walking dead and Are LEGION, NATIONWIDE!
But ObamaCareless victims are the walking dead and Are LEGION, NATIONWIDE!
Only in the minds of the Fux Snooze Nitwork Trolls.
Gotta love the BS -the Corporation cut the hours so they don’t have to spoil their billion dollar profit margin, to ensure the people who are going to serve america, have no access to health care or medicine; and it is the ACA fault. Only from a nitwork that like Fux.
Don’t forget that Bush gutted FEMA, leaving it with the lowest morale and capability in many years, and installed one of his incompetent cronies at the top with no experience in the field. In other words, Bush set the Gulf Coast up for the horrendous response they received. Obama did not gut any agency that lead to the website debacle. As a former software analyst who managed multimillion dollar projects, I suspect that the Obama administration was simply not aware of what software contractors tell you to get a contract, and what they will/can actually do; they are absolutely not the same in many cases, and that includes the most well known companies out there. If you are not technically savvy enough to look ‘under the hood’ and ask the right questions, there is a good chance you will end up with the debacle we see. Add to that a Republican party doing everything possible to sabotage the project, especially by not building state websites, and the result was almost inevitable on the first pass. Requirements documents for the project would have needed to be written in 2010 followed by intense coding, module testing, and integration testing, w/o Republicans mounting a court challenge and turning the public against the project, for a project this huge to be successful. With this kind of interference, it’s extremely difficult if not impossible to know what the final software needs to do, and thus, how to code it, which means precious time lost . The right wing ploy worked, pure and simple. But that doesn’t mean that the intent of the bill is not laudable nor that it should be abandoned, regardless of temporary website glitches. A large portion of the blame for Healthcare.gov not working lies directly at the door of the Republicans. After all, they worked REALLY HARD to achieve that goal. Give credit where credit is due!
bush gutted fema? or, was fema turned into another “intell”-action branch for homeland security? one of the 18? national “Intelligence” agencies.
who knows who or what’s responsible for the debacle of the “healthcare” plan? anyone outside of inside-washington who’s actually studying what we need for a decent healthcare system thinks that even if the computer system worked, the healthcare part might be totally and seriously BOGUS. who can tell when it looks like the government (to which everyone working is paying a big chunk of their pay to in taxes)..who can assume the plan was ever meant to be good for the residents of this country (and not just for the healthcare industry) in any case? who’s trusting Washington anymore?!
bush gutted fema only in so much as its purpose which WAS to respond and to help in emergencies, instead…. they sent machine-gunned mercenaries and let a lot of people die or lose their homes and life in neworleans forever, etc!.. someone had other big plans for the city, it seems. was it intentional or not to let that disaster happen? it looked intentional in many ways. it was horrid. ( like 911 was horrid.)
was it brownie’s fault in new Orleans ? or was it someone like Chertoff’s…. plan… to let it all be even worse than it needed to be?
now you could say that the healthcare “system” we had before is being gutted. longer term, they want to GUT ALL the social programs. it’s called austerity… or whatever the billionaires like pete Peterson call it.
Katrina”care” and Obama”care” …. bush”care” or Obama”care” ….
bottom line is ..THEY DON’T CARE. they really don’t seem to care at all. …………..because… maybe because they better?
they the rich. ( remembering George carlin’s message.. recalling
Arthur silber’s at his post last week . )… they don’t care. they’re better, they’re really rich ….and so they’re BETTER. WE NEED TO
RESPECT THAT!.
Yeah dumb correlation.And actually Katrina’s response was mostly due to the idiocy of the elected government there.Bush started slow to intervene.A mistake for sure.But Certainly Sandy was far worse in any number of ways.I actually put less blame on bush AND Obama than most.They wanted to help.Mistakes were made.And a better protocol has to exist.But all in all mother nature is a bitch.And the idea that bush was not attacked in a systematic planned way is ludicrous.James Carvil refutes that outright.He admits he and gang of 15 began the attack the day Bush was elected.Hilary admitted it worked too well.Hurting all future presidents.And it has been followed by the right towards Obama.But all that aside…forget Bush and Carter and all the rest.Obama is in charge and is doing a horrible job.Now today,as we speak.That there ARE folks out there who hate him personally,(as there were those with Bush) does not change that seminal point.he was a rank Amateur as he began his first term.Now he is a stubborn legislator doubling down on failed ideas and concepts.He is a liar.A man who feels it was his job to remake this country.He is a horrible horrible leader for this country at this time in history.Would Mccain have been better.Oh God yes.As flawed as he is,he and Sarah would of been far better.In every way possible.Mitt and Ryan?We would be on the road to some sort of recovery ,instead of being hit one blow upon another upon another as we sink to our knees.Bad vote people(and i know most of you trusted this guy)
the failures of the Katrina response and the disaster of the opening shots of the new “healthcare” system might be comparable, for sure. there is a flood of ways that the comparison might be made if you want to make some point, like the newyork times tried to do. but I tend to see them both as drawing similarities, not differences, between republican and democrat parties.
we know there are less and less differences between D’s and R’s, but we also know that the republicans have a special group of radicals within it who are causing even extra damage and distractions in Washington. they will be the ones making the most out of the disastrous healthcare start and ‘the very idea’ of a healthcare plan for the country.
they are the ones who will be shouting how Obama is the problem or the idea of any social programs like it is the problem.
but we know that both the democrats and republicans have allowed big money and corporate power to pull down the country and make a mess of things, to put it mildly. most of them REPRESENT big money and the dangerous lean toward a corporate fascist police state. so can we really blame only bush or Obama for the failures? of course not.
rob parry wrote in October, an article called, “making the economy scream” comparing the destabilizing of this country to how it’s been done in countries like chile over the past decades. so I want to quote two paragraphs parry wrote:
” Home to Roost
but the concept remains the same. control as much as possible what the population gets to hear and see; create chaos for your opponent’s government, economically and politically; blame it for the mess; establish in the minds of the voters that their only way out is to submit, that the pain will stop once your side is back in power.
today’s republicans have fully embraced this concept of political warfare, whereas the democrats generally have played by the old rules, acquiescing when republicans are elected to office with the goal of ‘making government work’ even if the republicans are the ones setting the agenda.”
i’m not convinced the democrats are actually trying to make the government work, not for the people, anyways, but I am convinced
that some of the failures are intentional, that weakening the democratic government is intentional, that making the economy scream is as intentional here at home as the corporations have long worked to make it in other countries, in order to have their way, to privatize it all, for instance.
the failures are more caused by the extreme and corrupted capitalism
that’s taken over, more than by either president or party, and the “mess it up” “make it scream” tactic is not new . it’s subversive, covert, and as despicable as ever, wherever it gets applied. I think it might be being applied here. is Washington letting it happen?
Once again, problems arise when corruption is part of the total package. Despite the apparent good intentions of the ironically named ACA, flawed foundations include:
Pandering,
Incompetence,
Lies,
Leadership in name only.
J golden I found your piece interesting but your perspective seems tilted.You speak as if this is not(or should not be) a capitalist country driven by personal rights over the collective.By the right of any business to incorporate for the process of legal protections.We are a country that rewards success, and does not subsidize failure.We believe in profit motive as a driver of economy.We believe in a entrepreneurial rugged individualistic spirit- that recreates wealth, with as little government interference or taxation as possible.We believe the private sector does everything better than the government, except for those few things the government is charged with undertaking under the constitution.This ALMOST without exception.We believe better government is smaller government.You call tea party radicals.Yet when the president falls back on doing you exactly what they asked him to do…..He IS not a radical?The hypocrisy and total fabricated lies against tea party patriots is revealed in all its misery at last.By God they have been right in all their predictions about this true radical (Obama).They have been right to of stood immovable in his way .And may they double down on all their efforts to thwart this man who means to remake America in a way that is bound to implode.If people only followed his political career.He has left a wake of destruction in his path.Look at the ward he started in.The jewel in his crown so to speak.The first test of his enlightened ways.A wasteland.Hundreds of millions rolled down a rat whole.What is this tea party?People from all walks of life who see an out of control government.Taxing,spending,printing money they do not have.Never even submitting a budget(in violation to the constitution)Todays tea party are all those who mean to stop dead in its tracks this absolute madness with one small piece of paper.The constitution of the United States.Radical??????Only if your not an American.We are All tea party.Not that facade…. that propaganda created by the lefts(and rights) political elite to disempower those who demand an adherence to our founding principles.In that we all stand united.The name tea party is meaningless.
Michael E: I normally don’t respond to folks who are trolling, but in this case I think I must. You don’t have the right to dictate to anybody anywhere what “we all think in America”. We don’t all think that Capitalism as unfettered by government is the best thing or even what this country was founded on. Feel free to express your ideas, but quit telling everybody that we all agree. We don’t. Our founding fathers didn’t agree, either, so don’t run and hide behind Washington or Jefferson.
Also, pretending that Bush had the same political problems as Obama is patently ridiculous. After 9/11, he got everything he asked for from Congress and nobody within the MSM fired a hardball at him. Not even the host of Hardball, who didn’t really disagree with him until a year or two AFTER he was out of office. Demnocrats who opposed this agenda were completely marginalized. In contrast, Republicans who opposed Obama were elevated to the highest levels in their party. Republicans who tried for balance or moderation were eliminated. Consider the former head of the RNC who was removed by a talk show host (Steel versus Limbaugh).
The other thing is that it doesn’t matter what issue Obama tries to take the lead on: ideas that would have been fine from Bush are now “the worst” when Obama does them. This means his problems don’t stem from his ideas or policies: they stem from his opponents polemic hate of him.
Back to the Katrina comparison and why it is incredibly dumb: All parties involved during Katrina dropped the ball, as every honest analysis has shown. It has been argued that local, state, and federal response was slip-shod, ineffective, and poorly coordinated. That is entirely different from getting a bill through, surviving a constitutional challenge, then having state and other federal officials decide to dig in trenches and do everything they can to prevent it from working, which is how Republicans have responded to losing on this issue.
If you want the two to be the same, Bush would have had to spend 2 weeks begging Louisiana & New Orleans to “let in the national guard”. Instead, he went on vacation and refused 2 weeks into the recovery to allow Doctors without Borders to assist in the recovery effort because “the US doesn’t need outside help with this disaster”.
Josh were to start with you…..First Im no Bush supporter, but…..I will dictate to you and this president -that this country will follow the constitution of the United states.Everyone you and i vote in takes an oath on it.The idea that the hatred for Obama is the same as Bush is crazy.Bush arrived at his personal low approval ratings after eight years of personal attacks ,driven in a coordinated effort by an organized left. Obama has arrived at the same place after years of hard core differences over all his policies.Remember his own party has not agreed with him on a budget yet(in violation of the constitution)You wonder why Bush got some things through legislatively and Obama meets a wall.Because Bush made sense to his foes on the left obviously.While Obama sounds like a man speaking some foreign tongue to those of us on the right. Lower taxes.Cut spending.Stop borrowing and printing money and just watch how fast conservatives sign off on his plans.Want me to prove the differance between you and i?I would love to sit down and have a beer with Obama.Seems a good family man.Im sure he is a good person.Though i fight tooth and nail his policies.How about you with Bush?See you HATE.I do not.We in the tea party have no hatred.Just strong disagreements.And yes demands…when it comes to adherence to the constitution.We wish Obama a good and happy life.AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN!How about you with Bush?By the way how about the class Bush is showing Obama while keeping his feelings to himself concerning Obamas policies.While Clinton begins the attack.It is said Bush personally likes Obama.And vis versa.Clinton and Obama are like oil and water.Always the same. Classic.