Ard's Blog
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Subject: FW: Canadian Press on Bush
This from the Canadian Press, which apparently, is a bit more objective than our own press and politicians.
George Bush, the man
David Warren…The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, September 11, 2005
There's plenty wrong with America, since you asked. I'm tempted to say that the only difference from Canada is that they have a few things right. That would be unfair, of course -- I am often pleased to discover things we still get right.
But one of them would not be disaster preparation. If something happened up here, on the scale of Katrina, we wouldn't even have the resources to arrive late. We would be waiting for the Americans to come save us, the same way the government in Louisiana just waved and pointed at Washington, D.C. The theory being that, when you're in real trouble, that's where the adults live.
And that isn't an exaggeration. Almost everything that has worked in the recovery operation along the U.S. Gulf Coast has been military and National Guard. Within a few days, under several commands, finally consolidated under the remarkable Lt.-Gen. Russell Honore, it was once again the U.S. military efficiently cobbling together a recovery operation on a scale beyond the capacity of any other earthly institution.
We hardly have a military up here. We have elected one feckless government after another that has cut corners until there is nothing substantial left. We don't have the ability even to transport and equip our few soldiers. Should disaster strike at home, on a big scale, we become a Third World country. At which point, our national smugness is of no avail.
From Democrats and the American Left -- the U.S. equivalent to the people who run Canada -- we are still hearing that the disaster in New Orleans showed that a heartless, white Republican America had abandoned its underclass.
This is garbage. The great majority of those not evacuated lived in assisted housing and receive food stamps, prescription medicine and government support through many other programs. Many have, all their lives, expected someone to lift them to safety, without input from themselves. And the demagogic mayor they elected left, quite literally, hundreds of transit and school buses that could have driven them out of town parked in rows, to be lost in the flood.
Yes, that was insensitive. But it is also the truth; and sooner or later we must acknowledge that welfare dependency creates exactly the sort of haplessness and social degeneration we saw on display, as the floodwaters rose. Many suffered terribly, and many died, and one's heart goes out. But already the survivors are being put up in new accommodations, and their various entitlements have been directed to new locations.
The scale of private charity has also been unprecedented. There are yet no statistics, but I'll wager the most generous state in the union will prove to have been arch-Republican Texas and that, nationally, contributions in cash and kind are coming disproportionately from people who vote Republican. For the world divides into "the mouths" and "the wallets."
The Bush-bashing, both down there and up here, has so far lost touch with reality, as to raise questions about the bashers' state of mind.
Consult any authoritative source on how government works in the United States and you will learn that the U.S. federal government's legal, constitutional, and institutional responsibility for first response to Katrina, as to any natural disaster, was zero.
Notwithstanding, President Bush took the prescient step of declaring a disaster, in order to begin deploying FEMA and other federal assets, two full days in advance of the storm fall. In the little time since, he has managed to co-ordinate an immense recovery operation -- the largest in human history -- without invoking martial powers. He has been sufficiently presidential to respond, not even once, to the extraordinarily mendacious and childish blame-throwing.
One thinks of Kipling's poem If, which I learned to recite as a lad, and mention now in the full knowledge that it drives postmodern leftoids and gliberals to apoplexy -- as anything that is good, beautiful, or true:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise .
Unlike his critics, Bush is a man, in the full sense presented by these verses. A fallible man, like all the rest, but a man.
JT
This from the Canadian Press, which apparently, is a bit more objective than our own press and politicians.
George Bush, the man
David Warren…The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, September 11, 2005
There's plenty wrong with America, since you asked. I'm tempted to say that the only difference from Canada is that they have a few things right. That would be unfair, of course -- I am often pleased to discover things we still get right.
But one of them would not be disaster preparation. If something happened up here, on the scale of Katrina, we wouldn't even have the resources to arrive late. We would be waiting for the Americans to come save us, the same way the government in Louisiana just waved and pointed at Washington, D.C. The theory being that, when you're in real trouble, that's where the adults live.
And that isn't an exaggeration. Almost everything that has worked in the recovery operation along the U.S. Gulf Coast has been military and National Guard. Within a few days, under several commands, finally consolidated under the remarkable Lt.-Gen. Russell Honore, it was once again the U.S. military efficiently cobbling together a recovery operation on a scale beyond the capacity of any other earthly institution.
We hardly have a military up here. We have elected one feckless government after another that has cut corners until there is nothing substantial left. We don't have the ability even to transport and equip our few soldiers. Should disaster strike at home, on a big scale, we become a Third World country. At which point, our national smugness is of no avail.
From Democrats and the American Left -- the U.S. equivalent to the people who run Canada -- we are still hearing that the disaster in New Orleans showed that a heartless, white Republican America had abandoned its underclass.
This is garbage. The great majority of those not evacuated lived in assisted housing and receive food stamps, prescription medicine and government support through many other programs. Many have, all their lives, expected someone to lift them to safety, without input from themselves. And the demagogic mayor they elected left, quite literally, hundreds of transit and school buses that could have driven them out of town parked in rows, to be lost in the flood.
Yes, that was insensitive. But it is also the truth; and sooner or later we must acknowledge that welfare dependency creates exactly the sort of haplessness and social degeneration we saw on display, as the floodwaters rose. Many suffered terribly, and many died, and one's heart goes out. But already the survivors are being put up in new accommodations, and their various entitlements have been directed to new locations.
The scale of private charity has also been unprecedented. There are yet no statistics, but I'll wager the most generous state in the union will prove to have been arch-Republican Texas and that, nationally, contributions in cash and kind are coming disproportionately from people who vote Republican. For the world divides into "the mouths" and "the wallets."
The Bush-bashing, both down there and up here, has so far lost touch with reality, as to raise questions about the bashers' state of mind.
Consult any authoritative source on how government works in the United States and you will learn that the U.S. federal government's legal, constitutional, and institutional responsibility for first response to Katrina, as to any natural disaster, was zero.
Notwithstanding, President Bush took the prescient step of declaring a disaster, in order to begin deploying FEMA and other federal assets, two full days in advance of the storm fall. In the little time since, he has managed to co-ordinate an immense recovery operation -- the largest in human history -- without invoking martial powers. He has been sufficiently presidential to respond, not even once, to the extraordinarily mendacious and childish blame-throwing.
One thinks of Kipling's poem If, which I learned to recite as a lad, and mention now in the full knowledge that it drives postmodern leftoids and gliberals to apoplexy -- as anything that is good, beautiful, or true:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise .
Unlike his critics, Bush is a man, in the full sense presented by these verses. A fallible man, like all the rest, but a man.
JT
Monday, September 29, 2003
Liberalism = Socialism = The Lost American Dream
I was chatting with a friend from over seas and he made a comment that the US is a two party system with very little differences separating the parties. I was rather taken back but answered him the differences were great and simple; it is Freedom verses Socialism. He laughed and asked me how could that ever be.
Quite simple, today’s Liberals push for big government. They want to take working family’s money and give it to those who earn less; taking food and ability to provide from working parents to give to those who supposedly don’t have. Somehow this will help everyone and this is the myth.
Liberals want the government to be responsible for your healthcare, you children’s safety, health and education in all matters, your retirement, your job security and more. Sit back, enjoy yourself; you need not be responsible for the government shall. Just let the government take money from those who earn it and redistribute the wealth. You need not work, just sit at home and watch your cable TV that was paid for because you deserve it.
Just vote Liberal.
Ignore the fact that the Government can take your children away from you without due processes and that the burden of proof is on you to prove you are a fit parent. The Government must protect the children.
Ignore the fact that you have no control over what your children are taught at schools; what morals, or lack there of, are brainwashed into them. The Government shall decide the social programs that are right for your kids and will define the Politically Correct newspeak to narrow our range of thought.
Ignore the fact that the healthcare system as we know it will cease to exists as the government rations healthcare; they decide who will and wont live. Even if that expensive operation can save your child, the waiting list is long and it is illegal to pay for it yourself and have another doctor perform it. The Government knows what is better for your family.
Ignore the fact that social security returns much less then two percent a year in its investment, well below inflation, resulting in a net loss for your savings. Enron is the word to support a broken system because we cannot let people fail. The government must protect you from yourself.
My grandfather, great grandfathers, and so forth never had any “safety net,” they had the right, the freedom, to succeed and to right and freedom to fail. This is the freedom that Liberals (Socialists) are trying to take away from us.
Our forefathers knew that if they worked hard, they could provide for their families and that their children would most likely have a better way of life.
This is the American dream that has been forgotten.
They did not care about a big house or new cloths or fancy trinkets. This was not important and nor was it their dream. They worked hard, toiling in fields, so that their children would have better and could provide better for their children.
The simple matter is we have forgotten the true American dream. It is not to have a huge house, two new cars, cable TV and more. The true American dream is that we can work hard so that our children can provide a better life for their children.
Socialism removes this drive that it integral to human nature.
Without the challenge, we are doomed to fail. It is human nature that we strive best when there are consequences for our failure. We must have the ability, the right and the freedom to fail; for if we don’t, then we can never truly succeed; we can never truly be free.
I was chatting with a friend from over seas and he made a comment that the US is a two party system with very little differences separating the parties. I was rather taken back but answered him the differences were great and simple; it is Freedom verses Socialism. He laughed and asked me how could that ever be.
Quite simple, today’s Liberals push for big government. They want to take working family’s money and give it to those who earn less; taking food and ability to provide from working parents to give to those who supposedly don’t have. Somehow this will help everyone and this is the myth.
Liberals want the government to be responsible for your healthcare, you children’s safety, health and education in all matters, your retirement, your job security and more. Sit back, enjoy yourself; you need not be responsible for the government shall. Just let the government take money from those who earn it and redistribute the wealth. You need not work, just sit at home and watch your cable TV that was paid for because you deserve it.
Just vote Liberal.
Ignore the fact that the Government can take your children away from you without due processes and that the burden of proof is on you to prove you are a fit parent. The Government must protect the children.
Ignore the fact that you have no control over what your children are taught at schools; what morals, or lack there of, are brainwashed into them. The Government shall decide the social programs that are right for your kids and will define the Politically Correct newspeak to narrow our range of thought.
Ignore the fact that the healthcare system as we know it will cease to exists as the government rations healthcare; they decide who will and wont live. Even if that expensive operation can save your child, the waiting list is long and it is illegal to pay for it yourself and have another doctor perform it. The Government knows what is better for your family.
Ignore the fact that social security returns much less then two percent a year in its investment, well below inflation, resulting in a net loss for your savings. Enron is the word to support a broken system because we cannot let people fail. The government must protect you from yourself.
My grandfather, great grandfathers, and so forth never had any “safety net,” they had the right, the freedom, to succeed and to right and freedom to fail. This is the freedom that Liberals (Socialists) are trying to take away from us.
Our forefathers knew that if they worked hard, they could provide for their families and that their children would most likely have a better way of life.
This is the American dream that has been forgotten.
They did not care about a big house or new cloths or fancy trinkets. This was not important and nor was it their dream. They worked hard, toiling in fields, so that their children would have better and could provide better for their children.
The simple matter is we have forgotten the true American dream. It is not to have a huge house, two new cars, cable TV and more. The true American dream is that we can work hard so that our children can provide a better life for their children.
Socialism removes this drive that it integral to human nature.
Without the challenge, we are doomed to fail. It is human nature that we strive best when there are consequences for our failure. We must have the ability, the right and the freedom to fail; for if we don’t, then we can never truly succeed; we can never truly be free.
