Talk Elections

The call for a bipartisan commission failed in a partisan vote.

All the present Democrats plus Jeffords voted for it
All the present Republicans voted against it.
It failed 44-54, with Vitter and Corzine absent.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00229#position


What do the Republicans have to hide? Time to vote every single last Republican out.

It's strange how Democrats have been opposed to Congressional committee investigations ever since they lost Congress.

Pretty pissed you're in the minority now, eh?

OK, YOUR TEH BOSS

What possible justification could one give for why they would oppose such an investigation?

Waste of time. Why doesn't Congress do something important, like repeal the estate tax?

It is a waste of time.

-The Federal Government screwed up
-The local governments screwed up

How about they get around to solving the problem and helping the people out that were effected.

L3TS VOTE OUT ALL THOSE 3VIL D3MOCRATS!!1!!!11!!1

Reading some of the amendments to the bill which the investigation is listed, I can see why some people voted against it.  A request for investigation should be a stand-alone request with no Congressmen on the committee.  The investigation should be headed up by professionals in the fields of catastrophe response, evacuation planning, transportation, etc . . . a truly independent panel. 

It is not surprising to me that the Republicans are afraid of a bi-partisan investigation, which I'm sure would find plenty of fault with the Democratic mayor of NO as well as the federal government.

This is how they are. There is never any accountability. It's always party before country.

Just like the Democrats who would rather have congressmen on the comittee instead of experts in the field. I can think of two guys in John Breaux and Rudy Guiliani who would be perfect people to chair a bipartisan committee. Instead, the Democrats want people like Biden or Kennedy to sit on the commission and turn it into a circus.

OMG OMG OMG Jfern!  You've convinced me and like 90% of teh rest of the forum.  I'm gonna be a DEMOCRAT NOw!!!111.  BUsh SUX I have a problem with my allegies!! It must be his fault!!  Let's have an independent investigation on why the Republicans won't help my allergy probelms.  It's tehr faultt!!  I'm gonna go get prenant and then abort it just to piss of Republcians and then make fun of Southern religious people because they hate me and scare me. And then I'm gonna subscribe to teh dailykos, become a member of the Democratic Union and we'll be on our way to FREeDomZ!1111!!!!!!1one.

Even for the partisan Republicans and Republican sympathizers on this forum, you have to question why the Republican party would be opposed to this investigation.

Don't they want to know what went wrong and how it can be fixed in the future?

Um, ever think to read my post or maybe read the amendments? The amendment specifies a congressional committee, not a government commission. One has political hacks running the show, the other has people who know what they're talking about running it. I'll take the latter.

Bush has already called for an executive level investigation.  A congressional investigation would be duplication of effort and an unnecessary expense.

Further, the riders to stock it with senators sunk it.  If they had instead been appointing people not currently in an elected office, such as Giuliani and the head of FEMA under Clinton (I cannot remember his name right now), it would have had a shot at actual support.

To the democrats who want the senate investigation:  Would you support it if it were staffed by Santorum, Coburn, Bunning and other people your party likes to vilify?

James Lee Witt, who was considered excellent.  BTW:  Prior to his reorganization of FEMA, he was a county judge and owned a local construction company.

What part of bi-partisan commission don't you understand? The Democrats might pick Breaux.

Sorry that I'm not going to be impressed with a non-independent commission full of Bush political hacks like Brown that caused the problem in the first place. You have the foxes guarding the hen house.

jfern, what's in your siggy?

Ah.
Millions of dollars to investigate Clintons penis was important.
This is not so important.

Who can tell; he's consistently supported Nagin's policies that had the effect of killing NOLA residents that were mostly poor an Black.

Bush wrote a note to Condaleeza Rice telling her he needed to go to the bathroom or something.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050914/ids_photos_ts/r2587077477.jpg#gooderhead

I thought it was a fake.

I'm not entirely sure that it is really Bush; that's very close for a reporter.

It's being reported that the photographer says it's Bush, but there is no way to tell from the picture.  What is needed is a comparrison between the handwriting in the photo and prior handwriting examples known to be from Bush.  However, it is pretty funny.  hahha

The only problem then is this does not become an independent investigation.  Just politicians reviewing an event.  For a real investigation, they should hire professionals in these fields to examine the whole response and see what went wrong and how it should be corrected.

Regardless, Texasgurl's point is very valid.

The Republicans waste lots of taxpayers' money on one of the most idiotic investigations ever that had absolutely no relevance to the American public.

Here is a legitimate image:

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Of course, JFRAUD seems to prefer presidents that piss themselves.  :-)

The the picture supposively of Bush writing his need for a bathroom break is in question.  Here is another same of his writing, this time done while in session on a piece of paper (note it is also in script and matches the sample you provided):

()

Why would Bush need to change his writing style in the latest photo?

Note the "R" in Republican and Reign.  They match.

Whatever, it's real.

WOW Maybe JFRAUD has found "Memogate, Part II."

No, that was the Washington Post article claiming that Blanco took her time declaring a disaster. They printed a retraction, but the damage has been done.

Anyways, the image in question here is on Yahoo pictures. Yes, I thought it was fake when I first saw it too, until I realized that it was on Yahoo pictures.

Yeah, I'm not questioning the authenticity of the picture; I'm just stating the obvious: he didn't write the whole thing.

OK, if you want to insist that he's incapable of writing that.

Well, WP did print a retraction and I cited it on the Blanco thread.  It got a fair amount of publicity.

The picture is real, but is it Bush?  It's kinda hard to tell from the back of his head.  Second, did he write the note or did he receive it?  It doesn't look like Bush's handwriting.  "Memogate Part II."  Maybe it's Dan Rather?

Also looking at the photo, there are two writing styles on the paper itself.  The top half is plain, with a mix words writting in caps and others not.  Below it, it looks like it is in script (or Bush script).  Maybe Bush (if this is Bush as Rick Wilking claims) is responding to someone elses not to him? 

Um, the top handwriting is not Bush's at all. The differences from what the person is writing and what is above in caps are drastic.

Also, the linewidth in the upper text is wider than the lower part.  I don't think Bush stopped halfway through his note to sharpen his pencil and change his writing style.

Here's another example of Bush handwriting.
This example includes two printed capital letters that occur in the printed top portion of the note: "M" and "I".  The "I" in the letter has the vertical crossing the top horizontal.  In the note, it is the opposite--and the top and vertical don't even touch in the second "I".  The "M" in the letter shows the middle point coming only halfway down.  The note has the legs and middle in a line.  Also, the "M" in the letter is much more angular than the rounded "M" in the note.

Also compare the note's "E"s in "NEED" with the capital "F" in "Freedom" in the Iraq note.  The "E"s are wide-open at the top, but the cross parts of the "F" cross far over to the left.
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Yup, if that is in fact Bush writing in the photo, then it's clear that he did not write the top half of the message.

Indeed, a complete and total waste of time, money, resources, staffing, energy, and many other things. I mean what do they really want to do here, investigate it to find out if it was really a hurricane?

The Democrats want to try to put on another show, that's all.

Most all of these notes look to me like they contain a lot of different writing styles. I like the one that references "our plan." The shame of it is that if anything real ever did surface, it would be a little like "the boy who cried wolf."

Republicans want to bury their heads in the sand. Here's a comment I made about the evacuation before the hurricane hit. If I could figure out it was going to be a problem, why didn't Bush?

Under their proposal, yes.  Remember, they originally only wanted to investigate the federal response to the storm, and not the whole response on all levels.  It was only after Bush called for a full independent investigation into the whole response that the language changed.  But still, it's not an independent investigation when there are Congressmen on the panel.  The only way to have a truly indenpendent investigation, and one that will offer useful feedback on how to improve the response structure, is to have outside experts sit on the panel, review all the material, and then make their response.  Anything else, and it's just showboating and spinning.

Do you really believe that Bush would create an indepented commission that wasn't just filled with political hacks like Brown?

If had to, yes.  However, I highly doubt that Bush would be the person picking the experts.  That would be the task of the Congress.  Of course, that still leaves it wide open for the Congressmen to pick their own hacks on both sides of the aisle.  At least the politicians won't be involved with the actual investigation, so that part will at least be much more independent and productive.

You seem to have a lot of trust in Bush here. Remember, he's the guy who decided that a failed horse laywer would be a good head of FEMA. Why oppose a real independent investigation, not an investigation that would be IINO (Independent In Name Only, like yourself)?

I see Bob Kerrey and Lee Hamilton are right wing hacks all of a sudden.

As you've pointed out, here is what you've said:


Now, in point of fact, 9,000 went to the Superdome prior to the storm.  Nagin had the ability to offer them evacuation, via buses, plus a few hundred on the empty train that left NOLA; he didn't.  Perhaps a few thousand that waited in their homes, and could have gotten out, would have, if transportation out; this is a maximum of 12,000.

What about the other 88,000?  The either couldn't use the buses/train or decided to stay.  Several thousand (10,000) are still there.  Now, I don't blame Nagin for not removing those people who have refused to leave or couldn't ride the buses, but the others he could have gotten out.

Last time I checked, people were singing the praises of FEMA last year with the multiple responses to Florida following their hurricanes.  How quickly people forget.



I'm not opposing a real independent investigation.  In fact, I'm calling for one.  The only way it will be independent is if there are no politicians involved but rather made up of professionals that actually understand this stuff, and can make realistic recommendations that will benefit everyone in the future, rather than politicians who pretend.  You can't get more independent than that.

But yet you oppose this commission? Are you afraid that it would overshadow Bush's commission? There's no reason that we couldn't have 2.

Two commissions take too much time away from the issues as well as wastes our money (as people have brought up the Clinton hearings earlier).  Do it once, do it right.  Have the professionals on the panel and keep the politics out of it.