9-20-2005

Lee P. Butler

"Many black people feel that their race, their property conditions and their voting patterns have been a factor in the response," Jesse Jackson said. "I'm not saying that myself, but what's self-evident is that you have many poor people without a way out."

Of course, Mr. Jackson doesn't have to actually say the words. He simply emotes a certain belief and those who follow his every syllable, spreads the actual meaning of his intention. The fact that he 'relates' what he claims others have said while illuminated by media elitist spotlights, is more than enough to spread the message of his 'intent'.

That message is simple: Republicans, especially President Bush, are racist or as Kanya West so eloquently expressed, "George Bush doesn't care about black people!" They also promote the idea that he 'just doesn't understand the plight of poor people'; i.e. African-Americans.

It's painfully obvious that the horrific disaster in New Orleans brought the plight of poor African-American people stuck in the societal destruction of the welfare state to millions of television screens across America.

Media elitists quickly pointed out that the economic distress of the mostly African-American populace caught by the camera lens' showed how 'destructive' the President's tax cuts are for the 'poorest among us' and his policies of 'under-funding projects and departments' led to the levee breaks and that the 'slow federal response' was due to his 'lack of compassion for the poor'.

Every one of those scenarios has been debunked several times over, for anyone who is willing to investigate and do the research, including members of the media who so desire. But then that is the very reason they continue to promote the racist, unfounded, and in some cases, the outright lies of those with a political agenda to destroy the President and Republicans in general.

To present all the facts, undiluted by liberal media bias, would exonerate the President and eliminate the premise of their agenda, that it’s his fault.

That's also why the 'race card' was used so predominately throughout the media and in the political world. At a gathering of several liberal African-American organizations, leaders of the group asserted they were focused on helping the people of New Orleans, not race.

Yet, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said, "To the President of the United States, I simply say that God cannot be pleased with our response." Cummings also said: "We cannot allow it to be said that the difference between those who lived and those who died in this great storm and flood of 2005 was nothing more than poverty, age or skin color."

For these groups, everything is about race and tracking hand-in-hand with that is keeping, or currently, regaining Democrat political power. These liberal pundits saw the Katrina catastrophe as a massive opportunity to stop the losses by Democrats at the polls.

Especially the loss of Democrat voters in African-American communities across the country. Take for instance the results from the 2004 presidential election that showed the Republican Party achieved an increase in African-American votes -- from 9 percent to 11 percent.

Plus, in Florida and Ohio, President Bush did even better. He picked up six percentage points in Florida over 2000, moving to 13 percent, and in Ohio, it was announced he had won as much as 16 percent of the African American vote.

In Ohio! Where liberals charged that the African-American vote had been suppressed by Republicans!

Men and women of our armed forces risked their own lives to save those unfortunate souls who were mercilessly stranded in New Orleans by an African-American mayor who should have better understood the plight of poor inner-city African-Americans than anybody else.

Instead, he turned away an empty Amtrak train that sat waiting to remove people before the storm and hundreds of buses were never utilized to move people out of harms way. When questioned about the lack of bus use to move people, Jesse Jackson retorted, ‘where would they go?’

According to an article in the New Orleans Times Picayune of November 9th, 1996, they didn’t have a problem utilizing school buses to move people from the inner-city when they needed to get hundreds of thousands of them to the… polls! They knew where to go then, why not in the face of pending doom?

Then just as it would seem the racists and liberal media were once again able to use their decades long race-baiting tactics to paint Republicans as racists, President Bush spoke to the nation and destroyed their plans.

"The Gulf Coast has some of the most beautiful and historic places in our country, as well as some deep and persistent poverty, rooted in racial discrimination and opportunity denied." President Bush said in New Orleans. "Now is the time to rise above this legacy of inequality. As the Gulf Coast rebuilds, evacuees should come home to the place they love with a chance at a better life."

ABC News was perplexed that they couldn’t get a group of African-Americans to bash the President immediately after his speech. Connie London was asked if she harbored any anger towards the President and she said, "No. None whatsoever, because I feel like our city and our state government should have been there before the federal government was called in. They should have been on their jobs."

Asked later if she did blame anybody, and she responded, "Oh, yes. I mean they've been allocating federal funds to fix the levee system, and it never got done. I fault the mayor of our city personally. I really do."

The racist attacks of hate mongers and the liberal media had backfired. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll showed 58 percent of Americans approve of Bush’s handling of the storm’s aftermath.

Race was only a factor in the heartbreaking catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina in the minds of those who routinely use race for political expediency and that’s more horrendous than the tragedy itself.