Dems make a baseless charge, the media repeats it. It is 
    easily debunked but that never gets any media play. Then 
    the media does a poll where some increased number of 
    people are outraged over the issue, proving not that Bush 
    is a bad person but that people believe the media spin. 

    "If anything, the federal government (and Bush 
    administration) failed to respond adequately to the 
    immediate and coordinated partisan attacks, because the 
    federal government was too busy saving lives and otherwise
    acting like adults."

    Other federal and state officials pointed to Louisiana's
    failure to measure up to national disaster response
    standards, noting that the federal plan advises state and
    local emergency managers not to expect federal aid for 72
    to 96 hours, and base their own preparedness efforts on
    the need to be self-sufficient for at least that
    period. "Fundamentally the first breakdown occurred at
    the local level," said one state official who works with
    FEMA. 'Did the city have the situational awareness of
    what was going on within its borders? The answer was no."

    "The anti-Republican/pro-Big Government bias is so 
    predictable. In the spring of 1997, a massive snowfall 
    led to flooding and levee-breaking in North Dakota. 
    Nobody blamed Bill Clinton's administration for not 
    realizing the levees were going to break."

    "We are fortunate to have an able and experienced 
    director of FEMA who has been with us on the ground for 
    some time."

    "The federal government pretty much met its standard time 
    lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-
    96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was 
    faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, 
    faster than Francine and Jeanne."

    The DOD response is well ahead of the 1992 Hurricane
    Andrew timetable. Back then, the support request took
    nine days to crawl through the bureaucracy. The reaction
    this time was less than three days officially, and DOD
    had been pre-staging assets in anticipation of the aid
    request from the moment Katrina hit. DOD cannot act
    independently of course; the Federal Emergency Management
    Agency (FEMA) is the lead agency. Requests for assistance
    have to be routed from local officials through FEMA to
    U.S. Northern Command and then to the necessary
    components. In practice, this means state officials have
    to assess damage and determine relief requirements; FEMA
    has to come up with a plan for integrating the military
    into the overall effort; DOD has to begin to pack and
    move the appropriate materiel, and deploy sufficient
    forces. This has all largely been or is being
    accomplished.

    The bottom line is that the mass media blew their 
    coverage of Hurricane Katrina badly. Has anyone paid a 
    price for that malpractice? Not that I know of. Last I 
    saw, media figures were awarding one another prizes for 
    their Katrina coverage.

    Someone tell me, other than the position of Hurricane 
    Katrina, what significant part of the story the media got 
    right during the first two weeks of the coverage, 
    especially regarding the effects on the city of New 
    Orleans.

    Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid
    compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and
    federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had
    not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush
    official said. . . .

    ....hundreds and hundreds of buses that the city of New
    Orleans failed to use to evacuate its most disadvantaged 
    citizens out of harm's way before hurricane Katrina hit 
    last week. Tens of thousands of New Orleans' residents 
    could have been spared the worst of the past week and 
    many might still be alive today if the city had actually 
    activated its plan to use its own vehicles--school and 
    commuter buses--to give them a ride. But the plan was 
    never activated, though the city was fully aware of the 
    plight of its citizens after hurricane Ivan nearly struck 
    it last year..... 

    Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city 
    level and stepping in to organize relief efforts, 
    Louisiana and New Orleans officials spent most of last 
    week lashing out at the Bush administration, though its 
    response was three times faster than the response to 
    hurricane Andrew just 13 years ago. Government actually 
    got quicker at doing something, in spite of the massive 
    increase in the number of lawyers on the public dime in 
    the intervening years. The locals blamed the feds even 
    though the administration, whatever its faults, was ahead 
    of all local officials when it came to declaring a state 
    of emergency and requesting a mandatory evacuation. A 
    massive butt-covering exercise is underway in Louisiana 
    as I write, so massive it is second only to the actual 
    relief and law and order efforts going on in the vast 
    Katrina destruction zone.

    [W]hy we aren’t hearing a lot of complaining from those in
    Mississippi about the relief effort. Mississippi was not 
    flooded as New Orleans was, but many there had their 
    entire cities completely wiped out – reduced to scattered 
    rubble. Relief got to them more quickly not because many 
    of them were white, but (among other reasons) because they
    were not thought to have “dodged a bullet” as New Orleans 
    originally was earlier in the week.

    I've reviewed the New Orleans emergency management plan. 
    Here is an important section in the first paragraph.
    "We coordinate all city departments and allied state and 
    federal agencies which respond to citywide disasters and 
    emergencies through the development and constant updating 
    of an integrated multi-hazard plan. All requests for 
    federal disaster assistance and federal funding 
    subsequent to disaster declarations are also made through 
    this office. Our authority is defined by the Louisiana 
    Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act of 1993, Chapter 6 
    Section 709, Paragraph B, 'Each parish shall maintain a 
    Disaster Agency which, except as otherwise provided under 
    this act, has jurisdiction over and serves the entire 
    parish.' "

    Check the plan -- the "we" in this case is the office of 
    the mayor, Ray Nagin who was very quick and vocal about 
    blaming everyone but his own office. A telling 
    picture, ... taken by The Associated Press on Sept. 1 and 
    widely circulated on the Internet shows a school bus 
    park, apparently filled to capacity with buses, under 
    about four feet of water. If a mandatory evacuation was 
    ordered, why weren't all the taxpayer-purchased buses 
    used in the effort?

    "Journalists who are long on opinions and short on 
    knowledge have no idea what is entailed in moving 
    hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size 
    of England in which power lines are down, no gasoline is 
    available, and roads and airports were covered with water 
    or debris. Yet this was done within four days of Katrina 
    dissipating. The most monumental and successful disaster 
    relief operation in world history is being libeled as a 
    national disgrace. 

    Idiot journalists wonder why helicopters were not used to 
    bring food and water right away to the people in 
    Louisiana's superdome. The reasons are (1) the local 
    government was supposed to have provided them with food 
    and water for three days, but didn't; and (2) you don't 
    divert helicopters from rescuing people in danger of 
    drowning to the aid of people whose lives are not at 
    risk. Thousands of people were rescued from rooftops in 
    Louisiana and Mississippi Tuesday, Wednesday and  
    Thursday. This wasn't a failure just because there were 
    no television cameras there to record it." -- Jack Kelly