Democratic Wings: 20 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath

September 09, 2005

20 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath

1) "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." - President Bush, on "Good Morning America," Sept. 1, 2005, six days after repeated warnings from experts about the scope of damage expected from Hurricane Katrina

2) "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) - this is working very well for them." - Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the Hurricane flood evacuees in the Houston Astrodome, Sept. 5, 2005

3) "It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level....It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." -House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Aug. 31, 2005

4) "We've got a lot of rebuilding to do ... The good news is - and it's hard for some to see it now - that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubble of Trent Lott's house - he's lost his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." (Laughter) -President Bush, touring hurricane damage, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005

5) "Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well." - FEMA Director Michael Brown, Sept. 1, 2005

6) "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." - President Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring Hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005

7) "I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water." - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on NPR's "All Things Considered," Sept. 1, 2005

8) "Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.' Because if you recall, the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse." - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, blaming media coverage for his failings, "Meet the Press," Sept. 4, 2005

9) "I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving." - Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Sept. 6, 2005

10) "You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals...many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold." - CNN's Wolf Blitzer, on New Orleans' hurricane evacuees, Sept. 1, 2005

11) "Louisiana is a city that is largely under water." - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, news conference, Sept. 3, 2005

12) "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." - President George W. Bush, turning to his aides while surveying Hurricane Katrina flood damage from Air Force One, Aug. 31, 2005

13) "I believe the town where I used to come from Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself, occasionally too much - will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to." - President George W. Bush, on the tarmac at the New Orleans airport, Sept. 2, 2005

14) "Last night, we showed you the full force of a superpower government going to the rescue." - MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Sept. 1, 2005

15) "You know I talked to Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi yesterday because some people were saying, 'Well, if you hadn't sent your National Guard to Iraq, we here in Mississippi would be better off.' He told me 'I've been out in the field every single day, hour, for four days and no one, not one single mention of the word Iraq.' Now where does that come from? Where does that story come from if the governor is not picking up one word about it? I don't know. I can use my imagination." - Former President George Bush, who can give his imagination a rest, interview with CNN’s Larry King, Sept. 5, 2005

16) "...those who are stranded, who chose not to evacuate, who chose not to leave the city..." - FEMA Director Michael Brown, on New Orleans residents who could not evacuate because they were too poor and lacked the means to leave, CNN interview, Sept. 1, 2005

17) "We just learned of the convention center - we being the federal government - today." - FEMA Director Michael Brown, to ABC's Ted Koppel, Sept. 1, 2005, to which Koppel responded "Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today."

18) "I actually think the security is pretty darn good. There's some really bad people out there that are causing some problems, and it seems to me that every time a bad person wants to scream or cause a problem, there's somebody there with a camera to stick it in their face." - FEMA Director Michael Brown, CNN interview, Sept. 2, 2005

19) "I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans." - FEMA Director Michael Brown, arguing that the victims bear some responsibility, CNN interview, Sept. 1, 2005

20) "Thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi and Alabama to our help and rescue. We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reid for their extraordinary efforts. Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard - maybe you all have announced it - but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating." -Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), to CNN's Anderson Cooper, Aug. 31, 2005, to which Cooper responded:

"I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians slap - you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?"

"Probably, hanging onto the past brings more destruction than any other single cause. ...It's the Muslim fundamentalists who worship the past and ignore the reformist spirit with which Muhammad viewed women. It's the backward-looking Christian literalists who interpret religious teachings in a way that consolidates their power..." ~ Gloria Steinem

"'Inherent differences' between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity." ~ Ruth Bader Ginsberg

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the world." ~ Virginia Woolf

"...remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors... If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." ~ Abigail Adams

"Bloody treason, murderous act
Not by women were designed.
Bells o'erthrown nor churches sacked
Speak not ill of womenkind."
~ Gearoid Iarla Fitzgerald

"Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." ~ Margaret Mead

"Of my two 'handicaps' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black." ~ Shirley Chisholm

"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?" ~ Zora Neale Hurston

"Eventually, all things merge into one; and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs..." ~ Norman Maclean

"There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example - where had they gone?... It was a spring without voices." ~ Rachel Carson

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." ~ St. Francis of Assisi

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but He cannot save them from fools." ~ John Muir

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." ~ Edward Abbey

"We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it... Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love." ~ George Eliot (Marian Evans)

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." ~ John Muir

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." ~ C. P. Snow

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." ~ Albert Einstein

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William Pitt

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If somebody tells you you ought to quit, it's because they're afraid you won't." ~ Bill Clinton

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." ~ Marian Anderson

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth in a few hands, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis

"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life." ~ Jane Addams

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." ~ William Shakespeare

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think." ~ Patricia Schroeder

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"What difference does it make to the dead whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one." ~ Agatha Christie

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." ~ Jesus

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"And thus I clothe my naked villany with odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil." ~ William Shakespeare

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing... in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret..." ~ Jesus

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, ... legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law." ~ Thomas Paine

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!" ~ Albert Einstein

"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." ~ Clarence Darrow

"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." ~ George Washington

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." ~ George Orwell

"To (say) that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it's morally treasonable to the American public." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." ~ Adlai Stevenson

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." ~ John Stuart Mill

"I don't give 'em hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it's hell." ~ Harry Truman

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!" ~ Will Rogers

"I never was surer of my position that no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her political rights." ~ Susan B. Anthony

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September 09, 2005