News organizations have been using a Conservative plant

[Quixote1818]

They had this jerk on ABC news last night comparing Mt. St. Helen's to New Orleans and criticizing the local and state Gov. I posted on this last night scratching my head as to how evacuating the tiny town of Cougar, Washington next to Mount St. Helen's made him qualified to comment on evacuating a city of a million???

Who is Bob Williams, and why is he on TV talking about Hurricane Katrina?

On September 6 and 7, numerous national media outlets featured G. Robert "Bob" Williams, president of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, falsely criticizing Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin -- both Democrats -- for their handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. But none of these media outlets disclosed that the Evergreen Freedom Foundation is a conservative think tank that espouses "limited, accountable government" and receives funding from numerous conservative donors. Nor did they make clear how Williams, who was a Washington state legislator during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, is qualified to comment on hurricane disaster relief efforts.

Williams's media tour appears to have been launched by a September 6 Wall Street Journal op-ed. He also was featured on the September 6 editions of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, ABC's World News Tonight, and Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, as well as the September 7 edition of MSNBC's Connected: Coast to Coast.

On his guest appearances on The O'Reilly Factor and Connected: Coast to Coast, Williams claimed that Blanco was largely to blame for the slow government response to Katrina's devastation, because "the feds can't come in" to provide disaster relief unless requested by the governor. This is false; in fact, the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan clearly states that the federal government may take a "proactive" response to a catastrophe and bypass state requests for aid. Normally, it is a governor's responsibility to request federal aid in the event of an emergency. But under a "proactive" response,
Continued at:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509070003

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Interesting...why is half of your post lined out?

[Quixote1818]

3. I don't know, I thought I went over the number of lines I was suposed

to include so I cut that part out? Strange

[Jim Sagle]

2. Please fix your post. That's distracting.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Evergreen Foundation as in "Evergreen Helicopters"?

Big CIA contractor located in Oregon?

[Nikki Stone 1]

5. Hmmmm. Gotta get this info out

....

[countmyvote4real]

6. DUH and quelle surprise!

MSM does not care about the truth. The devastation of Katrina caught them off guard. Now they are back-peddling (no pun intended) to prove their allegiance to the Fuehrer.

[DELUSIONAL]

7. Mt. St. Helens was a very different disaster from New Orleans

I know -- I live in Washington and was here when the volcano blew it's top.

The life loss was about 60 -- mostly close to the Volcano. But we knew the volcano was going to blow at any time because of the lateral expansion of the volcano had to relieve the pressure -- which is what happened -- the first eruption was at that bulge and then the top of the volcano blew. The photos are awesome. People had plenty of time to evacuate unlike New Orleans.

There was major devastation around Mt. St. Helens -- but primarily to rural and remote areas. The glacier did melt and there was flooding -- but there is no comparison with the flooding of an URBAN New Orleans area with a high concentration human lives in such great numbers to a rural flooding along a known path of a river.

There was major ashing east of Mt. St. Helens -- but I don't recall any lives lost directly to the heavy ash fall. Crops were lost in large areas -- but again this is no where comparable to the major flooding of an URBAN metropolitan area with a major seaport plus a major river used for Interstate commerce.

The closest West Coast disaster that could be compared to Katrina's devastation to the Gulf Coast would be the San Fransisco Earthquake of 1915.

The West Coast is due for a major earthquake -- or Mt. Ranier could blow -- and that could impact major Urban and Metropolitan areas. There should be enough warning to evacuate -- hopefully the science of volcanology has evolved since 1980. If not then the loss of life could be massive. But again this is very different to the New Orleans and Gulf States hit by Katrina.

With the same idiots in charge in D.C. as are currently in control when a major disaster hits this region -- I believe that we all know that we are on our own -- and I hope that the people of Washington and all other states realize this fact.

on edit: I must add that Washington State has some of the dumbest jerks elected to public office. This is the state where the old Republican party was taken over by the religious right wing NUTS and to this day the party of NUTS still holds the Republican party hostage -- and the sane Republicans has switched parties.

Some Republicans were angry that the Democratic Governor created an exclusion zone around the volcano -- I'll bet that this jerk was one of the guys yelling about how the Governor was hurting the corporations. She eased the zone-- and a large portion of people killed were independent loggers -- working for large corporations in the zones that the Governor opened to please the corporate interests.