This is the architect for the current success of the Republican party in the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_AtwaterInterestingly, you can see the Republican administration starting to use these same techniques to blame the Mayor of New Orlean's for the hurricane debacle.
Smashmouth is also practiced by some here, when certain people don't agree with them.
It is effective, but it doesn't make the practitioner correct, but they will influence the stupid this way!
Hence you have poor and disadvantaged people voting Republican now, while the Bush administration cuts all programs that are designed
to help the very same people.
In New Orlean's he cut the FEMA funding and stopped the levi project to ensure against storm surge from a large hurricane. Now, the Republican machine is out to smashmouth any complainers.
Watch the difference in content between Fox, and then CNN and/or MSNBC!
On Fox you would think the Bush administration is heroic and the local politicians where at fault, on CNN and MSNBC it is all about the disaster, and lack of help from the Federal Emergecy Management Adminstration, or FEMA, which has had their budgets cut 44% under Bush, and was placed into the Dept of Homeland Security. Yet another layer of beurocracy preventing quick devise action.
The comparison I heard on Fox this morning about how well they local politicians did in NYC for 911 compared to the local New Orleans politicians is absured.
There was no tiny footprint of damage in New Orleans, it was not only the city but the whole region.
In NYC the devastation was over in one hour, the rescue mission was sorting through the rubble in a small area. The damage was turned into dust.
In New Orlean's, 5 days later, the evacuation is not full strenght, still waiting for those troops to arrive that Fox reports as already in place.
The intensity of the damage increases every hour due to rot and sewage and lack of food and water.
In NYC the damage was stable, except for some toxicity for those workers at ground zero, in the long term, but no immenent death after the hit, except of course for the very few survivors found that had not evacuated the building.
NYC it was a building, New Orleans is a city!
Check out the former police commissioner who lost the nonimation for Homeland Security Director next time they re-run his interview ... if you can stand it!
