Where are Obama and FEMA? By Gråulf

Five days after being hit by an ice storm more than one million Americans in the Midwest are without power, and socked in by snow and ice. Reports of fresh water being in short supply and power outages that may last for weeks have many in the region begging for help. The storm that began in the Midwest last Tuesday has been blamed in at least 42 deaths, including 11 in Kentucky, nine in Arkansas, six each in Texas and Missouri, three in Virginia, two each in Oklahoma, Indiana and West Virginia and one in Ohio. Most were blamed on hypothermia, traffic accidents and carbon monoxide poisoning. Local emergency personnel report that they have only managed to clear roads of fallen trees and tree branches in urban areas, and that most rural roads are impassable, so no one knows for sure how many people may be out of fuel and food out in the country.

Meanwhile, local officials are angry about the lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is no sign of FEMA, and President Obama appears to be oblivious to a million US citizens being isolated, and without power in the middle of winter. I know it is not really the job of the president to personally intervene in natural disaster of this sort, but the press and the Democrats didn’t want to hear any excuses from President Bush when he was slow to respond to Katrina. But it seems to me that if Bush was crucified for “eating cake” with John McCain and not sending FEMA “fast enough” and not running down to New Orleans to get in the way of rescuers, then Obama deserves to be criticized for ignoring this natural disaster in the Midwest. He is supposedly having a black-tie dinner tonight with members of the press in the warm, cozy White House while hundreds of thousands of Americans have had to evacuate their homes, or are trapped in them without power. Could it be that the liberal press, and the President, doesn’t consider this a real emergency because most of the victims are white? Or maybe they don’t actually believe this is happening in the midst of all the global warming we are having.

Gråulf.