A tale of two hurricanes: Obama comforted victims, Bush ate cake

11/2/2012 1:27pm by 37

A reader mentioned that we ought to dig up the old photo of President George W. Bush, when, in the hours after Hurricane Katrina struck the US mainland on October 29, 2005, George Bush flew to California to have a birthday cake with Senator John McCain, and take funny photos laughing together while Americans were quite literally drowning in New Orleans.

And what did President Obama do after Hurricane Sandy struck the east coast, destroying large swaths of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and more? Less than two days later, President Obama flew to the scene to comfort the victims and get a first-hand briefing on the extent of the damage.

Democrats: We do things differently.

Bush versus Obama on Hurricanes Katrina versus Sandy

Two different responses to a devastating hurricane hitting the continental United States.

During the worst of Hurricane Katrina, George Bush celebrated John McCain's birthday in California.

During the worst of Hurricane Katrina, George Bush
celebrated John McCain’s birthday in California, Aug. 29, 2005.

Less than two days after Hurricane Sandy hit land, President Obama was on the scene, comforting victims.

Less than two days after Hurricane Sandy hit land,
President Obama was on the scene, comforting victims. Oct. 31, 2012.

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@aravosis | Facebook | Google+. Editor of AMERICAblog, joint JD/MSFS from Georgetown, worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, and as a stringer for the Economist. A frequent TV pundit, he has been on The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline & Reliable Sources. Full bio and .

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  • THill

    Just so you all no the lady in the picture was promised relief from obama she got a fourm letter saying thanks for supporting our troops.what a joke so basically obama just used these people for a campaign photo opp.all of you obama bots are ignorant people who only repeat what the media tells you.

  • http://twitter.com/truthonlybesaid Karen Marie

    Former FEMA director Michael Brown criticized Obama for his quick fly in and fly out photo op

  • http://twitter.com/truthonlybesaid Karen Marie

    Obama went for a photo op and did nothing. He is now golfing

  • Joecat367

    One more thing, Why don’t YOU mention that while Obama was in Las Vegas campaigning people in New York were dumpster diving trying to find food because they’re starving!!! Where is he when so many people on Staten Island lost their homes and lives? I’ll tell you where he is he’s campaigning for a job I pray to god he loses on Nov 6th.

    • playa4thee

      I bet you that you would want Obama to climb the light post and connect the electricity too. He (Obama) can’t ever do anything good enough for those of you that hate him. 

      • http://twitter.com/truthonlybesaid Karen Marie

        We want Obama do his job and stop playing and hanging out with the uber rich Hollywood elite. I don’t hate Obama at all. I want him to act like a President and do his job

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3B52VO2FZHYBFGY7JXB6HTUCFA ALWAYS RIGHT

      Obama did what he was supposed to do….set for gas truck…loose the money to the governors…tour the damage to know what to send….they rest that you are mention is up to the governors of that state…as he delegates priorities….UNGRATEFUL ITCH

      • http://twitter.com/truthonlybesaid Karen Marie

        He went for the photo op – It was before the election otherwise he would never had gone there at all.

  • Joecat367

    Wheres all the main stream media’s coverage of how the Obama Administration tried to cover up what they did or didn’t do to help our guys in Benghazi? Why didn’t Obama Why aren’t they all over that? Why didn’t they send Military back up to prevent the second attack? Some “Military backup may have made a difference at around five the following
    morning, when a second wave of attackers assaulted the CIA annex where
    embassy personnel had taken refuge. It was during this second wave of
    attacks that two ex-SEALs working for the CIA’s security teams—Glenn
    Doherty and Tyrone Woods—were killed in a mortar strike”. Let’s hear about that I don’t care where Bush was or about how quickly Obama went to NJ. If it weren’t so close to the
    election we wouldn’t have seen him in NJ. It took him 10 days to go to
    Joplin after the tornadoes they had.Yet he’s in NJ the day after Sandy hit. He must think we’re stupid to think it was anything else but a show for votes. I live not 10 Miles from Seaside one of the areas hardest hit by Sandy and I can tell you a lot of people in Seaside and the surrounding areas are pissed that Obama just came here for the photo ops. He had a photographer following him taking pictures of people lives that were destroyed not just houses and rides.That was peoples lives. I was one of the lucky ones and didn’t sustain to much damage but there are people who have lost everything and the last thing they needed or wanted was to be part of a press junket. They don’t need the President here they need real help not some phony hugging and hand shaking!!!

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3B52VO2FZHYBFGY7JXB6HTUCFA ALWAYS RIGHT

      YOU FORGOT during Joplin he was closing in on OSAMA BIN LADEN…the next day OBL was dead..YET HE MADE SURE HE WENT  TO JOPLIN…UNGRATEFUL ITCH.

  • Dcnwboot

    Irony, On Nov 1 W was in the Cayman Islands. He was the keynote speaker at a conference on “Alternative Investing”, moving money and investments overseas.

  • ezpz

    Don’t know if it was screwy Disqus or me (also screwy at times), but a comment that was intended for this thread ended up on the Newt thread.  So for the record, here’s the comment:

    I didn’t realize Bush was running for president again.  Better than Bush – what a pathetically low bar.  
    Trying to promote your guy in this context reeks of desperation.

    There.

    And this site seems to be having a major and very annoying disqus problem.

  • RoseB

    Katrina hit in August not October…if you can’t even read captions of the pictures you are providing, you probably shouldn’t be writing articles.  Also, it’s hard to visit a city while it’s still in the process of being destroyed.  Hurricanes take days to move through an area.  Bush didn’t provide great relief assistance; we can all agree on that.  As a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, I assure you Obama’s FEMA response to Isaac was far greater than Bush’s response to Katrina, but it’s obvious that FEMA learned something from Katrina under the Bush administration.  As far as Sandy goes, all I have to say is you should be thanking God that it’s cold up there, because down here in NOLA, it’s so swelteringly hot and humid you feel as if you’re being suffocated and strangled by the heat without AC.  It’s hard to describe….definitely something that needs to be experienced first hand to understand.  

    • hollywoodstein

      Freezing without electricity sucks too.

  • Mando5ths

    August.  Katrina hit New Orleans in August of 2005, not October.

  • http://buddybest.tripod.com/index.html BuddyNovinski

    Willard Romeny, qu’il mange le gâteau!  Après que nous pouvons le couper la tête!

    • Joecat367

       Wow really come on a message board and reply in another language that most on the board wont understand. You must be an Obama supporter!!!

      • Moderator3

        It’s a bit like wandering onto a new blog and complaining about it.

    • Alkgnjebgfjzdkn

      FUCK U!!!!!!!!

  • pigboy

    I see the biggest difference between shrub and President Obama is, President Obama didn’t take the generator with him when he left the ongoing disaster like shrub did.

    This time around it was about the victims rather than the pResidential photo-oops.

    • ezpz

      What?  You don’t think those hugs were photo ops?

      And this site is annoyingly out of synch with Disqus.

  • http://www.rebeccamorn.com/mind BeccaM

    In other news: New York officials have decided after all to cancel the upcoming NYC Marathon.
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/02/new-york-marathon-faces-backlash-amid-hurricane-sandy-aftermath.html

    I think this was the right decision, and was one of Bloomberg’s more boneheaded moves to have attempted to go forward with it just two days from now.

  • Just_AC

    ACCCKKK – I keep on trying to forget those eight years, and it keeps on coming back like a bad burrito

    Just_AC

  • medium lebowski

    Adding:  And even if Obama wins, which looks quite likely, if you top journalists don’t strongly point out the blatant, democracy-destroying tactics and lies being employed by one of our parties, you will still be branded as cowards, and hounded now, and by history, as traitors to democracy and journalism and truth.   
    You will be among the most repulsive cowards the human race has ever known if you don’t stand up, before the election, to defend truth and democracy.

  • medium lebowski

    One political party has tried in 2012, to disenfranchise millions of American voters.  The same party has a candidate who is willing to tell important, deeply cynical lies to the voters.  That is not a candidate, nor a party, that believes in democracy.  This candidate is willing to seize power.

    If our few mostly-truthful top journalists, who occupy rare and precious seats of media power, don’t take this opportunity to defend truth and democracy, they will rightly be branded by history, all around the world, as cowards, and traitors to journalism, and traitors to democracy.

    You occupy those seats of power, telling yourselves that, yeah, you compromise all day long, but you’re there just in case somebody needs to stand up for truth and justice.  Well, if this isn’t just such a time, then you’re just lying to yourselves, and you’re cowards.

    • hollywoodstein

      This situation is only possible because the 4th Estate has failed to protect the public interest in favor of the corporate interest. 
      It is a sad state of affairs when a lie cannot be called an untruth let alone a lie.  When voter suppression efforts are not decried as a national scandal.  And electronic machines that can be hacked are used to count the vote, leaving open the possibility that elections are being stolen because they can. 
      Maybe somebody should do something. 
      The dems could lead on this.  Legislation to require voting machines to be at least as secure as Vegas slot machines would be a start.  Initiatives to encourage more people to vote, like maybe having the election on a weekend instead of Tuesday, ( a date that goes back to 1845 agrarian society).  Maybe teaching civics in school so citizens know how their government works.  And as long as we’re dreaming an amendment to restrict money in politics, ( this may hafta be a citizen get since the politicians who got where they are with the money system are unlikely to reform it). 
      Despite what well paid knuckleheads like Larry Sabato have been parroting for years, America is not a center right nation, on the major issues it is center left.  Republican corporatist ideas of tax cuts for the rich, and dirty air and polluted water cannot win in a fair fight even with their unholy alliance with the religionists, the nativists, the racists, and teh bigots, and their well oiled proganda machine that has brainwashed half the citizenry.  So they have to cheat. 
      Somebody should stop them.  There oughta be a law.
       I can dream can’t I?

      • http://twitter.com/truthonlybesaid Karen Marie

        The Dems never lead – they destroy. Lots of voter supression in all swing sates by Obama and the liberals. It was a fixed election. American is a center right nation and will remain that way. Obama is rich, and so is Buffett, and the Hollywood elite and union leaders, Oprah i s uber rich lots of rich libs out there who do not pay their fair share

  • Rigby

    Well, to be fair, there’s this:  http://c498390.r90.cf2.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/President-George-W.-Bush-Comforts-Katrina-Victims.jpg

    Don’t get me wrong:  I’m no fan of Bush and Obama’s response to Sandy ran circles around Bush’s.  But he did comfort and hug victims.  Was it as rapid a response?  Nope.  But it did happen.

  • http://www.rebeccamorn.com/mind BeccaM

    I always thought this image here was even more iconic. It was taken the day after Katrina made landfall. Afterwards, Bush returned to his pig ranch in Texas to take his last day of extended vacation. Meanwhile, people — American citizens — were dying needlessly.

    Thinkprogress.org has an excellent detailed timeline of the mind-numbing incompetence, dereliction of duty, and cavalier attitude of the entire Bush administration during the crisis: http://thinkprogress.org/report/katrina-timeline/

    • Joecat367

       Kind of like Obama sat by while Americans were killed in Benghazi and than tried to cover it up! So whose worse the one that just doesn’t get it or the one who gets it and just doesn’t care and will try to cover it up?

      • http://www.rebeccamorn.com/mind BeccaM

        You really should watch something other than Fox News. You might’ve learned that a Hurricane Superstorm just hit the eastern seaboard and a Democratic President and Republican governor set aside politics and their personal differences to deal with a crisis of national proportions.

        BTW, your Benghazi conspiracy theory story is utter bullshit. Even Geraldo Rivera couldn’t take it anymore.

        • Mt

          Classy. You must be an Obama supporter with your lack of morals and vocabulary. Obama just quadrupled the national debt in FOUR YEARS. Now THAT’S not bull$h!t, that’s real.

          • http://www.rebeccamorn.com/mind BeccaM

            Actually no, I’m not an Obama supporter and didn’t vote for him, but so what if I had?

            Do you even REMEMBER why there are deficits? Do you recall the Bush tax cuts, which were passed by the GOP-controlled Congress? Do you have the slightest fucking clue whatsoever that it is Congress that proposes and passes budgets and not the President, who merely signs or vetoes them? Do you have any neurons clinging to the memory that it was your precious Republicans who insisted that the Bush tax cuts be extended, and that they in fact were also responsible for passing both the unfunded Medicare-D expansion AND for keeping both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars ‘off the books’ so neither of them were ever paid for?

            Obama quadrupled the national debt? That’s fucking rich. Do you even understand the concept of math? National debt, sum total at the beginning of George W Bush’s term = $5.9t. At the end of his 8 year term = $10.7t. It could reasonably be argued that he almost — but didn’t quite — DOUBLE the national debt. During Barack Obama’s term, it went up an additional $5 trillion, but do you have any clue where that came from? Bush’s tax cuts, his unpaid-for wars, and the collapse of tax revenues caused in part by the economic collapse and depression we’re still recovering from.

            So no — Obama did not fucking quadruple the national debt. And if you have a fucking problem with my vocabulary and morals — I am a bisexual woman married to another woman, by the way — you should probably find another blog to troll in.

            • Dchtlh3

            • http://twitter.com/truthonlybesaid Karen Marie

              Bushes Tax cuts that helped many people. Seems you also have lots of hate and misinformation. Seems you forgot about 9/11. Seems you forgot that Congress approved the wars. Bush had a surplus until Pelosi, Reid, Barney and Dodd came into power and any debt incurred by Bush was gone early in 2009. Obama’s debt (6 trillion and going up big time) will take decades to pay off. Our children and grand chidlren will be paying for it. Obama has admitted and stated that he has no clue how much debt we are in and he does not care. 6 trlllion is more than all Presidents combined have spent. congrats on your marriage but realize you and your partner will be paying Obamas debt for a very long time

              • http://www.rebeccamorn.com/mind BeccaM

                Thanks for the laughs. Amazing what you people believe.

        • http://twitter.com/truthonlybesaid Karen Marie

          Gee maybe you should watch FOX news you might learn the truth.Also Obama was there for a photo op and boy he was gone quickly. Joecat367 was right. Obama is never there for anyone just himself

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