Native Americans across the country -- including<br>tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe members -- voiced anger<br>and frustration Thursday that President Bush has responded to the<br>second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with silence.<br><br>Three days after 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed nine members of his Red Lake<br>tribe before taking his own life, grief-stricken American Indians complained<br>that the White House has offered little in the way of sympathy for the tribe<br>situated in the uppermost region of Minnesota.<br><br>"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross<br>has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or<br>done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder<br>and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's<br>children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he<br>should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white<br>community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."<br><br>The reaction to Bush's silence was particularly bitter given his<br>high-profile, late-night intervention on behalf of Terri Schiavo, the<br>brain-damaged Florida woman caught in a legal battle over<br>whether her feeding tube should be reinserted.<br><br>"The fact that Bush preempted his vacation to say something about Ms.<br>Schiavo and here you have 10 native people gunned down and he can't take<br>time to speak is very telling," said David Wilkins, interim chairman of the<br>Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a<br>member of the North Carolina-based Lumbee tribe.<br><br>

Ahem...<br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>Similarly, on the day following the infamous school shooting at Columbine, the President requested and used Channel One's pipeline into secondary schools to deliver a message to students.<p><hr></blockquote><p>columbine received much, much more attention from <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9904/20/school.shooting.08/">the president</a> (<a href="http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/052099-remarks-by-president-and-hrc-to-columbine-community.htm">more here</a>). then again, the media also gave columbine much, much more attention.<br><br><br><br>--<br>Straw-man rhetorical techniques are the practice of refuting weaker arguments than one's opponents offer. 2 "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is 2 create a position easily refuted, then attribute that position to your opponent.

The claim was made that Bush has been mute on this issue. I merely pointed out that the claim was without merit. But of course now comes the niggling over the freakin' word count. <br><br>This is like the old joke about 2 elderly jewish divas kvetching over a restaurant they'd just patronized.<br><br>[color:blue]Oy, Sadie. The food was so terrible I couldn't eat it.</font color=blue><br>[color:purple]Me too, Rose. And the portions were so small!</font color=purple><br><br>The fact is, he didn't ignore the event, as CE claims. The metric weight of the remarks doesn't matter, unless you either consider it a commodity, or just can't allow yourself to give Dubya a single centimeter of slack.<br><br>

... 'cause he left the "t" out of Native when he read the news? He's a cowboy! What can one expect?<br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p> The fact is, he didn't ignore the event, as CE claims. The metric weight of the remarks doesn't matter,<p><hr></blockquote><p>it matters when one feels that he paid simple lip-service to the tragedy when he could have done much more. i would guess that's what some people believe. personally, i am only a bit miffed at the media and i could not care less what dubya does on this because he's already done more than i expect . . . unfortunately.<br><br>--<br>Straw-man rhetorical techniques are the practice of refuting weaker arguments than one's opponents offer. 2 "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is 2 create a position easily refuted, then attribute that position to your opponent.

I'm no Bush supporter, but what never ceases to irk me is when someone claims "So-and-so didn't do something he or she should have done." You demonstrate that so-and-so in fact did do that something, and the response is always, "Well, he or she didn't do enough of it", or "...didn't do it long enough", or "...didn't do it the right way". <br><br>It just proves that if one has an agenda one will find any nuance within a 50 mile radius of the point to prop up whatever pegs were knocked out from under it. <br><br>Translation, you can't please some folks, no matter what. <br><br>

well, the response did take a while . . . and, <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3229016a12,00.html">this is the kind of news</a> that was circulating with relation to this story:<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p> CRAWFORD: U.S. President George W. Bush has offered federal help and personal prayers to the Red Lake Indian reservation in northern Minnesota after being criticized for remaining silent for days about the deadliest U.S. school shooting in six years. <br><br>. . . <br><br>Bush's silence drew fire from some American Indians, including Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement in Red Lake.<br><br>"It's kind of late," Bellecourt said of Bush's call to Jourdain. "He should have been the first one to reach out to the Red Lake Indian community."<br><br>Bellecourt cited Bush's decision to rush back to the White House from his Texas ranch last weekend to sign unprecedented emergency legislation allowing Schiavo's case to be reviewed in federal courts.<br><br>"He does not have any problems flying in to restore the feeding tube to Terri Schiavo. I'm sure if this happened in some school in Texas and a bunch of white kids were shot down, he would have been there too," Bellecourt said.<p><hr></blockquote><p>--<br>Straw-man rhetorical techniques are the practice of refuting weaker arguments than one's opponents offer. 2 "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is 2 create a position easily refuted, then attribute that position to your opponent.

Like I said... spin it to suit your needs. I'm sure that if Bush had addressed the Red Lake issue first, someone would find some deficiency in the act, and make a big deal of it. Frankly, I don't think he should've gotten involved in the Schiavo case at all. But luckily for Bellecourt, he did, providing a handle for the spin.<br><br>

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush offered federal help and personal<br>prayers on Friday to the Red Lake Indian reservation in northern Minnesota<br>after being criticized for remaining silent for days about the deadliest<br>U.S. school shooting in six years.<br><br>Bush, on vacation at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, spoke for five minutes to<br>Floyd Jourdain, chairman of the Red Lake Chippewa tribe, about Monday's<br>rampage in which a 16-year-old killed nine people and himself.<br><br>White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush sent his condolences to the<br>"entire Red Lake community," and "pledged continued help from the federal<br>government."<br><br><br>The above was released thru Reuters, To this I would say to the President, it is too little too late. Speaking with one of our leaders for 5 Minutes is hardly enough time to say hello and goodbye. You can not learn much in<br>5 minutes of polite conversation.<br><br>As for the pledge for "continued help from the government"...what help?<br><br>The government offers Native Americans a band-ade that is ment to cover a scrape when the wound is 10 times the size of a scrape. If there had been help from the government to help solve the high unemployement, high substance abuse, the high sucide rate, high rate of teen pregnancies, <br>low quiality education then perhaps this event would have never happened in the first place.<br><br>To pledge Continued help from the government somehow translates into<br>"now you all be good little indians or the government will not continue<br>to help you" yet another way the government keeps the native americans<br>in check.<br><br>