How come I get this feeling that dispite knowledge about 911,the big wave and now this hurricane and more nothing was done. America and the World is changing quickly. I look forward to my place on earth in the mountains once again .
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How come I get this feeling that dispite knowledge about 911,the big wave and now this hurricane and more nothing was done. America and the World is changing quickly. I look forward to my place on earth in the mountains once again .
food and water has arrived at superdome. thank god
Quote:
Originally Posted by likwid
In other parts of the world, the average person isn't armed. The sad thing is that this probably just makes more people want to buy guns to defend themselves, but that only seems to make the problem worse.
Friday, September 2nd, 2005
Dear Mr. Bush:
Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag. Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?
Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!
I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike? And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job forthem -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!
On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you
couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.
There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing.
Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.
No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING
-- to do with this! You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com
P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them
before they get to DC on September 21st.
Washing Away (from 2002).
Mayor transcript:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/nag...ipt/index.html
cannot blame him, this has worked for the last 4 years.Quote:
Originally Posted by Evil E
and wel.
why change now.
America is to blame.
pavlovian response, he is doing what he has been REWARDED FOR the last 4 years.
President Bush IS to blame for the scale of the disaster as a result of his administration's policies and actions
Sidney Blumenthal
Friday September 2, 2005
The Guardian
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, the storm has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter, and hundreds reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
A year ago the US army corps of engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, the Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. Operated by the corps of engineers, levees and pumping stations were strengthened and renovated. In 2001, when George Bush became president, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely potential disasters - after a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. By 2004, the Bush administration cut the corps of engineers' request for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80%. By the beginning of this year, the administration's additional cuts, reduced by 44% since 2001, forced the corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate debated adding funds for fixing levees, but it was too late.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem - whose presses are underwater and can now only put out an online edition - has reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly has contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands around New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush promised a "no net loss" wetland policy, which had been launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed the approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The army corps of engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce. In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a study that concluded in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary - much less a category four or five - hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's council on environmental quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable", and boasted: "Everybody loves what we're doing."
"My administration's climate change policy will be science-based," President Bush declared. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the UN, reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy", and excised the climate change assessment from its annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive Report on the Environment, stating: "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment", the White House simply removed the line and all such conclusions. At the G8 meeting in Gleneagles this year, Bush stymied any common action on global warming. But scientists have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, producing more severe hurricanes.
In February 2004, 60 scientists warned in a statement, Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the US the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease..." Bush ignored the statement.
In the two weeks preceding the storm, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced it was postponing sale of the morning-after pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board.
The UN special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda as a result of pushing its evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence". The chief of the board of justice statistics in the justice department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops. He refused to concede and was forced to quit. When the army's chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7bn no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton, she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings.
On the day the levee burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech comparing the Iraq war to the second world war and himself to Franklin D Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own Streetcar Named Desire.
· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is author of The Clinton Wars
TrueQuote:
Originally Posted by Woodsy
.......
and the issue right now is "merely" destroyed homes, loss of power, and flooding. All of these things have driven people there crazy, and the supressed beast from within has come out. Look at the national paralysis we have now from a storm, and see how a simple event like losing electricity unravels our "civilized" society.Quote:
Originally Posted by cj001f
yup, the world's watching, and you can bet some people are taking notes.
I love this message board. I love the passion found here for all subjects. ALL of our leaders have dropped the ball,and there is no way that can be disputed. The only good that has come from this tragedy is the proof of how awful our current leaders really are.
Unfortunately, we are to blame for voting these same idiots into office year after year.
V.O.R.D.
Vote Out Rupublicans and Democrats
You do realize it's a FUNDAMENTAL right of US citizens to carry arms. A rightQuote:
Originally Posted by snowsprite
I personally strongly disagree with, but nonetheless. The only reason you think it's OK to shoot people with guns in New Orleans is because they are poor and black. Would you advocate shooting white people in the suburbs who carry guns?
Here is an interesting profile of the mayor of New Orleans, who is still in the city:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090102413.html
Here is what I think will happen next: large parts of the city will burn. Think about it: everyone is gone, there is no water in the pipes and no firetrucks can reach the fires, and gas leaks everywhere. All they need is a couple of dry windy days and the fires will spread with absoutely no way to control them. :(
Voting them all out doesn't solve anything. If California is a guide, it makes things much worse. Legislators who don't understand the basic process or how government functions produce energy deregulation policies that cripple a state, and cost it a fortune. It's like any other job; when you are new and don't know what your doing you screw up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kya
just saw Bush live on the spot in missip with Haley Barbour talking about getting pipelines and refineries back online asap. Bush mentioned fighting terrorists and looters in the same sentence. Bush had the odasity to criticize the response effort. WTF? Doesn't that rest soley on his shoulders? Our commander in chief is a blundering fool.
Cheney is on vacation in Wyoming. Haven't even heard from that MIA fucker.
Where's Charlton Heston when you need him?Quote:
Originally Posted by snowsprite
"Oh Moses, Moses, Moses!"
I was about to make this exact same point. Yes, there are armed thugs, but how many people are just trying to protect themselves in a complete state of lawlessness? And without any access to communications, how are those same CITIZENS supposed to learn about "shoot to kill" orders?Quote:
Originally Posted by Alek
And we thought the London police were bad :nonono2:
Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsuma
David, you have it all wrong. When the banner "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!" was posted on the aircraft carrier way back when, everyone misinterpreted the message. It as actually an anagram: "CMON, I LIED. SO SCAMPISH!"
can't take credit, courtesy of The Daily Show a few months ago:)
This entire nightmare is a travesty.
He's not a politician, not really. Nagin, 49, was a cable TV executive at Cox Communications, a man with no previous political experience, when he beat out 14 candidates to win election as mayor in 2002. Back then, he was a fresh face in New Orleans politics, a young guy with a shaved head who promised to clean up a corrupt city.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alek
This is priceless. No wonder the city is so screwed. A former cable TV exec? Cable companies provide the worst customer service in the friggin universe. They shit on their customers.
All I can really do to be productive and proactive is to donate money the Red Cross and lend an open room to any survivor that needs it...both of which I've done. That being said, hopefully I can quell any "quit complaining and do something about it" criticism before it starts.
IMHO, it seems completely obvious that our government has completely screwed the pooch on this one. I wonder how we could have made things better if we still had the $80-some billion in the bank that we spent on the Mess-o-potamia. Where are the National Guards that should be picking NO residents off their roofs?....in Afghanistan, silly...right where we need them the most.
In the coming months as blogs, camera phones, and first-hand accounts begin to tell tales that we can't even imagine, I think there's going to be a lot of explaining to do on the government's side. Why can we commandeer jet liners to fly thousands of soldiers to Iraq for Desert Storm, but we can't get boats and busses to evacuate a US city? Why can we launch 'Shock and Awe' in Baghdad, but we can't drop MREs and water bags over New Orleans? How can we spend more money on military than any other country on the planet, but we can't out fire-power thugs with handguns? Why can we dispatch full Naval ships to save 16 Russian sub sailors in less than a day hours, but it takes us over 48 hours to have rescuers to get their poop in a group? Where's our HOMELAND SECURITY? This is the fucking HOMELAND.
On a separate note, I hope everyone that voted for Bush who lost their job, lost their husband/wife/son/daughter/grandmother/granfather/uncle/aunt/co-worker, lost their home, lost their sanity, and lost their hope takes the time to think about what caused this tragedy. Hurricanes are fed by warm ocean waters. Oceans get warmer because of warmer climates. Climates get warmer because of CO2. Kyoto was making an effort to slow CO2 production. Bush decided Kyoto was a bad idea because it would hurt our economy. I wonder if the people living in anarchy in New Orleans are worried about the economy of the US right now. I wonder if they are worried about where their SUV is? I wonder if they think it's over? As I see it, it's only going to get worse from here.
Boo to you Bush. I hope you finally burn for this one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cj001f
No f......ing way. I don't buy that for a second. The only power we have in this democracy is our vote. Our leaders are not leading. This disaster has made that crystal clear. We need to make a change. Go ahead and vote for these idiots again, sounds like you already gave up :(
V.O.R.D.
Vote Out Republicans and Democrats
Sorry, but hurricanes are not new, and there were plenty before Bush and Kyoto. Bush fucked up on this one but it wasn't freaking Kyoto.Quote:
Originally Posted by huck4bucks
I bet the people in NO wish more time was spent on hurricane preparedness, and their levees than Kyoto - which would not have stopped this storm.
Go here: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/kat...act/index.html
scroll down and click on the link "(See the mayor's demand for national leaders to 'get off their asses' -- 12:09)"
The NO Mayor is saying EXACTLY what we're thinking. Thank god someone in power is intelligent enough to see this for what it is.
When you vote a new group into a screwed up system, they act the same way the old group did in a very short time. Change the system. Start with competitive districts for politicians. Fewer patronage positions (sorry "political appointees"). More coordination between agencies. This will weaken the 2 parties more than a kneejerk vote out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kya