WHERE IS BUSH?!

[Arty50]

FEMA predicted it in 2001.

Then the federal government cut funding for the corps.

Actually, it's much worse than that.

There was an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal on FEMA. Bush had FEMA placed under the control of the Department of Homeland Security, which means DHS also controls FEMA's budget. Guess what? The majority of the money that FEMA traditionally gets was reallocated for anti-terrorist activities. Some $800M. FEMA is basically a shell of it's former self.

Nice one, George. How many terrorist attacks have occurred in the US over last 100 years? How many major earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, and floods have occurred? So the restructuring of FEMA was a brilliant allocation of our money. Dumbasses.

[FollowMe]

Another acccount, this one from a friend of my aunt's...

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Hello Angela,

I want to let you know that all is well with this law student, though New Orleans has taken a severe blow.

I decided to stay in the city on Sunday as the storm bore down. This was an encore of last year's Hurricane Ivan, which ultimately hooked east and barely ruffled the City, and I thought the same might well happen with Katrina.

Professor Oliver Houck, an expert on river and coastal law and a great naturalist, felt the same and he and his wife chose to stay and have a hurricane dinner party Sunday night.

I joined them and a neighbor who is a Tulane lawyer and his wife and children had escaped to stay with friends in Washington, DC. We sat outside under
rising winds, but in very good spirits.

In fact the storm proved considerably LESS powerful and LESS damaging than its forecasts, at least as to the Garden District of New Orleans where Tulane is. At its most powerful point, Monday morning around 9 or 10 am, I was standing on the veranda and even went across the street to the Houck's house to check on them. I doubt that we saw winds any greater than 75
miles per hour. Not enought to break windows, though certainly enough to bring down branches and trees and power lines all over the neighborhood.

Monday evening, after the storm moved through, the sky looked calm and benign and Professor Houck and his family and the lawyer across the street and I had a fine candlelight dinner on the terrace, surrounded by a tumult of broken branches and downed trees. But buildings perfectly intact.

Mark Klyza, the neighbor, and I slept outside on the upstairs veranda of his handsome 100 year old home under the stars and a crescent moon... in a silent city without a light or human sound anywhere...completely deserted. Tuesday morning dawned with a pink horizon, parrots squawking and
herons flapping overhead. But by midday, the news began to filter in that breaches in the levees had developed, with a torrent of water flowing into the
city from Lake Ponchartrain.

We reconnoitered and found only a few streets with standing water, but the threat seemed too serious to ignore.

We packed two SUVs and made our way out of the city, navigating around downed trees and power lines, telephone poles, to the one bridge over the
Mississippi that remains intact. Angela, I did not have a chance to check on your friend Tim ____ and I hope that he too was able to leave in time...

Ominous military caravans were rumbling along the deserted highway into New Orleans as we drove out.

We came along the Mississippi's west bank to Baton Rouge, where I am now staying with a kind family, Rick and Susannah Moreland. They had a superb dinner last night for us refugees: okra and tomatoes, pulled pork, beans, various salads, peach cobbler, good bottles of wine.

The question of when floodwaters in the city may be stabilized or drained is now paramount. I may lose many of my possessions, but this seems like a trifle compared with the others here whose homes are at risk; yet their spirits are remarkably chipper.

It's ironic that the Army Corps of Engineers has its largest and most venerable installation here in New Orleans, only a few blocks from my office along the river levee... They had better come up with an effective way to plug the dikes and save the city.

If I am forced to head home, one consolation will be having our often postponed dinner.

Un abrazo,

Holliday

[Jumper Bones]

Mr_gyp, yes this could be remedied by operation fucking dumbo drop. Airdropping rations and water would be an easy thing to do. At the least, heavy lift helicopters too impractical for plucking people off of rooftops (like Marine Super Stallions) could be used to sling hoist loads of food and water and drop them off throughout the city.

there are complications, not the least of which is the aforementioned groups of armed thugs taking over the dropped supplies, but it could be done very easily.

[tetsuma]

As a first post here, this will probably get me in big shit... but wtf.

Beyond the issues of the Fed Gov't bungling this, or at least not being able to respond effectively due to commitments in Iraq (the war that I'll point out Bush said was over a year+ ago), the lack of response seems to me as being dissproportionally impacting african americans. IOW, this is plain frigging white-boy, I don't care, racism. (and, before anyone hops all up and down, I am a tried-and-true white boy.) If this were Jupiter, Florida, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

America voted these shits into office, and now we gotta eat our own dog food.

That being said, let's do what we can individually to help out.
David

[Karl Stall]

Regardless of your perspective, that is a solid post. JONG

Jupiter, FL - that is pretty damn funny if not sad because it's true.

[dbp]

September is National Preparedness Month. This advice seems a little ironic coming from the Department of Homeland Security.

[snowsprite]

David has posting Tourettes...I like him.

I'm not sure if it's really the case. I am as pissed off as anyone but will admit that this is freakin' huge in terms of a catastrophe. There is still no excuse though for getting things done more quickly and effectively.

My gut tells me it's not racism as much as "class-ism." And ineptitude. Yeah, a lot of that.

Sprite

[Blurred]

What's really fucking sad is if this was a presidential election year, and Bush was up for re-election......would this have been handled differently??

[SLCFreshies]

What's really fucking sad is if this was a presidential election year, and Bush was up for re-election......would this have been handled differently??

Of course--look at Florida last year. GWB visited that state 48 hours after that storm. This time, W waited 48 hours BEFORE ENDING HIS VACATION.

[NorCalSJK]

Not sure if this has been posted somewhere already...but here's a link to a local NO newspaper.
http://www.wwltv.com/

[mtbakerskier]

What's really fucking sad is if this was a presidential election year, and Bush was up for re-election......would this have been handled differently??

Exactly that incompetant fuck, should be put on trial for the deaths in NO.

[wert]

to blurredelevens and any similar idiots

first off, use some stinking logic if you have any. so the government, which is always been and always will be inept should go use the rest of our fuel supply saving one person at a time, while you display your rapant hatred of anything that is successful created by someone with a different and much better viewpoint than yours. From this, because your emotions rule that the world should be all nice, full of wild animals, and socially subsidized by other people you cannot even admit your own ignorance to real facts.
Here is a good example of the idiocy behind this statement. Lets say you buy something from a large business, etc. It then is completely demolition by a force of nature that is completely out of your control. What should one do? Go yell and scream at the head of that company or talk to someone that can actually do something physically not politically about that certain thing being broken.

Get a brain.

[The Reverend Floater]

to blurredelevens and any similar idiots

Lets say you buy something from a large business, etc. It then is completely demolition by a force of nature that is completely out of your control. What should one do? Go yell and scream at the head of that company or talk to someone that can actually do something physically not politically about that certain thing being broken.

Get a brain.

If that "head of that company" was the most powerful person in the world, with the single greatest control of available resources and supposedly even more influence and clout, then yeah--I think I'd have a word with him if it appeared as if he wasn't interested in using said resources to fix my "completely demolition" "thing".

[NorCalSJK]

to blurredelevens and any similar idiots

first off, use some stinking logic if you have any. so the government, which is always been and always will be inept should go use the rest of our fuel supply saving one person at a time, while you display your rapant hatred of anything that is successful created by someone with a different and much better viewpoint than yours. From this, because your emotions rule that the world should be all nice, full of wild animals, and socially subsidized by other people you cannot even admit your own ignorance to real facts.
Here is a good example of the idiocy behind this statement. Lets say you buy something from a large business, etc. It then is completely demolition by a force of nature that is completely out of your control. What should one do? Go yell and scream at the head of that company or talk to someone that can actually do something physically not politically about that certain thing being broken.

Get a brain.

FIRST OFF,
Use some fucking grammar, IF you have some. Second, read through everyones posts...we are not mad at "the force of nature" we are mad(read:furious) at the lack of urgency with which this rescue mission has been conducted. It's FUCKING Thursday night...there's 20,000 people at the convention center with NOTHING. That is why we are emotional...why don't you go back and lurk you 1 post fuckhead.

[Will]

Holy fucking shit.... Wert just called Blurred out as tree-hugging patchouli-smelling 'terrist'-cudddling lefty. I am stunned....

In other news, here are some facts:
- We knew this shit was coming. New Orleans was (no doubt about it) going to be hit by a big storm (4 or 5) sooner or later.
- NO was also in great danger of flooding
- NO had a system of dikes (and not the good kind), levies, etc in place to hold back the flood waters.
- That system needs constant maintenance and upgrades which it was not receiving.
- In fact, the budget for maintaining that system was recently cut!!! As a result it was thought it could only withstand a category 3 storm, and not a 4/5 as this one turned out to be.
- This was a problem that people knew about, one of the new orleans papers had been running articles about how cutting the maintenance and upgrade budget for the dikes and whatnot was a real bad idea, of course no one listened.

And now onto the rescue effort (and this is the response you're looking for G):
- What have we been told the gov has been planning for like mad over the last few years?
- That's right, a terrorist attack! Something along the lines of nuclear, biological, or chemical.
- Now were there such an attack, do you think that a massive rescue/evacuation effort would be required? Do you think that effort would require the transportation of lots of people, food, supplies, water, etc to any major city in the nation? Would there be refugees or displaced persons in case of such an attack?
- Now, if we have been planning for such an attack and our necessary response has been in the works since about 9/12/01, then where the fuck is that plan? Sure, this ain't sarin gas, but to a large degree the remedy is the same. (minus the haz-mat suits.... thus far, give it some time. Given the climate down there, all that standing water, the industrial and sewage polution, and the dead bodies we could see some serious sickness)

Yeah, this was an act of nature, and not a terrorist attack, but it revealed how bullshit our "preparations" have been.

Note to Bush: put someone other than a political crony in charge of FEMA. What is the past history of the present guy? Didn't he use to be an estate lawyer? Let's see, there was Allbaugh who used to be your cheif of staff in Texas, but the name of the present fellow escapes me.

Let's hear it from former FEMA director James Lee Witt who, despite being a Clinton appointee, received praise from both sides of the aisle. "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded," he testified at a March 24, 2004, hearing on Capitol Hill. "I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me, 'It is like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management.'"

[SLCFreshies]

The bottom line is that W and his entire administration live in some kind of alternate universe where everything is going well just because you say so. Freedom is "just around the corner" in Iraq. And "there are enough National Guardsmen in New Orleans."

Listen to this interview from NPR with Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff. It's obvious that he, just like the rest of this administration, still lives in a bubble and is absolutely fucking CLUELESS. This is the kind of people W picks...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4828771

and

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4828774


And this picture makes me the most mad (I posted it in another thread too). This is TUESDAY, August 30th. While people are dying in New Orleans and have lost all their shit in Mississippi and Alabama, what is W doing?


Someone should shove that guitar right up his ass.

[NorCalSJK]

This has already been linked...but read the latest blog, "The Real News"
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/

[Endlessseason]

I broke my usual personal policy of not clicking on political threads. I don't know why I did it. I should have known it would piss me off.

Obviously, this thread would exist regardless of who was president but that's small consolation when I see the kind of anger displayed here. A misdirected, futile waste of energy, in my opinion. Someone would have still figured out a way to somehow blame the president for what's going on right now in three gulf states. It boggles my mind that no one is even talking about personal responsibility.

Like everyone else, I watched the news and interviews in the days leading up to this disaster. Along with everyone else I witnessed the defiant, cavalier, attitudes of wealthy people deciding to weather the hurricane in their docked boats. Countless interviews of less affluent residents in rural areas, physically able to leave, but giving unbelievably stupid rationales for why they were directly violating an order to evacuate. An order, by the way, that reporters constantly reminded could save their lives.

I saw buses going through neighborhoods offering to take people to safety. I saw people sitting on their porches or in their yards wave off the rides. I saw idiots partying in bars the day before Katrina hit. Laughing and joking about the coming storm. I really don't give a shiz how many times they were warned in the past and still came out OK. They had never before been ORDERED to evacuate. Regardless, they were warned and aware of the danger.

One guy, when asked why he was directly defying the mandatory evacuation, turned to the reporter, and on live, international TV, said, "None of your f**king business!"

When it is documented that tens of thousands of our fellow citizens chose, of their own free will, to accept the consequences of playing chicken with an approaching category 5 hurricane, I have a hard time finding fault with a presidency. Give me a freaking break. What ever happened to personal responsibility in this country?

The very few people who truly had zero opportunity to leave, and are in that mess through no fault of their own, are now getting screwed by the many ignorant assholes who, by their own actions, put the lives of undeserving people at risk. Dealing with a few thousand refugees who could not get out, instead of the tens of thousands who CHOSE to be there, would have generated a completely different operation right now.

I don't buy the complaining and fingerpointing about funds being pulled when study after study made it clear that there could not be a "safe shelter" in New Orleans in the direct path of a cat 5. Luckily for all of these people who shouldn't even be alive right now, they are. A last minute bobble in direction and drop in force is the only reason they escaped with their lives. They were spared in spite of their defiance and stupidity.

Don't go blaming politicians for their inability to get them out of the hell hole they shouldn't have been in in the first place.

[NorCalSJK]

Don't go blaming politicians for their inability to get them out of the hell hole they shouldn't have been in in the first place.

I really hope you're kidding about being this ignorant. It is not the Presidents fault...BUT this is not happening fast enough. There are too many people who have been without food, water, and worse any form of leadership...they have been like this for days...since Sunday night. This is solely their own fault?

[kush1]

Just saw on CNN that the military turned around about 10 private buses headed into the city to help. They also apparently turned around people at gun point who were trying to walk out of Baton Rouge……

edit: and endless, maybe you should check your facts about free transportation out of the city. From what I have read and seen there was almost none at all, most people were actually left to find there own way out. the Pentagon is actually admitting that it did not warn or offer enough help before the storm.......................

[Endlessseason]

Read it again. That's not what I said.
I'm not clicking on this thread for a couple of days. I'm too pissed.

[kush1]

[QUOTE=Endlessseason]

I saw buses going through neighborhoods offering to take people to safety. I saw people sitting on their porches or in their yards wave off the rides. I saw idiots partying in bars the day before Katrina hit. Laughing and joking about the coming storm. I really don't give a shiz how many times they were warned in the past and still came out OK. They had never before been ORDERED to evacuate. Regardless, they were warned and aware of the danger.

[\QUOTE]


OK

[cj001f]

Read it again. That's not what I said.
I'm not clicking on this thread for a couple of days. I'm too pissed.

An estimated 120,000 households in New Orleans did not have transportation before the hurricane. Go drink the your federal water project water in the desert.

[BobMc]

I broke my usual personal policy of not clicking on political threads. I don't know why I did it. I should have known it would piss me off.

Obviously, this thread would exist regardless of who was president but that's small consolation when I see the kind of anger displayed here. A misdirected, futile waste of energy, in my opinion. Someone would have still figured out a way to somehow blame the president for what's going on right now in three gulf states. It boggles my mind that no one is even talking about personal responsibility.

Like everyone else, I watched the news and interviews in the days leading up to this disaster. Along with everyone else I witnessed the defiant, cavalier, attitudes of wealthy people deciding to weather the hurricane in their docked boats. Countless interviews of less affluent residents in rural areas, physically able to leave, but giving unbelievably stupid rationales for why they were directly violating an order to evacuate. An order, by the way, that reporters constantly reminded could save their lives.

I saw buses going through neighborhoods offering to take people to safety. I saw people sitting on their porches or in their yards wave off the rides. I saw idiots partying in bars the day before Katrina hit. Laughing and joking about the coming storm. I really don't give a shiz how many times they were warned in the past and still came out OK. They had never before been ORDERED to evacuate. Regardless, they were warned and aware of the danger.

One guy, when asked why he was directly defying the mandatory evacuation, turned to the reporter, and on live, international TV, said, "None of your f**king business!"

When it is documented that tens of thousands of our fellow citizens chose, of their own free will, to accept the consequences of playing chicken with an approaching category 5 hurricane, I have a hard time finding fault with a presidency. Give me a freaking break. What ever happened to personal responsibility in this country?

The very few people who truly had zero opportunity to leave, and are in that mess through no fault of their own, are now getting screwed by the many ignorant assholes who, by their own actions, put the lives of undeserving people at risk. Dealing with a few thousand refugees who could not get out, instead of the tens of thousands who CHOSE to be there, would have generated a completely different operation right now.

I don't buy the complaining and fingerpointing about funds being pulled when study after study made it clear that there could not be a "safe shelter" in New Orleans in the direct path of a cat 5. Luckily for all of these people who shouldn't even be alive right now, they are. A last minute bobble in direction and drop in force is the only reason they escaped with their lives. They were spared in spite of their defiance and stupidity.

Don't go blaming politicians for their inability to get them out of the hell hole they shouldn't have been in in the first place.

Ron, you need to think about what you would do if in THEIR circumstances. Do you think everyone can just "walk away" from their home/job/neighborhood? Where were these people supposed to go? These people on the news aren't able to check into the local Ritz and stay for a few weeks.

Our perspective is not relevant to those in the tragedy.

BobMc

[flatlander420]

"which is always been and always will be inept should go use the rest of our fuel supply saving one person at a time, while you display your rapant hatred of anything that is successful created by someone with a different and much better viewpoint than yours""

What the fuck are you takling about? Learn how to write coherent sentences, then come back and talk shit!