Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Everything Else => Topic started by: missioncontrol on August 30, 2005, 11:07:39 am
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I can't believe there are people so low to start looting right after the Hurricanne.......
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I can't believe there are people so low to start looting right after the Hurricanne.......
I can't believe that you can't believe that. The world is chock full of scumbags, sadly enough.
-S
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yeah I can believe it...I just hate it that there are people like this....
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This just in: New Orleans butcher shop stripped of bacon. Disturbing footage at 11:00.
-S
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No....... NOT THE BACON
that's it arm the police with automatic weopons
shoot first and ask questions later.....
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The dumb part is that martial law just makes things worse. The scumbags see that as license to do what they want because clearly the cops are busy elsewhere.
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I'm reading some of the reports now... what I don't get are all the reports of things like apt buildings, on the beach, that collapsed during the storm, killing 30+. Why the hell were there people in a building right on the beach? All these people who were killed in their houses that went completely underwater, why were they there? Did they think they could fight 8 feet of water? I mean damn, get yourself and your family clear if you have to ride bikes! They knew the storm was coming...
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At first glance I thought he said:
"I can't believe the people there are so slow to start looting right after the Hurricane"
I can't believe there are no stories about people who died trying to loot Wal-Mart during the Hurricane.
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All these people who were killed in their houses that went completely underwater, why were they there? Did they think they could fight 8 feet of water? I mean damn, get yourself and your family clear if you have to ride bikes! They knew the storm was coming...
For some people, there just wasn't anywhere to go...a lot of the poor in NO just don't have cars (or enough "bikes" for their family, come on!)
I saw a report somewhere that upwards of 112,000 lower-income people around the city do not own cars. There isn't enough buses in the city to get them out, so they faced a decision...SuperDome or stay home?
I'm sure there are loads of people that had the option of leaving, and chose to stay...but there are plenty that just didn't have the means to do so. Don't write them off so easily.
mrC
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Anyhow, why are all you guys focusing on the asshats anyhow? There is real tragedy here, on a scale we have yet to fully realize.
From the Mayor:
"We have 80 percent of our city underwater. In some parts of the city, the water is as deep as twenty feet.
"We have people still trapped on their roofs.
"We have an incredible amount of water in the city. Both airports are underwater."
"The twin spans in New Orleans East (I-10) are destroyed. They're gone."
"We have three huge boats that have run aground. We have an oil tanker that is also run aground. And leaking oil."
"We have a serious levee break at 17th Canal. It's causing waters to continue to rise in certain sections of the city.
"We have houses that have literally been picked up off of their foundations and moved.
"The yacht club on the lake has burned and is destroyed.
"I must tell people who are driving around that if you drive on the highrise, we're not sure about the structural soundness of the high-rise, because it appears that a barge has hit one of the main structures of the high-rise."
"This is a briefing that I got from FEMA.
"All of Slidell is under water."
"We have gas leaks that have sprout out, and even when they are under water, you will see a flame shooting out of the water. It's not a pretty picture."
mrC
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Wow, I had no idea it was so bad. I remember seeing a show on the Discovery channel or the Science channel or one of those types of channels not long ago about how easy it would be for a hurricane to totally flood NO because a large part of the city is actually below sea level and they rely so heavily on their levy system. Look like that turned out to be correct. Sounds pretty nasty.
-S
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For some people, there just wasn't anywhere to go...a lot of the poor in NO just don't have cars (or enough "bikes" for their family, come on!)
They had DAYS of warning. It doesn't take days to walk out of the city. We're talking their lives and the lives of their children. "I don't have a car" or "there isn't a bus today" is not acceptable. I'd carry my kids on foot out of the city if that was the only option, but I tend to be tremendously conservative when it comes to things like this.
I will not get past the people who know a disaster is coming and let things like lack of automotive transportation stop them from evacuating. This doesn't apply only here, it can be said of pretty much all major storms we get in the US.
I'm getting sick of hearing television people refer to this as "our tsunami". More than 200,000 people died in that tsunami. That's like both atomic bombs combined.
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I just read a couple of online stories about the hurricane. I saw two different people compare it to the Indian Ocean Tsunami. I also thought that was just stupid. Not to belittle this particulat tragedy, but the number of deaths isn't even approaching a significant fraction of those who died in the Indian Ocean. It's like comparing a Cessna crashing into a farmhouse to 9/11. It's just a whole other magnitude.
-S
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I just read a couple of online stories about the hurricane. I saw two different people compare it to the Indian Ocean Tsunami. I also thought that was just stupid. Not to belittle this particulat tragedy, but the number of deaths isn't even approaching a significant fraction of those who died in the Indian Ocean. It's like comparing a Cessna crashing into a farmhouse to 9/11. It's just a whole other magnitude.
That analogy only works if there were 150,000 people killed in those towers.
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I agree it is no where near the tsunami they had.
another thing in the tsunami they had no warning.
these people had warning and were told to evacuate......
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http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/29/scene.blog/index.html
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these people had warning and were told to evacuate......
Exactly. Days of warning. I agree with Chad, my feet could carry me pretty darn far in that amount of time if I were unfortunate enough to not own a car.
-S
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Erg.
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Erg. This whole blog concept is stupid. We took years to develop a method of well organized presentation of information on the web, and now people all want to go back to random crap all tossed onto one HTML page that you have to sift through to find anything useful.
You weren't looking at cnn.com's photo blog were you? What a mish-mash of almost completely unrelated crap that turned out to be.
-S
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It's raining pretty hard here right now.
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I wonder if Jan Egeland will name the "stingy" rich nations of the world that aren't sending the USA enough aide?
It is belittling and stupid to say the people that died in the hurricane are not as significant as the people that died in the tsunami.
I do not live in a hurricane zone, but I do live in a tornado zone. I see tornado warnings all the time.
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This one was touted for days as a ten year storm. They had a voluntary evacuation followed hours later by a mandatory evacuation. They were in fact breaking the law by not evacuating.
When was the last time one of those tornado warnings was given days in advanced and accompanied by a mandatory urban evacuation order?
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It is belittling and stupid to say the people that died in the hurricane are not as significant as the people that died in the tsunami.
I never said the people are insignificant. I said the numbers are just nothing like the numbers that were killed in the tsunami. I mean come on, a friend of mine died not long ago. Terrible tragedy, but nobody compared that to the tsunami.
-S
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Tornados offer no warning....
Hurricanes do and are tracked for days before they even hit...
It was a Cat 4/5 days before it hit New Orleans. any sane person would leave, especially with New Orleans being below sea level.
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For those of you in your offices and want to keep current:
Click for the [KLOU Live News Feed] (http://www.khou.com/perl/common/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=beloint_khou&props=livenoad)
- FA
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I never said the people are insignificant. I said the numbers are just nothing like the numbers that were killed in the tsunami.
Each one of those "numbers" had a name, and a family that's either still looking for that "number" or morning that "number" in a make shift morgue.
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Each one of those "numbers" had a name, and a family that's either still looking for that "number" or morning that "number" in a make shift morgue.
What he is talking about are the idiots on TV who keep saying tsunami so that the producer will keep them on their live feed for a few seconds longer. He didn't say anything at all about the victims themselves.
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I never said the people are insignificant. I said the numbers are just nothing like the numbers that were killed in the tsunami.
Each one of those "numbers" had a name, and a family that's either still looking for that "number" or morning that "number" in a make shift morgue.
Don't be an ---uvula---. You know what I mean. I know that each of those people are human beings that deserve respect. We're comparing hundreds of thousands of dead human beings to what seems to be a few hundred at this point. I understand that a few hundred people is a lot, but not when compared to 250,000 plus. Oh wait, those weren't Americans so they don't count, right?
-S
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Each one of those "numbers" had a name, and a family that's either still looking for that "number" or morning that "number" in a make shift morgue.
that number/name could have listened to authorities and evacuated then maybe no one would be mourning them........
and how about the wasted time and money being used saving these people from rooftops they shouldn't have been on if they had just evacuated.....
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This one was touted for days as a ten year storm. They had a voluntary evacuation followed hours later by a mandatory evacuation. They were in fact breaking the law by not evacuating.
I'm just saying...it seems insensitive and petty to start dissing people at this point, when you have absolutely no idea what was behind their individual reasons, nor any clue about the scale of the tragedy.
I mean, you suggested that they just "bike their family" out...or walk. To where? Where do they stay, if they can't even afford a shelter? How exactly do you OUT WALK a hurricane has big as your STATE? Did you see the 10-12 hour traffic jams out of the city? Maybe they could not truly comprehend the danger the storm posed, even with the level of warnings being given.
Either way, let's wait and see before we start condeming the dead.
mr.C(ompassion) - obviously. ::)
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Updates as they come in on Katrina (http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html)
wwltv
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I'm just saying...it seems insensitive and petty to start dissing people at this point, when you have absolutely no idea what was behind their individual reasons, nor any clue about the scale of the tragedy.
I didn't "diss" anyone.
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Tornados offer no warning....
Hurricanes do and are tracked for days before they even hit...
Yesterday I was told that today we would have heavy rains from the Hurricane, today the same people are telling me that it's going to be 80 degrees and clear skies.
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Many people aren't able to walk to higher ground, but they are able to walk to stores to loot.
Compassion for people unable to help themselves is one thing. Elderly, sick, etc.
Compassion for people unwilling to help themselves is wasted.
Art
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So, how exactly does a tornado relate to a storm that was watched by satellite for a whole week?
If you COULD get warning of that tornado that is likely to destroy your house and kill your family, would you still stay in the house and ignore it so you can watch TV?
The people of New Orleans had such a warning, to the point that they were legally ordered to evacuate. It wasn't a suggestion.
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Tornados offer no warning....
Hurricanes do and are tracked for days before they even hit...
Yesterday I was told that today we would have heavy rains from the Hurricane, today the same people are telling me that it's going to be 80 degrees and clear skies.
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New Orleans is unique in that it is below sea level. The city is surrounded by Levees that hold back 20-50 feet of water on many sides of the city. It is literally a city built in a drainage pit with the water walled off. The levees are breaking, and the city is flooding to its natural state of water levelling.
If any city has really needed to heed those evacuation warnings in recent memory, this was it.
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No one has condemned the dead or said anything even specifically about them. All I say is that I don't understand.
Well, that's kind of a problem...can you see how you've sort of "opened the door" on the "warranted compassion" debate, before the bodies are even counted?
All I'm suggesting is that you (and others) actually *wait* for the information to come out, so you can better "understand", if you really want to.
mrC
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Tornados offer no warning....
Hurricanes do and are tracked for days before they even hit...
Yesterday I was told that today we would have heavy rains from the Hurricane, today the same people are telling me that it's going to be 80 degrees and clear skies.
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So, how exactly does a tornado relate to a storm that was watched by satellite for a whole week?
The satellites that were watching the storm for over a week also said this storm would hit Chicago today, yesterday they were still saying that we should get heavy rains today.
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Yes, people at sea level pay more attention. Yes, people keep tuned for more accurate information as the storm approaches.
New Orleans is below sea level, which means they should have been glued to the TV or radio as the storm approached.
Chicago is never going to get a hurricane that does this because it is too far inland. By the time the storm gets that far it is depleted enough to be a nuisance but not much more.
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I don't think your going to get any rain from it in Chicago:
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High-res image of the damage from one of the levee breeches:
(http://forms.belointeractive.com/sharedcontent/datafiles/1125380087252_ORIGINAL_100_0870.jpg) (http://forms.belointeractive.com/sharedcontent/datafiles/1125380087252_ORIGINAL_100_0870.jpg)
[ENLARGE] (http://forms.belointeractive.com/sharedcontent/datafiles/1125380087252_ORIGINAL_100_0870.jpg)
mrC
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"Mayor Nagin estimated that about 80% of the city's 485,000 people evacuated before the storm. That has to be a very rough estimate and HOPEFULLY VERY LOW. If about 20% of the residents are still in the city, that's approximately 97,000 people. Only 9,000 or so are at the Superdome, and only several hundred have been rescued from their homes. That leaves about 87,000+ trapped in homes rapidly flooding with toxic water, with no food or water or way to get out."
If that's true, by some estimates on this thread, that's 87,000+ people WITHOUT BIKES nor DESERVING OF COMPASSION. 87,000+ possible individuals who just didn't pay attention.
Trapped in a city, without food, water & electricity, surrounded by water that is rapidly rising. Good thing we don't have to concern ourselves with those lowly imbeciles that can't pay attention to the news. /sarcasm
mrC
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Wow. Obviously that's a lot more people than the news stories that I read this morning led me to believe. Despite the impression that I may have given to some in this thread. I genuinely do hope every one of them make it to safety, even if they did ignore the warnings.
-S
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Trapped in a city, without food, water & electricity, surrounded by water that is rapidly rising. Good thing we don't have to concern ourselves with those lowly imbeciles that can't pay attention to the news.
A little harsh don't ya think.
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Wow. Obviously that's a lot more people than the news stories that I read this morning led me to believe. Despite the impression that I may have given to some in this thread. I genuinely do hope every one of them make it to safety, even if they did ignore the warnings.
We know that. Only an idiot would assume people here are actually hoping people die needlessly in the flooding.
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I don't think your going to get any rain from it in Chicago:
My point is, yesterday they were saying we were going to get rain from the hurricane.
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Again, as with all disasters...the immediate information is suspect.
CNN reports, there are now 24,000 to 30,000 people in the superdome, as it's now a central hub, of sorts. Furthermore, there seems to be some confusion over the counting of 9000+ individuals, as opposed to 9000+ "families", since some estimats had 26,000 people in the dome at time of closure. So some media outlets are using the 9000+ number to represent individuals, whereas, that may *not* be the case.
Either way, we're possibly looking at some horrible numbers...since that leaves an estimated 70,000+ people unaccounted for.
A little harsh don't ya think.
Yeah, I do think it's harsh, actually. I was sarcastically referring to some other posters in this thread. I don't feel that way, myself. Hence my use of the "/sarcasm" tag.
mrC
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Latest I've gather from listening to local NOLA radio/television (streamed online):
- It'll be at least 2 weeks before they can get the water out of the city of New Orleans.
- Minimum 2 months before electricity can be restored.
- Minimum 2 months that schools will not open to students.
- Mayor states that NO economy will take decades to recover
- Waters continue to rise all over the city.
- Waters are waist high outside the Superdome
- Looting of food and supples continues in front of police officers. There is no where to take the offenders.
- People that evacuated are being told not to come back. There is nothing to come back to.
- One county in SE LA is totally submerged. It has become a part of the mississippi river. The peak of a church is said to be totally submerged. It exists no more.
- Thousands are stranded on roofs and other high ground waiting for rescue.
- Untold numbers of people are presumed dead.
- Water is waist-deep, surrounding the SuperDome.
- Man commited suicide inside SuperDome by jumping from second level
- Conditions inside the SuperDemo deteriorate. Waste is piling up.
mrC
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This thread is starting to make me appreciate the fact that I live on top of a hill. Sounds pretty bleak down there.
-S
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I'm sure it's hell.
Gulf Shores is hell also.
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It's pretty clear that this is a HUGE disaster, beyond what was reported initially. It's historic in scope, and has certainly changed the face of Louisiana forever. It's also pretty clear that it will become a more broad national tragedy, and will effect the entire U.S. economy.
I'm watching officials in the area give a live news conference, the woman at the microphone was openly weeping while trying to relay the devastation.
Watch streaming station here: http://www.wwltv.com/perl/common/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=beloint_khou&props=livenoad
My heart goes out to those effected, and I will contribute to relief in any way I can.
mrC
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I just read on MSNBC that officials have ordered all refugee centers, including the Superdome, to evacuate because water is pouring into the city through broken levees.
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Erm, evacuate to where, exactly? Unless they plan on helicoptering 10000+ people out, that isn't going to happen.
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i hope Bob Roberts is ok - isn't he from down that way?
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This just pissed me off, courtesy of the racist yahoo news.
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NO WAY! You didn't alter that image?? Disgusting.
I'm fed up with the "looting" crap too. All I've seen, in 99% of the footage on the news, is people carrying loads of FOOD.
It's not looting, it's self-preservation...these people have no food, no water, no electricity, and no way out of town, are they suppose to starve while the food rots in grocery stores?
I'm watching Hannity (that souless pig) right now, continually try to demonize these people, while the cop on the phone is calling him on his racist, sensationalistic shite. Sick bastard.
mrC
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There is always looting after a big disaster.
Food, we can understand. Nobody seems to be shooting anybody for the food. Loads of Tennis shoes, TV's and jewery, we can't handle.
I don't get how the hell they can evacuate if the city is flooded. Somebody has to airlift 1000's of people out, and that has to be a huge logistics problem. How can they do that?
People with bass boats and small watercraft are comming in to help, but I bet the gas situation sucks.
That is going to be a terrible mess for a long time to come.
Wonder if Mexico or France will help?
I'm sure they have little clue as to how many people are dead. They are stepping over the bodies right now trying to get to the live ones.
I'm also really sure they have no clue as to how to fix the leevies. They are just now figuring out where they are broke. Let alone how they should get fixed.
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UPDATE:
"ALL RESIDENTS ON THE EAST BANK OF ORLEANS AND JEFFERSON REMAINING IN THE METRO AREA ARE BEING TOLD TO EVACUATE AS EFFORTS TO SANDBAG THE LEVEE BREAK HAVE ENDED. THE PUMPS IN THAT AREA ARE EXPECTED TO FAIL SOON AND 9 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN THE ENTIRE EAST BANK. WITHIN THE NEXT 12-15 HOURS"
This really sucks...it looks as if the entire French Quarter, and other historic gems, are in danger of being flooded, completely. The sandbags NEVER MADE IT to the levee breaks. There was a communication breakdown, or general miscommunication between the rescue teams, and the effort to stop the leakage has failed.
This means that Lake Ponchatrain, 3 feet above sea level, will drain into a city below sea level with walls all around it.
Wonder if Mexico or France will help?
Is this some sort of snark? Venezula already offered assistance. Saudi Arabia has offered to increase oil production, to offset the loss. I'm sure France and Mexico will help...to assume otherwise is just unfair bitterness.
mrC
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The French quarter... historic gems... did you read that on a website? That is half my heritage, I have tons of creole relatives down there. Yes, they are all confirmed safe... but historic gems? Creole culture is half wrapped around lack of evidence of its existence...
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No, it's not a "snark".
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Another reason I am thankful to live in the relative stable weather system of Sydney Australia. The occassional heavy storm or Hail storm but thats about it!.
Though this drought isnt the most fun you can have in a year!
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The French quarter... historic gems... did you read that on a website? That is half my heritage, I have tons of creole relatives down there. Yes, they are all confirmed safe... but historic gems? Creole culture is half wrapped around lack of evidence of its existence...
So what's your point? That you are somehow more qualified to care about the disaster now? Is this the opposite of how you don't usually care about stuff unless it directly effects you?
Did my wording upset you again? Wtf?
I'm just passing info along, for those interested...you can continue to be a pompous @ss if you want, you're also free to ignore me...probably better that way.
At least I'm not the one quoted as saying the poor should have just "biked" their families out.
mrC
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We used the best technology at the time to create a city that was destined to be flooded and destroyed like it is (or perhaps worse). Is there a point to rebuilding the city only to have it happen again, perhaps next year?
If they DO rebuild, I hope this time they hook up a flapper valve and all the other workings so we can just hit the lever and flush all the crap out, instead of making a non-draining toilet of a city again. This last happened in the 60's, and no one could figure out it's a piss-poor geographic nightmare?
Tomorrow we'll have stories about how the rains are flooding the Mississipppi and how all that rain is running down it right into....you guessed it....the giant toilet bowl that currently is clogged.
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It'd be kinda cool if they rebuilt N'awlins like Venice.
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It'd be kinda cool if they rebuilt N'awlins like Venice.
I was thinking more along the lines of those houses up on posts....all tropical-like and stuff
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No, it's not a "snark". It's a direct quote. We'll see who helps us.
Oil production isn't the issue anyway, it's the capacity to refine from useless OIL into gasoline and transport it. The refineries are down. The infrastucture is ruined. All the oil in the world won't help today Mr.C.
This was terrible at the beaches. They said a 20' wave came in for several hundred yards in MO and MI. They had hotels gutted through the first 2 floors. Buildings totally demolished.
New Orleans will be down for some time. Gulf shores didn't recover from the last one.
There are going to be huge body counts.
What in the name of god are you saying? Imagine that you are someone other than yourself reading this post trying to figure out what it means.
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I think fredster's post was clear.
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The profiteering has begun. By 8pm last night, every gas station in my town except one had raised its prices as of 8am by 15 cents or more.
The news always tells us that the gas stations only raise their prices when their suppliers raise it on them, keeping the same very small per gallon margin they always have. Logically, unless they all received shipments yesterday that were 15 cents per gallon more than the last shipments, this story is untrue.
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The profiteering has begun.
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Many of the stations where I live don't sell much more than gas and a small shelf of automotive necessities like oil and windshield fluid.
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Gas prices spiked here too. As a matter of fact they were up by about 10 cents yesterday afternoon.
-S
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The funny part, another part that doesn't work the way they say it does...
...prices will spike, say, 20 cents when something happens. Okay, fine, there is a bit of panic.
Why does it never go down the full 20 when the situation is clear? It will go up 20, but only down 8. The next time, up 20, down 8. It never goes back to the price it was.
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The majority of them make around 1 cent a gallon profit from actually selling gas.
national standard is 14 cents mark up per gallon.
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Another funny bit:
Here in MA, they are required to post the amount of tax per gallon right on the pump. It's like forty cents here, between federal and state.
If the gov't really wanted to help the poor deal with the fact that they can't buy gas to get to work, they could just shave some of that tax off. But they won't.
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That's because the gov't doesn't care about poor people. Please note that this is not a stab at the current
regime administration. They don't seem to care about the poor regardless of who's in the white house.
-S
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I see we will be dipping into the federal oil reserves. When is the last time that happened? Ever?
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whats done is done.. the big question here is..
Should they rebuild a city thats essentially doomed to sink again?
should billions of our tax dollars be used to bailout and then rebuild whats essentially from a civil engineering standpoint a "defective " city?
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I seem to remember it happening once before in recent memory but can't remember when.
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Building a city below sea level was a dumb idea to start with, so I'm sure the government will be happy to build it again in the same bad location.
-S
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It's not like they designed the city that way. It was a seaport and just grew over the years. No one would have gone into an empty spot and built that city as a whole.
I wonder how long it will be before someone influential in the media brings up that point. It may not be worth rebuilding a lot of that, considering it's just going to happen again.
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I love gasoline tax. The government has to provide roads and freeways and so on. Gasoline tax puts a heavier burden of road maintanance and building on people who actually use the roads. And the more frequently you use the roads, the higher the share of taxes you pay. It also has the indirect benefit of encouraging public transportation. Just compare public transit systems in Europe to what we have here and consider that brits have always paid more than double for gas (probably more like four times) than what we pay in the U.S. due to heavy taxation. There are probably other factors that influence the growth of public transit in Europe as well, such as people being less geographically dispersed or bad traffic, but I think it stands to reason (and there is probably pretty solid research that would bare this out) that high costs of using a car would encourage people to use public transit.
As far as what I said about the taxes it only applies completely if gasoline taxes are only used by the departments of transportation (and perhaps the EPA), which is probably not the case, but I think most states and the federal government do use a great deal of it for roads and other driving related purposes.
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I would feel better about such a tax if, as you said, it was ONLY used for roads. Sadly, the roads in MA are typically in garbage shape and there are bridges here that haven't been touched in more than 50 years. Many of the small bridges here, if you were to look under them, are actually crumbling. Even a minor road construction project takes a year and a half, typically going 2-3x over projected cost.
With the amount they must take in from gasoline taxes in this state, we could probably have ceramic roads.
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That's sounds dangerous, but fun.
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Especially if they're glazed.
-S
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I think fredster's post was clear.
Each individual line makes sense. He's using proper grammer and syntax and so on. It just makes no sense as a response to Mr. C, which is what it was.
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Oh, in that case, it may as well be in Polish. Most of the time I skip over Mr C's posts, so if they're not quoted as part of the response, I don't get context.
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I see we will be dipping into the federal oil reserves.
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I'm seem to remember Clinton tapping into them at one point, and just after 9/11 it seems like they were tapped.
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Clinton tapped everything he could get his tapper on.
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Clinton tapped everything he could get his tapper on.
It's good to be the president.
-S
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Yeah...thought it doesn't seem as though he was nearly as discerning as he could have been. JFK seems to have had far higher standards.
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Well, Clinton only screwed Monica. Bush screwed everybody.
-S
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JFK was much better looking than Clinton. He was also a better man, and back then, the media protected the President, it didn't try to destroy him.
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I wonder how long it will be before someone influential in the media brings up that point.
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For still struggling to figure out why a good many people chose to stay behind in NOLA, even with the warnings.
The dirty secret: Poverty (http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/08/index.html#007548)
The mainstream media is not prepared to deal with this sort of concept, so they'll focus on vilifying the "looters" and sensationalizing the mass chaos, as borderline racists on the right feign sympathy, while practicing indifference.
I can only hope that America comes together to support the people of that region, irregardless. Kudos to Texas for allowing the use of their Astrodome to house the refugees currently stuffed inside the Superdome.
Only problem now is, who do they move 30,000 people (including a large number of infirm, and elderly) roughly 600 miles?
mrC
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...as borderline racists on the right feign sympathy, while practicing indifference.
It's as if your ignorance knows no bounds. Be sure and tell us all what study you got this from and how you are certain that giving anyone on "the left" a pass is proper.
Somehow you've managed to figure out that the only racists in America are on the right, and that you hold a monopoly on "true" sympathy.
Get over your pious self and go back to telling us all how much you do for your country, but "you don't want to go into details and boast"
You've been consistent on trying to turn back to politics, I'll give you that. Your piss-poor political attitude towards this is quite simply repugnant.
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The area where most of the real devastation is is geographically small. It was possible, with the given warnings, to walk out of the worst of the potential damage zone to a place more likely to be safe. It is not many miles from New Orleans to the next town north.
Poverty does not make one unable to walk when their life depends on it.
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I heard on NPR that they were planning to bus them to Houston. It caused a question mark to appear above my head, Metal Gear Solid-style.
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Yeah, to the Astrodome. One ancient, crappy dome to another.
I guess the roads are not flooded?
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From I read today it sounds like some of the roads are still passable, but at least one interstate is flooded out, and many of the bridges are out. I would expect that road travel is probably at walking speed until you get clear of the city.
-S
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"We probably have 80 percent of our city under water; with some sections of our city the water is as deep as 20 feet. Both airports are underwater,''
Much of Interstate 10 is closed on either side of New Orleans. Some sections of Lake Ponchartrain's I-10 twin span
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What's different about the Astrodome is...well, primarily....the toilets work and there isn't all that water inside :-\
Dunno if my questions are similar to shmokes', but how are they being bussed out if it's flooded, and why are those busses running now, instead of earlier? Is this the example MrC is going to point to about "the right feigning sympathy"?
Oh, and regarding the link MrC gave us, and Chad's viewpoint - has anyone taken a LOOK at that ridiculous link? Something jumped out at me. Kinda goes along with what Chad is saying, but evidently MrC isn't wanting to actually look at the story too carefully.
After being rescued from her roof, Moses said she was among those unable to evacuate before the hurricane. "My mother-in-law went out of town, but I didn't have any money, so I couldn't,"
So let me get this straight. Someone from her family was evacuating, i.e. acting to save their life, and this chick says money was the reason she couldn't hitch a friggen ride with the mother of her husband? That's asking to suspend logic for far too shaky a reason. Are we to believe they were able to talk to one of the few people with such a PISS-POOR relationship with a relative that they wouldn't take them away from a situation with the very real possibility/probability they'd die? That borders on attempted murder, and it's simply not a plausible story.
They stayed because they wanted to, and "I didn't have any money" is yet another stupid excuse. Please fill us in on how her day at work is going today, since she and everyone else who stayed obviously have to get back to work because they're living day to day.
Fall for something else, but spare us the poverty drivel.
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I say, maybe some of the poor daisies didn't buy all the doom and gloom stuff and figured they'd sit in their homes, deal with the few inches of water that came in under the floor and not be hastled with the inconvenience and serious expense of going and finding a place to stay. How far would they have to go for a vacancy in a motel? When they found one, what kind of exhorbitant prices would they be charging.
So it was a dumbass mistake. So was ignoring the warning signals for Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Sympathy and/or charity doesn't have to hinge on whether a person could have avoided their current situation. It's easy to be smart in hindsight.
edit: That's funny. Saint's getting out of hand here. I did not say daisies up there, LMAO.
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So, when your life is threatened, you should only flee if you can find a motel vacancy. That makes sense. A good parent risks their children's lives in the face of a natural disaster rather than sleeping in a park...
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I say Chad should reread the first line of my last post.
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I've already warned you about ramming your post down peoples' throats.
With all the autocensor tweaking around here, who knows what anyone is trying to say at a given time.
Pillsbury.
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...as borderline racists on the right feign sympathy, while practicing indifference.
It's as if your ignorance knows no bounds. Be sure and tell us all what study you got this from and how you are certain that giving anyone on "the left" a pass is proper.
My ignorance?? You're the fool who takes all his marching orders from Glenn Beck.
Anyhow, it doesn't take a study to figure out, just watch FOX news. Try watching Hannity, who can't stop beating the drum about how these "blacks" just can't stop looting. Watch Fred Barnes (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/08/30.html#a4702) exclaim his amazement that "these people" don't have as much private flood insurance as he has on his summer beach house. Watch these spokespeople start talking up "personal responsibility" instead dealing with the complete lack of Federal "pre-disaster planning" and funding for the levees. Watch the echo-chamber on the right completely amplify this message and ignore the reality of working poor in America. Watch those with the most racists tendancies banter about how these folks "brought it upon themselves" by being "too stupid to leave". It's already happening...
These morons have been given the soapbox by people on the right, they speak for the right...that's not *my* problem, that's yours.
I've never claimed that the "left" is devoid of racism, but I don't think it's a stretch to claim that the right holds a monopoly on it. Don't shoot the messenger.
mrC
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I wish you daisies would just shut the artichoke up. ;)
-S
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Pillsbury.
I can't believe you just said that! Thankfully, saint was on the lookout for words like that!
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They stayed because they wanted to, and "I didn't have any money" is yet another stupid excuse. Please fill us in on how her day at work is going today, since she and everyone else who stayed obviously have to get back to work because they're living day to day.
Fall for something else, but spare us the poverty drivel.
"Poverty drivel??"
What an @sshole you are. Seriously.
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Dunno if my questions are similar to shmokes', but how are they being bussed out if it's flooded, and why are those busses running now, instead of earlier?
They AREN'T being bussed out yet, Genius. They are hoping too. But as it stands, that can't do anything until the water situation is under control. As for why the busses hadn't been available earlier, there simply wasn't enough buses to move such an enormous amount of people in such a short time. The highways were gridlocked anyhow.
There was no mass transit system in NOLA, and there are a LOT of people who were too poor to afford vehicles, or bikes for their entire family, as Chad suggested.
mrC
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THIS JUST IN:
MANY NOLA AREA HOSPITALS ARE ALMOST OUT OF FUEL WHICH KEEPS ELECTRIC GENERATORS RUNNING.
This means that those on ventilators and emergency life support systems are in danger of losing their fight for life. Appx 1600 critical paitents are going to need evacuation to other hospitals in the inter-state area.
I lived in New Orleans for over 11 years, and Biloxi for 3. I never saw a natural disaster get this bad.....
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I hope the gov't gets on the ball quickly and gets some fuel to those hospital generators. That should become the #1 priority.
-S
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I still don't understand the bus situation. I am under the distinct impression that the reason they are evacuating the shelters is because the levees are leaking water, causing the water levels to rise, putting the people in the shelters at risk. If the water are got under control to the point of allowing buses to drive right up to the Superdome, doesn't that negate the need to evacuate in the first place?
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I hope the gov't gets on the ball quickly and gets some fuel to those hospital generators. That should become the #1 priority.
-S
Bush left Andrews AFB about an hour ago aboard MC1 to survey the area. He has also released a national energy conservation notice, asking citizens all over the country to use fuel/energy sparingly to ease the economy on the coast.
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As high as fuel prices are right now I don't need Bush to tell me to use it sparingly.
-S
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I still don't understand the bus situation. I am under the distinct impression that the reason they are evacuating the shelters is because the levees are leaking water, causing the water levels to rise, putting the people in the shelters at risk. If the water are got under control to the point of allowing buses to drive right up to the Superdome, doesn't that negate the need to evacuate in the first place?
They're now talking about bringing in federal airlift support, as the Natl. Guard units in the area are tapped out. Alabama sent 2 guard battalions yesterday.
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Now they're saying they need to evac 10,000 out of 9 hospitals due to no power of any kind! Generators and backup generators are now completely out of fuel...
(I'm watching a live press confrence feed out of Baton Rouge)
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I still don't understand the bus situation. I am under the distinct impression that the reason they are evacuating the shelters is because the levees are leaking water, causing the water levels to rise, putting the people in the shelters at risk. If the water are got under control to the point of allowing buses to drive right up to the Superdome, doesn't that negate the need to evacuate in the first place?
All this latest confusion seems to point to a cascading disaster, the likes of which has never been seen in modern America. I'm getting the feeling these reports are not even touching on the reality of the situation, where essentially we have tens of thousands of people trapped by rising water.
I know that didn't have very many options for dealing with the refugees, so the Dome was probably the best bet...however, now, what do they do?
mrC
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Now they're saying they need to evac 10,000 out of 9 hospitals due to no power of any kind! Generators and backup generators are now completely out of fuel...
Oh man, this is getting bad. So the power is already out at the hospitals?
-S
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I know that didn't have very many options for dealing with the refugees, so the Dome was probably the best bet...however, now, what do they do?
I hope the city of Houston is doing something in the way of more permanent shelters. After being inside the flooded superdome with no power or working plumbing, the astrodome is going to seem like a luxury hotel. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be in that situation.
-S
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Mayor:
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My ignorance?? You're the fool who takes all his marching orders from Glenn Beck.
What would those be? Clearly you have no idea what my "marching orders" are, or perhaps you see me as "one of them there racists" as well.
Oh, and again, tell us how Patty PovertyStricken is doing at work today, since she's living day to day.
I've never claimed that the "left" is devoid of racism, but I don't think it's a stretch to claim that the right holds a monopoly on it. Don't shoot the messenger.
Kinda hard to say you believe your side to not be devoid of racism but then speak about a monopoly on the right. Save your double-speak for the nightly shows. I'm sure they'll be beating your door down to talk to you, since you have a better handle than anyone else on what to do. We've all marvelled at your plan.
"Poverty drivel??"
What an @sshole you are. Seriously.
Is that supposed to be the kind-hearted person you are, just seeping out at the seams? This from the guy who looks at this natural disaster and while everyone's discussing it, drops in with "BUSH SUCKS, YOU RIGHTIES ARE RACISTS"?
Here's an idea. Send a few bucks down there. That's about all the good you're able to do. Tell us how compassionate you are then. Tell us how you're working to unite the country again, in spite of Bush. Just like you're working to unite everyone in this thread.
Isn't there a kettle somewhere around here you can call black?
The place should be razed. Split Baton Rouge into two parts and rename one of 'em NewNewOrleans. Stop thinking we can outsmart nature, or at the very least, bulldoze some of Texas over to fill in the hole and build on that. I've heard today that all the measures used to stop the water from the Mississippi from filling in normally actually contributed to the city sinking over the years, making this worse as time goes by. Giddyup with the civil engineers admitting this can't be solved and this will most definitely happen again. And again. Three or more times, even.
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I hope the city of Houston is doing something in the way of more permanent shelters. After being inside the flooded superdome with no power or working plumbing, the astrodome is going to seem like a luxury hotel. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be in that situation.
-S
I fear the shelters talk is extremely optimistic at this point, obviously they'll need them, and it's important to start planning for it, but, as it stands now, I have yet to hear of any feasible plan to get these people out of there and to these shelters!
The National Guard is strapped, a LOT of NO's flood-water equipment is in Iraq, same with the helicopters. This evac will take a herculean national effort.
mrC
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Oh, and again, tell us how Patty PovertyStricken is doing at work today, since she's living day to day.
You are a crass bafoon. Your penchant for this type of callous deflection needs no response. It truly stands alone.
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Mayor:
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Let me get this straight.. they knew the hospitals were on limited fuel capacity... yet they didn't immediately start an evacuation of the patients? They waited until the power was out to decide to move them? We can refuel Air Force One in midair but we can't airlift fuel to hospitals?
The whole city is underwater, right? Boat in some damn fuel so that you don't have to evacuate thousands of injured and critical patients. That should have already been accounted for and a system for fueling hospital generators put in place.
Who is handling this situation? It's been handled incompetently and now people are going to start dying because of it.
This whole thing really makes me appreciate how brilliantly the days after 9/11 were managed. I don't think many people ever understood that. Given the dramatic contrast with this week's mismanagement, maybe they will now.
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Mayor:
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Okay, then, tell us what that number signifies. Does it signify that they are dead? That they are round? That they are Pillsbury artichokes?
Maybe you should have told him to say it was a substantial number. That way he would look like he understood English.
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Dartful taught me yesterday that all numbers are significant. This was right after he gave me a big hug and called me his brother. I think he might have been smoking oregano.
-S
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Well, here is what I can come up with:
6 is significant. It signfies a whole value of more than 5 and less than 7.
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Dartful taught me yesterday that all numbers are significant. This was right after he gave me a big hug and called me his brother. I think he might have been smoking oregano.
-S
I saw him with a bong full of nyQuil just a few minutes earlier. I was wondering where he was going, but he was whispering something about "Stingray's not heavy", so I figured it best to leave him alone.
Plus, my bacon was reaching perfection. To leave it would have meant having to throw it away. You see my conundrum, yes?
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Well, here is what I can come up with:
6 is significant. It signfies a whole value of more than 5 and less than 7.
7 is actually more significant, not to mention that 6 is afraid of it.
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It's true.
7 8 9. Poor nine.
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Let me get this straight.. they knew the hospitals were on limited fuel capacity... yet they didn't immediately start an evacuation of the patients? They waited until the power was out to decide to move them? We can refuel Air Force One in midair but we can't airlift fuel to hospitals?
The whole city is underwater, right? Boat in some damn fuel so that you don't have to evacuate thousands of injured and critical patients. That should have already been accounted for and a system for fueling hospital generators put in place.
Who is handling this situation? It's been handled incompetently and now people are going to start dying because of it.
This whole thing really makes me appreciate how brilliantly the days after 9/11 were managed. I don't think many people ever understood that. Given the dramatic contrast with this week's mismanagement, maybe they will now.
Chad, you need to understand 2 things...
1. Lousiana is the most corrupt state government in the US.
2. Hospital fuel reserves for generators are built below ground. You cant get fuel to the tanks if the manhole cover is submerged in 15ft of water.
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Plus, my bacon was reaching perfection.
This makes no sense. Bacon is perfection. What could it possibly have to reach for?
Can I have another hit off that, DD?
-S
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Chad, you need to understand 2 things...
1. Lousiana is the most corrupt state government in the US.
Didn't know that, but I believe it.
2. Hospital fuel reserves for generators are built below ground. You cant get fuel to the tanks if the manhole cover is submerged in 15ft of water.
You're telling me the US Military does not contain engineers capable of adding secondary capacity to a few generators?
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I need to type faster if I want to beat you guys to the bunch line.
The joke was done twice before I could press post.
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2. Hospital fuel reserves for generators are built below ground. You cant get fuel to the tanks if the manhole cover is submerged in 15ft of water.
Wow. Talk about brilliance. Advance planning at it's best ladies and gents.
-S
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15 feet of water is nothing. Send down divers to attach the hoses.
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4 paitents have been confirmed dead due to the power outages....... :'(
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Chad, you need to understand 2 things...
1. Lousiana is the most corrupt state government in the US.
Didn't know that, but I believe it.
2. Hospital fuel reserves for generators are built below ground. You cant get fuel to the tanks if the manhole cover is submerged in 15ft of water.
You're telling me the US Military does not contain engineers capable of adding secondary capacity to a few generators? How about just rerouting the source to come from above ground tanks that you just brought in? How about having it come from a boat anchored right next to the hospital? Think like an engineer. Lives are in the balance and you have the full resources of the United States at your disposal.
Chad Tower for Lousiana Governor!
He has all the answers. :police:
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I saw the Louisiana Governor on TV this morning. I think it was tommy.
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That bong was filled with Jagr. It's a perfectly understandable mistake, though.
In defense of the disaster effort here compared with 9/11, they're not really comparable. Not that I don't think 9/11 was handled just about as well as it could have been retroactively, but...everyone was doomed. There was nobody to save, and nearly every victim (or remains) was confined to a city block. Nearby apartments had to be evacuated, but those people were not in immediate mortal danger.
Most of the worst things about 9/11 don't apply here, or at least they apply in very different ways. And vice versa. I suspect it's pretty damned easy to evacuate neighboring apartment buildings after the World Trade Center has been demolished by terrorists and the air is nearly unbreathable. What were they supposed to do in New Orleans, send troops every door in the city, smashing them in and searching for people not following evacuation orders? The logistics of moving millions of people out of a city and trying to coorinate piecemeal rescue efforts across hundreds of square miles (I made that up, I don't know how big the city is) -- a person in this tree, a family in that attic -- it ain't anything like the same thing.
9/11 happened and for the most part, it was over. People either survived or didn't survive and this all happened in the space of hours. After that all we could do was dig and provide aid to survivors. If you were a survivor you went to, for the most part fully functional, if crowded hospitals. For the most part there wasn't much ongoing danger after all the planes had crashed and the fires were extinguished.
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just a thought......
I remember hearing once about a flood somewhere that once the ground got so saturated the caskets at a cemetary started poping up out of the ground and floating in the flood.
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New Orleans "buries" their dead above ground precisely because they are below sealevel.
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Their main cemetary, BTW, is one of the few dry spots in New Orleans right now because it is the high point topographically.
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Thankfully it looks like caskets popping out of the ground isn't going to be an issue in this situation, but thanks for creeping me the hell out Mission. ;)
-S
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you don't have to worry about being creeped out until the cemetay is under water..........
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Plus, my bacon was reaching perfection.
This makes no sense. Bacon is perfection. What could it possibly have to reach for?
Can I have another hit off that, DD?
-S
Heat. Bacon is almost perfection. Cooking completes it. Cooking it makes bacon attain its sole purpose in this world. Perfection.
I thought the entire city was built on the silt and crap from the Mississippi, and that the reason all their houses are so tall is because they CAN'T dig a basement, water simply keeps flooding in. How can they bury fuel tanks in that crap and expect them to stay in place and not shift, defeating their purpose?
That's yet another reason they have all the mausoleum's there.
Oh, and it's not surprising....New Orleans was settled by the French. It was just a matter of time before the city gave up.
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Building a city below sea level was a dumb idea to start with, so I'm sure the government will be happy to build it again in the same bad location.
-S
New Orleans being largely below sea level is not really a new development. The potential harm from a direct hit of a large hurricane, or damage to the levees around it have also been discussed at length. But with so many things, it is often our nature to procrastinate, or be reactive.
From:
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313
"On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:
"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."
Half of The Netherlands population lives below sea level. During a Flood in th 50's 2000 died, and at that point the Dutch reacted, Increasing an already expansive array of seawalls. You can pretty much put people anywhere if you have the technology, and are willing to deploy it properly.
So far I've watched very little coverage of the storm on TV, it feels more like distater exploitation than useful information. Even the print press are doing a crappy job. I can't speak to wether or not there is outright racism involved in the reporting, but the captions for the following photos were more than a little interesting to me:
Photo One (http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/050830071810_shxwaoma_photo1)
Photo Two (http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10208301530)
Additionally, My wife is a commissioned officer in the Public Health Service (Uniformed Services as opposed to Armed Services), she's on the list for emergency deployment (a list that is maintained year round, but is seldom ever called into action), and in fact would like to go and help. Even with this system in place, and after getting regular updates about preparing (what to pack etc.) She discovered that somehow her existence on that list is unknown to the people actually making the deployment decisions, and that things are to say the least, screwed up. It starts to make you think that those emergeny response plans are a placebo and not an actual plan. I suspect that FEMA will be under the same sort of scrutiny after this, as the intelligence community was after 9/11. Hopefully, even if a storm like this repeats itself in our lifetimes, we won't see this level of damage.
*EDIT: Photo links fixed
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Oh, and it's not surprising....New Orleans was settled by the French.
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Classy.
People are still dying there and you guys are competing for funniest one-liner...and Drew has the balls to question my concerns, and criticise my character.
Real classy.
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So far I've watched very little coverage of the storm on TV, it feels more like distater exploitation than useful information. Even the print press are doing a crappy job. I can't speak to wether or not there is outright racism involved in the reporting, but the captions for the following photos were more than a little interesting to me:
Photo One (http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/050830071810_shxwaoma_photo1")
Photo Two (http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10208301530")
Links no longer working.
Today I heard a morning DJ say the flooding might finally wash away that permanent urine and vomit smell on the streets.
If they decide to rebuild, they're contemplating installing vomit-resistant cobblestones. That way, they keep the old world charm, but replace it with new high-tech materials :D
Seriously, I think they start planning on spending for relocation rather than any rebuilding program. The inane system that's set up already there fails. Zero's link speaks of the levee's ALWAYS sinking. It's a natural occurrence due to how the area SHOULD work, and to continue sinking money into keeping that city viable until the next hurricane is like.....any structure or road in WV. It's a waste of money, but it keeps the locals happy.
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Classy.
People are still dying there and you guys are competing for funniest one-liner...and Drew has the balls to question my concerns, and criticise my character.
Real classy.
Yeah, because YOU see this as political fodder, with a side dish of sympathy thrown in there. Mebbe you'll tell us what you're doing about the problem. How YOU are gonna help out, oh great uniter.
Your morbid obsession with wallowing in despair no matter the reason is simply amplified in any responses you've had in this thread.
And you tell me I'm the one who needs to get outside once in a while.
Save your piousness for someone else. Sackcloth and ashes don't become you.
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I went to New Orleans in College, and back then I though "Where was Mrs. O'Leary's cow when a city needed it"?
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Chad, you need to understand 2 things...
2. Hospital fuel reserves for generators are built below ground. You cant get fuel to the tanks if the manhole cover is submerged in 15ft of water.
You're telling me the US Military does not contain engineers capable of adding secondary capacity to a few generators?
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Classy.
People are still dying there and you guys are competing for funniest one-liner...and Drew has the balls to question my concerns, and criticise my character.
Real classy.
Did we really expect the people who have no problem with 100,000 people being killed needlessly in a 'brown' country with their tax dollars to have a problem with whats happening in New Orleans?
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Well, yes, frankly. These are Americans.
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Did we really expect the people who have no problem with 100,000 people being killed needlessly in a 'brown' country with their tax dollars to have a problem with whats happening in New Orleans?
Here I was starting to think it was just MrC who thought he was better than everyone else in the room. We'll get to building a pedestal for you, but right now we need the materials for a little bathtub down by our coast.
Are we gonna get more facts from you like our unemployment numbers or civilians killed in Iraq or....it's too hard keeping up with your dismisinformation you get from your media. Just give us your unbiased crap so MrC can agree with you.
Oh, and this just in:
Bush Expected to Visit Storm-Ravaged Areas
Bush to be criticized for not showing up soon
enough but criticized for tying up resources
while on his visit.
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Here I was starting to think it was just MrC who thought he was better than everyone else in the room.
See...now that's just insulting. To me.
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Classy.
People are still dying there and you guys are competing for funniest one-liner...and Drew has the balls to question my concerns, and criticise my character.
Real classy.
Did we really expect the people who have no problem with 100,000 people being killed needlessly in a 'brown' country with their tax dollars to have a problem with whats happening in New Orleans?
I did care that the Iraqi people were paying taxes so Sadamn could kill 100,000 of them.
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Your morbid obsession with wallowing in despair...
Yeah,
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Your morbid obsession with wallowing in despair...
Yeah,
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I don't care about the City of New Orleans, it was a toilet before the flooding.
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Bush to be criticized for not showing up soon enough but criticized for tying up resources
Funny....I'd have never expected *you* to bring this up (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313)! You must be starting to see the light, there is hope for you after all.
mrC
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On a lighter note
(http://img345.imageshack.us/img345/4261/thatsracist5zm.gif)
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The mainstream media is not prepared to deal with this sort of concept, so they'll focus on vilifying the "looters" and sensationalizing the mass chaos, as borderline racists on the right feign sympathy, while practicing indifference.
Why won't you villify them? Because they are hungry? Because most of the ones that are shown on television are black? Because you can't blame anyone for anything?
It's against the law to steal. I don't care if you're hungry. If I had to steal to feed my family, I'd be prepared to deal with the consequences. I wouldn't, however, be on CNN showing my new Nike's.
Please Mr. C, please hold some accountable for their own actions, just once.
And blaming me doesn't count.
And why should the govt fund people who choose to live in a danger zone? Would you be for the govt funding to rebuild Malibu, CA beach homes because they fell in the ocean? Bet not. 'cause the people who live there are white, or rich? two curses against them you thinks.
If anything, the govt should help the victims, get 'em out, and buy out the damn place. Lease it to farmers. No more buildings.
Art
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Bush to be criticized for not showing up soon enough but criticized for tying up resources
Funny....I'd have never expected *you* to bring this up (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313)! You must be starting to see the light, there is hope for you after all.
mrC
If I weren't being proven right, this'd be almost comical. Instead, it's just ironical.
Oh, and being proven right by you time and again is getting to be boring. I'm starting to feel like Shmokes.
Here I was starting to think it was just MrC who thought he was better than everyone else in the room.
See...now that's just insulting. To me.
You're on a different level. Remember? We voted. Your sig even sez so. I just thought it was kinda redundant to say you're better than everyone in the room when you're better than everyone in the universe. ;)
Please remove the smiting. The Gold Bond only works for so long, and I was starting to wonder why the itch. Boy, am I glad I logged back in to see the reason!
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On a lighter note
(http://img345.imageshack.us/img345/4261/thatsracist5zm.gif)
I see a slight difference in those pictures, the kid appears to be hauling an absolute massive haul, while the couple in the first part of the picture is barely carrying anything.
I'd just go a little while without eating, as I carry around a large enough reserve with me to weather most natural disasters.
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I just thought it was kinda redundant to say you're better than everyone in the room when you're better than everyone in the universe. ;)
Repentance accepted.
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I just heard on the radio you guys might be in for some strong wind and a little rain.
Just thought you guys might be interested there may be some bad weather headed your way.
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The Governor of Lousiana made a statement today urging police officers to bypass those needing rescue, and deal with the looting problem. THis is getting REALLY bad people......
NOLA area law enforcement has asked the surrounding communities (and civillians) to "loan" officials ammunition and weapons due to the lack of firepower.
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Was only a matter of time I guess.....
http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/08/083105nola.htm
But at least somebodys making sense....
http://www.bakutoday.net/afps/english/shared/int/050901072853.mg3xn29z.html
"For four days there were warnings that (Katrina) was going to make a direct hit, and the king of vacations at his ranch only said 'you must flee.' He did not say how," Chavez said, charging that the United States had no evacuation plans. "It's the rancher mentality."
King of vacations, AWOL again ROTFLMAO! :D
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Evacuation of the Superdome has been suspended due to refugees firing weapons at military helicopters trying to help them.
I don't know how to properly say what I'm feeling, but suffice it to say I don't believe firing weapons at those trying to help you demonstrates much sense.
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Dexter:
What country do you live in?
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Dexter:
What country do you live in?
Ireland. Dublin, Ireland to be exact. Why? (As if I don't know already ;)
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"For four days there were warnings that (Katrina) was going to make a direct hit, and the king of vacations at his ranch only said 'you must flee.' He did not say how," Chavez said, charging that the United States had no evacuation plans. "It's the rancher mentality."
King of vacations, AWOL again ROTFLMAO! :D
Dexter:
Are you so completely helpless that you need the president of the United States to tell you how to get away from a hurricane?
How do you get to work? To the store? To the bathroom? To bed? Are you managing to do ALL Of that without help from anyone in the government?
BTW, I wish ALL of the politicians would go on vacation for 4 years. No more LAWS. We have enough already.
ARt
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The only good news is that this disaster might force George Bush to start taking climate change more seriously instead of giving priority to the short term interests of the US economy. I'm not saying the hurricane was directly linked to global warming (although freak weather is becoming more common all over the world) but it does illustrate that when it comes to dealing with the forces of nature simply crossing your fingers and hoping for the best is not an option. It's about time he started listening to the scientists. They warned that New Orleans was becoming increasingly vulnerable to serious flooding many years ago.
Also, a dose of high oil prices might be the wake up call that America needs to recognise that its dependence on vast quantities of oil (much of it from the turbulent middle east) is extremely unhealthy for political, environmental, and (in the long term) economic reasons.
Maybe it could be argued that the hurricane was a sign from god. I'm an atheist but it seems you sometimes have to couch your arguments in religious terms for people like Bush to understand.
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v. loot
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Dexter:
Are you so completely helpless that you need the president of the United States to tell you how to get away from a hurricane?
No, but then again ITS NOT ME BEING QUOTED IS IT? Do I think enough is being done as we speak. No. Do I think the national guard could have done more if it wan't bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire. Yes.
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It's about time he started listening to the scientists.
Which scientists do you want to listen to? There are as many who say global warming is a crock as not.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-329es.html
Who is the Cato institute? I have no idea. Probably on the other side of the aisle from the greenpeacers.
Art
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Dexter:
What country do you live in?
Ireland. Dublin, Ireland to be exact. Why? (As if I don't know already ;)
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It's about time he started listening to the scientists.
Which scientists do you want to listen to? There are as many who say global warming is a crock as not.
Actually no. The vast majority of scientists do accept that man made global warming is a reality.
They could be wrong but do you wish to bet the planet on it?
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I see a slight difference in those pictures, the kid appears to be hauling an absolute massive haul, while the couple in the first part of the picture is barely carrying anything.
I'd just go a little while without eating, as I carry around a large enough reserve with me to weather most natural disasters.
Uh, so it is not looting as long as you don't take TOO much? Who decides how much is TOO much? How do you know how many people this kid has to feed? The bag is floating, so it is obviously not PS2's in the bag.
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I'm just trying to understand why you hate Americans so badly.
Hate Americans? LOL!! Far from it chief. Fact is I am one of a majoriy of europeans who dislike the bush regieme, its policies and its actions. We hope to see america return to its former glory sooner rather than later. Hate americans, no. Dislike the people who suport and condone the bush regiemes actions, yes. Be they american, british or outer mongolian.
Incidentally, my AMERICAN family member (raised with me) just went back to boston. I Updated him on the Iraqnam quagmire, ohio voting fiasco, rove scandal etc while he was here. Oh, and I wasn't issuing a fatwha/jihad calling on his 'yank' ass either. If he had been spouting 'gawd, amerikur, prezzidens' BS then there would have been a heated debate.
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Welp...Bush is back from his month long vacation, and it only took ONE DAY for him to wash the government's hand of any responsibility.
George W. Bush (Today on Good Morning America): "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."
Are you KIDDING me?
Either this man is a blatant liar or a completely incompetent fool. I'd wager on both. Is this how his mind works? Did he just decide to ignore all the desperate pleas for federal money to shore up the levees (over the past several years) because *HE'S* too stupid to anticipate just about anything? Sure, higher/stronger levees might not have stopped the hurricane, but it would have potentially saved a lot of people and untold billions in damages from flood afterward.
Every day with this moron my rage toward him and his minions feels more vindicated.
mrC
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If I weren't being proven right, this'd be almost comical. Instead, it's just ironical.
As comical as your sad pre-emptive apologist crap?
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And where was the leader of america when this CATASTROPHE was happening?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4550031
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The mainstream media is not prepared to deal with this sort of concept, so they'll focus on vilifying the "looters" and sensationalizing the mass chaos, as borderline racists on the right feign sympathy, while practicing indifference.
Why won't you villify them? Because they are hungry? Because most of the ones that are shown on television are black? Because you can't blame anyone for anything?
Those responsible for looting goods other than food should be held responsible, I'm not advocating that they aren't. (Even though it seems kinda' low on the list of priorities right now) I have a broader concern though.
In the early hours of a disaster of this scale...the media's response will ultimately frame the debate and coming national dialog. By constantly focusing on the actions of the outrageous few, they unfairly villify an entire group of people for no reason (LA population=4.5 MILLION). It's not going to help anybody, and it isn't going to lead to those real "looters" being held accountable either. I will say that I've noticed the focus of the news coverage has seemed to shift to include the realities of the working poor in America, and the conditions and decisions these folks faced before the storm. It's an issue that *should* be addressed, and I'm glad to see it.
Please Mr. C, please hold some accountable for their own actions, just once.
I just agreed with you, but please see my deeper concern above.
And why should the govt fund people who choose to live in a danger zone? Would you be for the govt funding to rebuild Malibu, CA beach homes because they fell in the ocean? Bet not. 'cause the people who live there are white, or rich? two curses against them you thinks.
I'd say this is a debateable point going forward, and I'm positive it'll be addressed once this whole mess is stabilized. I think a historic city like NO deserved more attention than some beach houses in Malibu might because NO had already existed, before the implications of it's location were really understood, and it would have cost less at that point, to invest in protecting it, as opposed to "moving it" or whatever. Rich people that want beach-front property know what they're getting into. It's also fairly clear that the investment to protect the city would have certainly cost less than the damage control, clean-up, and rebuilding effort our nation is facing now.
Anyhow, it's really disheartening to see this underlying contempt for the poor coming from people here (and in the media). I'm sure they'll send money, but to me, until people work together to come to some understanding about the dynamics of wealth distribution in this country, and the reality of the lower-class struggle, and the effects it has on all of society...it will do nothing to fix the long-term issues. People aren't poor simply because they "don't want to work" or "are too stupid to help themselves." I believe that may be the case for some people, but I feel obligated as a human being to look past those kinds of people and focus on those who really need help.
They are members of our society, and helping them better themselves helps us all in the long-run. As bleeding-heart as it seems, some of my reasons are as selfish as those who decide not to care. Less poor in America, means less crime, less drugs, less disease...more stable economy...all things that directly effect me, my friends and family. Now, and in the future.
If anything, the govt should help the victims, get 'em out, and buy out the damn place. Lease it to farmers. No more buildings.
Ok...well, there is always that option. I'm not a civil engineer, but there is historic precedent for other projects where entire cities were raised to protect against flooding. After a hurricane struck in 1900 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston%2C_Texas#Galveston.27s_Rise_and_the_Hurricane_of_1900), Galveston Texas built their giant seawall and raised the entire grade of the city.
Not sure how practical that is here...just saying that it's been done before.
mrC
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And where was the leader of america when this CATASTROPHE was happening?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4550031
What are you implying? That Bush should have went to L.A. while it WAS happening and personally stop the hurricane? Is he going to send in the National Guard to help out WHILE the hurricane is happening?
While the hurricane is happening there isn't that much he can do, so he might as well do his job and pay attention to other parts of the US.
I'm not a fan of politics in general (you would have gotten a simular response from Kerry on something like this) but be realistic.
On another note, man, Wiki is fast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
And why should the govt fund people who choose to live in a danger zone?
THE ENTIRE US IS A DANGER ZONE!
So where would a safe zone? Every area of the US has it's own natural disasters to deal with.
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What are you implying? That Bush should have went to L.A. while it WAS happening and personally stop the hurricane? Is he going to send in the National Guard to help out WHILE the hurricane is happening?
Seriously, I'm no fan of Bush. Quite to the contrary, I find him to be the worst president of my lifetime. However, I have to agree with the above post. What could he have done? He seems to be doing everything possible now and I have to commend him for the effort that he seems to be making now. Despite the fact that he seems to think that he's god's right hand man, I'm pretty sure that there isn't a whole lot he could do to stop a hurricane.
-S
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Quite to the contrary, I find him to be the worst president of my lifetime.
Wow, really??
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Quite to the contrary, I find him to be the worst president of my lifetime.
Wow, really?? Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton. Any of those ring a bell?
The fact that you choose to include Carter and leave off Reagan says volumes. Aren't you missing Rush Limbaugh or something?
-S
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Quite to the contrary, I find him to be the worst president of my lifetime.
Wow, really??
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Seriously, I'm no fan of Bush. Quite to the contrary, I find him to be the worst president of my lifetime. However, I have to agree with the above post. What could he have done?
He could have stood in front of it said "Bring it on" ,wrassle it to the ground, and open up a can o' whoopace on it.Clinton.
What was the national deficit at when Clinton left office, And whats the deficit at now?
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Quite to the contrary, I find him to be the worst president of my lifetime.
Wow, really?? Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton. Any of those ring a bell?
The fact that you choose to include Carter and leave off Reagan says volumes. Aren't you missing Rush Limbaugh or something?
-S
Yep, it should say volumes. Regan was the best president of my lifetime. ;)
You have your opinion. I have mine. We're not going to change each other's mind and the last thing this forum needs is another couple of daisies arguing about politics. So how about if we just leave it at that?
-S
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Quite to the contrary, I find him to be the worst president of my lifetime.
Wow, really??
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latest I heard ****
They have haulted evacuating people becaus of gunfire........
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CLINTON WON...GET OVER IT ;)
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Yep, you betcha. Going to go eat some (http://www.stingraysmadness.com/misc/theword.jpg) now. :laugh:
Thankfully we have (http://www.stingraysmadness.com/misc/theword.jpg) to agree on. (http://www.stingraysmadness.com/misc/theword.jpg) is the great uniter. Vote (http://www.stingraysmadness.com/misc/theword.jpg) in 2008!
-S
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Just heard a report on UK television that 50,000 body bags have been ordered by the authorities. Hopefully somebody got their wires crossed :'(
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Thankfully we have bacon to agree on. Bacon is the great uniter. Vote Bacon in 2008!
;D
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Did anyone else know "Fats" Domino was missing?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168122,00.html
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Did anyone else know "Fats" Domino was missing?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168122,00.html
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=42466.0
-S
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oops... I hadn't got that far down yet.. lol
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bacon
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Oh god! its even worse than brussels sprouts.
We need my bAcon back!
Mods?
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And why should the govt fund people who choose to live in a danger zone? Would you be for the govt funding to rebuild Malibu, CA beach homes because they fell in the ocean?
Thats what I've always wondered.
I feel little sympathy for people that intentionally put themselves in harms way.
That includes:
People who live on fault lines.
People who live on/under hills prone to mudslides.
People who own oceanfront property.
People who, if entropy has its way, will be underwater.
People who live under mountains prone to avalanche.
People who live near active volcanoes.
Isn't it just common sense? Mother natures gonna win, every time.
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People who live near active volcanoes.
When I was a kid we lived right near St. Helens when it erupted......
it was awesome....
but then again I was only 7.....
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People who live near active volcanoes.
When I was a kid we lived right near St. Helens when it erupted......
it was awesome....
but then again I was only 7.....
Young punk! I was a world seasoned 12. ;)
-S
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People who live near active volcanoes.
When I was a kid we lived right near St. Helens when it erupted......
it was awesome....
but then again I was only 7.....
Young punk! I was a world seasoned 12. ;)
-S
well actually I was 7 and 3/4
it happened in May and my birthday is August
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People who live near active volcanoes.
When I was a kid we lived right near St. Helens when it erupted......
it was awesome....
but then again I was only 7.....
Me too. I was even younger, though. 6 at the oldest (moved at of WA at 6). I remember the scouts going and getting huge lava rocks afterward, though.
What year did it erupt? I was born in '78
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It was '82 wasn't it?
-S
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1980
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In that case I was 10. MissionC is clearly telling a fib about his age, since it's already been established he and I are twins who were separated a birth. ;)
-S
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People in new orleans are shooting at the rescue helicopters...yeap thats gonna make them land
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Living all then way over here it really takes some time for the impact of these things to settle in.... but wow.
I seen some stuff on TV this morning in the work cafeteria, that place is a mess. This is a pretty big event for your nation to overcome.
Shame about all the ratbags.
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Here's something that suprised even me, the curmudgeon that I am:
The big story today and yesterday was the horrorshow happening at the convention center (not the Superdome). I've heard anywhere between 5,000 to 10,000 people were being sent there by authorities, where they were left with no direction, food, water, or information. People were dying out in front of the building, young children had been raped, lord of the flies type-stuff in the face of complete social breakdown and lack of sustenance...living walking among the dead.
...and the director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff said *TODAY* that he didn't even know there were people there. Then when the commentator on NPR informed him that journalists were serving as eye-witnesses, Chertoff preceeded to call it a "rumor."
Doesn't this guy, or anyone in his department watch CNN?? It's been ON THE NEWS for the past two days!
Furthermore, how safe, exactly, is America, given that this guy is heading the dept. tasked with saving our @sses in the event of a catastrophic attack?
I feel safer already!
mrC
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I heard that interview. It was surreal. It sounded like the guy was in denial. He was like, "Everything's fine. There's enough food for everyone, it's just that some people are in places that are still difficult to reach."
NPR, "There's not a shortage of food and water? Does that include the convention center."
Chertoff, "We have plenty of food. There are daisies growing in my pants. Be happy."
NPR, "We have a live feed to our correspondents who are physically at the convention center right now. We are talking to them at this very exact moment. There are thousands of people there, who have been instructed to go there and to stay there. And there is no food or water. zero. There is also a dead body on the floor of the convention center and another outside the front door in a wheelchair."
Chertoff, "There are also roses and tulips. I'm serious. Smell me. Life is exquisite."
obviously those were not Chertoff's verbatim responses, but I've pretty much nailed them on tone, substance and his level of having no idea what he was talking about.
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Save your hot-air for later, right now...it's tasteless. You can go about making light of the situation after all the heavy lifting is done. That's what you do best anyhow. I'm sure you'll be copying and pasting full-page wing-nut satire before all the bodies are dry.
What's tasteless is turning this quickly into a political situation. Let us know what "heavy lifting" you've got planned. I'm guessing a few protest signs is about all the lifting you're concerned with.
Cooldown for making jokes about disasters, Was 4 years..
Its now 4 Hours..
Good Times..
Waiting period for using disasters for political purposes? Used to not be done at all. Now, just a few hours.
Good Times ::)
The mainstream media is not prepared to deal with this sort of concept, so they'll focus on vilifying the "looters" and sensationalizing the mass chaos, as borderline racists on the right feign sympathy, while practicing indifference.
Why won't you villify them? Because they are hungry? Because most of the ones that are shown on television are black? Because you can't blame anyone for anything?
It's against the law to steal. I don't care if you're hungry. If I had to steal to feed my family, I'd be prepared to deal with the consequences. I wouldn't, however, be on CNN showing my new Nike's.
Please Mr. C, please hold some accountable for their own actions, just once.
And blaming me doesn't count
Art, I can't let your misstatement go by uncontested, especially since he knows what you mean, and he'll give his pat answer that makes him "feel" better.
Please change your request. It should read:
"Please, MrC, please hold someone accountable for their own actions, just once. Someone OTHER than the government."
Was only a matter of time I guess.....
http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/08/083105nola.htm
I think the source for your link pretty much sums it up.
Hey MrC, did I just "break the ice" for all the one-liners, and that's why it's ok for Dex, or is it just because you agree with him? It's beautiful. He thinks it's so funny, he's rolling around on the floor. Wait, let me get my somber MrC tone down.
Classy.
People are still dying there and Dexter is throwing his entry in for funniest one-liner?
Real Class.
Evacuation of the Superdome has been suspended due to refugees firing weapons at military helicopters trying to help them.
Mark, unless those reprobates are seeking refuge from helicopters coming to save them, they aren't refugees, they're degenerate thugs. Hard to believe there's folks there so depraved that they want to continue to fester in that mess because for the time being, they're King Turd of the cesspool.
The only good news is that this disaster might force George Bush to start taking climate change more seriously instead of giving priority to the short term interests of the US economy.
So let me get this straight. He should be doing something about gas prices. That's a short term interest. He's worked to put more tax money back into your pocket. Long-ish term interest. He SHOULD HAVE left taxes where they were, but he SHOULD NOT leave gas prices alone, and should fix them right now. Climate change, which can be better dealt with through MORE FUNDING - isn't that the constant carping? We need more funding to study blah blah blah, yet we should pass on the economy and focus on the environment?
I'm not saying the hurricane was directly linked to global warming (although freak weather is becoming more common all over the world)
Rii-iight. Hey, this just in:
Link to the gospel of the NY Times about chicken-little thinking like that (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/national/30cycle.html?ei=5065&en=9e0e24b0c5ee1d90&ex=1125979200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print)
"Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming.
But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season."
Oh, and in case you missed it, please explain to us whether we should have been concerned with "short term economy" or "climate changes" during the EIGHT YEAR PERIOD between '95 and '03 when ONLY THREE - T-H-R-E-E!! struck the U.S. at full strength.
Bbut it does illustrate that when it comes to dealing with the forces of nature simply crossing your fingers and hoping for the best is not an option. It's about time he started listening to the scientists. They warned that New Orleans was becoming increasingly vulnerable to serious flooding many years ago.
On these points, I wholeheartedly agree with you. But wait, there's more! This same area had an identical disaster befall them in the 60's. Now, Zakk even realized that area is a friggen bathtub, and is ill suited to keeping water away from it at its current location. We've been crossing our fingers for FORTY YEARS! You're correct, it wasn't an option, and shouldn't ever be again. It IS about time we start listening to the scientists who tell us that the Mississippi cannot be shut off from this area unless we want it to sink year after year after year after year. How long ago did they warn about this? 60's minus 2005....carry the naught.....yeah, they've been saying this was a problem for FORTY YEARS, and somehow you are trying to tell us that Bush should be thinking about climate change NOW? pssst....there's decades of history you just walked past. This didn't happen because of problems in the last few years, it's ALWAYS been happening, and everything finally came to fruition yet again. Are we gonna wait another 40 years before someone says "stop building"? And clearly this should qualify as a wetland area. Wont' someone think about the spotted frog? Won't someone care?
Also, a dose of high oil prices might be the wake up call that America needs to recognise that its dependence on vast quantities of oil (much of it from the turbulent middle east) is extremely unhealthy for political, environmental, and (in the long term) economic reasons.
The oil prices aren't high, it's the gas price, and the stock price. The price for the oil used has stayed relatively stable. Stop confusing options prices and pump prices with the cost per barrel. Make a solar powered car that can haul things like a truck, and people will use it, and it won't increase prices like crazy. Make a hybrid that actually saves you money and isn't just for making people feel good, and people will use it, in spades. All these things will be brought about by market forces, and it seems the push for these things are only being advanced by government mandates, which have demonstrably proven to be utterly useless. Forcing someone to produce something that no one wants for a myriad of reasons equates to a losing proposition allthe way around, but I guess as long as it makes a few folks feel good.......
Maybe it could be argued that the hurricane was a sign from god. I'm an atheist but it seems you sometimes have to couch your arguments in religious terms for people like Bush to understand.
I'd have to agree with you again. I'd go with it was a sign from God, but you're working from the wrong translation book. You've got your philosophy book out when you should have your Spanish book. Either way it requires several readings before the light comes on.
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Now, Zakk even realized that area is a friggen bathtub, and is ill suited to keeping water away from it at its current location.
Hey, whoa heynow. I had to read that whole post to get that gem out.
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I heard that interview. It was surreal. It sounded like the guy was in denial. He was like, "Everything's fine. There's enough food for everyone, it's just that some people are in places that are still difficult to reach."
Also from that NPR interview, and this is a verbatim quote:
Chertoff: "There is a more than adequate law enforcement presence in New Orleans"
Unbelievable
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Now, Zakk even realized that area is a friggen bathtub, and is ill suited to keeping water away from it at its current location.
Hey, whoa heynow. I had to read that whole post to get that gem out. Notice how easy my heckles were to pick out of my posts. C'mon, I'm a busy man over here, no time for "where's Waldo?"!!! >:(
;D
I just wanted to see HOW hard you have to work. I've gotta say, if you could pick that nugget out of all that.... ::)
;)
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Whoa......Drew. I'm not kidding here. We've been through this before and I thought you understood me. Posts like that will not be tolerated. Hire an editor.
And oil topped $70/barrel in response to Katrina. Remember back in the good old days of $45 a barrel. Oh wait, that was less than a year ago. Oh yeah, and those days sucked because a $45 barrel of oil represented skyrocketing oil prices.
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Also, a dose of high oil prices might be the wake up call that America needs to recognise that its dependence on vast quantities of oil (much of it from the turbulent middle east) is extremely unhealthy for political, environmental, and (in the long term) economic reasons.
Fun fact #1: Half of all oil used by the US comes FROM the US.
Fun fact #2: Half of all oil imported by the US comes from that singular disgusting haven of alternating lawless anarchy and opressive regimes known as CANADA.
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Whoa......Drew. I'm not kidding here. We've been through this before and I thought you understood me. Posts like that will not be tolerated. Hire an editor.
And oil topped $70/barrel in response to Katrina. Remember back in the good old days of $45 a barrel. Oh wait, that was less than a year ago. Oh yeah, and those days sucked because a $45 barrel of oil represented skyrocketing oil prices.
That's the options price, not what it's sold for.
Sorry, I was watching a movie and typing. It slipped....got away from me. Wave your magic wand and "Reader's Digest" all that. It'll prolly look something like "blah blah blah sucks blah blah".
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WHAT THE ---I'm attempting to get around the autocensor and should re-read the rules!--- IS GOING ON?!? Theres offers of aid coming in from foreign countries left, right and centre and bush just crones on about how america will take care of it themselves.
Bush told ABC-TV:
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Foreign aid dollars wouldn't save any lives. What is needed is pure vehicles and manpower, over the next few days to evacuate people. I could send them a billion dollars right now, and it wouldn't do a thing for saving lives, now if they starting sending over troop carrying helicopters with pilots and staff TODAY, then that would be useful.
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http://www.sitepunch.com/hurricane_aid_090105_0023.php
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/31/235829/261
Canada are stranding by NOW with food, water and medicine. But they're NOT BEING ALLOWED to help.
The tsunami victims had aid faster than this. America is a first world nation being offered aid NOW by other first world nations and is refusing it. WTF!
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http://www.sitepunch.com/hurricane_aid_090105_0023.php
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/31/235829/261
Canada are stranding by NOW with food, water and medicine. But they're NOT BEING ALLOWED to help.
The tsunami victims had aid faster than this. America is a first world nation being offered aid NOW by other first world nations and is refusing it. WTF!
Ok, that is just stupid, if Canada has troops ready to deploy then it is just totally stupid of us to refuse them, they are actually close enough to be usefull.
But money, that won't really help all that much.
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But money, that won't really help all that much.
Yep, theres only one reason for the whitehouse to refuse actual aid but accept money. They can distribute the money as they see fit to their 'haves and have mores' base contributors who own companies that could provide aid relief. Haliburton anybody?
It pays to be cynical.
How about this report:
http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68732,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
This is the new weapon they've been itching to test for ages. A good reason for not sending in the army and allowing anarchy to reign?? Why do that when theres a new toy to field test. They never miss an opportunity this regieme, not one.
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Worth a read if you have some time spare....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10050.htm
"A year ago the U.S. 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, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late."
Also, if you're a leftie:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=183
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"A year ago the U.S. 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, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late."
I heard about this on NPR after work yesterday. Just amazing. This exact scanario had been predicted, and they had even started trying to develop a plan for dealing with the terrible aftermath that NO is experincing right now, but funding to the project got cut off.
-S
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Also, a dose of high oil prices might be the wake up call that America needs to recognise that its dependence on vast quantities of oil (much of it from the turbulent middle east) is extremely unhealthy for political, environmental, and (in the long term) economic reasons.
Fun fact #1: Half of all oil used by the US comes FROM the US.
Fun fact #2: Half of all oil imported by the US comes from that singular disgusting haven of alternating lawless anarchy and opressive regimes known as CANADA.
Please get your facts straight.
#1: In 2003 the US produced an average of 5.7 million barrels of crude oil per day. That's 2080.5 million barrels for the year, or 2080500 thousand barrels. Crude oil production was lower in 2004 due to Hurricane Ivan. The percentage of crude oil imports is approximately 64%, not 50%.
Link (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/usa.html)
#2: In 2004 the US imported a total of 3692063 thousand barrels of crude oil. 591489 came from Canada. That's 16%, not half.
Link (http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/petroleum_supply_annual/psa_volume1/current/txt/table_21.txt)
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What we are seeing in New Orleans is the culmination of 35 years of GOVERNMENT planning. Ever since the last major Hurricane hit New Orleans Plans were apparently carefully crafted to make sure everything would be taken care of.
I hope we all have warm fuzzies that our government will help us if disaster hits. And no, we don't need any stinking gun control. After all, it looks like we can count on the authorities to know what to do and protect us.
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v. loot
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I certainly can't imagine that ordianry NO citizens are behind the whole shooting at the helicopters thing. On the contrary, they're probably even more horrified by it than the rest of us are. My personal theory is that the people shooting at the helicopters must be crazy street people and hard drug addicts who cannot get their fix and are just flipping out because of the withdrawals. Please do not take this theory as me trying to coddle those nuts. We need to get the choppers back in the air, but we need to have a couple of Marines with M-16s in each one to just blow the head off any psycho who shoots at a helicopter. That kind of crap needs to be taken out of the gene pool asap.
-S
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What I really don't understand though, is how people can break into pawnshops, take weapons and ammunition, and opening fire on disaster relief personnel.
Why? Because they are freaking idiots that do not care about anyone but themselves.
Why? Because nobody is there to stop them.
Why? Because they have no life or morals
Why? Because they can now and nobody is going to stop them.
I don't think that we are seeing a lot of people doing this. I really don't.
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Which makes sense if everybody was acting the same. But there are countless thousands (some reports say up to 200,000 people) the VAST majority of whom aren't raping, murdering etc. who urgently need help.
The tsunami refugees weren't told to find a helping hand at the ends of their arms, can the citizens of the worlds only superpower not expect their government to come to their rescue, like they allegedly did for the people of eye-raq? Hopefully the moderate republicans wil realise now that saving people from peril is not what the bush regieme is about, be it in tikrit or new orleans.
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For some people, there just wasn't anywhere to go...a lot of the poor in NO just don't have cars (or enough "bikes" for their family, come on!)
They had DAYS of warning. It doesn't take days to walk out of the city. We're talking their lives and the lives of their children. "I don't have a car" or "there isn't a bus today" is not acceptable. I'd carry my kids on foot out of the city if that was the only option, but I tend to be tremendously conservative when it comes to things like this.
I will not get past the people who know a disaster is coming and let things like lack of automotive transportation stop them from evacuating. This doesn't apply only here, it can be said of pretty much all major storms we get in the US.
I'm getting sick of hearing television people refer to this as "our tsunami". More than 200,000 people died in that tsunami. That's like both atomic bombs combined.
Even the poorest folks I have seen still have wagons and strollers for their kids. No matter what if I was in their shoes I would of packed up the kids in the stroller and the wagon and started walking. If I lived there my reasons for leaving would be:
#1 hurricane
#2 city below sea level
#3 Aging levee system
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That kind of crap needs to be taken out of the gene pool asap.
Exactly.
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That kind of crap needs to be taken out of the gene pool asap.
Hey, sometimes you need to toss some chlorine in the gene pool.
Especially considering these miscreants aer typically from the shallow end.
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You know what I'm thinking!
What makes New Orleans so different from any other city in the southeast destroyed by a hurricane? I mean seriously, can't they build a raft or something? Are they truly that helpless?
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A lot of people couldn't leave.
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No city is safe. Look what happend in one hour here.
http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Story/20050819-003/page.asp
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You know what I'm thinking!
What makes New Orleans so different from any other city in the southeast destroyed by a hurricane? I mean seriously, can't they build a raft or something? Are they truly that helpless?
So lets get this straight. Leave the bit of dry terra firma they are surviving on to build a raft to float off looking for food, water and medicine that isn't there yet? And go where exactly? You do know the topography of the area right??
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You know what I'm thinking!
What makes New Orleans so different from any other city in the southeast destroyed by a hurricane? I mean seriously, can't they build a raft or something? Are they truly that helpless?
So lets get this straight. Leave the bit of dry terra firma they are surviving on to build a raft to float off looking for food, water and medicine that isn't there yet? And go where exactly? You do know the topography of the area right??
I'm saying they're not completely HELPLESS, Dexter! They won't even do anything to help themselves.
How many hurricanes have you been through? You know, they're not the end of the world, as some would predict.
AS FOR WHAT they can do, hell! They can do what we do here. Build a raft, or some floating device, check for others who may need help or begin forming a TEAM to HELP others. With NUMBERS Dexter, the possibilities are ENDLESS!
DON'T JUST DO NOTHING!
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Oh yeah, BTW, whats the latest from Britain, France, Canada, or Germany? How about Spain, Australia, or Poland? Where are they when we need assistance? Whats that you say? They're to BUSY to help!!? ???
Read some of the above posts.
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just for those saying how disconnected the government is. Bush just said the rescue efforts progress so far is unacceptable.
The probably is communication. There is no solid line of communication. The closest thing is the media in NO. But that doesn't help relief efforts. Even in Baton Rogue the red cross has had problems communicating w/ the red cross down the line.
another example.
Fox news had a nurse on the phone that said they had no food or water. They had evacuated almost all of the patients. They had no help from local, state or fed. gov. and that they had not had any violence at the hospital. Then on ABC someone from the hospital said they had NOT evacuated the hospital and HAD violence brought against them.
Anyone no what happen to the 4,000+ national gaurds the state officals said were going to NO yesterday morning? I woke up last night and from what I gathered only a few had trickled in.You know what I'm thinking!
What makes New Orleans so different from any other city in the southeast destroyed by a hurricane? I mean seriously, can't they build a raft or something? Are they truly that helpless?
The Flooding. Plain and simple. No truly easy way in or out. Plus if there is any other flooding in LA it doesn't help remeber its the Bayou. The gas shortage that is happening and poweroutages don't help either.
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Obviously I can only speak for myself here, so that's what I'm doing.
If I were stranded on my roof, I would be busy dismantling said roof and using the materials to build a raft and at least get to dry land. Not sure what I'd do when I got there. Start walking I guess. What I would not do is stay in NO with the whole collapse of civilization happening all around me. Again, this is just me. I have sufficient tools and fasteners always on hand in my house that tearing apart the roof or walls and using the materials to build a usable raft would be within the realm of possiblity for me.
-S
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Obviously I can only speak for myself here, so that's what I'm doing.
If I were stranded on my roof, I would be busy dismantling said roof and using the materials to build a raft and at least get to dry land. Not sure what I'd do when I got there. Start walking I guess. What I would not do is stay in NO with the whole collapse of civilization happening all around me. Again, this is just me. I have sufficient tools and fasteners always on hand in my house that tearing apart the roof or walls and using the materials to build a usable raft would be within the realm of possiblity for me.
-S
Yeah, but youre a crazy mountainman. Not a cashier in NO who's never seen a hammer before ;)
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You know what I'm thinking!
What makes New Orleans so different from any other city in the southeast destroyed by a hurricane? I mean seriously, can't they build a raft or something? Are they truly that helpless?
So lets get this straight. Leave the bit of dry terra firma they are surviving on to build a raft to float off looking for food, water and medicine that isn't there yet? And go where exactly? You do know the topography of the area right??
I'm saying they're not completely HELPLESS, Dexter! They won't even do anything to help themselves.
How many hurricanes have you been through? You know, they're not the end of the world, as some would predict.
AS FOR WHAT they can do, hell! They can do what we do here. Build a raft, or some floating device, check for others who may need help or begin forming a TEAM to HELP others. With NUMBERS Dexter, the possibilities are ENDLESS!
DON'T JUST DO NOTHING!
There are people doing that.
They are alot of people that are trying to leave but can't. They could walk but would you leave the place that you have a small amount of food and water. To risk walking to the next town that has a shelter thats probably at least a full days walk away. The people that don't have food or water just don't know where to go. Fox has been on a bridge probably 1/4 mile away from superdome on I-10 for acouple of days with people w/ no food or water. The worst part for those people is watching all the cars and convoys go by and not getting any info or supplies.Obviously I can only speak for myself here, so that's what I'm doing.
If I were stranded on my roof, I would be busy dismantling said roof and using the materials to build a raft and at least get to dry land. Not sure what I'd do when I got there. Start walking I guess. What I would not do is stay in NO with the whole collapse of civilization happening all around me. Again, this is just me. I have sufficient tools and fasteners always on hand in my house that tearing apart the roof or walls and using the materials to build a usable raft would be within the realm of possiblity for me.
-S
So with flood waters rising you would grab your trusty hand saw box of nails and a hammer? In the areas flooded it took any where from 30 min. to a few hours to have the water reach the top of peoples roof's.
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Obviously I can only speak for myself here, so that's what I'm doing.
If I were stranded on my roof, I would be busy dismantling said roof and using the materials to build a raft and at least get to dry land. Not sure what I'd do when I got there. Start walking I guess. What I would not do is stay in NO with the whole collapse of civilization happening all around me. Again, this is just me. I have sufficient tools and fasteners always on hand in my house that tearing apart the roof or walls and using the materials to build a usable raft would be within the realm of possiblity for me.
-S
So with flood waters rising you would grab your trusty hand saw box of nails and a hammer? In the areas flooded it took any where from 30 min. to a few hours to have the water reach the top of peoples roof's.
Yes, that's exactly what I would do, but like I said, that's just me. Are you saying that you would just wait there to die? Actually now that I think about it I wouldn't have to build a raft most likely. I own a small fishing boat. I guess I'd just use that provided it was locatable by the time I realized that I needed it.
-S
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Yes, that's exactly what I would do, but like I said, that's just me. Are you saying that you would just wait there to die? Actually now that I think about it I wouldn't have to build a raft most likely. I own a small fishing boat. I guess I'd just use that provided it was locatable by the time I realized that I needed it.
-S
That's what I'm saying!
They're standing on their rooftops thinking when the water goes away, they move back inside. That's just not going to happen. Salvage what you can, and get the hell out. FIND HELP, RELIEF, and what have you.
And like I said, when you find a few people all willing to help one another , it's amazing what can be done/found. The problem is , this all needs to be done locally. There really isn't much we can do from outside anyway.
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If I were stranded on my roof, I would be busy dismantling said roof and using the materials to build a raft and at least get to dry land. Not sure what I'd do when I got there. Start walking I guess. What I would not do is stay in NO with the whole collapse of civilization happening all around me. Again, this is just me. I have sufficient tools and fasteners always on hand in my house that tearing apart the roof or walls and using the materials to build a usable raft would be within the realm of possiblity for me.
-S
As would most of us. Problem is though, most of the people I've seen been plucked from their roofs don't look like the raft building type unfortunately. Also, if you're not confident of your raft building abilities, seeing dead bodies float past you probably won't have you rushing to make rafts.
just for those saying how disconnected the government is. Bush just said the rescue efforts progress so far is unacceptable.
Whats unacceptable is bushes procrastination and refusal to accept foreign aid, as well as being AWOL once again. Match the timelines in this link belwo to the national catastrophe that unfolded. Was it a two day 'my pet goat' contemplative state he was in, or just not giving a damn? Nero fiddles once again while rome burns:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4550031
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4500685
For those rushing to blindly support their *resident as usual, just remember there could be another terrorist attack, possibly on the scale of whats happening in NO. Is your government really competent enough to cope with a disaster of that scale? Look how they're coping now. Wheres all of the public money for contingencys, was it well spent? Wheres the rapid response, the national guard, the army?
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Problem is though, most of the people I've seen been plucked from their roofs don't look like the raft building type unfortunately. Also, if you're not confident of your raft building abilities, seeing dead bodies float past you probably won't have you rushing to make rafts.
You make a couple of very valid points. Like I said, that's just me. Even with the bodies floating past, I'm 100% confident that I would have no problem getting my wife to board the raft and get the hell out. I don't think either of us are the "wait for someone else to help" type. Rational or not, I'm certain that by this point I'd be well outside the NO city limits.
-S
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Will any of the feel sorry for everyone liberals please stand up and say that anyone raping children is wrong?
Or are they just so HORNY because Bush lied?
Let's continue to question our government. It's a good thing. It would be awesome if every elected official in this country lost his reelection bid next time. But it won't happen. Massachusetts will continue to reelect fat Teddy because he felt bad, and he builds monuments and gets funding for that awful state, and NJ will still reelect their replacement senator, that old geezer Lousenberg. Heck, I'd even support throwing out all of the great republican senators ;D
Bush is gone anyway.
Throw 'em all out I say.
Art
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You make a couple of very valid points. Like I said, that's just me. Even with the bodies floating past, I'm 100% confident that I would have no problem getting my wife to board the raft and get the hell out. I don't think either of us are the "wait for someone else to help" type. Rational or not, I'm certain that by this point I'd be well outside the NO city limits.
-S
I'd be long gone before the hurricane myself, plus my family. I can't even imagine what it was like for the people who couldn't manage to evacuate in time. The real victims of this are the poorest and most ill/elderly that couldn't leave. They don't need to suffer any more than they have already.
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Will any of the feel sorry for everyone liberals please stand up and say that anyone raping children is wrong?
I'm probably not left enough to be considered a true liberal, but I do lean pretty far in that direction. Anyone raping children deserves a punishment so severe that I would most likely get this thread locked and get myself banned if I described it in detail. Suffice to say that vice grips, fire ants, and possibly explosives would figure prominantly.
-S
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You make a couple of very valid points. Like I said, that's just me. Even with the bodies floating past, I'm 100% confident that I would have no problem getting my wife to board the raft and get the hell out. I don't think either of us are the "wait for someone else to help" type. Rational or not, I'm certain that by this point I'd be well outside the NO city limits.
-S
I'd be long gone before the hurricane myself, plus my family. I can't even imagine what it was like for the people who couldn't manage to evacuate in time. The real victims of this are the poorest and most ill/elderly that couldn't leave. They don't need to suffer any more than they have already.
Indeed, I would not have been in town during the hurricane either. I was only following a chain of thought that started with "what if I were stranded on the roof of a building surrounded by floodwater?"
-S
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We need to rally, not toss these people out.
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Will any of the feel sorry for everyone liberals please stand up and say that anyone raping children is wrong?
Or are they just so HORNY because Bush lied?
? ::)
Straight up though, why isn't the army and national guard all over this? ITS FRIDAY FOR FCUKS SAKE.
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Will any of the feel sorry for everyone liberals please stand up and say that anyone raping children is wrong?
Or are they just so HORNY because Bush lied?
Let's continue to question our government.
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None of us know how we would react. Nothing like this has happened to anyone on this board.
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Please don't take this the wrong way because I was not there for any of the storms that you're talking about so I'm only going by what I saw on TV. Katrina seems to have done much more damage and left many more people stranded without supplies than the storms that have recently ravaged Florida. It's not about NO being more valuable, it's just that there are so many more people there who still havn't been rescued. Getting those people out is, and should be top priority. Rebuilding will come later, possibly much later.
-S
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Brother, I had four , count them 1-2-3-4 hurricanes knocking on my front door last year, and you know what , I survived every damn one of them. And, I did it without raping, killing or looting! WE no sooner cleaned up from one, and another one got us , and so on & so on.
I still for the life of me, fail to see what makes New Orleans so much more valuable as a whole , compared to the hurricanes we had last year alone in Florida!
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Please don't take this the wrong way because I was not there for any of the storms that you're talking about so I'm only going by what I saw on TV. Katrina seems to have done much more damage and left many more people stranded without supplies than the storms that have recently ravaged Florida. -S
Fair enough.
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Turn on the tv the aid is finally making it to NO. They just showed on fox a some buildings on fire that the police and firefighters rolled up to stood around for a while and just left because there was no water pressure to put out the fires.
As far as the rafts go I would have hit the road on sunday and just racked up My credit cards getting the f out of dodge
As for all this raft business, exactly where are they going to raft to? What would they find when they get there? Come on. Don't forget this was a cat 1 hurricane all the way up into LA. It was effectively a tornado about 45-60 miles wide all the way up the state. More than New Orleans was affected.
BTW IT guys, we fired ours today in anticipation of lack of Automotive Business.
Computer guys beware.
I think you mean up to Cat5 then cat 4 when NO got hit. I beleive Tornado winds are still faster, though
If it came down to budget constraints I could totaly see my IT postion eleminated before the storm. but I am not to worried I work for a grocery store w/ four stores in jackson, MIss and about 20-30 in LA. As long as wal-mart doesn't kill us we aint going no where
The stores in Miss opened up yesterday with the vps and executive board members giving out free ice to customers.
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Brother, I had four , count them 1-2-3-4 hurricanes knocking on my front door last year, and you know what , I survived every damn one of them. And, I did it without raping, killing or looting! WE no sooner cleaned up from one, and another one got us , and so on & so on.
I still for the life of me, fail to see what makes New Orleans so much more valuable as a whole , compared to the hurricanes we had last year alone in Florida! >:(
Did any of these equal the magnitude of this one? is your house still there? or was your city completely devastated and sitting under 30' of water in parts?
That's like me telling a man who had an arm blown off in war that the paper cut I got last week at work hurt a lot and I know what he's going through.
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Brother, I had four , count them 1-2-3-4 hurricanes knocking on my front door last year, and you know what , I survived every damn one of them. And, I did it without raping, killing or looting! WE no sooner cleaned up from one, and another one got us , and so on & so on.
I still for the life of me, fail to see what makes New Orleans so much more valuable as a whole , compared to the hurricanes we had last year alone in Florida!
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Perhaps you're right, the lot of us here chose not to be victims and decided to do something about it.
As did a lot of the people who live in NO. This doesn't diminish the fact that those who remain in the city desparately need help.
-S
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Brother, I had four , count them 1-2-3-4 hurricanes knocking on my front door last year, and you know what , I survived every damn one of them. And, I did it without raping, killing or looting! WE no sooner cleaned up from one, and another one got us , and so on & so on.
I still for the life of me, fail to see what makes New Orleans so much more valuable as a whole , compared to the hurricanes we had last year alone in Florida! >:(
One thing, up to 20ft of floodwater. Just thought I'd mention it. It's not about value, or amounts or how much worse YOU have it. There are people dying of starvation, dehydration etc and the government are dragging their heels. They're deploying weapons to blast undesirables with instead of deploying the military to bring aid and protection.
And your point is?
Perhaps you're right, the lot of us here chose not to be victims and decided to do something about it.
The problem w/ NO is flooding. They have to evacuate the entire city with close to 100,000 people in it still. Thats why all the attention is going to them. In parts of Miss and Ala. they have started, I believe, to begin the earliest phases of working to rebuild. Mainly get supplies in to people that need them.
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That's like me telling a man who had an arm blown off in war that the paper cut I got last week at work hurt a lot and I know what he's going through.
Oh please, that's not what I'm saying at all. Try re-reading the post , SISTER !
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That's like me telling a man who had an arm blown off in war that the paper cut I got last week at work hurt a lot and I know what he's going through.
Oh please, that's not what I'm saying at all. Try re-reading the post , SISTER !
Actually you might want to re-read your post. I don't think you meant it that way, but using Shape D's analogy, you do sort of come off as saying that the papercut you got was just as bad as the guy who got his arm blown off and since you got over the papercut quickly, you don't understand what he's sniveling about. Again, I don't think you meant it that way, but that interpretation is there.
-S
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I'm sure your cities, or local radio stations are putting together a colllection or some kind of drive to collect canned foods and clothing for the victims.
There are many good people who are in a bad situation that need your help now.
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Then it still goes back to the original point as mentioned here before.
Acting like complete SAVAGES and HURTING your fellow man, while at the same time having the nerve to extend your hands in a desperate cry for help.
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That's like me telling a man who had an arm blown off in war that the paper cut I got last week at work hurt a lot and I know what he's going through.
Oh please, that's not what I'm saying at all. Try re-reading the post , SISTER !
Actually you might want to re-read your post. I don't think you meant it that way, but using Shape D's analogy, you do sort of come off as saying that the papercut you got was just as bad as the guy who got his arm blown off and since you got over the papercut quickly, you don't understand what he's sniveling about. Again, I don't think you meant it that way, but that interpretation is there.
-S
Does ShapeD actually think all we had in Florida , were PAPERCUTS?
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Then it still goes back to the original point as mentioned here before.
Acting like complete SAVAGES and HURTING your fellow man, while at the same time having the nerve to extend your hands in a desperate cry for help.
I think you're making the all too common mitake of confusing the people who need to be rescued with the crazies who are shooting at the resue workers. They are two distinct groups. One needs help, the other needs extermination.
Does ShapeD actually think all we had in Florida , were PAPERCUTS?
See now I think you are misinterpreting him. I'm certain that he was over exagerating to make a point.
-S
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Help us under stand TheVengeance. What losses did you incur from the 4 hurricanes? Who did you recieve water and food from? Do you live in a home w/ insurance? Do you have the means to be able to buy products once your arc reached dry land?
I think you may be missing the fact that these people that are in NO are the Poor who if they walked out couldn't have been able to by food or water before they reached a shelter. They also are sick and elderly who can't help themselves let alone other people.
There ARE people from NO helping out other people. Its just you not going to see it on the recap of the news at te end of the day because they think all anyone wants to here about is the lotters and rapists and murderers.
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Actually you might want to re-read your post. I don't think you meant it that way, but using Shape D's analogy, you do sort of come off as saying that the papercut you got was just as bad as the guy who got his arm blown off and since you got over the papercut quickly, you don't understand what he's sniveling about. Again, I don't think you meant it that way, but that interpretation is there.
-S
Thats actually what both of these read like.
Brother, I had four , count them 1-2-3-4 hurricanes knocking on my front door last year, and you know what , I survived every damn one of them. And, I did it without raping, killing or looting! WE no sooner cleaned up from one, and another one got us , and so on & so on.
I still for the life of me, fail to see what makes New Orleans so much more valuable as a whole , compared to the hurricanes we had last year alone in Florida! >:(
And your point is?
Perhaps you're right, the lot of us here chose not to be victims and decided to do something about it.
So what about the sick and elderly. they don't have the pysical or monitary requirements needed to make it out of the city. before or after this happened.
That's like me telling a man who had an arm blown off in war that the paper cut I got last week at work hurt a lot and I know what he's going through.
Oh please, that's not what I'm saying at all. Try re-reading the post , SISTER !
Insults don't always work great when trying to prove your point. If you would like to inform me I am wrong feel free too correct me without resorting to an insult, and I will gladly lend you an ear.
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See now I think you are misinterpreting him. I'm certain that he was over exagerating to make a point.
-S
Well I wasn't exagerating! Florida was hit hard last year, and I defy someone to say different. That's all.
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The people doing these things(rapes, murders) are the same people that would have done it last week, two weeks and three months ago. The difference no is their behavier has been unchecked for the last 4 days.
Some of these people are abviously not in the, I need to get out of town, state of mind. Just think about it you house was destroyed or its under water why the hell do you need a tv ar 50 pairs of pants? where are you going to put that?
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Help us under stand TheVengeance.
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Does ShapeD actually think all we had in Florida , were PAPERCUTS? >:(
And who says we got over the PAPERCUT quickly? There are still parts of Florida rebuilding from last year's STORM(s).
No, I do not think Florida received "papercuts" from the storms last year. I do however think the amount of damage done to Florida isn't on the same level as the damage done to New Orleans. As stingray stated I exaggerated For the use of emphasis.
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Help us under stand TheVengeance. What losses did you incur from the 4 hurricanes? Who did you recieve water and food from? Do you live in a home w/ insurance? Do you have the means to be able to buy products once your arc reached dry land?
See now I think you are misinterpreting him. I'm certain that he was over exagerating to make a point.
-S
Well I wasn't exagerating! Florida was hit hard last year, and I defy someone to say different. That's all.
Thats why I was curious of you situations, because not all of florida was hit evertime. I am just trying to under stand where you are coming from.
how your posts have been going it does sound like the papercut comparison.
Thanks for replying, try not being an ass next time though.
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How about we channel all the energy and venom in this nasty, hateful thread into helping with the solution?
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Acting like complete SAVAGES and HURTING your fellow man, while at the same time having the nerve to extend your hands in a desperate cry for help.
Those that act that way, were like that before the hurricane, there are people like that in your city too.
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Okay Setabs, I SEE. You were just making a point, right ? Thank you anyway for your concern.
We all helped one another last year, everyone. Good thing you weren't part of it, or nothing would have been accomplished at all. I can tell from your attitude, just what kind of person you are in reality.
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How about we channel all the energy and venom in this nasty, hateful thread into helping with the solution?
Money sent to www.redcross.org , places to shelter the victims of this, the worst natural disaster in recent history, those are helpful solutions, not the hate-filled political backbiting going on here.
For once, put aside the political bickering and blaming and be a part of the solution. Blaming the victims is just plain stupid.
This hurricane was not choosy about who it killed or made homeless or stranded.
Put aside your prejudice and judgements and do something positive to help.
We can do so much better than this! ;D
Thanks! ARCADIAC!
See also: http://www.hurricanehousing.org/ if you can help by sheltering someone in your home
and of course www.redcross.org
This is probably the smartest thing I've read in this entire thread.Okay Setabs, I SEE. You were just making a point, right ? Thank you anyway for your concern.
We all helped one another last year, everyone. Good thing you weren't part of it, or nothing would have been accomplished at all. I can tell from your attitude, just what kind of person you are in reality.
Please read my above post. Its hard to take someone seriously when they resort to name calling.
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How about we channel all the energy and venom in this nasty, hateful thread into helping with the solution?
Money sent to www.redcross.org , places to shelter the victims of this, the worst natural disaster in recent history, those are helpful solutions, not the hate-filled political backbiting going on here.
For once, put aside the political bickering and blaming and be a part of the solution. Blaming the victims is just plain stupid.
This hurricane was not choosy about who it killed or made homeless or stranded.
Put aside your prejudice and judgements and do something positive to help.
We can do so much better than this! ;D
Thanks! ARCADIAC!
See also: http://www.hurricanehousing.org/ if you can help by sheltering someone in your home
and of course www.redcross.org
already donated, probably donate more later as a couple thousand people will need to find some sort of permenant housing in my area in the next couple of months.
There ya go we should start discussing what the most effective way to completely rebuild NO will be. I go with a FDR/ Depression era work force of vast amount of people that where displaced by this.
this isn't political. Its just a simple discussion.
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Thanks for replying, try not being an ass next time though.
WTF man ? What the hell do you even know about storms anyway? Ya ever been in anything outside of the sagebrush blowing like mad? I mean, seriously, Florida's only nice when you come see Disney , right? Everybody wants to move here, right?
If I wasn't an ASS, I'll sure as hell be one now.
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the most effective way to completely rebuild NO will be
On higher ground, further inland. Or maybe not at all.
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Okay Setabs, I SEE. You were just making a point, right ? Thank you anyway for your concern.
We all helped one another last year, everyone. Good thing you weren't part of it, or nothing would have been accomplished at all. I can tell from your attitude, just what kind of person you are in reality.
See some people would get on a forum, say they've been through 4 hurricanes in florida. and be like "look at me I didn't have any trouble rebuilding I strated the next day." come to find out hey are in the area grazed or missed by the storms.
Now I know you did suffer from damages.
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the most effective way to completely rebuild NO will be
On higher ground, further inland. Or maybe not at all.
The "not at all" isn't an option because its a large port and fast way for goods to travel out of and into americas heartland. The way they rebuild the leeve's will make a big difference.
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the most effective way to completely rebuild NO will be
On higher ground, further inland.
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ARCADIAC is Right!
You can lose a lot of the translation when something's read as opposed to being spoken aloud.
Florida, New Orleans, it's all the same , right? WE BOTH suffered a great loss, so the only solution I see here, is this.
After we ( the people of S.Florida ) finish rebuilding parts of Florida that were hit the hardest by last years storms, then we ( the people of S. Florida ) can go help the unfortunate ones in New Orleans. That's only fair, right?
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Don't be an ---auto-censored---. Noone is defending rapists here. This is just a huge strawman. Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Are you sure no one here is defending rapists? This goes back to my original post asking for Mr C. to blame the looters. He wouldn't. He blamed Bush. Now the looters have formed armed roving gangs and are committing rapes.
I've seen some quotes here, like
"No one knows what they would do in this situation, it's never happened before"
Uh, yeah, I do know. I'd do what it would take to keep my family alive, and if it was stealing, I would pay the consequences when the time came. BUT, I would not break the law simply because I could get away with it.
Also, I would have done something for my family way before the hurricane. I would have done whatever it took to NOT be poor. Like I did when I WAS poor. Like work lots of jobs. Anytime, anywhere. Oh, and I didn't have a family while I was poor, because I couldn't AFFORD one.
Thanks for the reply. Not sure why you asked me about my wife.
Art
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Thanks for replying, try not being an ass next time though.
WTF man ? What the hell do you even know about storms anyway? Ya ever been in anything outside of the sagebrush blowing like mad? I mean, seriously, Florida's only nice when you come see Disney , right? Everybody wants to move here, right?
If I wasn't an ASS, I'll sure as hell be one now.
Reread you post to see were my comments came from.
Haven't been anything as bad as any hurricanes that have hit florida recently. Was in one when I lived in Houston I am not sure what storm it was but all the ones at the time I was there were cat1. I have also been in some serious thunderstorms that included tornados. I was in the strom of the century. But none off these time did I ever incur any loses.
Yes Florida is only nice for disney.
No I wouldn't move there because of the Hurricanes.
Unfortunatly for you, you are supposed to start seeing more at greater intesity.
Either from global warming or from the cycles the Atlantic does naturally. which ever you may believe in.
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looters are not rapists. this may be supprising, but theres a difference.
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Thanks for replying, try not being an ass next time though.
WTF man ? What the hell do you even know about storms anyway? Ya ever been in anything outside of the sagebrush blowing like mad? I mean, seriously, Florida's only nice when you come see Disney , right? Everybody wants to move here, right?
If I wasn't an ASS, I'll sure as hell be one now.
Reread you post to see were my comments came from.
Haven't been anything as bad as any hurricanes that have hit florida recently.
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I have been sickened by how quickly the "entitlement" population of N.O. has turned itself into a jungle society, trampling on the elderly and those who can't defend themselves. I am also sickened by people who should behave better in the news media (CNN, FOX etc.) who spend more time and breath criticizing and second guessing the relief efforts than doing basic information distribution. They (Miles O'Brien is a classic example) roll in in their air conditioned motor homes and satellite trucks and assume that because they got two or three vehicles in that the entire relief effort should be able to do the same. They forget that the storm was over and the trucks were rolling towards N.O. when the levee system failed and the task changed from one of moving support materiel in to one of moving people out. Further, the very road system that would normally permit fast response is under water hindering movement in either direction.
You know, I lived there for 10 years and it was clear that the culture of South Louisiana was one of take and take (natural resources, government handouts, the bounty of the delta) and put nothing back. I remember Ducks Unlimited video of south Louisiana hunters using automatic weapons to slaughter geese in rice paddies at a time when folks in the Prairie Pothole region of the upper mid-west were trying to nurture declining populations of geese before they made their annual migrations south. People from outside the state were appalled; locals shrugged their shoulders and moved on.
St. Tammany Parish (Mandeville, Covington, Slidell) has a large population of folks from outside the state who felt the same way. I have been asked several times whether I miss south Louisiana and to them my answer has been no. I have learned never to say never but it is unlikely that I'd ever go back. I have friends who essentially said the same and believe (like me) that it would be a mistake for our federal government to rebuild NO as it was. Something will have to be rebuilt but why would anyone invest billions of dollars in a hole next to the Gulf of Mexico?
The city's motto is let the good times roll. Don't worry about or plan for the future, don't build a strong education system and certainly don't help yourself. Go ahead and drain more marshes and build more subdivisions at or below sea level. Cut channels directly from the Gulf of Mexico into the heart of the very marshes that buffer the cities from the Gulf which permits salt water incursion to kill the marsh. Don't let the Mississippi River replenish the marshes with silt and natural build-up because it might flood some of those subdivisions that don't belong in a flood plain. Then, when the worst of the inevitable happens, cry, and chant "we need help" and let blowhards like Sharpton and Jackson rave about the injustice of the "system".
Thanks for letting me vent!
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Don't be an ---auto-censored---. Noone is defending rapists here. This is just a huge strawman. Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Now the looters have formed armed roving gangs and are committing rapes.
Damn sounds like a something straight from an ill informed journalist.
I am guessing most of the rapes are happening in the midst of people getting help at different places.
The looters i would think are not at these places they are wondering the streets.
the gangs are also wandering the streets.
Unfortunately there are a small percentage of poor that for some reason do not wish to better there lives or that of they immediate family. its do to drug abuse, mental stability or just plain american laziness
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I have been sickened by how quickly the "entitlement" population of N.O. has turned itself into a jungle society, trampling on the elderly and those who can't defend themselves. I am also sickened by people who should behave better in the news media (CNN, FOX etc.) who spend more time and breath criticizing and second guessing the relief efforts than doing basic information distribution. They (Miles O'Brien is a classic example) roll in in their air conditioned motor homes and satellite trucks and assume that because they got two or three vehicles in that the entire relief effort should be able to do the same. They forget that the storm was over and the trucks were rolling towards N.O. when the levee system failed and the task changed from one of moving support materiel in to one of moving people out. Further, the very road system that would normally permit fast response is under water hindering movement in either direction.
You know, I lived there for 10 years and it was clear that the culture of South Louisiana was one of take and take (natural resources, government handouts, the bounty of the delta) and put nothing back. I remember Ducks Unlimited video of south Louisiana hunters using automatic weapons to slaughter geese in rice paddies at a time when folks in the Prairie Pothole region of the upper mid-west were trying to nurture declining populations of geese before they made their annual migrations south. People from outside the state were appalled; locals shrugged their shoulders and moved on.
St. Tammany Parish (Mandeville, Covington, Slidell) has a large population of folks from outside the state who felt the same way. I have been asked several times whether I miss south Louisiana and to them my answer has been no. I have learned never to say never but it is unlikely that I'd ever go back. I have friends who essentially said the same and believe (like me) that it would be a mistake for our federal government to rebuild NO as it was. Something will have to be rebuilt but why would anyone invest billions of dollars in a hole next to the Gulf of Mexico?
The city's motto is let the good times roll. Don't worry about or plan for the future, don't build a strong education system and certainly don't help yourself. Go ahead and drain more marshes and build more subdivisions at or below sea level. Cut channels directly from the Gulf of Mexico into the heart of the very marshes that buffer the cities from the Gulf which permits salt water incursion to kill the marsh. Don't let the Mississippi River replenish the marshes with silt and natural build-up because it might flood some of those subdivisions that don't belong in a flood plain. Then, when the worst of the inevitable happens, cry, and chant "we need help" and let blowhards like Sharpton and Jackson rave about the injustice of the "system".
Thanks for letting me vent!
Didn't NO have one of the most corrupt PD's?
I could understand why fox and other news agencies can't start handing stuff out. They would simpley run out of supplies and at worst start a riot within 30min. I have seen on fox and abc them help out. the guy from the studio b show his crew gave ice and water to a few people that would come up and those in desperate need. On ABC they where driving around town and came across two men that had two elderly people in boats and begged ABC to take them to a place where they would get picked up.
I watched part of the Black caucas try and turn the lack of relief in to a prejudice issue against elderly, poor and blacks. That is just sad.
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I watched part of the Black caucas try and turn the lack of relief in to a prejudice issue against elderly, poor and blacks.
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Didn't NO have one of the most corrupt PD's?
I do believe they have that reputaion, but how much basis that has in fact I have no idea. I did hear one news report about police officers going to a supply room in the PD where disaster relief supplies were supposed to have been stored. There was nothing there. Apparantly everything had been either taken or sold by police officials before the hurricane ever happened.
-S
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I'm sure we'll see a lot of stories in the next few weeks. This will be studied for years to come.
But right now we have got to remember we are the United States of America. We hold together in a crisis. We have got to be unified behind the people comming in to help these people.
We'll have to decide if NO will be rebuilt later. We have to make sure that we help those US citizens to the fullest extent we can and Soon.
It's a national disgrace what's happening there. The local government, state government, and federal government seem overwhelmed by it. There's no "nerve" center being setup. Fingers are being pointed so early in the game. It's unreal.
We don't have time to worry about the scum. I say save 100 scum if only one of them is worth saving. We need to make sure that this disaster is addressed NOW. Call your law makers, give to the red cross, ask your boss if he'll help somehow.
Band together and judge these people later. It's not their fault. Not a single one of these people were alive in 1718 when they started that city. Not a single one of them contributed to the engineering of the levees. None of them wrote the hurricane relief plans we see in "action" now.
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Fredster, I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with every word in your last post.
-S
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Then there is hope for you yet ;)
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Then there is hope for you yet ;)
Funny, I was just thinking the same about you. :)
-S
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This one just ran through the office wire, some of you might enjoy it. Just thought I'd share.
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And he's in Indiana....
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And he's in Indiana....
;D
No, but I am....
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Don't be an ---auto-censored---. Noone is defending rapists here. This is just a huge strawman. Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Are you sure no one here is defending rapists?
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This goes back to my original post asking for Mr C. to blame the looters. He wouldn't.
JackTucky,
As JCL mentioned, you obviously haven't read what I wrote. Go back and try again.
mrC
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Fredster, I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with every word in your last post.
-S
Yeah, I know wha you mean stingray. Scary isn't it?
Well said Fredster. Hit nail on head
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Fredster, I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with every word in your last post.
-S
That's weird, so do I.
Strange times indeed.
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Things are way worse than admitted here. Apparently the people in the Superdome AREN'T EVEN ALLOWED TO WALK AWAY!
And people are being turned back WHEN THEY TRY TO LEAVE THE AREA!
All you people who say "I'd walk out" are just ignorant of the facts on the ground. This is from Fox News: http://s30.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1VGIKB6GMH0670TVAQ6ELSB3LI.
And Relief Organizations aren't allowed into the city to do their job: http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html#4524.
And the local authorities asked for help even before the storm: http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf
And yes, the poor are helped last as people of means jump the queue for evacuation: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/katrina_superdome_hk1
This is sick and all you people blaming the victims are seriously deluded.
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I honestly feel awful for the people stuck in New Orleans. My mother-in-law's house in Pass Christian, Missippi was destroyed and she will probably be staying at our house for awhile.
One thing that is not being talked about, but is the underlying problem here:
There is nowhere currently ready for all these now homeless people to go. The people being bumped up in evacuation are tourists who actually have homes to go back to.
Think about it - where could you just dump 150,000 people right this second and guarantee their food, medical, and security needs? That's the issue. There is nowhere to go. And, the government is also concerned about outlying areas (like Baton Rouge) which have already swelled past their capacity with evacuees. Very soon this may reach a quarantine situation and the people cannot be allowed to leave unsupervised to insure the safety of other US citizens.
This is a bad deal, no doubt, but it IS NOT A RACIST SCHEME TO TORTURE BLACK PEOPLE. I'm really tired of seeing that angle being promoted by the news networks and Jesse Jackson.
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I honestly feel awful for the people stuck in New Orleans.
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I disagree. If someone has somewhere to go, why would you force them to wait until a place was found for everybody who had no place to go? When did common sense become classist/racist?
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This is a bad deal, no doubt, but it IS NOT A RACIST SCHEME TO TORTURE BLACK PEOPLE. I'm really tired of seeing that angle being promoted by the news networks and Jesse Jackson.
If you don't racism and/or classism hasn't, or won't, come into play in this disaster, or didn't have anything to do with the amount of people left to face the hurricane...then you are naive. These issues should not detract from the rescue and relief efforts in any way, but they should also not be buried under the rug. There are a few examples of this horrid aspect of American culture, *possibly* coming into effect in this post-disaster situation. I can post more on this later.
George. W. Bush, president of the United States, in his televised press conference referred to New Orleans as "this part of the world"...as if it *isn't* inside the United States. Is this evidence of the tremendous disconnect between this weathy administration and the less fortunate of America?
The vast majority of those "left behind" to face the disaster did not have the funds to make their way out. The manditory evacuation order was given on Sunday, but greyhound buses, and all flights out of the airport were stopped on Saturday, from what I understand. There are reports from numerous local businessmen claiming that they had to drive by people who were begging for $20-$50 to fill their gas tanks so they could leave. A large portion of the population of New Orleans lives below the poverty line, most received checks from the government as assistance. Those checks come on the 1st of the month, this storm struck on the 28th, the end of the month. There were plenty of dynamics at work here, leading to the current horrific situation we have been witnessing the last few days.
On other point, it's important to note that at times like this, other aspects of the reality on the ground can be blown out of proportion. The initial reports of the "rampaging hordes" came all too quickly in the media, and were swallowed all too easily by most Americans watching. I think it important to be skeptical of ALL reports before they are confirmed from multiple sources. These hecticly breathless reports about roving bands of lawless "negroes" may or may not be true. I've seen footage of people stealing goods, other than those needed for survival, and I'm sure there are horrific instances of other acts of violence. However, I have yet to see ANY solid confirmation that it is happening at the scale that was initially being reported. Lots of people say they've "heard" of these lawless gangs, but for all the reporters flocking to the area, not one has been able to confirm. In addition, the initial reports of people "firing at helicopters", at this point, seems to be FALSE.
"Now it turns out that Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, has cast doubt on the report of the firing on the helicopter. She said she had no such report.
"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on," she said, adding that the FAA was in contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft."
http://watchingthewatchers.org/story/2005/9/2/9350/92642
"It's probably good to keep in mind that the last two major disasters of this scale, the Galveston hurricane of 1900 (some 6,000 dead) and the late 1800s Johnstown, PA flood (2,200 fatalities), both involved false reports of "minority" savagery, Blacks and Eastern Europeans supposedly rampaging and cutting off the fingers of the dead to get their rings. All or most of these stories, many reported in the respectable press of the time, are now believed to have been completely untrue or wildly exaggerated."
Now where does this penchant for villifying the "darkies" come from? Is it really at play here? At this point, I'm not sure. What I will say, however, is that we owe it to the people there to keep an open-mind and be prepared to treat them fairly, respectfully...and give them the benefit of the doubt. Furthermore, I think it'll be increasingly important, moving forward, to continue to explore and discuss this very issue, racism/classism and how it might have come into play prior to, and during the Gulf Coast disaster.
mrC
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WATCH this video of Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera on FOX NEWS and tell me that there wasn't some hint of classism at work here:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/02.html#a4763
They were BOTH witnessing agents of the federal government REFUSE to allow people to leave the area surrounding the Convention Center, to seek shelter in neighboring areas which had electricity, food and water. Neighboring suburban areas.
Furthermore, at the Superdome,
"At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line
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Because the tourists had somewhere to go. The tourists are not homeless, they are just stuck. They have somewhere to be evacuated to. The people still in New Orleans do not have a place waiting for them. I live near Dallas, TX and our state has already taken thousands of evacuees from New Orleans, but our facilities have reached capacity.
I saw Geralado and Shepard Smith both last night. Geraldo was trying to incite a riot at the Convention Center by encouraging the people there to get angrier. He cried out, "let these people walk out of here!" You act as if there were people from Etna standing over on the other side of the bridge begging for evacuees. They weren't. They are not in any shape to handle 30,000 people from the convention center. Do you just want to put them in Wal-Mart?
You don't want to understand what should be common sense - there isn't anyplace for these people to go YET. There will be, but it will take time. It sucks, I agree, but that doesn't magically make 150,000 hotel rooms appear. Just letting them walk across the bridge will make 30,000 homeless people on the other side of the bridge. If there were a facility there to take them, THEY WOULD ALREADY BE THERE.
My mother-in-law is a 60-year-old white woman and the National Guard in Mississippi has refused her access to her property until Monday. You don't hear about that on CNN or Fox News because that doesn't create racial controversy. This disaster is bigger than 30,000 people in New Orleans. I don't hear the congressional black caucus screaming about injustice to homeless white people on the gulf coast. Is my mother-in-law less important because she is white?
You seem to be stating that only poor people deserve help and in-fact white middle class tourists should be punished because they are not poor or black. That is racism/classism, just opposite of the kind you are railing against. Why shouldn't all people be treated with the same urgency?
I notice that Fats Domino is out of New Orleans. Why? - because he has somewhere to go. Can you show any example of where people who actually have somewhere to go (not just crashing a nearby neighborhood) are being forcefully restrained? I'm not seeing it. Geraldo was screaming that the people needed to be removed from the convention center. So today, they are air-lifted to the airport. Guess what, now they are sitting at the airport. Why? Because they have nowhere to go yet.
This is not RACISM. If it were RACISM then the government would have blown both I-10 briges and waved goodbye.
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I disagree.
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I disagree.
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I disagree.
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"This is not RACISM. If it were RACISM then the government would have blown both I-10 briges and waved goodbye. "
That's a crazy statement. I'm not crying racism here, but many less bad things than the above would be racist.
If the policy was explicitly to help all white people, then help blacks, would that be racist?
By any reasonable definition (ie. NOT your's) of course it is.
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No, genius.
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I notice that Fats Domino is out of New Orleans. Why? - because he has somewhere to go. Can you show any example of where people who actually have somewhere to go (not just crashing a nearby neighborhood) are being forcefully restrained? I'm not seeing it. Geraldo was screaming that the people needed to be removed from the convention center. So today, they are air-lifted to the airport. Guess what, now they are sitting at the airport. Why? Because they have nowhere to go yet.
The problem is they were apparently being held in a hostile environment, without food or water...and the delay costs lives. They were actively being prevented from leaving the area and seeking refuge in surrounding neighborhoods, during a period when there was no ETA for these supplies. It isn't a matter of whether they had a place to go or not, it's a matter of why they weren't provided assistance while someone worked to give them a place to go.
Yes, they are thankfully being airlifted TODAY, which is SIX DAYS after the storm. That's 4-5 days without water...which is the bare limit for survival. Those in charge cut it close. One more day and these folks would have been dropping like flies.
"This is not RACISM. If it were RACISM then the government would have blown both I-10 briges and waved goodbye. "
So, the federal government BLOCKED the only exit out of the area, instead of blowing up bridges. How is that any better? (BTW, one I-10 bridge was washed away in the storm, there was only one way out of NOLA)
Anyhow, there has been a congressional investigation established to look into the mishandling of this whole affair, by members of both parties and it's up to US, the citizenry of the United States to pressure our elected officials to get to the bottom of it, so it doesn't happen again.
mrC
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"This is not RACISM.
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So, the federal government BLOCKED the only exit out of the area, instead of blowing up bridges. How is that any better? (BTW, one I-10 bridge was washed away in the storm, there was only one way out of NOLA)
Not true.
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markvp,
I think myself and JCL are arguing that there has been more instances of classism at work, and that by definition of the ethnic breakdown in American class systems, racism is often implicit therein. Had a disaster of this magnitude happened in Ireland, the classism breakdown would be different.
Anyhow, it isn't overtly racist, I'm not arguing that. There's obviously people of means that were trapped, and there's obviously poor white folk down there as well. However, the largest demographic, by far, is poor blacks. They are going to come to represent that face of this disaster, as the most devastated areas in NOLA are inhabited primarily by poor black folk. Going forward, issues of classism in America, and conversly "racism" will most likely be the dinner table/back-room converstations all over the country. It's a fine line, so it's important to parse the arguments carefully.
mrC
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I fully agree that the overwhelming majority of people affected in New Orleans is poor black people. As you move along the coast of Mississippi you will find that this demographic swings 180 degrees as most of the homes destroyed there were owned by white people of means. On the news, you see continuous coverage of New Orleans because, quite frankly, that's the most compelling story. Many people in New Orleans were issued water and food well before any assistance was given to Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, and Long Beach, MS. We are talking about people across three states needing LIFE SAVING ASSISTANCE.
What I do not believe is that George Bush or any member of the Federal government ever said to anyone, "Don't send any help to New Orleans, it's just poor black people being affected."
I also concede that there is overwhelming evidence of CLASSISM at work in New Orleans. As has been brought up in this thread before, there was corruption in "Sin City" long before hurricane Katrina. What I am seeing though, is that people of any color who have somewhere to go and a way to get there have been evacuated. Everyone else is simply having to wait on help that would have/should have been there sooner. The next disaster will have a better response. Hurricanes hit the US every year, but we have NEVER seen one this bad and the plan is being modified/made-up as we go.
I do not believe the plan has been made so as to be punitive to black people and have seen no evidence to support such claims.
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Just out of curiosity, since it might cost the taxpayers 10-50 BILLION dollars for the destruction in NO, wouldn't that be some sort of justification to NOT rebuild?
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Just out of curiosity, since it might cost the taxpayers 10-50 BILLION dollars for the destruction in NO, wouldn't that be some sort of justification to NOT rebuild?
Considering we have already spent over 400+ BILLION in Iraq, with a continued monthly projection of $5.8 BILLION a month (http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_cost_111804,00.html?ESRC=eb.n)...with little to nothing to show for it, I don't think it's too much to ask that we rather strongly consider rebuilding New Orleans, and fortifying it against further hurricanes.
After all, it is an AMERICAN city.
mrC
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If 4 out of 5 people in a city are black, and 80% of the arrests made in that city involve African-Americans, guess what. Its not classism or racism by the police departments. Its called the law of probability. Same goes for this whole racism/classism-evacuation problem. If 4 out of 5 people stuck in the city are in the lower class, they're not being denied anything because of how they live, they're refusing aid because they are unwilling to be helped. These are the same people that take comfort in knowing that they can collect a welfare check and do nothing, instead of going out and finding a real job.
I'm also seeing a tendency in the last few posts for Mr. C to change the subject or not answer the question of how many homeless people he'd accept in his home. He seems to have a state of mind called NIMBY. Not In MY Back Yard. It goes something like this, "Do good things and give those needy people a place to go, just dont bring them here".
In regards to law enforcement holding people, Mr. C, if you were a resident of NOLA, and you had relatives in Wisconsin who were willing to take you in, would you be upset if the government didn't allow you to get on a bus or plane? In addition, pretend you were the governor of LA. Would you let loose tens of thousands of people who had nowhere to go?
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After all, it is an AMERICAN city.
.....built by the French
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Scary fact no one seems to be mentioning.
Those pumps that burned out because they were only designed to handle heavy rain and not a full-blown flood?
They were dumping water back into Lake Pontchartrain.
The same lake that was dumping into the city through a levee breach.
New Orleans had NO MECHANISM WHATSOEVER for dealing with a failed levee.
The city's disaster plan consisted of sticking their collective heads in the sand and pretending it couldn't happen. And this has been their policy since the levees were first built and the bowl was drained to make it available for development back in the 1910s.
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This is from Fox News: http://s30.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1VGIKB6GMH0670TVAQ6ELSB3LI.
I can't view this. Where can I find the codec or can someone translate it and repost?
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George. W. Bush, president of the United States, in his televised press conference referred to New Orleans as "this part of the world"...as if it *isn't* inside the United States. Is this evidence of the tremendous disconnect between this weathy administration and the less fortunate of America?
No, just evidence that you're willing to read into his words something that was never said or implied, and let the hobgoblins in your mind run wild.
I think it important to be skeptical of ALL reports before they are confirmed from multiple sources.
All reports about this event only, though, right? *cough*DanRather*cough*
It's weird. You wish to point out how racism might be at hand, and in doing so, think that the best way to do so is to let everyone know you've got a solid grasp of all the terms racists might use. Somehow, you think using "darkies
and "negroes" is actually helping somehow here? All you're doing is helping to ensure that emotions remain high, which only serves to make working on the problem harder than it has to be. There are far better terms that could be used, and it serves no one to act in such a fashion.
What we owe to the people there is to help them get the hell out of there and to deal with your issues about villifying people AFTERWARDS. Keeping an open mind and treating people fairly, respectfully, and giving them the benefit of the doubt is far easier when you aren't helping inflame the situation with your rhetoric that simply makes people more wary than need be at a time when it's the last thing that needs to be worried about it.
You're making New Orleans sound like some big plantation that "Massah kep' all us po' folks from leavin' less'n we get beat". People moved there for a reason. The pictures we get to see are representative of the population as a whole. Their government was representative of their population. What's next, Mexico is our problem too because Americans are "down with brown"?
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Considering we have already spent over 400+ BILLION in Iraq, with a continued monthly projection of $5.8 BILLION a month (http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_cost_111804,00.html?ESRC=eb.n)...with little to nothing to show for it, I don't think it's too much to ask that we rather strongly consider rebuilding New Orleans, and fortifying it against further hurricanes.
After all, it is an AMERICAN city.
Shrimp and hand grenades. I've got an idea. Let's take the money we're spending to help rebuild Iraq and shut it down there and use it to rebuild New Orleans. Guess you prolly don't like that idea either, though.
It has been done before, in Richmond Virginia, and should be done again here. There is not another setting like this, the reason for the problem is known, it cannot be fixed by man.....so the U.S. is probably gonna give it a shot ::)
If we had only had the foresight to call it "Orleans" instead, then the rebuilt city a few miles inland on way more solid ground could have been properly called "New" Orleans.
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Just out of curiosity, since it might cost the taxpayers 10-50 BILLION dollars for the destruction in NO, wouldn't that be some sort of justification to NOT rebuild? I mean, it's happened before, it happened now and it will happen again. I think you might make the whole area 'uninsurable'. Obviously it's not safe for habitation, and it took a terrible toll on lives and resources. Perhaps the taxpayers should speak out against rebuilding it? ???
(Now off to check and see if my car insurance company is using this as an excuse to raise my rates, just like they did after 9/11) :'(
So i guess anything damaged in CA by earthquake should not be rebuilt. We should evacuate the whole mid west and various other parts of the U.S. because of tornadoes. The whole state of Florida needs to leave because of hurricanes.
It would be stupid not to rebuild NO. It would kill the farm industry in mid west and whatever other industries rely on goods going in and out of the ports there.
I agree with DrewKaree that the physical location of much of the city needs to be reassessed.
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Something else people have overlooked...
With our dependence on fossil fuels increasing, it seems as though it would behoove the President to get NOLA back on its feet as quickly as possible, as it is the richest natural gas/petroleum region in the US.
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This video snip says it all. --- ;D
As quoted from BigBoys.com
At a hurricane releif benefit Kanye West goes off about the way the media portrays black looters. A minute into it he blurts out Bush doesnt care about black people. Watch Mike Myers reaction, he doesnt know what to do. They quickly cut to Chris Tucker who mubbles for a while--- Send water...trucks...do what you can, save lives...we all are one and...Please, please please please. I would love to know what Mike Myers was saying to Kanye while Chris Tucker was tripping over his words.
http://www.big-boys.com/articles/kanye.html (http://ttp://www.big-boys.com/articles/kanye.html)
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On the racism thing. Just trying to imagine a load of white people being stuck on their roofs for 5 days in crawford, texas with no food or water waiting for bush to act.
Guess my imagination just isn't that good :)
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You know , HOW and WHY did RACE even become an issue in this tragedy? Was it the response team not being fast enough to aid the victims? Something happened somewhere, right?
Is there even a RACE CARD at all here? Any chance this might be trickery by the MEDIA to once again stir the 'pot of multicultural bliss' in an attempt to gain publicity?
Perhaps maybe it's just greed. We're doing everything we can to help, but yet the people of NOLA seem to want more.
Just a few ideas floating around. What do y'all think? I'd like to hear some feedback on the events taking place after the storm.
The violence, looting, rioting , rapes - - is this just a prime example of how these people really are? The media is painting such a vivid picture, it's almost as if they consider it an 'ethnic cleansing' of sort.
I've always given to charities, and I'm quite active with a few local ones. When is enough , enough though?
Like I said, just looking to pick someone's brain and find out if the way some of us are feeling now, is considered normal. ???
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There will always be racist card pulled if theres black people involved. And they atrent letting them into the places with electricity because those places havent been lootied yet and it would turn into another free for al and taking over builings party again. And its not just the blacks its all of them. And theyre saying theyre looting because they need to find food but you can't eat televisions and video games. And how the hell can you use a tv if thres no electrcity. The news says that at night its a war zone there. Theyre shooting eachother and raping women and CHILDREN. Its become its own little third world country.
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On the racism thing. Just trying to imagine a load of white people being stuck on their roofs for 5 days in crawford, texas with no food or water waiting for bush to act.
Guess my imagination just isn't that good
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no.... it became a RACE issue when Jesse Jackson put his 2 cents in......
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no.... it became a RACE issue when Jesse Jackson put his 2 cents in......
If you remember the Riots in Benton Harbor, MI.... Jesse Jackson showed up, claiming the race card, and said that it was the governments fault for not having tech centers. Benton Harbor replied: "We have 3." Jesse then packed up, and ran out with his tail between his legs.
Next time you go into a crisis, make sure you do your previous research. ;D
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The RACE Card has become such a powerful tool for not only the African Americans , but the News Media as well. Now it seems as if they play on some sort of white guilt in order to claim victory in every instance the 'Card' is used.
I really hate that this has become the case with Katrina/NOLA. I'm tired of being held accountable for something I had NO part in whatsoever, and that includes my forefathers. The fact that slavery has become such a crutch with today's society, it's almost as if we're the victims now, having it shoved down our throats to no end.
I could go on forever, and not just because of Katrina. I wish there were a forum where we could discuss our differences and build strong foundations from there.
All that aside, I'm just in a real bad mood tonight people, so I don't mean any harm. I just a little disgusted with what has evolved from this storm.
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I had my first run-in with a survivor from New Orleans last night.
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I really felt for the guy.
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Just out of curiosity, since it might cost the taxpayers 10-50 BILLION dollars for the destruction in NO, wouldn't that be some sort of justification to NOT rebuild? I mean, it's happened before, it happened now and it will happen again. I think you might make the whole area 'uninsurable'. Obviously it's not safe for habitation, and it took a terrible toll on lives and resources. Perhaps the taxpayers should speak out against rebuilding it? ???
(Now off to check and see if my car insurance company is using this as an excuse to raise my rates, just like they did after 9/11) :'(
So i guess anything damaged in CA by earthquake should not be rebuilt. We should evacuate the whole mid west and various other parts of the U.S. because of tornadoes. The whole state of Florida needs to leave because of hurricanes.
It would be stupid not to rebuild NO. It would kill the farm industry in mid west and whatever other industries rely on goods going in and out of the ports there.
I agree with DrewKaree that the physical location of much of the city needs to be reassessed.
Well, they COULD go back to just using the high ground... but the whole point of draining the basin back in 1910 was so they wouldn't have to restrict the city to the high ground.
I'd blast the levees and rebuild the city right outside New Orleans Lake.
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I also heard about another person who had come through town from there.... she went to Walmart here to get something to eat for her and her 3 kids... she didn't even have a dollar. She offered to pay what she had for some food that the deli was obviously going to toss out... and they flat out REFUSED.....
1) Businesses such as WalMart have had numerous reports of the lengths they went to in order to help folks recover thus far from the hurricane - individuals who were allowed to re-clothe their children, formula given, water and other needs available if people could reach the store...and all for free. Not a dime was asked of those people. Now, this may be terrible reporting and taking a story as the truth, but we can't simply villify the corporation as a whole for the actions of one individual location, and perhaps the actions of one individual within that location and throw 'em under the bus because of that single person in a staff of tens of thousands who may have acted in a way we don't understand.
2) WalMart and other businesses have donated very large amounts of money to aid organizations to help in the relief efforts. This IS NOT an "allegedly" type of story, this can be verified as factual and truthful.
3) If they truly WERE going to "toss out" the food, there's a reason. If they WERE to give the food to that person and that person were to become ill, contract food poisoning, or even the worst-case scenario, die from eating that food, WalMart could and most likely would be held liable for any of these issues and in fact, could be sued for a rather big chunk of money. It HAS happened in the past, although I'm not positive about WalMart, there were 3 businesses that it happened to right here in my little neck of the woods. These businesses were SUED and WON their cases because they contracted mild cases of food poisoning. Didn't pay for anything, the business was "doing the kind-hearted thing", and they got HAMMERED for it. That FREE charity given COST them. In a screwed-up situation, there may have been another even MORE screwed-up situation that led to the second screwed-up situation
4) Nothing was ever mentioned about whether or not that story can be confirmed, and whether or not the person was told the above things, all we know is that person's side of it, and no one corroborated the worker at WalMart who refused that person's request and the WHY's of the refusal. Until a better grasp of what both sides have to say about the situation is known, it behooves us to hold off condemning the actions of a business, ESPECIALLY in light of what HAS been reported and IS verifiable.
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I'm retracting my last statement on that post... which is now edited to do so....
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Guess my imagination just isn't that good
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Yep, theres only one reason for the whitehouse to refuse actual aid but accept money. They can distribute the money as they see fit to their 'haves and have mores' base contributors who own companies that could provide aid relief. Haliburton anybody?
It pays to be cynical.
It does indeed pay to be cynical. Check the last paragraph of this story...
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/343339p-293108c.html
"The Navy announced yesterday that Vice President Cheney's former company, Halliburton, which has handled much of the repair work as well as support services for the U.S. military in Iraq, was hired to restore power and rebuild three naval facilities in Mississippi that were wrecked by Katrina."
Refuse actual aid, request 'cash' aid, then Bush signs off on the $10.5bn in aid, president cheneys boys get the contracts. Who didn't see that coming.
also: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3335685
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...These businesses were SUED and [the plaintiffs] WON their cases because they contracted mild cases of food poisoning. Didn't pay for anything, the business was "doing the kind-hearted thing", and they got HAMMERED for it. That FREE charity given COST them. Maybe you'd like to remember that, if you shop at WalMart.
What a load of B.S. That didn't happen. At the very least there is some substantial information missing here, but I suspect that the whole story was fabricated.
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Yep, theres only one reason for the whitehouse to refuse actual aid but accept money. They can distribute the money as they see fit to their 'haves and have mores' base contributors who own companies that could provide aid relief. Haliburton anybody?
It pays to be cynical.
It does indeed pay to be cynical. Check the last paragraph of this story...
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/343339p-293108c.html
"The Navy announced yesterday that Vice President Cheney's former company, Halliburton, which has handled much of the repair work as well as support services for the U.S. military in Iraq, was hired to restore power and rebuild three naval facilities in Mississippi that were wrecked by Katrina."
Refuse actual aid, request 'cash' aid, then Bush signs off on the $10.5bn in aid, president cheneys boys get the contracts. Who didn't see that coming.
also: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3335685
Dex, I'm guessing you are about 12 years old because that is the maturity of your thought process. The 10.5 billion is from US tax dollars. When you hear any official ask that you give cash money, the are requesting cash donations for the AMERICAN RED CROSS. The American Red Cross is buying supplies for these people on the ground.
There is more at play here than providing a few helicopter rides and happy meals and you can't seem to grasp the scope of that. How much money have you donated to the rescue effort? Are you currently posting from the US gulf coast where you are helping people? See my previous post and questions asked there which you refused to answer because YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. It appears all you do all day over there in Ireland is try and find biased articles on the internet to support your hatred for the current US government leaders.
Dex, you are part of the problem and not part of the solution. I'm sure you are very proud of yourself.
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I'm retracting my last statement on that post... which is now edited to do so....
I edited mine as well to reflect it. :)
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Dex, I'm guessing you are about 12 years old because that is the maturity of your thought process.
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What comment was that?
I'm still waiting for you to answer my questions.
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What comment was that?
I'm still waiting for you to answer my questions.
The comment was about haliburton getting the contract, which turned out to be correct.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=42375.msg390978#msg390978
I then provided links to back this up. You would know this information if you took the time to read my post instead of telling me I don't know what I'm talking about. Its obvious from your post that this is true in your case.
Also, how is linking to factual stories in the new york daily news linking to biased articles? Was the information in the article incorrect? reply at your leisure......
To answer your questions:
How much money have you donated to the rescue effort?
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And in your post about Halliburton you stated that was why the government was asking to give cash. You were implying that the government was trying to raise money for Halliburton, which in fact is completely false. Cash donations to the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army are not under government control, and therefore could not be directed to Halliburton.
Even the most biased person could not possibly claim that the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army are funding Halliburton, yet you implied it none the less.
If you really want to help the people of America, then you can start by stopping to spread misinformation. Save your bitterness for George Bush for a time when Americans aren't dying due to a natural disaster.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050904/ap_on_re_us/katrina_surviving_in_the_quarter_hk1
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And in your post about Halliburton you stated that was why the government was asking to give cash.
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It is you who has nothing useful to add. Every post I have ever seen from you has been negative towards some aspect of things occurring in the United States.
If you check my posts you will see that I have been very helpful with arcade-related information as that is what this site is intended for. You will also see that my posts are not aimed at tearing down people or governments like you. I have, however, taken exception to your constant US government bashing.
So, if I understand correctly, you now seem to think that George Bush created a hurricane with a secret weapon to try and destroy only the homes of black people and then withhold aid to them so as to get other countries to provide funding for Halliburton? That's a great theory. :P
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I think Sean Penn's personal photographer shot this pic
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So, if I understand correctly, you now seem to think that George Bush created a hurricane with a secret weapon to try and destroy only the homes of black people and then withhold aid to them so as to get other countries to provide funding for Halliburton?
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Great! I'm glad you now see how unreasonable your conspiracy theories are.
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Great!
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I've been wondering what annual budget FEMA works with. Shouldn't they have a piggy bank that we raid for stuff like this? Seems pretty stupid to give them a dime when they don't do anything, know anything, or have anything to contribute to something they are supposed to be designed to handle.
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I'm sure that the contracts went out for "proper" bidding anyhow. Unless it was fairly based on their stellar performance they've had for us so far. They save us a ton in petro costs in Iraq. :-\
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Here is one of my frustrations with some of the thoughts being posted in this thread.
On one hand we hear outrage that things aren't happening faster . . .
On the other hand we hear outrage that we didn't go through a bidding process to hire people to rebuild. Bids have to be advertised and examined.
Out of curiosity, how many companies can provide the rebuilding services that Halliburton can? Is there an unlimited supply of corporations who can rebuild infrastructure at a moments notice without having to round up subcontractors over a period of a few weeks? If Halliburton were denied any government contracts simply because the current VP used to work there, then isn't it likely that we would be handicapping our options? Could it be possible that Halliburton gets government contracts because they are actually capable of doing the job needed? And possibly get it going faster than finding another vendor?
No it's much easier to believe it's part of some vast government conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers.
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Out of curiousity, does anybody know if Haliburton gets significantly more contracts from our current administration than they did with prior administrations? Did Clinton make use of Haliburton much? I'm basically wondering if Cheney being V.P. has meant a windfall for Halliburton, or just provided a lot of cannon fodder.
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Out of curiousity, does anybody know if Haliburton gets significantly more contracts from our current administration than they did with prior administrations? Did Clinton make use of Haliburton much? I'm basically wondering if Cheney being V.P. has meant a windfall for Halliburton, or just provided a lot of cannon fodder.
That's actually a good question. I never heard of Haliburton before the election, but after that it was a steady stream of "OMG TEH HALIBURTON AM GETZ TEH CONTRACT CUZ OF CHENEY!!1111 "
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Good points from www.czabe.com (http://www.czabe.com/daily/):
Here
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This thread teeters on the brink of post hell . . .
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This thread teeters on the brink of post hell . . .
YES , I AM WAITING !
SEND IT
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Speaking of which....Where's Dick Cheney?
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Speaking of Haliburton or Speaking of the devil? :)
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Speaking of Haliburton or Speaking of the devil? :)
:angel:
Now, if we're talking about speaking like the devil, I think Babs Bush takes the cake:
"What I'm hearing - which is sort of scary - is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle)--this is working very well for them." (Link (http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/09/the_modern_let_them_eat_cake_moment.html)) - Barbara Bush
Yes...She actually said this today, live on NPR, when she was asked to comment on the refugees housed at the Astrodome.
Momma' "Beautiful Mind" Bush, nurturer, true "compassionate conservative."
mrC
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I agree that the comments you posted are not sensitive, but they are true. The truth hurts sometimes. My wife is from New Orleans and she tells me that a lot of the underprivileged there were living in houses that had been passed down 3 or more generations. Although they had a house, they did not have electricity because they couldn't pay the utilities. They also didn't have 3 meals a day or access to showers. So, in reality, Barbara Bush is correct that many of these people will find themselves in a better situation than what they had. However, having to live with 15,000 other people in a stadium is far from ideal by any stretch of the imagination and I'm sure not the first, second, or third choice for anybody who is there.
What is reality is that most of the underpriveleged evacuees won't have the means to leave wherever they have been evacuated too. That is scary to the governments of Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio who now find that their population has grown by thousands of people who will not be paying taxes to help support the infrastructure that will be supporting them. There is money right now, but it is a real concern for the future.
This disaster will affect many aspects of our nation's economy on many levels. Refusing to discuss these issues because someone might get their feelings hurt won't help create long term solutions.
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This thread teeters on the brink of post hell . . .
The sooner the better. :'(
ARCADIAC!
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I am usually quite liberal and critical of President Bush but DrewKaree's last post made quite a bit of sense, especially the part about the school buses that could have been used to evacuate the city.
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Worth a quick read..
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article310554.ece
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This thread teeters on the brink of post hell . . .
What took you so long to take this action, Saint? ;)
-S
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I am usually quite liberal and critical of President Bush but DrewKaree's last post made quite a bit of sense, especially the part about the school buses that could have been used to evacuate the city.
Maybe Nagin could have used the buses to move more people, maybe not. Hopefully the congressional investigation will figure that out. In reality, however, it does not absolve the Federal Government of their responsibility to it's citizens, nor does it explain why they completely dropped the ball and fumbled about for 4-5 days.
Nagin does NOT have the resources, nor the manpower that the Federal Government has, and his failure to utilize additional buses did not cause a lack of funding for the leeves, nor did it lead to the lawlessness in the aftermath, the National Guard needed to be mobilized to do that.
He'll get his comeupance, if he is shown to have failed...just as Bush should.
mrC
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The only models even close to this disaster are the earthquake in Kobe, Japan and the Tsunami.
NewOrleans was going to do this sometime. It was a matter of WHEN not IF. MrC didn't read the piece above from Drew.
It took almost 9 years to place the people of Kobe.
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So, given that many of the people who are still there are shooting at rescuers, police, repair workers, and anyone that comes near them... do you really think those people would have voluntarily gotten on a bus to evacuate?
And do you think any politician would have ever gone within 100 miles of ordering poor black people onto busses? Too many bad prior events linked to bussing for that to be anything but a PR nightmare.
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You know , a sick and twisted part of me was hoping to see someone walking around the streets of NOLA with one of those signs that read :
REPENT , for the end of the World is NEAR!
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There probably was, but then he was beaten and raped randomly by a pocket of resistance induhviduals.
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Well, all my worries and concerns about accountibility can now be put to rest...Bush just announced (http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/D8CERF180.html) today that *he* "will oversee an investigation into what went wrong and why."
"What I intend to do is lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong," Bush said. "We still live in an unsettled world. We want to make sure we can respond properly if there is a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) attack or another major storm."
But Bush said now is not the time to point fingers and he did not respond to calls for a commission to investigate the response.
"One of the things people want us to do here is play the blame game," he said. "We got to solve problems. There will be ample time to figure out what went right and what went wrong."
AWESOME!! In other news, O.J. is still hunting for the killer!
mrC
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AWESOME!! In other news, O.J. is still hunting for the killer!
mrC
Think he'll find the killer on the golf course?
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I believe he found him while shaving. Unfortunately, the man in the mirror was pointing a razor at OJ's throat, so OJ fled.
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MrC didn't read the piece above from Drew.
I did read the post, but I didn't care to respond to it since you only have to get to the second bullet point before the lies start.
2. One of the primary reasons why the National Guard did not arrive sooner, was the fact that the Governor (Katherine
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Well, all my worries and concerns about accountibility can now be put to rest...Bush just announced (http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/D8CERF180.html) today that *he* "will oversee an investigation into what went wrong and why."
I guess that's like leaving Clinton in the Oval Office with your 21 year-old daughter.
And do you think any politician would have ever gone within 100 miles of ordering poor black people onto busses?
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Ok, then all the major news outlets and the National guard themselves are lying then.
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Why is bullet point #2 a lie?
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Look...I don't care if they hang Republicans or Democrats...I hope everyone responsible for the atrocious response is held accountable. It's clear the failure goes all the way up the chain of command. It's just pathetic that these anonymous smears seem to be blurring the lines already.
Hurricane Katrina was responsible.
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Here is one of my frustrations with some of the thoughts being posted in this thread.
On one hand we hear outrage that things aren't happening faster . . .
On the other hand we hear outrage that we didn't go through a bidding process to hire people to rebuild.
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Hurricane Katrina was responsible.
We're talking about response/evac/aid after the storm DD. Come back when after you've actually read the thread. I've said this before, but your responses are like some form of Conservative Tourettes Syndrome.
They make more sense in that context.
mrC
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MrC,
Keep this up and we'll have to up your Meds.
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Hurricane Katrina was responsible.
We're talking about response/evac/aid after the storm DD. Come back when after you've actually read the thread. I've said this before, but your responses are like some form of Conservative Tourettes Syndrome.
They make more sense in that context.
mrC
LOL, mrC, you are so right.
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MrC,
Keep this up and we'll have to up your Meds.
I'm already at full dose. Sorry.
ROCK ON!!
(http://mywebpages.comcast.net/duncanblack/bushk.jpg)
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That dude in the back is like "wtf, Bush is stealing my guitar!"
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9228086/
President Bush doesn't want anyone but himself doing an investigation.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9228086/
President Bush doesn't want anyone but himself doing an investigation. He already said what a good job FEMA did... so who will he find at fault? I don't know. *I* think FEMA should be dismantled. We're wasting taxpayers money there if we have to donate money everytime something happens. I don't understand how the Red Cross and the Salvation Army should be the countries only hope after a disaster.
Thank you for giving voice to the thought that has lived in my head since this thing started. I have no problem with donating to such a worthy cause, but what the hell is FEMA for? They proved themselves to be nothing short of useless over the last week. (Bush's opinion about his buddy Brownie notwithstanding).
-S
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People are still refusing to leave their homes.
They are/were responsible for their own response/evac/aid actions.
They claim they've been worried about the levy breaking for decades.
Decades, that's a lot of time for a city/state to have a decent plan ready.
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http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Hannity-Colmes-Smith-Rivera-freak-in-NO.wmv
A sobering video.
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It's just pathetic that these anonymous smears seem to be blurring the lines already.
Are you referring to smears like "conservatives dawdled with helping out because it was just a bunch of "darkies"? Stuff like that, or are you referring to something else?
We get it. If you say something, it's just you "holding someone accountable" or "raising questions that need to be answered". No smears whatsoever. Clearly. ::)
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Decades, that's a lot of time for a city/state to have a decent plan ready.
The Bush administration CUT THE FUNDING FOR THE LEVEES! That was PHASE ONE of the plan to keep New Orleans safe. I'll grant you that PHASE TWO: Evacuate New Orleans was sorely lacking. PHASE THREE: Resue the survivors, was completely non-existent. FEMA and DHS were useless. Who appointed these morons to head FEMA and DHS? You guessed it - "Kerry!" Wait....sorry, you're WRONG. "Clinton?"........WRONG again Dartful!................It was BUSH!
Don't think for a second that Al Qaeda isn't taking notes.
People are still refusing to leave their homes.
They are/were responsible for their own response/evac/aid actions.
"They"? Whose "they"? Have you given up caring already?
Again, here we have another demonstration of Dartful's twisted logic. Because, I've heard 10,000 people are still there, let's say a third of them are refusing to leave, so that's 3,333 people - By your "logic"...because 3,333 people are refusing to leave, 90,000 people should be left on their own to die?
That's what it looks like your are saying. I'm tired of trying to parse anything sensible out of your inane ramblings...you could be just commenting on the few dolts that refuse to leave, but then that *still* wouldn't have anything to do with anything. Yikes.
mrC
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It's just pathetic that these anonymous smears seem to be blurring the lines already.
Are you referring to smears like "conservatives dawdled with helping out because it was just a bunch of "darkies"? Stuff like that, or are you referring to something else?
We get it. If you say something, it's just you "holding someone accountable" or "raising questions that need to be answered". No smears whatsoever. Clearly. ::)
Smears?? Dude, wake up....
You don't want me to provide examples of the disgusting racially coded comments this disaster has prompted from your side of the political spectrum. Trust me, you don't.
mrC
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Smears?? Dude, wake up....
You don't want me to provide examples of the disgusting racist comments this disaster has prompted from your side of the political spectrum. Trust me, you don't.
And thankfully we have you to frame them for us in terms even the most ignorant redneck wouldn't use. For what purpose would you do this other than to inflame the situation at a time when not only is it NOT needed, but there's demonstrable proof that "dem white folks is heppin' dem dere "darkies".
And you talk about not even waiting for the bodies to dry.
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Maybe Nagin could have used the buses to move more people, maybe not.
They commandeered the Superdome for this event. They have images of the busses sitting there lined up underwater, useless, instead of being used.
You have no problems in trying to lay the blame of the response to this event at Bush's feet, but you can't even stand up and state one way or another whether or not the man "could have used the busses to move more people"?
You're simply amazing. Truly. Anyone with half a brain can see those vehicles as a resource that went to waste because of poor planning, and you can't decide if that's something the mayor of the city could have used. No problems seeing that MONEY could have been used on the levees though, right? Oh yeah, levees that were deemed sound. No problems seeing how a wall was going to stop millions of gallons of water from entering the city, but you have a problem with figuring out that those busses wouldn't have cost "poor black folks" NOT ONE RED CENT to get the heck out of Dodge and save their lives.
Yeah, let's blame someone for a wall that couldn't stop the problem from happening, but ignore the resources at hand for stopping a few of those DEATHS from happening.
Nagin does NOT have the resources, nor the manpower that the Federal Government has, and his failure to utilize additional buses did not cause a lack of funding for the leeves, nor did it lead to the lawlessness in the aftermath, the National Guard needed to be mobilized to do that.
His failure to utilize additional busses certainly added to the number of people trapped in that lawlessness, and likely more than a few unneeded deaths.
He didn't need federal funding to commandeer a fleet of busses, those busses WERE the resources he needed to remove those who "couldn't afford to leave the city", the manpower was there in the people who would have wanted to remove themselves from a deadly situation, and the National Guard certainly didn't need to be mobilized to utilize those busses.
Will we EVER see anyone but Bush that you are willing to assign some blame to?
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I can't get rid of the crabgrass that keeps blowing over into my lawn from the neighbor's yard. I blame Bush.
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Will we EVER see anyone but Bush that you are willing to assign some blame to?
I do. Your just to close-minded to see it. The moment anyone even *hints* at holding your Dear Leader accountable, you tighten up the laces on your black Nike shoes, throw on your jumpsuit and scream like you're making ready for the comet. It's cultish.
I'll lighten up on Bush the moment I see people the likes of you start holding him accountable for his mistakes. As it stands now, I've got to do double-time since you Bush supporters seem to act like his sh!t don't stink. I'm talking beyond immigration too...since that's about all that seems to get you righties all wound up.
Anyhow, the "school busses" are now being used by the right as a distraction from higher levels of accountability. It's the "big story" in the right-wing echo chamber. I'm sure Glenn Beck is frothing at the mouth about it. Your mind can't simply fathom the idea that surely state level officials AND federal officials mucked up hardcore.
For you...it stops at the school busses. Why indulge you?
Bush's negligence most definitely outweighs Nagin's...and Nagin will surely get his...As for Bush, it's up to people like you, and I'm lacking faith in your ability to see straight when it comes to Dear Leader.
mrC
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I can't get rid of the crabgrass that keeps blowing over into my lawn from the neighbor's yard. I blame Bush.
But, anyhow, isn't the ChadTower solution to just farm dirt? Screw the "neighborhood"...
mrC
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Can't we all just agree to blame everybody? I mean I'm willing to take my share. I could have gone down there and fixed some levies, but I didn't.
-S
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When you drove your Chevy to the levy, the levy was dry.
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When you drove your Chevy to the levy, the levy was dry.
Good point. The whiskey & rye didn't help.
-S
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Can't we all just agree to blame everybody? I mean I'm willing to take my share. I could have gone down there and fixed some levies, but I didn't.
-S
Ok. My bad, then.
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Has someone posted this?
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051
Eerie.
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I saw a lot of vehicles underwater Drew.
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Has someone posted this?
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051
Eerie.
THAT is scary.
So 14 months ago, FEMA knew exactly what was needed should this exact thing happen... now they know nothing. I want a refund on my past years contributions to this waste of an office.
"FEMA's continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. " - I see no reference to the Red Cross or Salvation Army... why did they have to become involved at all?
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I did read the post, but I didn't care to respond to it since you only have to get to the second bullet point before the lies start.
Don't let the dates and words get in your way at all, do you? The "stiff upper lip". Just keep plodding on in spite of your misunderinterpreting in the haste to find someone to blame.
FALSE. (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006415) Blanco declared a state of emergency on August 26th, two days before the storm hit her area. That declaration involves the de facto request for National Gaurd. The ACTUAL documents have been available (http://gov.louisiana.gov/2005%20%20proclamations/48pro2005-Emergency-HurricaneKatrina.pdf) (PDF) since that time, so it's not even a good lie.
As fredster laid out for you, we are to believe your assertion in spite of....screw the media....we're to believe your assertion in spite of the National Guard themselves.
The actual document is required to be declared by her, it does nothing until she takes the next step, which WAS taken by her. August 28th. It lays out for you in vivid detail what you are misleading everyone on.
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf (http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf)
Under the provisions of (the document linked above by MrC) I request that you declare an expedited state of disaster for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina
A state of emergency - STATE LEVEL, required BEFORE you can ask for it on the FEDERAL level and request for aid at that time, was declared 2 days before. The declaration of a FEDERAL state of emergency and request for aid wasn't put into action until THE NIGHT OF.
Paperwork required for additional National Guard troops for an area that commonly has hurricanes hit weren't available for the Governor to sign. She had to get them sent from Washington. This can't be accomplished WEEKS in advance? This was known beforehand.
Oh yeah, that "de facto" request for National Guard. It's to mobilize those troops under her guidance. As fredster laid out for you, it's for them to "make ready". It's NOT a "send 'em all in, we need help NOW!" issue.
Because it is based on the premise that she hadn't declared a state of emergency, which is false. She requested federal assistance. There are discrepencies over who would have had jurisdiction, but it is not up for debate whether or not that assistance was needed and/or requested.
What's not up for debate is that the assistance was requested the eve of landfall. You're telling us that "ok.......NOW!" when requesting assistance is ensuring a logistical nightmare and giving an impossible timeline to have that assistance put in motion. Also, asking for a federal state of emergency to be declared 2 days after you do it for the state level isn't a premise, it's there in black and white for you.
"The plain English of this document (PDF (http://)) shows that states of emergency had been declared on both the state and federal level
YOU show that passage to us. I've read through it several times. It doesn't exist in there. Point it out to us.
before the hurricane hit and that at the state's request the president had given FEMA plenary powers to "identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of these emergency."[/i]
Again, since you declare falsehoods, prove yourself. Show it to us. Point it out to us WHERE in that document that at the state's request the president had given FEMA plenary powers to "identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of these emergency."[/i]
Your reference is to the "plain English" of the document. Point out where or even give us the "plain English" and what portion of the document you interpreted it from.
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I want a refund on my past years contributions to this waste of an office.
You got one when they CUT THE FUNDING FOR THE LEVEES!
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I'll lighten up on Bush the moment I see people the likes of you start holding him accountable for his mistakes. As it stands now, I've got to do double-time since you Bush supporters seem to act like his sh!t don't stink. I'm talking beyond immigration too...since that's about all that seems to get you righties all wound up.
I heard "BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH.
The question I asked was
Will we EVER see anyone but Bush that you are willing to assign some blame to?
Are we to presume that your answer is no, then?
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Drew,
FEMA had a plan for this... according to Zakks link:
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051
It's FEMA's own website.
It's covers the affected area.
It's Hurricane caused.
It was done 14 months ago.
It's all supposed to be federally funded.
Knowing in advance what was possible, knowing immediately after what the extent of damage was, it should have taken one phone call.
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I'm about to run out so I'll post more later, but I wanted to let you guys know that my father is the County Judge in our county.
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I saw a lot of vehicles underwater Drew. I wasn't involved with the planning, but I'd imagine the busses were for the people to leave from there to somewhere else until it was safe for them to return home. I don't think anyone imagined that they would be underwater at the end of the day... unless it was your sole purpose to think of worst case scenarios... like FEMA *should* be doing. And the line of busses *should* have been yet another indication to FEMA that there were a bunch of people that need to be saved, that there were people somewhere close by, and that they were in dire need of assistance because the current plan was "in the drink".
I'm not certain if that link was what I read in the past week or not, but in 2001 when they were setting up the framework, a poll taken of the populace told them that at the very least, a third of the people stated that in just such an instance as what happened, they weren't going to leave their homes no matter what.
You'd figure that since 1965, people would have had time to realize they need to find someplace less prone to disaster to live, or at the very least, get out when one's coming.
I lived 2 hours from the coast in NC. Both hurricanes that came through my area were forecast well enough in advance that even though we waited until the morning before landfall, we were DEFINITELY getting out of dodge. I was in Charlotte when the one (Dennis, I think) did what EVERYONE said hurricanes NEVER do. Back up. Flooding all along the coast, and to within a 20 minute drive of my house.
If anything, this'll teach people to rely on themselves, and rely on the government only as a last resort.
Next stop, Wisconsin State Fair. Wonder if I'll meet any folks from N.O. at the auction :-\
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How is that Bush's fault?
Because Gore lost.
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Based on what I have seen, the officials in Louisiana completely dropped the ball.
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Okay Cooter.
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I am terribly saddened by this whole event, but I'm not trying to make myself feel better by trying to harm others because of political bias. I guess I'm going to have to accept that some people can't understand that sometimes bad things happen that are out of our control and blaming somebody else is the only way they can deal with it.
And with that well made point, I'm out.
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FEMA works with the local authorities, not CNN (although this event has shown that somebody from FEMA should be watching CNN & Fox News 24 hours a day during events like this).
I was just about to say that.
Not just this event, though it was the most signifigant. The media has a nasty tendancy of reporting things before the guys "on the ground" even know they're there. A guy wit the sole job of watching media coverage of the event would be AT LEAST as useful as a radio connection to the local government.
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http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/D8CERF180.html
I thought this was a joke when I read it yesterday but then I heard it on the news.
So bush will lea an investigation to investigate himself, his administration and his appointees. Its an insult to the victims of the calamity that followed the hurricane.
Now, my problem with this has nothing to do with what I think of the bush regieme. My problem is that another whitewash/coverup is on the way and unless the people who are responsible are replaced and procedures changed, whats to stop the same disgraceful response happening again.
Every person who ignores/excuses this administrations criminal failure with the katrina disaster will have blood on their hands when history repeats itself. Is the safety of you and your loved ones more important to you than being a bush apologist or not?
EDIT: Added a link to Kunichs speech, WELL worth a look. Quote of the day: "Indifference is a weapon of mass distruction"
http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0902-10.htm
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Bush still hasn't stopped that damn crabgrass.
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Bush still hasn't stopped that damn crabgrass.
Chad forgets Bush is President, not a gardener.
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Or maybe he is a gardener..he seems to have absolutely no problem using firemen and rescue wrokers as lawn ornaments. All while people were dying.
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197
"ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
...
"But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas."
Who ya' going to believe....me, or your lying eyes?
(http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/rids/20050903/i/ra2838142191.jpg?x=380&y=306&sig=nGxy3CvKSMMZUshWzlVoOg--)
mrC
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Chad forgets Bush is President, not a gardener.
The man next door is elderly, living off of his pension and more substantially Social Security. He also has health problems that Medicare have not covered him on... had Bush fixed Social Security and Medicare by now, this guy would be able to afford to have someone take care of his lawn and his lawn would not be damaging my lawn, or better yet he may be healthy enough to take care of his lawn himself.
Bush is to blame for the crabgrass on my lawn.
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Chad forgets Bush is President, not a gardener.
The man next door is elderly, living off of his pension and more substantially Social Security. He also has health problems that Medicare have not covered him on... had Bush fixed Social Security and Medicare by now, this guy would be able to afford to have someone take care of his lawn and his lawn would not be damaging my lawn, or better yet he may be healthy enough to take care of his lawn himself.
Bush is to blame for the crabgrass on my lawn.
Heh. Grab your rake (or pitchfork)...We march to Washington on the morrow.
mrC
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I went bicycling Sunday and got a sun burn. If Bush's administration would have spent more money on research to find a way to fix the ozone layer I broke by driving to work everyday and using aerosol cans, this wouldn't have happened. There should also be national guardsmen on prairie path handing out sun screen and a helicopter should have picked me up when it was obvious I was getting burned.
The government knew days in advance that Sunday was going to be a clear and sunny day, there was no excuse for them to let this happen to me.
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blah...blah...blah.....
Here's your hero....
Note, the two superimposed photos were taken the same day.
(http://images.dailykos.com/images/user/3/th_bushguitGREAT.jpg)
via boingboing
(http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/06/katrina_wish_you_wer.html)
mrC
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See, he WAS there, trying to provide moral support.
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See, he WAS there, trying to provide moral support.
Lol, yeah but judging by the picture he wasn't very successful.
There's nothing more depressing than a middle aged politician trying to act cool.
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(http://www.p0stwh0res.com/images/t3nukedthread.jpg)
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There's nothing more depressing than a middle aged politician trying to act cool.
Gore was cool when he invented the internet.
Clinton was cool when he played bad sax on TV.
Reagan was cool when he was making movies.
Wait, making movies actually was cool.
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Wait, making movies actually was cool.
People who party through college are also cool.
Bush isn't acting cool, he just is cool.
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There's nothing more depressing than a middle aged politician trying to act cool.
someone's got to post the Clinton wearing shades playing the saxiphone picture up......
this thread needs that picture to live.......
please
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Well Chad, while it must be fun to pretend, your crabgrass is not an issue of national security. Maintaining 50% of our port capability and 20% of our oil refining capability is.
This is, of course, above and beyond the human disaster.
Dartful: Matthew 25:31-46. Get your soul straight man.
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Well Chad, while it must be fun to pretend, your crabgrass is not an issue of national security.
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Bush isn't acting cool, he just is cool.
Your threshold for what can be described as cool is obviously far lower than mine.
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Yeah, he requires rectangular headed robots.
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There's nothing more depressing than a middle aged politician trying to act cool.
someone's got to post the Clinton wearing shades playing the saxiphone picture up......
this thread needs that picture to live.......
please
OK if you insist. ;D
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That one of Kerry is so much funnier... the Clinton one looks staged, which of course it was, but the Kerry one looks like he was gonna jam but sat on his martini glass.
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That one of Kerry is so much funnier... the Clinton one looks staged, which of course it was, but the Kerry one looks like he was gonna jam but sat on his martini glass.
or a packet of Heinz Ketchup.....
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Why was someone hanging from the ceiling to take that photo, anyway?
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Gore was cool when he invented the internet.
Clinton was cool when he played bad sax on TV.
Reagan was cool when he was making movies.
Wait, making movies actually was cool.
Unless that movie was "Bedtime for Bonzo"
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Still cooler than what most other people were doing.
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It would appear you are not also holding accountable the first response team who failed miserably.
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It would appear you are not also holding accountable the first response team who failed miserably.
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Why isn't the head of FEMA subject to congressional approval, anyways?
Seems a failing of the check/balance system.
...
Of course, if EVERY presidential appointment was subject to approval, Congress would never get anything done. Be too busy fillibustering appointees.
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Well, I'm still not convinced that George W. Bush is responsible for Hurricane Katrina and all the destruction it caused, but if it makes you guys feel better . . . .
. . . . I will never again vote for George W. Bush for president. ;)
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There's nothing more depressing than a middle aged politician trying to act cool.
Gore was cool when he invented the internet.
Clinton was cool when he played bad sax on TV.
Reagan was cool when he was making movies.
Wait, making movies actually was cool.
Gore never, ever, said that he invented the internet. He never even said anything that could even be reasonably construed as meaning that he invented the internet. That's a complete and, for Gore, tragic myth. Imagine what it would be like to be the butt of a joke for the millions of Americans who sincerely believe, because of irresponsible journalists who haven't heard of fact checking, that he made such an absurd statement.
And why is it that Clinton was playing "bad sax" but Reagan was simply making movies? Carrot Top and the Olsen Twins make movies. How cool is that?
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Well, I'm still not convinced that George W. Bush is responsible for Hurricane Katrina and all the destruction it caused, but if it makes you guys feel better . . . .
. . . . I will never again vote for George W. Bush for president. ;)
Ditto. No way I'm voting Bush in for a third term. And I bet all of America agrees with me.
There's nothing more depressing than a middle aged politician trying to act cool.
Gore was cool when he invented the internet.
Clinton was cool when he played bad sax on TV.
Reagan was cool when he was making movies.
Wait, making movies actually was cool.
Gore never, ever, said that he invented the internet. He never even said anything that could even be reasonably construed as meaning that he invented the internet. That's a complete and, for Gore, tragic myth. Imagine what it would be like to be the butt of a joke for the millions of Americans who sincerely believe, because of irresponsible journalists who haven't heard of fact checking, that he made such an absurd statement.
Indeed. What he said was "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. "
It's awkwardly phrased, and could be misconstrued as "I invented the internet," but it ISN'T "I invented the internet."
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
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"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
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If you read his full quote though, he infers that he pushed for "initiatives" like the internet, and for education, among other things. The original quote is quite clumsy though; I believe he uses initiative 3 times in two sentences, and several times before this particular quote.
That's a lot of initiative! ;)
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If you read his full quote though, he infers that he pushed for "initiatives" like the internet, and for education, among other things. The original quote is quite clumsy though; I believe he uses initiative 3 times in two sentences, and several times before this particular quote.
That's a lot of initiative! ;)
Yes.
But it's funnier to say he invented the internet. :P
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"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
- Al Gore to Wolf Blitzer on CNN
March, 1999
See http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/index.html
I think the general problem Gore opponents had with this statement is that Gore was implying that "if not for Gore, the internet as we know it would not exist."
It's plain dishonest to read his quote as saying anything remotely like he invented the Internet. He was clearly saying that, as a legislator, he was instrumental in creating the environment that allowed the internet to grow so quickly in the 90's into the monstor it became. From Snopes:
It is true, though, that Gore was popularizing the term "information superhighway" in the early 1990s (although he did not, as is often claimed by others, coin the phrase himself) when few people outside academia or the computer/defense industries had heard of the Internet, and he sponsored the 1988 National High-Performance Computer Act (which established a national computing plan and helped link universities and libraries via a shared network) and cosponsored the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992 (which opened the Internet to commercial traffic).
The internet could not be used for commerce prior to to a bill that Gore cosponsered. That's a pretty big deal. To suggest that Gore actually believed, or was even attempting to make others believe that he invented the internet would be exactly akin to me taking the following Bush quote literally...
"It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way."
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People who party through college are also cool.
Bush isn't acting cool, he just is cool.
When you sneak into Yale on a legacy admission and are set for a life of privelidge and wealth when you leave reegardless of performance, Partying through college isn't cool, it's just failing to EARN your place there and respect your good fortune.
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People who party through college are also cool.
Bush isn't acting cool, he just is cool.
When you sneak into Yale on a legacy admission and are set for a life of privelidge and wealth when you leave reegardless of performance, Partying through college isn't cool, it's just failing to EARN your place there and respect your good fortune.
I'd venture to say that absolutely no one at Yale "earned" it. Every single one is getting a free ride from either family members, or from a scholarship system that charges OTHER PEOPLE for your tuission to inflate their statistics, or they have otherwise received handouts. Or they are using student loans, which is also money they never earned.
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People who party through college are also cool.
Bush isn't acting cool, he just is cool.
When you sneak into Yale on a legacy admission and are set for a life of privelidge and wealth when you leave reegardless of performance, Partying through college isn't cool, it's just failing to EARN your place there and respect your good fortune.
I'd venture to say that absolutely no one at Yale "earned" it. Every single one is getting a free ride from either family members, or from a scholarship system that charges OTHER PEOPLE for your tuission to inflate their statistics, or they have otherwise received handouts. Or they are using student loans, which is also money they never earned.
If you're talking about scholarships based on academic ability then I have to say I disagree. Scholarships of that type are 'earned' by individuals having to work hard at school, passing exams etc. In fact that's the only aspect of the American funding system that is meritocratic. Sporting scholarships are a different matter and are totally retarded IMHO.
Also student loans eventually have to be paid off.
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People who party through college are also cool.
Bush isn't acting cool, he just is cool.
When you sneak into Yale on a legacy admission and are set for a life of privelidge and wealth when you leave reegardless of performance, Partying through college isn't cool, it's just failing to EARN your place there and respect your good fortune.
I'd venture to say that absolutely no one at Yale "earned" it. Every single one is getting a free ride from either family members, or from a scholarship system that charges OTHER PEOPLE for your tuission to inflate their statistics, or they have otherwise received handouts. Or they are using student loans, which is also money they never earned.
If you're talking about scholarships based on academic ability then I have to say I disagree. Scholarships of that type are 'earned' by individuals having to work hard at school, passing exams etc. In fact that's the only aspect of the American funding system that is meritocratic. Sporting scholarships are a different matter and are totally retarded IMHO.
Also student loans eventually have to be paid off.
Sports or academic it doesn't matter, in either case OTHER people's tuition money is paying your way so the school can inflate their numbers.
As for sports, don't even get me started. I firmly believe that every single college in America should do away with all their sports teams. Most people don't realize what a huge percentage of their tution is paying for sports teams.
Yes, you can try to drag out the arguement that the teams create revenue for the school, it is a wonderful arguement that holds up right until you get to the point where you actually examine the financial records.
College would be a fraction of the price if each person paying didn't ALSO have to pay for someone on the hockey team, and some other kid who is smart, and then someone else who paints good pictures.
There is a reason why community colleges cost $2000 (or less) a year, and normal colleges cost 5 to 15 times that, and only a teeny percentage of it is the higher salary for the more qualified professors (many of which are teaching gigantor classes of 100-500 that don't even exist in community colleges). That reason is sports teams and scholarships.
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My point is theres nothing 'cool' about partying your way through college when your a legacy entry and you have a life of priveledge and wealth waiting at the other end, regardless of grades etc.
The decent thing to do would be to 'earn' (not in a monetary sense guys, I meant in a moral sense) your right to be there by doing your best.
But as we know, juniors life before politics involve failed business ventures and run ins with the law, with other people picking up the pieces or sweeping them under the carpet. A life of never being responsible or held accountable for anything. No wonder 'the buck stops here' sign is in the waste paper basket beside his desk in the whitehouse.
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I'm a Rebublican by default, but I am not too big a fan of Bush. I like him personally, but I don't see him as being particularly competent.
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Paige, student loan money is earned. People who pay them back are charged interest, that goes back into the lending pool and to pay administrative costs, further enabling the lending cycle.
It is people that do not pay back their student loans that screw the lending cycle up.
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Paige, student loan money is earned. People who pay them back are charged interest, that goes back into the lending pool and to pay administrative costs, further enabling the lending cycle.
It is people that do not pay back their student loans that screw the lending cycle up.
I see "borrowed" and "earned" as two distinct concepts. ;D
The sheer concept of borrowing is based upon getting something you have not earned, but plan on earning later.
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That is true, though you have earned it when you pay it back. The legal concept is that you WILL pay it back. I've paid back probably $50k in student loans to this point and have something like $13k left to go...
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I pay for all of my school. No scholarships. Generally no loans. I just save money throught the semester to pay for next semester. I'm still only paying about 1/3 of the cost of my schooling. Every student, regardless of financial position (at least at a public university or community college) has his or her education subsidized by the state. It's another reason that partying through college, or not working hard to learn and get good grades is completely reprehensible. The taxpayers are saying, "We believe in you and want to help you better yourself, here's $5k-10k per year." To turn around and squander your time and not try after receiving an opportunity and good-faith charity like that is lame.
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News reports last night and today say the LOUISIANA state department of Homeland Security would not allow the Red Cross to bring food and water to the Superdome and Convention center because they didn't want to create a "magnet" location for evacuees.
Today the Democrats in congress and the senate are starting a smear campaign against the Bush administration and trying to pry funding away from FEMA and channel it to a "Democrat controlled bureacracy" that doesn't even exist yet.
The Louisiana government is overwhelmingly Democrat including the governor and NOLA mayor. These are the same Democrats who forbid the Red Cross to help people at the Superdome & Convention Center.
I suspected that all the finger pointing at Bush was Democratic partisan CYA. It looks like that's true.
It would be really easy for the Feds to point a big finger at Louisiana, but they haven't done that, insisting instead that it is more important to help people who need it right now.
I'm not as concerned with who was at fault last week as I am with who is trying to impede the progress that is being made today all in the name of partisan politics.
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Here is the Democrats latest response to why didn't you evacuate NOLA when Bush told you to before the hurricane hit:
"Well what if terrorists had blown up the levees? You wouldn't have had time to evacuate before that."
WTF is wrong with people? Let's help the victims instead of stopping all funding to FEMA as an F.U. to the current administration.
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Let's help the victims instead of stopping all funding to FEMA as an F.U. to the current administration.
Lets help the future victims of this administrations incompetence/indifference by holding those responsible to account.
Remember, FEMA could be responding to a disaster/terrorist attack in YOUR neighbourhood. The time to stop the rot is NOW.
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But as we know, juniors life before politics involve failed business ventures and run ins with the law, with other people picking up the pieces or sweeping them under the carpet. A life of never being responsible or held accountable for anything. No wonder 'the buck stops here' sign is in the waste paper basket beside his desk in the whitehouse.
All that against him and he still became a great president. That is cool.
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Cool Dex.
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You can gather wood all you want, but it won't burn. It's soaked.
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psik0tik has a trashcan full of charcoal in his basement.
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People tried to get with their own resources, were rebuffed. They tried to walk out and were turned back. They tried to create shelter, their efforts were destroyed.
http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml
What the hell were people supposed to do? They aren't allowed o take care of themselves and the government actively hurts them, not helps them.
But blame the victim if it helps you sleep at night.
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The government tried to warn the people of the danger. It told everyone to leave, but the people refused.
What the hell was the government supposed to do? We don't live in a country that allows our government to knock down the doors and drag innocent people from their homes, and the people actively hurts it, not help it.
But blame the government if it helps you sleep at night.
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People tried to get with their own resources, were rebuffed. They tried to walk out and were turned back. They tried to create shelter, their efforts were destroyed.
http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml
What the hell were people supposed to do? They aren't allowed o take care of themselves and the government actively hurts them, not helps them.
But blame the victim if it helps you sleep at night.
I read that whole article. Those two paramedics seem to think a large part of the problem was the local law enforcement. I have also been advocating this position. If there is BLAME to be handed out, I believe your article supports the position that NOLA government was sorely lacking here.
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What the hell was the government supposed to do? We don't live in a country that allows our government to knock down the doors and drag innocent people from their homes, and the people actively hurts it, not help it.
But it seems they can falsely imprison people in a flooded disease-ridden city without food and water for several days.
I'm guessing that when the dust settles there is going to be a massive lawsuit launched against the New Orleans authorities and anyone else responsible for this debacle.
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People tried to get with their own resources, were rebuffed. They tried to walk out and were turned back. They tried to create shelter, their efforts were destroyed.
http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml
What the hell were people supposed to do? They aren't allowed o take care of themselves and the government actively hurts them, not helps them.
But blame the victim if it helps you sleep at night.
Thank you for posting that article. It was well worth the time it took me to read it.
-S
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There go my theories about people not evacuating on foot.
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Mine as well.
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Who still wants to claim that the largest failures were not local authorities now?
They were taking food FROM evacuees and not allowing them to build their own shelters... all to avoid media attention.
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Also worth a read, discussing rebuilding New Orleans. (http://slate.msn.com/id/2125810/?nav=navoa)
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There are some good points being made there. I can't imagine why the poorest people would want to go back. Provided they are able to find employment and housing in the area where they were evacuated, there wouldn't be a lot of reason to return. If the poor neighborhoods were as bad as that article would lead you to believe (I have seen no reason to think otherwise), why would anyone want to go back after establishing a fresh start in a new city?
-S
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There go my theories about people not evacuating on foot.
And here you thought it was just a black thing....
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And here you thought it was just a black thing....
Show us where I said that.
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On CNN just now, Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told a female CNN reporter that she should be on the Bush payroll. The reporter was asking some tough questions about why the Democrats were all blaming Bush, calling for the resignation of FEMA's director in the middle of a disaster, and basically ignoring all the Democrats who were at fault in Louisiasana.
CNN is historically anti-Bush and pro Democrat, so when the Democrats are accusing CNN of being on the Bush payroll, it would appear they have lost all perspective on everything. If they want the White House and/or congress back they need to get a grip in a hurry, bring forward their own POSITIVE plan for action, and quit blaming even their own media allies for all their own mistakes.
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Wow...that sounds like a great plan MarkVP. Majority party, here we come!
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With the survivor accounts coming out now, it's starting to look like the local authorities simply refused to implement any type of plan that did anything other than keep the evacuees where they were in order to keep them out of the clean areas.
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And here you thought it was just a black thing....
Show us where I said that.
I think this is just a black thing...
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I just ran a string search on every page of this thread. The only person who has used the phrase I think this is just a black thing is shmokes.
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;D LMAO
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The weirdest part is the suspicious date/time of your quote above. How did you do that?
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Wow...that sounds like a great plan MarkVP.
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From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.
If this was a scene in a movie this would be funny.
That story was well written. It didn't take long for that part of the US to become a 3rd world country.
The bad guys are threatening you with guns and the people that are suppose to be the good guys are threatening you with guns.
It's a bad way to learn why some of us are fighting to keep our right to bear arms.
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The government tried to warn the people of the danger. It told everyone to leave, but the people refused.
What the hell was the government supposed to do? We don't live in a country that allows our government to knock down the doors and drag innocent people from their homes, and the people actively hurts it, not help it.
But blame the government if it helps you sleep at night.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? People tried to get out and were kept in by government forces!
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Local government forces.
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The government tried to warn the people of the danger. It told everyone to leave, but the people refused.
What the hell was the government supposed to do? We don't live in a country that allows our government to knock down the doors and drag innocent people from their homes, and the people actively hurts it, not help it.
But blame the government if it helps you sleep at night.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? People tried to get out and were kept in by government forces!
That story happened after the hurricane.
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans....
It's the first line of the story, since I don't have a reading comprehension problem I was able to comprehended that the people in this story didn't heed the governments warnings.
They also couldn't defend themselves when the local police started firing over their heads.
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If only more of the NO refugees had guns.
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If only more of the NO refugees had guns.
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I see what you mean. That's terrible. If only that man had a gun, perhaps he could have defended himself and gone on raping that little girl.
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The government tried to warn the people of the danger. It told everyone to leave, but the people refused.
What the hell was the government supposed to do? We don't live in a country that allows our government to knock down the doors and drag innocent people from their homes, and the people actively hurts it, not help it.
But blame the government if it helps you sleep at night.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? People tried to get out and were kept in by government forces!
That story happened after the hurricane.
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When you sneak into Yale on a legacy admission and are set for a life of privelidge and wealth when you leave reegardless of performance, Partying through college isn't cool, it's just failing to EARN your place there and respect your good fortune.
When you claim someone snuck into Yale and ignore the very real problem you have that BOTH candidates in America for President in the last election went to the same school and had similar grades and priveledge, it pretty much lets us know that either you would have hated ANY presidential candidate who won our last election, or you just have an intense hatred for the one who DID win, and seek any opportunity to badmouth him, even if your ignorance is found out.
Link to another "biased" report that shows Dexter cares little about anything but finding some way to badmouth Bush here. (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student?mode=PF)
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What's a legacy admission and how can I obtain one?
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You people are so wacky. You claim not to trust the government, yet when government says jump, you say "F those who don't listen, let them die, don't even let them help themselves!".
Yeah, I guess you're right, we're all saying that they should have listened when the government said "jump". Nevermind that big friggen swirly thing that even blind people could tell was coming. Yeah, we simply marched in lockstep, following orders. Everyone (well, at least YOU could) can see the government faked all the news reports on a sound stage somewhere and couldn't be trusted to be telling us the truth.
You should think about selling this stuff on video as a workout tape. You could call it "Stretching (facts or truth) For Dummies", or are you only limited to writing books under the "Dummies" label?
What's a legacy admission and how can I obtain one?
Buy a Subaru. Free with purchase. And I think you get a cool T-shirt.
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When you claim someone snuck into Yale and ignore the very real problem you have that BOTH candidates in America for President in the last election went to the same school and had similar grades and priveledge, it pretty much lets us know that either you would have hated ANY presidential candidate who won our last election, or you just have an intense hatred for the one who DID win, and seek any opportunity to badmouth him, even if your ignorance is found out.
Well you could have voted for Ralph Nader.
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Somehow I think Dexter would see ol' Ralphy-boy as not "progressive" enough
That's about it for me this weekend. See you guys Sunday-ish. I'm betting I care far less about this thread by that time::)
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You people are so wacky. You claim not to trust the government, yet when government says jump, you say "F those who don't listen, let them die, don't even let them help themselves!".
Yeah, I guess you're right, we're all saying that they should have listened when the government said "jump". Nevermind that big friggen swirly thing that even blind people could tell was coming. Yeah, we simply marched in lockstep, following orders. Everyone (well, at least YOU could) can see the government faked all the news reports on a sound stage somewhere and couldn't be trusted to be telling us the truth.
You should think about selling this stuff on video as a workout tape. You could call it "Stretching (facts or truth) For Dummies", or are you only limited to writing books under the "Dummies" label?
What's a legacy admission and how can I obtain one?
Buy a Subaru. Free with purchase. And I think you get a cool T-shirt.
So just to clarify Drew, you think these people deserve to die, and it's perfectly OK for the local authorities to take steps that increase their likelihood of dying, just because they failed to heed the warnings.
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You people are so wacky. You claim not to trust the government, yet when government says jump, you say "F those who don't listen, let them die, don't even let them help themselves!".
This is truly something I can't fathom. Hate government, yet refuse to condemn government when they act like jack-booted thugs.
That is the complete opposite of what I am saying.
I say:
Love the government,
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You should think about selling this stuff on video as a workout tape. You could call it "Stretching (facts or truth) For Dummies", or are you only limited to writing books under the "Dummies" label?
Drew....this is perhaps the worst joke ever. Were you eating paste when you wrote your last post?
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You people are so wacky. You claim not to trust the government, yet when government says jump, you say "F those who don't listen, let them die, don't even let them help themselves!".
Yeah, I guess you're right, we're all saying that they should have listened when the government said "jump".
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Buying a Subaru won't help... I had a Legacy, and we had a couple lengthy threads about how it was worthless.
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So just to clarify Drew, you think these people deserve to die, and it's perfectly OK for the local authorities to take steps that increase their likelihood of dying, just because they failed to heed the warnings.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm also saying I'm AGAINST clean air and water, I'm against banning lead paint, I'm FOR allowing smoking and consumption of alcohol by women who are pregnant, I'm AGAINST improving our schools/roads/whatever, I'm FOR....... ::)
Yeah, there you go. Something you'll be able to quote me for until the end of time.
Let me clarify, Grasshopper. You think that these people didn't deserve to die, and only through God's grace they're still alive, in spite of the belief of many that God doesn't exist?
Here's a question for you. Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
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I don't think that pointing out the wrongdoings of the local authorities lets Bush off the hook.
It seems to me that both the local authorities and Bush screwed up.
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So just to clarify Drew, you think these people deserve to die, and it's perfectly OK for the local authorities to take steps that increase their likelihood of dying, just because they failed to heed the warnings.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm also saying I'm AGAINST clean air and water, I'm against banning lead paint, I'm FOR allowing smoking and consumption of alcohol by women who are pregnant, I'm AGAINST improving our schools/roads/whatever, I'm FOR....... ::)
Thanks for clarifying that. ::)
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in spite of the belief of many that God doesn't exist?
Why would that matter?
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in spite of the belief of many that God doesn't exist?
Why would that matter?
Yeah I was wondering that. In fact the whole sentence makes no sense to me.
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When you claim someone snuck into Yale and ignore the very real problem you have that BOTH candidates in America for President in the last election went to the same school and had similar grades and priveledge, it pretty much lets us know that either you would have hated ANY presidential candidate who won our last election, or you just have an intense hatred for the one who DID win, and seek any opportunity to badmouth him, even if your ignorance is found out.
My comments relate to anybody who takes their good fortune for granted. I mention bush because it is relevant to this thread.
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My comments relate to anybody who takes their good fortune for granted. I mention bush because it is relevant to this thread.
He was elected president, TWICE, I'd say he used his good fortune to better himself, and the world.
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Himself, clearly, but the world?
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He was elected once. He was appointed the first time.
At least Iraqis are free now, though.
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Why is it that you have so much faith in the judicial system when it comes to babystabbers, but refuse to accept their decisions in the case of Bush's first electoral win?
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I accept it. I think Bush was the legal president after his appointment. I just don't think that he was "elected" president. The Supreme Court acted within their powers. I think that it was bad law and that the conservatives on the court, especially with respect to Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas, had to sacrifice their principles in order to get their guy appointed, but I still considered Bush the legal, if not legitimate president.
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There is no difference between legal and legitimate in this context. The Supreme Court did not get their guy elected, they interpreted the Constitution as it applied to the case and ruled according to the law. There is no room for sacrifice of principals there. The law is clear and was applied properly.
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None of which changes the fact that Bush is a p3nis wrinkle.
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Chad, you're talking out your ass. The law is clear that states set their own election laws and that the final arbiter of those laws is the State Supreme Court. On any other case, the three justices I mentioned would have been the very first to refuse to hear the case. And had they heard it anyway (it only takes a minority vote of four justices to hear a case) the three would have voted to uphold the Florida Supreme Court ruling, possibly noting that they think it is misguided, but that they don't have jurisdiction. These are States rights justices.
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That sure does look like the truth.
He has played a major role in making this country, and the entire world, worse off than it was before he was elected.
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Chad, you're talking out your ass.
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One for the "Get a Gun!" crowd:
NY-Times Link (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/national/nationalspecial/09cnd-storm.html?hp&ex=1126324800&en=fa6ffd5834d3800e&ei=5094&partner=homepage)
You can't stay. You can't leave. You can't shelter yourself. You can't protect yourself.
We're from the Government and we're here to help you!
Edit by saint - fixed long link
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"Individuals are at risk of dying," said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of the New Orleans police. "There's nothing more important than the preservation of human life."
So, the solution is to threaten to shoot them if they do not evacuate, apparently. We'll kill them before allowing them to die on their own.
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It's starting to look more and more like the NOPD rep for corruption has a pretty solid basis in fact. Not that I'm placing all of the blame for this mess on them. It might start there, but it goes all the way to the top.
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Given the importance of a Presidential election, there was no real way for the Federal Supreme Court to avoid hearing this case. Had Florida said that Gore won, the Republicans would have forced it to the Supreme Court. Had they said Bush won, same thing other side. This was going to go to the Federal level no matter what happened.
Nonsense. By not hearing the case they would simply be saying, "The Florida Supreme Court interpreted Florida election law. They ordered that selectively recounting votes wouldn't do and that every vote must be counted. They are the final arbiters of Florida law except when that law violates the U.S. Constitution. It doesn't, so the Florida Supreme Court ruling stands." Which is what those justices would say under any other circumstances, presented with a similar situation. Even if they couldn't "avoid hearing the case" as you say, that's still exactly how those three (and probably both the other conservatives on the court) would end up ruling.
When you say, "Given the importance of a Presidential election...," you hit the nail on the head. When Sandra Day O'Connor was watching election coverage and Florida was initially called for Gore she said, "Oh ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---," and walked out of the room (She had cancer and was getting ready to retire, remember -- she wanted to be replaced by a republican president). The personal consequences of not hearing this case (Gore likely winning and likely replacing two conservative justices) outweighed those justices' principles.
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...they interpreted the Constitution as it applied to the case and ruled according to the law. There is no room for sacrifice of principals there. The law is clear and was applied properly.
You do realize, at least, that it was a 5-4 vote, right?
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Doesn't matter. You can sour grapes and accuse them of bending their principles all you want, that doesn't make much of it fact.
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Well....journalists reporting on a giant hurricane in NO doesn't make the hurricane fact either. But it still happened.
You can insist, without doing any research, knowing virtually nothing about the justices on the Supreme Court and the constitutional philosophies they ascribe to or even the laws they were interpreting, that, "the law is clear and was applied properly," But it just adds to your history of boldly stating "facts" that you pull straight from your gut, and didn't bother to actually verify, and then defending them to the death in the face of reason or absolutely any damning information.
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...they interpreted the Constitution as it applied to the case and ruled according to the law.
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...they interpreted the Constitution as it applied to the case and ruled according to the law.
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I find it interesting that when votes are split down party lines that the losing party always says it was purely a partisan vote by the majority.
I find this interesting:
Bush was elected president by a partisan vote by the majority...
Majority: ma
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I find it interesting that when votes are split down party lines that the losing party always says it was purely a partisan vote by the majority.
I find this interesting:
Bush was elected president by a partisan vote by the majority...
Majority: ma
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The popular vote is meaningless anyway. We don't have a national election, we have 50 state elections.
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It absolutely could be that the democrats on the court were voting based on partisanship. It's just not so clear because their dissenting opinion isn't so hypocritical.
The state legislature's power to choose electors for the presidential election is plenary. If they wanted to they could simply appoint electors without even holding a statewide election of any kind. They could draw names from a hat if they wanted. It's none of the Federal Supreme Court's business how a state chooses it's electors. Once the legislature writes laws governing the selection of their electors it is then up to the Florida courts, and ultimately the Florida Supreme Court to interpret those laws, except where they violate the U.S. Constitution or federal laws that stem from powers granted by the U.S. constitution.
The majority's opinion was held per curiam which means it is held in the name of the court, rather than having individual justices sign it. Per curiam opnionsare normally short, deal with non-controversial issues and are unanimous. The majority opinion also contains this zinger:
Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.
Even the majority realized that this went against their principles and would come back to bite them in the ass. No problem, though. They got around that by taking the unusual step of saying, "Oh....this is how we're going to decide this case, but we're stating for the record that we are not setting a precedent here."
How convenient. They get to have their cake and eat it too.
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It absolutely could be that the democrats on the court were voting based on partisanship.
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But with all the complaining about it, are the Democrats any less self serving? Does anyone really doubt that, given the majority in that situation, that the Democrats would not have simply shoved Gore into office the same way you are accusing the Republicans of doing with Bush?
There really is little difference at this level. It's all about retention of power, not what is best for the country or what is right or what is legal.
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Partisan doesn't imply minority so there is no contradiction:
No but complaining about the winner of an election because the ma
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But the majority is stupid! Only the 1337 minority knows what is best for the unwashed.
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I can't tell if Dartful is serious in his last post, which seriously implies brain damage, or if he's just trying to ruffle feathers.
And Chad, the problem with your theory is that if anyone who is 1337 comes in here, the mere act of imparting wisdom will sacrifice that person's status as 1337.
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And Chad, the problem with your theory is that if anyone who is 1337 comes in here, the mere act of imparting wisdom will sacrifice that person's status as 1337.
Only if people listen to them.
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Partisan doesn't imply minority so there is no contradiction:
No but complaining about the winner of an election because the ma
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shmokes, didn't you get the memo?
"Don't bring up Gore, the loser, in a thread that's complaining about the administration"
We (the ma
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Majority of what? If you think that an election by 5-4 (or even 7-2) out of a population of 300 Million is anything about democracy, you are crazy.
Yes
The 5-4 vote (but not the 7-2 one!) WAS split on partisan ground. Duh. That is a statement of fact, not a moral argument.
Fact: 5>4
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But the majority is stupid!
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Back to Katrina. Can anyone defend FEMA now?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/
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Majority of what? If you think that an election by 5-4 (or even 7-2)
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We're not done talking about the SCROTUS.
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Even the 7-2 is pretty shaky from a practical standpoint. They voted that selectively recounting only some balots violated the equal protection clause because there wasn't a statewide uniform standard for counting balots that ensured that all balots were counted equally.
But, of course, there wasn't a standard to begin with. By that rationale the automatic machine recount that was triggered merely by the election being so close would have been unconstitutional because poor counties used punchcard ballots with a high rate of error, while rich counties used the optical balots that just read the pen mark and are much more accurate. The 7-2 ruling effectively invalidated the election results in every state in the country as unconstitutional.
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Quarterback is the only BYOAC member that I am aware of that is currently 1337.
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Even the 7-2 is pretty shaky from a practical standpoint.
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No, I think that had the court refused to hear it, or had the court sent it back to the FSC, which had already drafted a new mandate requiring a statewide recount, there would have been no new precedent.
In the future people wouldn't be arguing, "Because of Bush v. Gore, federal courts must now leave state laws up to state courts for interpretation where there is no federal question."
They wouldn't need the "have your cake and eat it too" clause because they would have been following, not setting precedent.
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Precedents are not necessary to elect Presidents.
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Wow! Tight.
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It's like a dyslexic palindrome.
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Back to Katrina. Can anyone defend FEMA now?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/
If Bush found Brown to be ineffective, then I think replacing him is a good move. I would prefer to see an effective head of FEMA who is already almost 2 weeks into this disaster than the Democratic alternative which was to stop all funding to FEMA and give the money to Ted Kennedy to disperse as he sees fit.
I also still feel strongly that the local authorities in NOLA are the biggest part of the problem and should not be overlooked in an attempt to smear Bush.
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Back to Katrina. Can anyone defend FEMA now?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/
If Bush found Brown to be ineffective, then I think replacing him is a good move.
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The problem isn't Brown. It's the person who put Brown there to begin with. President Bush has a habit of filling important positions that have historically been non-partisan, with political allies instead of people who have any experience or expertise that would allow them to effectively do that job. Think John Bolton, John Ashcroft or replacing scientists on the National Science Board with politicians.
Before joining FEMA in 2001, Brown, a protege of longtime Bush aide Joseph Allbaugh, was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association and had virtually no experience in disaster management.
An official biography of Brown's top aide, acting deputy director Patrick Rhode, doesn't list disaster relief experience.
The department's No. 3 official, acting deputy chief of staff Brooks Altshuler, also does not have emergency management experience, according to FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509070232sep07,1,1654452.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true)
How can you possibly say that FEMA should be held responsible and not President Bush? ARE YOU PEOPLE MAD? Can it possibly surprise you that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be somewhat ineffective when the President has filled its leadership with people with absolutely no emergency management experience? EXPERIENCE!!! They didn't even have theoretical expertise from training. They simply had no qualifications at all. In fact, the article doesn't mention this, but I think Brown was actually fired from that Arabian Horse job.
I mean, Jesus...how inept does one have to be when filling the post for the undersecretary of homeland security for emergency preparedness and response, to tap a guy with ZERO experience, ZERO expertise, who currently runs a horse enthusiast group. He may as well have hired Saint, for his extensive knowledge of arcade cabinets. Think about it for god's sake. This appointment came from the guy who was the President of the U.S. when 9/11 happened, and he still has so little concern for it that he taps a political buddy for the job. His incompetence is staggering. This isn't merely a liberal vs. conservative hatred-fest. It's not like there are no intelligent, highly qualified republicans in the country with emergency response experience. It's not like Democrats have a monopoly on Disaster preparedness (and if they did, a competent president would have sucked it up an hired one -- it's not like they make fiscal or social policy). He could have easily found qualified, conservative republicans to fill those roles. And yet, POST 9/11, he uses them as political thank-you cards.
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There's a lot of that going around.
Incompetence in government is the rule rather than the exception. The broad policies are clear, but what gets screwed up is all of the details.
The devil was certainly in the details here.
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The details and in the gigantic amounts of corruption by the people actually performing the evacuation.
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In the future people wouldn't be arguing, "Because of Bush v. Gore, ...
It's because of Bush > Gore.
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That's not saying much.
A toddler > Gore
That is why Gore couldn't win.
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Can you imagine how much corruption there's going to be?
OMG we are talking Billions here.
Think about it.
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In the future people wouldn't be arguing, "Because of Bush v. Gore, ...
It's because of Bush > Gore.
Tourettes
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Back to Katrina. Can anyone defend FEMA now?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/
If Bush found Brown to be ineffective, then I think replacing him is a good move.
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I'm not even talking about money.
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An Arabian horse expert. That's who's leading the emergency response team in NO.
I wouldn't call an Arabian horse expert if my water heater broke and flooded my basement. A terrorist attack? Earthquake? Nuclear power plant melt-down? A child overdosing on methamphetimines? A broken arm? A broken beer-tap at a keg party?
I can't think of a single emergency that I would call an Arabian horse expert to sort out. Can anyone here help me out on this?
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I can imagine a scenario where the islamic extremists switch from car bombs to horse bombs, but beyond that...
-S
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I don't know...maybe I should cut him some slack. Maybe he figured that FEMA would probably never need to be used anyway. I mean, how many people have any experience with a huge national disaster that causes mass casualties?
edit: lest you miss my sarcasm, I'm pointing out that Bush happens to have experience with just such a national disaster, which is all the more reason that he should be cut no slack for this.
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Rudy Giuliani maybe?
I'm talking completely out of my backside here. I really know nothing about the man beyond the fact that I was impressed with how he handled NYC after 9/11.
-S
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Well...he couldn't be less qualified than the horse guy...
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The problem with a position like head of FEMA is that no one qualified wants it. You could only place someone unqualified that is reaching above their abilities. Anyone experienced and talented enough to be an effective FEMA head has a better job already than head of FEMA.
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I think that Shmokes could even run FEMA. And he likely doesn't have any horse experience.
The problem was that nobody jumped in and took charge. Taking charge was what was needed. He doesn't have a little office in the corner, he probably has a staff with an assistant staff with a few temps too.
If he would have gotten the right team together, he could have managed. But he didn't.
Nobody has set up a "command" center yet either. When we see Jeb in FLA, he's in a "command" center and works to coordiate efforts with the various teams from the local/state/fed. They have lots of practice. That model looks like it works pretty good.
Nobody in LA took charge. It looks to me like they were looking for somebody else to take charge. Including "FEMA".
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Every comment I saw from the Governor of LA in the first 48 hours was about the lost casinos and their $500,000/day in revenue lost by the state. Clearly the Governor's priorities were appropriate.
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The problem with a position like head of FEMA is that no one qualified wants it. You could only place someone unqualified that is reaching above their abilities. Anyone experienced and talented enough to be an effective FEMA head has a better job already than head of FEMA.
Bull ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. Chad....you just make this ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- up. Is it compulsive?
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Every comment I saw from the Governor of LA in the first 48 hours was about the lost casinos and their $500,000/day in revenue lost by the state. Clearly the Governor's priorities were appropriate.
Maybe the Governor is an ass. Or is this some kind of strange dichotomy where we have to decide between the President and the Governor being an ass, but we only get one?
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You've never been in a hiring position, have you?
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I think that Shmokes could even run FEMA. And he likely doesn't have any horse experience.
The problem was that nobody jumped in and took charge. Taking charge was what was needed.
If he would have gotten the right team together, he could have managed. But he didn't.
Well, I am at least as qualified to run FEMA as the current director. Which is, of course, to say that I have no qualifications whatsoever.
And part of being the director of FEMA is putting the right team together. Part of being the POTUS is putting the right team together.
You think it's just the luck of the team? You think Michael Dell, or Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates, or Michael Eisner don't deserve credit for the success of their organizations? You think that one governor is as good as the next? Howard Dean, Jeb Bush, Arnold Schwartzenegger....who cares. When it comes down to it, it doesn't even matter who's holding the reigns.
I know you don't believe that Fredster.
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Actually, when it comes to government, it really doesn't matter who holds the reigns. They all seem to suck.
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You've never been in a hiring position, have you? There are literally hundreds of high level gov't positions like this. Do you really think there are hundreds of people with enough experience and talent to fill positions like this that actually WANT the job?
Sure, it does look like Bush didn't even try, but don't make it seem like highly qualified and credible candidates would have been knocking down doors for this job.
Oh brother. Literally hundreds of high level gov't positions? What, so like you put an ad in the help wanted section of the newspaper:
Help Wanted. FEMA Director. High level government experience a plus.
I'm sorry, but the same people aren't competing to be the director of the IRS as those who want to head up the EPA.
For one thing, we're talking about Bush's baby, homeland security. We're talking about the front line of a terrorist attack, conventional, biological, whatever.
He's an Arabian Horse expert. The CDC itself is teaming with qualified individules. Are you telling me there's not a single person there with ambitions enough to take that position?
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Yes, but it looks like there were people on both sides of the fence fooled by this guy.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Connecticut, had cited Brown's Edmond experience as "particularly useful" for FEMA during a hearing in 2002. (http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/09/katrina.brown.reut/index.html)
And, uh, being head of the Arabian Horse Council implies that he is an Arabian horse expert pretty much with the same credibility that being head of FEMA implies that he is a disaster response expert. It's probably safe to assume he don't know jack about horses, either.
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Edmond is a nice little town. I'm sure the folks who live there are breathing a sigh of relief that nothing terrible happened while Brown was pretending that he was in charge.
-S
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Well...I've gotta hit the road, so I don't have time to click that link, but keep in mind that Lieberman is a retard.
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Well...I've gotta hit the road, so I don't have time to click that link, but keep in mind that Lieberman is a retard.
;D
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Oh there's plenty of blame to go around.
The bigger questions are still out there. What's going to happen to these people now? How long will they have to be sheltered by the government? What will happen to NOLA when they bulldoze all of those ruined structures?
Will we have pay for a new system that protects NOLA from a CAT 5.1?
What other agencies are ran by people without the proper qualifications?
How much will this cost?
How many people are dead?
What other disaster plans are a disaster?
Do we want the military to actually take control of an area?
Man, the questions are endless.
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Shmokes:
What would you like to see happen to Bush?
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Back to Katrina. Can anyone defend FEMA now?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/
If Bush found Brown to be ineffective, then I think replacing him is a good move.
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Back to Katrina. Can anyone defend FEMA now?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/
If Bush found Brown to be ineffective, then I think replacing him is a good move.
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I have been unable to find a transcript of the Democratic press conference, but here is a LINK (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/national/nationalspecial/08democrats.html?pagewanted=2&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1126160382-7afq6SCZs1PU0TuuSmTXxw) to a NEW YORK TIMES article that talks about the press conference yesterday where Democrats proposed legislation for affected areas.
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The "blame" for this rests solely in Louisiana.
1) The mayor SHOULD have had a plan in place to get the poor out (especially in the wake of Ivan), if he truly "cared" about them, as he'd have us believe.
2) The local and state governments SHOULD have done something to bring the levies up to Cat5 level at some point, BEFORE they needed it.
3) The governor SHOULD have requested, and more importantly DIRECTED, federal aid in a timely manner.
Federal aid is subordinate to the State in these types of scenarios; and can't do ANYTHING without direction FROM the State.
4) The PEOPLE should not have been shooting at the first responders, and SHOULD have been helping each other, as has happened elsewhere when a disaster like this has hit.
The federal government is NOT the primary disaster relief agency that everyone seems to think that it is.
State and local authorities are responsible for that, and failed miserably in this disaster.
If they had a plan to evacuate PROPERLY, there wouldn't be anybody there that NEEDED help.
The federal aid could have waited for a week, as it has in past disasters, before going in to help rebuild.
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I have been unable to find a transcript of the Democratic press conference, but here is a LINK (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/national/nationalspecial/08democrats.html?pagewanted=2&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1126160382-7afq6SCZs1PU0TuuSmTXxw) to a NEW YORK TIMES article that talks about the press conference yesterday where Democrats proposed legislation for affected areas.
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That's what they said in the press conference.
Here is what I can corroborate: Leading Democrats in both the House & Senate held a press conference yesterday to criticize the the Bush administration. In this press conference Nancy Pelosi stated that she asked the president to Fire Mike Brown as FEMA director.
Everybody is reporting that. What was also in the press conference is what I stated earlier. I remember it because a reporter asked them specifically why they would eliminate an agency that was already in the middle of a rescue/recovery operation and add a new layer of bureacracy. I do not know why the internet press is not running with that story. Probably because no one took them seriously as they do not have the power to pull off such a move.
In any event I have not changed my story from the first post.
The Democrats in Washington seem to care little about helping the victims on the Gulf Coast. They do seem very interested in trying to harm the Republican party and president Bush by politicizing a natural disaster.
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MarkVP,
First you said:
the Democratic alternative which was to stop all funding to FEMA and give the money to Ted Kennedy to disperse as he sees fit."
Then you said:
Nancy Pelosi and other lead Democrats yesterday held a press conference and called for all funds to FEMA to be halted and a new entity similar to the one created during the Tennessee Valley Floods to be created under the leadership of Ted Kennedy.
Even if your account of the press conference on CNN turns out to be true, it's a little disingenous to say that your story never changed.
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If you honestly believe that I claimed Democrats wanted to put all of FEMA's money into Ted Kennedy's personal checking account then you are not as bright as you need to be.
You guys are attacking me personally rather than responding to the issue at hand which is: should the Federal government abolish FEMA in the middle of a disaster relief effort and create a new bureacracy with its funding under the leadership of Ted Kennedy?
If you want to debate the issue I'm all for it. If you want to attack me personally then I'll just laugh and go on. Shmokes, I asked you some serious questions earlier in this thread because I honestly would like to hear your thoughts on the issues. Since you have chosen not to respond, I'll assume you don't have answers and chose personal attacks instead.
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They're not personal attacks. They're attacking a strawman argument. You have given some backstory now, but in the context of defending your original post. You simply said that Democrats want to take the money from FEMA and give it to Ted Kennedy to disperse it as he sees fit. Were we supposed to magically infer from that statement that Pelosi said a new full-fledged organization would be formed? How could a full-time senator like Ted Kennedy even run a separate organization like that?
You're right. It sounds ridiculous, which is why it was identified as a ridiculous claim without anyone even bothering to look it up. I'm still not entirely clear if Ted Kennedy is meant to be the director of this new organization or if he is meant merely to head up its creation, but anyway....
I'm not ignoring your earlier questions, I just had to hit the road, as I mentioned to Chad in my post about Senator Liebermann, because I had to head to one of my other offices and do some work there. I was just gone for a few hours and haven't caught up on everything.
I guess you're basically asking if I think he should be impeached. That's pretty tough. I think probably not. I mean, there's the oath of office (I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.)
And I simply don't think he's done that. But, my god, if you could impeach for doing a poor job (even one as bad as his) Presidents would get impeached any time one party controlled congress while another the whitehouse. I think it's a trajedy what the Republicans did to President Clinton. As much as I would personally derive a great deal of satisfaction watching President Bush, who I think has done so much harm, get impeached, I'm not sure that impeaching presidents on a whim is a habit I really want to see develop. Anyway, considering the makeup of Congress it's neither here nor there. Wishful thinking at best.
But Bush should be held accountable. He should be held accountable in the next election, in terms of Democrat gains in Congress. And he should be held accountable in 2008 in terms of Democrat gains in the White House.
Do you think that a lame duck President can simply do whatever he wants just because he doesn't have to worry about reelection? Look what Nixon did to the Republican party as a whole. Y'all didn't recover until 1994. Bush can be held accountable for his ineptitude.
Now if we could impeach his whole administration, I'd be all for it just so the democrats could get a piece of that Supreme Court, but...
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Do you think that a lame duck President can simply do whatever he wants just because he doesn't have to worry about reelection?
No, I don't feel that way. I don't feel Bush has taken this attitude either. I believe from the day he stepped in office elected Democrats have done everything in their power to undermine him every chance they get because they didn't feel he was the legitimate president. I don't feel that benefitted anyone in the country. What I am seeing now is a lot of hatred by the opposition being directed at Bush for political purposes and I feel the victims on the Gulf coast are the ones being negatively affected.
I would like to see the Democrats offer to work with the administration to help during this time rather than trying to make power plays while people are still in need. Although I am a Republican, I feel the overall attitude in Washington right now is destructive on both sides and is only getting worse. A little less name calling and finger pointing would go a long way.
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A little less name calling and finger pointing would go a long way.
That's going to be a little tough, considering that the Democrats are the ones who were actually RESPONSIBLE for the well-being of the people in Louisiana.
They have to finger point at SOMEONE to take scrutiny off of themselves, and the President is a good target.
The Democrat mayor of the town didn't get his people out BEFORE the storm hit, like he should have.
The Democrat governor didn't get her people mobilized quickly enough, NOR get the people out when the locals botched the evacuation, NOR did she communicate with the feds to give them any direction on what she wanted them to do.
Now they are making this a race issue, trying to show how badly Bush hates black people, so that nobody will see that THEY DIDN'T DO THEIR JOB!
The Feds were there within a couple days.
That has always been sufficient in the past.
The people in Carolina had to wait a week for them, a few disasters ago.
You didn't hear about that though because the people there were all helping their neighbors to recover--not looting, and raping, and pillaging, and shooting at their rescuers, like the people in New Orleans.
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Democrats worship satan and eat babies too.
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I was just pointing out that, if they were to actually stop finger pointing and name calling for any length of time, it would quickly be discovered that the finger POINTERS (the mayor, the governor, alot of the people that were trapped, etc...) were actually responsible for their own predicament.
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I'll tell you what though, if I was appointed to a position that I had no experience... I'd "hit the books". If I appointed someone that had no experience, I'd make damn sure they "hit the books". I know there are a LOT of positions that are filled as political thank you's, it's (unfortunately) how our government works. But positions like heading FEMA *should* go beyond partisanship.
Look at how every discussion we have boils into an arguement about dems vs repubublicans. It shouldn't be that way. We're all on the same team. Clinton was a moron, Bush is a moron, they're all morons. The problem is that elections are still viewed as High School popularity contests rather than an actual comparison of who is best suited for the job.
One of my biggest complaints about Bush is how he will not criticize himself. He makes mistakes. Everyone does. I see the point about blaming Bush for appointing an idiot, but I don't know what idiots were there before. That's why I'm upset at him for saying FEMA did a good job, not (entirely) for the actual appointment. I just hope our next "choices" for President include someone that is actually smart and not part of some exclusive boys club like our recent choices have been. If it were possible, I'd run myself. Of course by not kissing a partisan butt, I'd never get any funding. :'(
btw:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday that local and state officials shouldn
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I was just pointing out that, if they were to actually stop finger pointing and name calling for any length of time, it would quickly be discovered that the finger POINTERS (the mayor, the governor, alot of the people that were trapped, etc...) were actually responsible for their own predicament.
Deny, delay, obfuscate.
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No, that should read, "Deny, Tom DeLay, Obfuscate."
::)
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Just heard this on the news...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050913/ap_on_go_ot/katrina_washington
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Erm, was was the Iraqi guy there? Is the Iraqi going to allocate US troops to help in the cleanup?