Quote:

---

Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:

Rivera is reduced to frigging tears...

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SignyM:
How does "negligent homicide" sound?

Please don't think they give a shit.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by citizen:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SignyM:
How does "negligent homicide" sound?

Please don't think they give a shit.

---

How about "Negligent Genocide"?

Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by embers:
I heard on the news this morning that when the National Guard finally did arrive in New Orleans on Friday (yesterday...5 days late) they were instructed to evacuate the people stranded in the Hilton (people with food, water and working toilets) BEFORE they were allowed to evacuate those who were really suffering (the poor, the elderly, the sick, small children) in the sports dome.

And now I hear that the President is too good to accept aid from other countries. Countries that are willing to send helicopters, hospital ships, and all kinds of needed trained organized help. No, no, we'll just leave the bodies to rot in the heat and humidity for another week.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by evilmike:
Shouldn't we wait until the facts are clear?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by embers:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by evilmike:
Shouldn't we wait until the facts are clear?

---

I think there has been too much waiting already.
I think we should write to our Senators & Congressman and make sure they know,
we want to know that the nurses and doctors are getting replacements so they can get some rest
(because those replacements have NOT arrived yet)
and we don't want the refugees currently in Houston to be forgotten,
they are not Houston's problem:
we ALL have to help.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by evilmike:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by embers:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by evilmike:
Shouldn't we wait until the facts are clear?

---

I think there has been too much waiting already.
I think we should write to our Senators & Congressman and make sure they know,
we want to know that the nurses and doctors are getting replacements so they can get some rest
(because those replacements have NOT arrived yet)
and we don't want the refugees currently in Houston to be forgotten,
they are not Houston's problem:
we ALL have to help.

---

I've got no problem with helping and making sure the government does what it supposed to. It's that blame thing that needs time, investigation, and facts.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
Here is a question for you:

Were you satisfied with the 911 commisions report ?

It seems that waiting for answers doesn't work so well anymore.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by evilmike:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
Here is a question for you:

Were you satisfied with the 911 commisions report ?

It seems that waiting for answers doesn't work so well anymore.

---

And assigning blame without the facts is the only alternative?

---

Quote:

---

...government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.... Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans.

---

Quote:

---

In a five-day, tabletop exercise last summer, emergency preparedness officials faced an imaginary "worst-case scenario" in which a hurricane hit the New Orleans, Louisiana, area... Participants drew up action plans for dealing with the storm's aftermath in which calls for evacuation were partially heeded, water pumps were overwhelmed, corpses floated in the streets and as many as 60,000 people died -- mostly by drowning.

---

Quote:

---

Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center and director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes in Baton Rouge {said}
Floodwaters from the east would carry toxic waste from the "Industrial Canal" area, nicknamed after the chemical plants there. From the west, floodwaters would flow through an industrial complex that includes refineries and chemical plants... "So, we're looking at a bowl full of highly contaminated water with contaminated air flowing around and, literally, very few places for anybody to go where they'll be safe." The levees intended to protect the city vary in height, from as low as 10 feet above sea level to about 14 feet, he said. They too are vulnerable because they are made of earth, he said... Walter Maestri, emergency management director in neighboring Jefferson Parish ... "The way it's described, we describe it here, is Lake Pontchartrain has now become Lake New Orleans" he told CNN in 2004.

---

Quote:

---

June 9, 2004

IEM Inc., a Baton Rouge, La.-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, announced it will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

---

Quote:

---

'Sustaining winds of 120mph... destroyed over 75% of the structures in its path, and left the majority of New Orleans under 15-20 feet of water... Sheltering, temporary housing, and temporary medical care' were chosen as areas to focus on 'functional plans' were put in place, that can be 'implemented immediately'.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Gennie:
I must agree whole heartedly with soupcatcher. They should have said to hell with the cost, let's get our people safe. But you have to remember that we are the country of gluttony. We have to have all of everything, and we do not like to share unless it benifits us directly.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by evilmike:
And assigning blame without the facts is the only alternative?

---

I'd like somewhere in the middle... but then again I don't really think blame will fall on those it should anyway... if past history is any judge.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by MacBaker:
I'm continually amazed at the Bush blame game going on here.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
I wanted my President on the phone, the moment he found out about the breaks in the levee, kicking ass and taking names.
New Orleans is the number one port in the United States. One thing they know how to do down there is move mass quantities of stuff in and out.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by lynchaj:
This a major catastrophe and national tragedy and to you it's just another cheap trick to bash President Bush. What a bunch of mean spirited opportunistic vultures. You make me sick.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SignyM:
But AJ- Ya gotta wake up, man. What will it take for you to figure out- you ain't Bush. He ain't you. And really, really...Please don't think they give a shit.

---

Quote:

---

The big disconnect on New Orleans
The official version; then there's the in-the-trenches version

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday, with statements by some federal officials in contradiction with grittier, more desperate views from the streets. By late Friday response to those stranded in the city was more visible.

But the conflicting views on Thursday came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts. The speakers include Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, evacuee Raymond Cooper, CNN correspondents and others. Here's what they had to say:

Conditions in the Convention Center


FEMA chief Brown: We learned about that (Thursday), so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need. (See video of Brown explaining how news reports alerted FEMA to convention center chaos. -- 2:11)

Mayor Nagin: The convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for the 15,000 to 20,000 people. (Hear Nagin's angry demand for soldiers. 1:04)

CNN Producer Kim Segal: It was chaos. There was nobody there, nobody in charge. And there was nobody giving even water. The children, you should see them, they're all just in tears. There are sick people. We saw... people who are dying in front of you.

Evacuee Raymond Cooper: Sir, you've got about 3,000 people here in this -- in the Convention Center right now. They're hungry. Don't have any food. We were told two-and-a-half days ago to make our way to the Superdome or the Convention Center by our mayor. And which when we got here, was no one to tell us what to do, no one to direct us, no authority figure.
Uncollected corpses


Brown: That's not been reported to me, so I'm not going to comment. Until I actually get a report from my teams that say, "We have bodies located here or there," I'm just not going to speculate.

Segal: We saw one body. A person is in a wheelchair and someone had pushed (her) off to the side and draped just like a blanket over this person in the wheelchair. And then there is another body next to that. There were others they were willing to show us. ( See CNN report, 'People are dying in front of us' -- 4:36 )

Evacuee Cooper: They had a couple of policemen out here, sir, about six or seven policemen told me directly, when I went to tell them, hey, man, you got bodies in there. You got two old ladies that just passed, just had died, people dragging the bodies into little corners. One guy -- that's how I found out. The guy had actually, hey, man, anybody sleeping over here? I'm like, no. He dragged two bodies in there. Now you just -- I just found out there was a lady and an old man, the lady went to nudge him. He's dead.
Hospital evacuations


Brown: I've just learned today that we ... are in the process of completing the evacuations of the hospitals, that those are going very well.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta: It's gruesome. I guess that is the best word for it. If you think about a hospital, for example, the morgue is in the basement, and the basement is completely flooded. So you can just imagine the scene down there. But when patients die in the hospital, there is no place to put them, so they're in the stairwells. It is one of the most unbelievable situations I've seen as a doctor, certainly as a journalist as well. There is no electricity. There is no water. There's over 200 patients still here remaining. ...We found our way in through a chopper and had to land at a landing strip and then take a boat. And it is exactly ... where the boat was traveling where the snipers opened fire yesterday, halting all the evacuations. ( Watch the video report of corpses stacked in stairwells -- 4:45 )

Dr. Matthew Bellew, Charity Hospital: We still have 200 patients in this hospital, many of them needing care that they just can't get. The conditions are such that it's very dangerous for the patients. Just about all the patients in our services had fevers. Our toilets are overflowing. They are filled with stool and urine. And the smell, if you can imagine, is so bad, you know, many of us had gagging and some people even threw up. It's pretty rough.(Mayor's video: Armed addicts fighting for a fix -- 1:03)
Violence and civil unrest


Brown: I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that.

CNN's Chris Lawrence: From here and from talking to the police officers, they're losing control of the city. We're now standing on the roof of one of the police stations. The police officers came by and told us in very, very strong terms it wasn't safe to be out on the street. (Watch the video report on explosions and gunfire -- 2:12)
The federal response:


Brown: Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.

Homeland Security Director Chertoff: Now, of course, a critical element of what we're doing is the process of evacuation and securing New Orleans and other areas that are afflicted. And here the Department of Defense has performed magnificently, as has the National Guard, in bringing enormous resources and capabilities to bear in the areas that are suffering.

Crowd chanting outside the Convention Center: We want help.

Nagin: They don't have a clue what's going on down there.

Phyllis Petrich, a tourist stranded at the Ritz-Carlton: They are invisible. We have no idea where they are. We hear bits and pieces that the National Guard is around, but where? We have not seen them. We have not seen FEMA officials. We have seen no one.
Security


Brown: I actually think the security is pretty darn good. There's some really bad people out there that are causing some problems, and it seems to me that every time a bad person wants to scream of cause a problem, there's somebody there with a camera to stick it in their face. ( See Jack Cafferty's rant on the government's 'bungled' response -- 0:57)

Chertoff: In addition to local law enforcement, we have 2,800 National Guard in New Orleans as we speak today. One thousand four hundred additional National Guard military police trained soldiers will be arriving every day: 1,400 today, 1,400 tomorrow and 1,400 the next day.

Nagin: I continue to hear that troops are on the way, but we are still protecting the city with only 1,500 New Orleans police officers, an additional 300 law enforcement personnel, 250 National Guard troops, and other military personnel who are primarily focused on evacuation.

Lawrence: The police are very, very tense right now. They're literally riding around, full assault weapons, full tactical gear, in pickup trucks. Five, six, seven, eight officers. It is a very tense situation here.



Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina.response/index.html

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SignyM:
BTW- Since the White House really doesn't (see my signature)... donate, donate, donate! The hardest part will be six months or a year, when many refugees still have no jobs, no permanent place to go, and attention is diverted to the latest crisis. Please don't forget the victims too soon. Set an anniversary alarm for six months, for a year, or write it into you PDA or diary. Make sure we ALL follow up. And use the link in the very first post to write your Congressmen/ women. This is not right. Things in Washington have GOT to change because...

Please don't think they give a shit.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SignyM:
MAC, you're a moron. Why don't you and AJ go exchange your baseless ignorant excuses between yourselves and leave the conversation to people who really give a crap. I mean it. Just go away, you are callous and stupid beyond belief, and you'd kiss Bush's butt even as he was shitting on you. Which he is.


Please don't think they give a shit.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by MacBaker:
http://www.punditguy.com/2005/09...5/09/ why_1.html
The above link has pictures of 205 school buses sitting in water. Why didn't the local, parish, or state officials use those buses to get people who did have a way out, transportation out before the hurricane hit?


http://instapundit.com/archives/...ives/ 025310.php
The New Orleans Regional Transportation Authority has hundreds of buses, none of them were used to get people out of the path of the hurricane! Why?

---

Quote:

---

A year ago the US army corps of engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, the Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. Operated by the corps of engineers, levees and pumping stations were strengthened and renovated. In 2001, when George Bush became president, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely potential disasters - after a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. By 2004, the Bush administration cut the corps of engineers' request for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80%. By the beginning of this year, the administration's additional cuts, reduced by 44% since 2001, forced the corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate debated adding funds for fixing levees, but it was too late.

---

Quote:

---

"My administration's climate change policy will be science-based," President Bush declared. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the UN, reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy", and excised the climate change assessment from its annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive Report on the Environment, stating: "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment", the White House simply removed the line and all such conclusions. At the G8 meeting in Gleneagles this year, Bush stymied any common action on global warming. But scientists have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, producing more severe hurricanes

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SevenPercent:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by MacBaker:
http://www.punditguy.com/2005/09...5/09/ why_1.html
The above link has pictures of 205 school buses sitting in water. Why didn't the local, parish, or state officials use those buses to get people who did have a way out, transportation out before the hurricane hit?


http://instapundit.com/archives/...ives/ 025310.php
The New Orleans Regional Transportation Authority has hundreds of buses, none of them were used to get people out of the path of the hurricane! Why?

---

The city of NO had hundreds of buses- But here's the $$$million question- Who's gonna drive them when the bus drivers are evacuating town ahead of the hurricane? There's an amusing story about a kid stealing a bus and driving 100 victims to Texas, but generally, there was no one to drive the buses. This is not the Mayor's fault. Some bus drivers stayed and took people out. Some didnt. That pic doesnt mean a damn thing other than there were no drivers for those buses.
------------------------------------------
He looked bigger when I couldn't see him.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SevenPercent:
A year ago the US army corps of engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, the Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. Operated by the corps of engineers, levees and pumping stations were strengthened and renovated. In 2001, when George Bush became president, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely potential disasters - after a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. By 2004, the Bush administration cut the corps of engineers' request for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80%. By the beginning of this year, the administration's additional cuts, reduced by 44% since 2001, forced the corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate debated adding funds for fixing levees, but it was too late.

---

Quote:

---

Amazing how you selectively respond to two of the sources I posted, but conveniently choose to ignore the last one

---

Quote:

---

Even NASA doesn't agree with the EPA on this:
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd06oct97_1.htm

---

Quote:

---

and no one can prove or disprove that global warming has anything to do with the higher number of hurricanes now

---

Quote:

---

Sorry but your attempt to dodge that by saying "I'm going to lay down the law right now - Clinton isn't President, and the Dems do not control all 3 branches of govt.", is weak!

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SevenPercent:

Quote:

---

Amazing how you selectively respond to two of the sources I posted, but conveniently choose to ignore the last one

---

I didnt "conveniently forget" the link, so don't think I was ignoring your 'facts'- I'll go back and include it, if you want, will that make you happy? I was trying to edit so that I didnt have a 27 mile long quoted post, and just grabbed at the meat of your argument- It won't change my response in the least- What Galveston, which wasn't in a state of emergency did, vs. what NO did, is not the issue- I love how you try to spin this - I don't recall Galveston evacuating 500000 people, do you? They had their buses ready? Yes, because they would have had DRIVERS, which N.O. did not have, because they weren't EVACUATING GALVESTON - Not once did I hear, "everyone leave Galveston" - If I had, I bet you dollars to doughnuts there would have been a bunch of empty buses in Galveston sitting in a lot- Holy cow- To quote a movie, you have to be the dumbest smart person I have ever seen in my life-

------------------------------------------
He looked bigger when I couldn't see him.

---