I’ll be posting about Katrina throughout the day, but all in this entry. Scroll down for the newer stuff.
- On the web you will find liberal and conservative blogs soliciting donations for the victims. I came across two conservative blogs bragging how much more they were giving than liberal bloggers, and apparently liberals are trying to organize a donation response. I’m not kidding. I’d call this “ghoulish,” but I don’t want to insult my more restrained and sensible friends in the ghoul community.
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- If you’re not devoted to the idea of using your charity to prove that Your Sort of People are the most generous and righteous, you might want to go on over to the iTunes Music Store. If you’ve bought something there before, you can just click the Red Cross symbol, sign in, and click the amount you’d like to donate. Your money, all of it, will be sent to the Red Cross.
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- It’s tempting to blame the horrifyingly limp and lethargic federal response to Katrina on President Bush, and not all of it is merited. A lot of it, though… Look, America elected a president who freely admitted he wasn’t a Detail Guy, that he was more a Broad Strokes bloke. Great. But in a moment like this, faith, conviction, and a good heart aren’t as helpful as a head for details.
The relief effort requires the participation of FEMA (part of Homeland Security), the Army and other military branches (DoD), local and state officials, and independent relief organzations, just to name a few. There is only one man in America with the power and responsibility to oversee and coordinate all of that, and we would’ve been much better off with either of our two previous presidents.
So there’s a lesson here. Whethere you’re conservative, liberal, or other - next time, let’s elect a guy who Knows a Lot of Stuff.
—————
There must have been a plan, right? Somewhere, there has to be an approved plan concerning what resources needed to be put where in the event of a massive hurricane approaching New Orleans. I’d imagine that this is going to become important as we look into this - who had the plan and why wasn’t it implemented on Saturday? I hate to harp on it, but clearly, one of FEMA’s pre-identified Top 3 threats to the US (along with “terrorist attack on New York” and “West Coast Earthquake”) must have had a plan of some sort associated with it.
Unless that plan was “Don’t put adequate safeguards or emergency supplies in place - that will only anger the storm.” In that case, well done.
—————
Watching the c overage of the hurricane on CNN and MSNBC, I made a shocking discovery: The news networks really still do know how to report news. They have the resources and the ability. Most of the time, they’re just busy with more important things, like celebrity trials and the Perils of the latest Pauline.
On the downside, I saw Lou Dobbs draw a sad comparison between the atrocities in the streets of New Orleans and the noble deeds of New Yorkers on 9/11. I was in New York on 9/11. Though it was one of the most horrible days of my life, the tragedy was localized, the aftereffects predictible. We pulled together, yes, but we had homes, food, and water. We weren’t living on the streets in standing pools of human waste with no communication and no end in sight. Not to excuse the villainous behavior down there, but it’s just not a fair comparison.
So, today’s challenge is to deprive Lou Dobbs of food, water, sanitation, hope, and family. See how long before his feral, savage nature is unleashed. I’d guess it’d take about 25 minutes.
Fanny Roborat
41 comments
Steve
September 2, 2005 at 4:26 pm
1For a very moving (and angering) interview with the mayor of New Orleans, go to Wonkette and read. Audio from the interview is also available there.
This “government” has to go. NOW!
Mike
September 2, 2005 at 5:26 pm
2Amazon also has 1-click donations set up. Very convenient if you’ve already got an account with them, since you don’t need to enter your credit card info.
ice weasel
September 2, 2005 at 5:39 pm
3Adam, below are some responses and reactions to what you wrote.
—–
I’m with you 100%. As though someone’s moral fiber could be determined by a donation contest, through a blog.
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Good idea.
—–
Adam, it’s more than tempting, it’s appropriate. And while you think make and excellent point about half of the electorate, exactly what responsibility to do I have for the feckless criminal now in power? I think you’re putting this administration in far too favorable of a light. Their behavior has been nothing less than criminal. Their negligence and malfaesance has been singular in my lifetime (and I was alive for Nixon, hell, Nixon was a great president compared to bush). bush’s actions are directly responsible that “limp” response. Don’t let him slide off the hook out of some bizarre desire to be fair. This is about fair, it’s about their own doctrine of personal responsibility. About time Chertoff and Brown learned that lesson the hard way.
As for your closing electoral advice, I know about 49% of the electorate who really doesn’t need. We voted for the smart guy.
—-
“There must have been a plan, right?” Of course, you know better than this. You’re just being funny. I that the folks in the Gulf Area are enjoying the same planning expertise that our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have been enjoying for some time now.
As a friend of mine once said, “brutal”.
Pete IVDL
September 2, 2005 at 6:49 pm
4I just finished listening to a truly frightening BBC interview with a Canadian chap who’s written a book and published a number of papers, who mentioned a whole lot of really scary information (actual information, not character assassination and tax break justifications). Like the fact that levees in the area, although raised after the storm in the 60’s, badly needed to be upgraded to handle a cat 4/5 hurricane, instead of the 2/3 they were upgraded to. Like how ideas (some stark raving bonkers, but some actually quite clever) about saving historically significant buildings were ignored.
I’m unfortunately reminded of Bill Cosby’s old “Noah” sketch - you know, “NOAH” “Whaaaat?” “How long can you tread water?” (Maybe it needs to be updated - “DUBYA” “What?” etc. Hmm. Maybe that skit is more appropriate than I thought!)
Adam, it’s really sweet of you to suggest that Bush & Co were not totally and entirely responsible for all that’s happened in the last few days (OK, they didn’t actually force the storm to actually precipitate); but let’s face it, they are entirely and solely responsible for all that’s happened since the rain stopped. And for much of what didn’t happen before the rain started.
the other Jim
September 2, 2005 at 6:59 pm
5OK. No plan. Not enough personnel. No sense of urgency when faced with a descent into chaos and looting. No acceptance of any responsibility. Am I detecting a pattern here?
SeattleDan
September 2, 2005 at 7:05 pm
6This is from the October 2004 issue of National Geographic:
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/index.html?fs=www 7.nationalgeographic.com
Long link, I know, but worth the read.
Auros
September 2, 2005 at 8:57 pm
7http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12528233.htm
The disaster preparedness agency at the center of the relief effort is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which was enveloped by the new Department of Homeland Security with a new mission aimed at responding to the attacks of al-Qaida.
…
Last year, FEMA spent $250,000 to conduct an eight-day hurricane drill for a mock killer storm hitting New Orleans. Some 250 emergency officials attended. Many of the scenarios now playing out, including a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, were discussed in that drill for a fictional storm named Pam.
This year, the group was to design a plan to fix such unresolved problems as evacuating sick and injured people from the Superdome and housing tens of thousands of stranded citizens.
Funding for that planning was cut, said Tolbert, the former FEMA disaster response director.
…
Both the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper and a local business magazine reported that the effects of [Bush] budget cuts at the Army Corps of Engineers were severe.
In 2004, the Corps essentially stopped major work on the now-breached levee system that had protected New Orleans from flooding. It was the first such stoppage in 37 years, the Times-Picayune reported.
“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,” Jefferson Parish emergency management chief Walter Maestri told the newspaper.
Bob
September 2, 2005 at 9:19 pm
8From the Washington Post:
“This is a storm that requires immediate action now,” the president said after a daylong tour of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
As opposed to immediate action later, which appears to have been the original plan.
Congratulations, folks: your shop teacher is president.
ulwan
September 3, 2005 at 12:00 am
9One of the things that I found particularly illustrative of Mr. Bush’s stupidity was his idiotic statement that there would be “zero tolerance for looting.”
That statement shows his total lack of connection to the reality on the ground. Does Mr. Bush expect the parents of a child to sit idly by and that child die of thirst or hunger rather than kick in the door of a the local neighborhood Walmart?
This is the same “either yer with us or yer against us” stupidity that was so helpful after 9/11. Rather than Lou Dobbs, I ‘d like to plunk George Dubya’s happy ass down on the corner of Magazine and Jackson with no food and water and see if he goes through the window of the minimart or sits calmly on his ass for FOUR days until FEMA gets around to securing the perimeter.
If you don’t want looting, sir, you might try getting some food and water to the folks who are trapped there.
Sweet Lobster, is this guy to be believed?
hedera
September 3, 2005 at 12:59 am
10SeattleDan, your National Geographic link is completely unreal - I read the first 4 paragraphs and thought, why is a news article so unusual - and then I looked at the date…
We impeached Richard Nixon for a burglary. This man, through incompetence, blind focus on his terrorism crusade, and cronyism, has destroyed a city and killed thousands of people. Why is that, in our so-called chief executive, not an impeachable offense? Why are we not calling him to account for his performance in office?
I’m afraid, ulwan, that he’s entirely believable - consistent, even. He’s never taken responsibility for anything in his life; and he still isn’t doing so.
Mike
September 3, 2005 at 5:24 am
11As far as a plan goes, according to a speaker on “Talk of the Nation” today, there was a plan set up in 1992? (maybe 1994 - during a good administration anyway) about how to handle a major hurricane in N.O. There were to be military hospital ships within a days sailing, thousands of national guard troops in the area (guarding the people of the nation, as contradictory as that may seem). Instead, we have all of our resources tied up elsewhere, fighting an unnecessary fight.
Today my friend showed me a recruitment pamphlet for the National Guard the depicted “civilian soldiers” fighting fires, repairing bridges, and, oddly enough, responding to national disasters. Strange, there was nothing in there about fighting a meaningless war while your countrymen die in squalid conditions…
And one more thing (I don’t post often, so I feel the need to rant), who else sees the blatant racism in this situation? Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems that the majority of the grieving citizens of N.O. interviewed on TV are white, but all the images of the horrible shit happening are black people. That, and compare the response to this disaster to the hurricanes last year in Florida. While the scale of this is much greater, the response to Florida was much faster and more generous (do you see any people from N.O. in a government provided trailer? No, these people get the abandonded Astrodome.) Shit. I’m too pissed about this to write anymore.
Mike
September 3, 2005 at 5:41 am
12A couple more things… Forgetting the political aspects for a moment, just think of what we’ve lost as a country. Forget the high gas prices. In the great span of history, we can even, well, not forget the loss of life, but… The significance of N.O. and the place it held in our culture, that’s gone. I’ve been crying over that for a while now.
On a more cynical note: I just LOVE that Venezuela is offering us financial aid, along with a few snarky remarks for our president. I hate to think that Chavez is feeling a little bit of satisfaction over this tragedy, but can you really blame the guy?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/katrina_venezuela
Lily
September 3, 2005 at 8:51 am
13Regarding racism, I’d recommend a cover story from the Globe and Mail (Canada’s national paper) entitled “Katrina’s Unequal Toll.” Sorry, I haven’t figured out how to make this appear as a link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.caom/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050903.wxstorm03 /BNStory/Front/
Lily
September 3, 2005 at 8:56 am
14Oops…though I swear I just cut and pasted that Globe and Mail URL, somehow the letter “a” appeared in .com. Sorry…here’s the accurate URL:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050903.wxstorm03/ BNStory/Front/
Lily
Laura
September 3, 2005 at 12:58 pm
15One thing that really disgusted me about W’s response is his early comment (and I don’t have an exact quote here) that Katrina is a “temporary” situation. Then he pulled out his storehouse of hot button words and phrases–guaranteed to make people believe he actually cares–and said that the city of New Orleans and the nation will be stronger for it. Hmm, so, according to W, the victims of Katrina whose lives, livelihoods, homes, and families have been destroyed should just quit whining for the good of the country? “Ghoulish,” I think, is the word.
Oh, and while I’m at it, I don’t see W or Dick giving any of their personal fortunes to help the hurricane victims.
Auros
September 3, 2005 at 2:36 pm
16Mike: read the RealCities (Knight-Ridder) link I pointed to. One of the other quotes is:
Being prepared for a disaster is basic emergency management, disaster experts say.
For example, in the 1990s, in planning for a New Orleans nightmare scenario, the federal government figured it would pre-deploy nearby ships with pumps to remove water from the below-sea-level city and have hospital ships nearby, said James Lee Witt, who was FEMA director under President Clinton.
Federal officials said a hospital ship would leave from Baltimore on Friday.
[In other words, they kept it in B’more til after the storm — rather than sending it out to moor in Miami (or thereabouts) as soon as the storm path was projected to hit NOLA.
Pete IVDL
September 3, 2005 at 5:36 pm
17Ulwan, I don’t disagree that some “looting” has been done by folks who don’t have any other options left, as you said. But what seems (from the perfect view of the other edge of the world) to be that much of the reported lootin’ and shootin’ has been carried out by greedy, stupid people. I mean, seeing medical teams being shot at by gangs of young males, when those teams were easily distinguished from anyone else in the area, made me truly angry. (Not that me being angry does anyone else any good… apart from my blood pressure…). And surely the desperate and forgotten people don’t really need TVs and liquor more than food and clothes?
Maybe the shooters thought the big red crosses were big red targets? Note that I’m trying really hard NOT to tar desperate people with the same brush, but I’m unable to understand the mindset of any human being taking advantage of such a terrible disaster to line their own pockets. Oh, hang on, it is the Bush Maladministration, isn’t it?
One of our local conservative radio pundits wanted to know when the suing would start. (We have ‘em over here, too, it seems. Makes me SO proud to be the same species as these mental defectives).
JMK
September 3, 2005 at 6:06 pm
18In several sources I’ve heard those shots explained as (completely irrational) attempts to force additional rescues - as in, “If you want that helicopter in the air, it better be heading towards my family.”
Yes, there were indefensible actions, and they’re still going on…but I can’t believe that many of those remaining in the city are actually rational. Frankly, had I been there, I’d have lost my reason, and probably by the 3rd day. I can’t say I condone those actions, but if anything, I’m surprised it hasn’t been much worse.
jmk (Constant Lurker)
cooper
September 3, 2005 at 7:28 pm
19Don’t you just love the way the bush administration doesn’t miss a beat when it comes to putting forward their agenda? NPR ran a story this morning about the FEMA list of organizations (note the “zed”, Pete) to make donations to assist the Katrina victims. Twenty of out the 22 listed were faith based religious agencies - the exceptions were American Red Cross and Second Harvest. Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessings was listed third. FEMA representatives claimed the list was not politically motivated. They have since rejiggered the list, adding a few secular groups as a sop and removed a few of the more stupidly aggregious God Squads. You’ve got to admire these assholes - they are unrelenting, shameless and never quit.
BTW, I failed to attribute a phrase used in one of my recent rants. The superb mental image of “skinning puppies” is the invention of our favourite Ozzie correspondent - Pete IVDL. Sorry, mate!
hedera
September 3, 2005 at 8:28 pm
20According to an NPR broadcast I heard on (I think) Wednesday, as of that date the only relief organizations with boots on the ground in New Orleans were the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army. I have my issues with the Salvation Army, especially over the way they refuse to support employees who aren’t heterosexually married, but in their defense I don’t believe they’ve ever forced the religion on anybody whose real need was a bowl of soup and a dry place to sleep. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the only faith-based organization that can take any real credit here.
nigel
September 3, 2005 at 11:34 pm
21R.I.P. William Rehnquist.
Since Bush passed over some qualified (and conservative) women for his first nomination, the 5th circuit court of appeals will again be in the headlines along with their fair city.
“As both sides dig in for what is expected to a be contentious ideological struggle over a successor to Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, five of the judges mentioned as possible nominees are on the 5th Circuit: Edith Brown Clement, Emilio M. Garza, Edith Hollan Jones, Priscilla R. Owen and Edward C. Prado.”
May you live in interesting times, GW.
nigel
September 3, 2005 at 11:45 pm
22p.s.(preemptive strike)–
Pat Robertson has not to my knowledge pointed out that the sinners of the Big Easy brought the wrath of God upon themselves, but he probably will.
But of course God’s wrath in this case was predicted in advance and the main blame laid on the march of progress and the Army Corps of Engineers (hubris and greed rather than lust and gluttony).
But maybe God just wanted to take out the 5th circuit court of appeals. After all, Jesus was a bit of a liberal if you are capable of reading the scriptures.
Speaking of God, here is a bit of comic relief:
http://members.tripod.com/~Scott_Michaud/Galveston-Hurricane.html
nigel
September 3, 2005 at 11:50 pm
23p.p.s.
It must really piss Pat off that left wing countries (along with Qatar, which is maybe worried they’ll get invaded) are offering money, doctors (probably troublesome ones), and oil. Damn, they’re evil–they’re trying to destablilize the hemisphere.
ulwan
September 4, 2005 at 1:16 am
24Pete IVDL:
Yes, the people who are stealing not to survive, but just to steal and the assholes shooting at the relief teams should be dealt with swiftly, and prosecuted. I agree with you that their behavior is sickening.
I think the point of my post on Bush’s “zero tolerance” remark is his utter inability to understand and deal with moral complexity.
I guess I feel that there was simply no need for him to make such a blanket statement. Instead he might have said, “the first thing we are going to do is restore law and order.” He still sounds like a big stong conservative but a big part of restoring law and order is getting food and water to the storm victims. Did it occur to Mr. Bush that if his administration had acted sooner, there might have been far less looting?
If you don’t have thousands of desperate, starving people wandering the streets of your city, you will might find that suddenly your looting problem just got a heap more manageable.
I heard a woman interviewed by a reporter as she came out of a store that was being looted. The woman was deeply distressed that she had resorted to stealing food, but her family was hungry and she felt that it was a matter of survival.
Now I don’t know about Mr. Bush, but I guess I have a little bit more tolerance for that kind of looting than for guys stealing guns and TV sets.
My question is: why can’t Mr. Bush see that in New Orleans this week, some of the people are facing the kind of pesky decisions that tend to crop up in life and death situations. As a result, there might be some cases in which some kinds of looting are slightly more “tolerable” than others.
Or maybe it’s just that I have zero tolerance for zero tolerance . . .
nigel
September 4, 2005 at 1:39 am
25In all the excitement someone forgot to assign a P.R. team to the Homeland Security Czar:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/03/katrina.chertoff/index.html
Forgive me for repeating myself, but I think we should rename New Orleans “Waterloo”.
Ann
September 4, 2005 at 1:39 am
26I’m just sick. I find myself avoiding the news, which is cowardly. This was all entirely predictable and entirely avoidable. Can we impeach Bush NOW, please? Pretty please? FEMA has been totally worthless. It’s like watching a cheesy disaster movie, where the good guys just can’t convince the people in power that something bad is REALLY going to happen, until it’s too late. At least it looks as though the MSM is finally calling bullshit on TPTB.
I don’t post as often as some of the regulars, but I still feel friendship with all of you, somehow. I’ve been to Murray’s Web site, and I’m exhausted just thinking about riding a bike. I wonder whether Pete IVDL has ever actually heard WWDTM. (And if not, how did you stumble across this site?) I wonder how I’d respond in a crisis. I live in Seattle, and we always have to think about an earthquake or the once-a-millennium eruption of Mt. Rainier. As has been said, this could just have easily been a terrorist attack, and now we know that the DHS is completely impotent. I’ll keep that in mind the next time I take off my shoes at the airport.
JMK
September 4, 2005 at 8:34 am
27Back again - has anyone noticed the advertising CNN is attaching to its video clips? Early in the week it changed from Cadillac to the Army/Army Reserves. Two in particular have caught my eye: the young man back from service who is now able to look his father straight in the eye (oh please), and the young man telling his mother he’s signing up because it’s time for him to be the man (of the family) now.
One young man is white. One is black. Guess which one wants to be like his father, and which one has to BE the father?
cooper
September 4, 2005 at 10:14 am
28For those of you wishing to donate to the Operation Blessings Hurricane Relief Fund, Pat Robertson’s “charity” listed on FEMA’s website, mayhaps you’ll want to know that OB has been under investigation by the Attorney General’s Office state of Virginia. Apparently, airplanes bought with Operation Blessings money had been used almost exclusively to make supply runs to the diamond mine in Zaire owned by Robertson’s African Development Co. Accordingly to former chief pilots for OB, they made a total of 2 humanitarian flights; all others were business related.
Well, I guess he needs to make money for his Venezuelan hit squads somehow.
hedera
September 4, 2005 at 2:19 pm
29Ann, that’s two of us who want to impeach him. How do we get more people onboard?
nigel
September 4, 2005 at 7:07 pm
30If someday there is a movement to deify George W. Bush along the lines of Ronald Reagan, let this be the response:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050904/ts_nm/drowning_dc
As a businessman he took their retirement investments and ran, and as a politician he has taken away any expectation that their tax dollars might someday come to their aid in time of need.
I would perhaps have more respect for him if he would be faithful to the conservative credo and said “these people ignored all warnings; they should be more self-reliant and trust in God; this is a taste of the future–live with it”. But these are the poor, the sick and the old, who did not necessarily have ability to do anything but trust in God. Pat Robertson’s Christian bandits did not have the foresight or heavy-lift helicopters to do their part. And now the Bushies have the gall to say they are blameless and are doing all they can.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Interpret THAT strictly, minions of GW.
nigel
September 4, 2005 at 7:17 pm
31Team Bush spins the crisis
By KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
“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.”
THAT didn’t take long!
nigel
September 4, 2005 at 7:21 pm
32What would Noah do?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050904/sc_afp/usweatherzoo_050904225204
Femi-Mommy
September 4, 2005 at 9:54 pm
3325 minutes huh? I give him a little more credit - I’m gonna say 30.
Let’s not forget that only half of America vote Shrub in… that is by no means a stance that would give all Americans a personal responsibility for preventing this from happening. Someone did have the power to prevent this. That same someone had the power to mount a working evacuation plan for the poor, underclass, mostly minority people who were stuck in that hell hole - he chose to do press conferences and let them starve to death. People may say he is indirectly responsible for the deaths of those people - I disagree - i think he is directly responsible. Perhaps I am extra pissed because of all the other crap he has done and people he has killed - but no, I think I’m pissed because he is a disgrace to our country.
Thanks for the page.
P.W. Fenton
September 5, 2005 at 4:41 pm
34There was terribly little villanous behavior in New Orleans. Probably similar in percentage to the number of people who made fraudulent 9/11 claims. New Orleans is a great city, with a great clultural legacy. That cultural legacy is black, and that is what stands between it and our government’s support.
I am so ashamed of my government, and of my President especially. If I had him in front of me I wouldn’t punch him… I would SLAP him silly. I would slap him till he couldn’t smirk anymore.
Allison in Santa Cruz
September 5, 2005 at 7:42 pm
35Hedera and Ann:
Count me in! I want to impeach Bush, too.
tess
September 5, 2005 at 10:13 pm
36I’m tired and sick from reading some people’s responses to the hurricane as though it’s the fault of the people who stayed (”Hey! They had 3 day’s warning!” crap), as though the entire population of desperate people were simply too stupid to leave. It’s the same sort of unthinking malice that makes me wish for a nuclear war to wipe humanity off the face of the planet.
On a slightly different note, yeah, I’m starting to see more parallels between Iraq’s post-war disaster to post-Hurricane Katrina — the same lawlessness, lack of planning, thoughtlessness that’s made Iraq into a haven for rapists, gangs, and terrorists (I’m getting tired of that word). Who wants to bet that we’ll see simiar conditions in New Orleans for the next 2-3 years during “reconstruction”?
Mary
September 6, 2005 at 10:20 am
37I was so pissed off Friday I wrote the White House an email expressing my outrage. I expect to see the FBI on my doorstep any day now. Naturally, I didn’t get anything but a canned response.
I disagree with the NPR commentator (Ray Austin?) this morning who feels we are all being too hard on the administration’s lack of response. We are neither unfair in our expectations nor ignorant of what needs to be done. We saw 9/11. We knew Katrina was coming. There should have been more organization on the part of FEMA to handle the aftermath of the storm. It isn’t hard to mobilize the troops when you know ahead of time they will be needed.
On the up side, kudos to the American public that has donated over $350 million to the Red Cross. We DO take care of our own.
Murray
September 6, 2005 at 10:21 am
38I think that my main reaction is anger.
Money that was to go to make the levies able to handle a cat. 4 or 5 storm instead of a 2 or 3 storm, was diverted to Iraq and homeland security. (Although that seems to have been a waste of money). The day after the storm Bush was out playing golf. Brown the head of FEMA is nothing but a college roommate of the past head and was a campaign manager, although he was dismissed from his last job with the horse association. On the day before the storm he warned of a cat. 4 storm hitting and being a disaster, several days later when people were dieing of dehydration, he was repeating the Bush Mantra, “How could anyone have known…”
Krugman points out that this is an administration that believes that government is the problem not the solution. They don’t see the government as being there to serve the general public. So it’s fine to dismantle FEMA and send the money to military contractors.
One third of the National Guard members are in Iraq, (Oh, and as far as the death count goes it only counts if you die on the battle field, if you die on the way to, or in, the hospital you are not counted), meaning that they are unavailable for the reason they signed up. At least half of the helicopters and amphibious vehicles are being deployed in the desert.
A hospital ship in the Gulf of Mexico, that can produce 100,000 gallons a day of clean water sat unused, beds empty. What would it have taken to bring it in and put it to use.
Kurgman calls this lethal ineptitude. I would add criminal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/opinion/05krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpini on%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Krugma n
Ann, I’ve been busy this weekend hosting our annual 72 Hours of Elvis 3 day bike festival. Sat was a bike rally, Sunday our mountain bike race (I raced and did well), and yesterday our 3 state metric century, (62 miles). It’s quiet now and I’m catching up on my FA.
Mary Kay
September 6, 2005 at 11:51 am
39Can anyone really be surprised at this outcome with a president who refers to a Catagory 5 hurricane as a “temporary distraction” and a head of FEMA who has no emergency management experience?”
Mr_Blog
September 6, 2005 at 2:39 pm
40Felbarians: are you following the Innovative Emergency Management story from Wayne Madsen (scroll to Sept. 4)? It seems a GOP donor got a contract to develop the disaster relief plan for Louisiana, used James Lee Witt’s name for credibility, but did nothing.
Pete IVDL
September 7, 2005 at 8:15 am
41Hedera and Ann, I’m with you - impeach the little gimp - before he invades Katrinastan looking for (wait for it…) Winds of Mass Destruction. (Sorry about the lack of taste, but I just couldn’t help it).