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Or a warm, intelligent woman like yourself.I'm sure they could certainly use a big, strong man like you.
Anyone over the age of 18 can volunteer, all they do is put you through about a 20 minute orientation. I'm sure they could certainly use a big, strong man like you.
And I know that the help knows no party, but I just thought the Tahoe thing was funny.
Or a warm, intelligent woman like yourself.I'm sure they could certainly use a big, strong man like you.
Or a warm, intelligent woman like yourself.
KSAT just ran tape of interviews with various Katrina survivors of all ages and races. Their comments are poignant. For each, the only concern is finding their family members and coming up with some way to put their lives back in order. There were no politics there. It was real -- very real.
Politics disgust me right now.
Just another example of people being reduced to their lowest common denominator by our government. It's hard to talk politics when you don't have a home, job or clothing, medicine or future, but I'm willing to bet some of these people had opinions about 911.
I honestly believe many of these people will have viable negligence cases before everything is said and done.
I'm really interested to hear how that's possible. Is there some identifiable duty that you have in mind to support those claims? The duty to prevent category 4 hurricanes until the levees have been upgraded?
Acts of nature don't give rise to negligence claims. Texas, for example, recognizes that Acts of God are a complete defense to negligence claims.
Besides that, if your intention is to sue the government, you'd better come up with a rock-solid theory to cir vent the principles of sovereign immunity. You do know that you can't sue the government unless the government has authorized suits on those claims, don't you?
I officially doubt that you know much about the law.
These people haven't been reduced to their lowest common denominator by the government!! They've been shown to be perfectly human -- fragile as all of the rest of us -- by an act of nature that has brought difficult and even tragic results.
Just take a step back for a second, dan, and realize that you just discounted the plight of each of these people -- each of these real people -- by equating them to pawns in some larger political game. WGAF if they had opinions about 9/11? You've got no real compassion for their plight; you just see it as a means to an end that has nothing to do with these people and everything to do with your unrelenting desire to see your candidates gain power.
While you play some game using their plight as a vehicle, many of those people are searching for or mourning loved ones. They are living on cots in cramped shelters in foreign cities. They are wondering where they'll find work. They are wondering where they'll go to school now. They are fighting like to stretch every last cent they have to begin to replace what they've lost while trying to keep up on a daily basis. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, and I certainly wouldn't ever think to use it for any sort of political gain. This transcends politics, unless you're so lacking in compassion that you don't appreciate real problems as anything other than political issues.
FromWayDowntown has the best takes I've read regarding the Katrina disaster. He gets it 100%.
This isn't about politics; it's about people.
Please, once again you under-estimate me.
In my opinion, It's not the levees breaking that may leave the Government legally vulnerable here. It's that the City, the State, and the Feds had no effective plan for evacuating the city in a timely, orderly fashion. I think that will be talked about plenty during Congressional hearings and the decision will be made then whether sovereign immunity applies in this case or not.
It's not I reducing these people to pawns in a political game. I wasn't the one preventing victims from exiting the city on foot because of the color of their skin or because they had no money. I wasn't the one firing shots over people heads because they had the audacity to approach me (law enforcement) for help and water. I didn't lie to people and tell them there was buses waiting to rescue them where there were no buses.Just take a step back for a second, dan, and realize that you just discounted the plight of each of these people -- each of these real people -- by equating them to pawns in some larger political game. WGAF if they had opinions about 9/11? You've got no real compassion for their plight; you just see it as a means to an end that has nothing to do with these people and everything to do with your unrelenting desire to see your candidates gain power.
Yes, when your rich or Caucasian or both these concerns don't matter to you because you already know that you'll be taken care of in case of a impending disaster. However, here we sit with two months left in the 05 Hurricane season and about the only thing the feds have proven so far is that if your poor, Hispanic, black, sick, old, or feeble it's every man for himself. But lets not talk about this because it might upset the victims of Katrina.
IMHO, you can plan for a situation but it doesn't mean those plans will work.
The flooding WAS anticipated for the Army Corps of Engineers but the levees breaking were not.
Sovereign immunity applies in any case in which a party seeks to sue a governmental en y. The only cognizable exceptions to sovereign immunity exist by virtue of statutes. Thus, as a matter of law (and not simply as a matter of my opinion) unless you can point me to a statute that existed on Sunday, August 28, 2005 that would permit suits against the sovereign for the damages that people have sustained, resulting from the absence of an effective evacuation plan, I have little doubt that there will be no judicial recourse for persons adversely affected.
Memo to self: Never challenge FWD to a game of Scrabble.
Now you're passing the buck. You're the one who's trying to pile on in a bad situation by assessing blame (based, I think, on your own political motives) while the problems that exist still haven't been resolved. The issue isn't what went wrong, but what must be done to put things back together. Your continuing focus on pointing fingers and looking backwards while there are still pressing, life-and-death issues to address is what galls me.
I'm appalled by your willingness to take the plight of these people and make it some antiseptic political issue, rather than the intensely personal and heartbreaking struggle that it continues to be.
It's not about upsetting the victims of Katrina, dan, it's about understanding the mul udinous daily problems they face and doing what we can to help them to address those problems in the here and now. It's about showing genuine compassion for the way in which their lives have been devastated. It's about comprehending that for each of those people, the human toll of this disaster will likely be significant. It's about understanding the uncertainty of a child who doesn't know what happened to his parents, who he last saw on the roof of the home they so recently lived in. Those are the real problems that exist -- those are the real problems we should be focused on solving, each in our own little way, however insignificant it might be.
I'll reiterate: there will be plenty of time to assess blame and make political hay. There are too many bigger issues that exist right now.
I'm not so much interested in assessing blame as you put it, as much as wondering if we don't examine the cir stances, and yes that includes the political issues, that led to this tragedy in the first place, how do we know its not gonna happen again? Sitting here in hurricane country I think we can all agree that we all have far to much to lose to let things continue being status quo.Now you're passing the buck. You're the one who's trying to pile on in a bad situation by assessing blame (based, I think, on your own political motives) while the problems that exist still haven't been resolved. The issue isn't what went wrong, but what must be done to put things back together. Your continuing focus on pointing fingers and looking backwards while there are still pressing, life-and-death issues to address is what galls me.
I'm appalled by your willingness to take the plight of these people and make it some antiseptic political issue, rather than the intensely personal and heartbreaking struggle that it continues to be.
Keith Olbermann had a interesting column on this very issue today which I would like to introduce at this time...
September 5, 2005 | 8:58 p.m. ET
The "city" of Louisiana (Keith Olbermann)
LinkSECAUCUS — Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: "Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..."
Well there's your problem right there.
If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government's response to a crisis, this was it.
The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming
identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.
But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”
Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the "I-Me" switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.
And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet's meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural... and government-made.
But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.
No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.
But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.
Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?
I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.
For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to '08, are
wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — "New Orleans."
For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."
In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.
As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the
muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government's credibility.
Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.
Last edited by Nbadan; 09-06-2005 at 02:23 PM.
Since we're quoting sports figures, I offer the following in rebuttal:
The Daily Czabe
Last week in this space, I wrote how I was disappointed in George W. Bush to some degree, for being a bit behind the curve in providing federal assistance to New Orleans. While some of this sentiment remains, I am blown away at how over the top certain elements of the Democratic left and the MSM are taking this. Furthermore, as a rational human being, I am able to amend opinions based upon facts – many of these facts only became known to me by watching the news and reading articles over the long weekend. Here’s what I found.
Here’s Ten Things you perhaps did not know, that might make you think differently about exactly who is “at fault” for “all of this.” (Two overly-general, and constantly thrown around terms I’ve heard all week.)
1. In the case of Katrina, there was huge fleet of school buses the mayor could have dispatched to aid in evacuating people unable to leave on their own. Instead, the buses sat in parking lots that later flooded, making them unusable when tens of thousands were stranded in the flooded city.
2. One of the primary reasons why the National Guard did not arrive sooner, was the fact that the Governor (Katherine “Cry, Cry, For Us..” Blanco) HAD TO ASK for the troops from the federal government, and that she refused at first, fearing that it would “complicate” the security situation on the ground. Contrary to popular belief, the President does NOT command the National Guard in any state. State governors do. Until she authorizes the Guard to be “federalized” they can’t do anything at the behest of the president. Such niggling details.
3. Though the city's crime rate is ten times the national average, U.S. news outlets downplayed the connection between New Orleans' outsized criminal element and delays in rescue efforts. Even as murder rates continued to decline in other cities in recent years, the murder rate in New Orleans crept up. The police were plagued by allegations of corruption and brutality, and, according to The Associated Press, only had ''3.14 officers per 1,000 residents - less than half the rate in Washington, D.C.''
4. Though the U.N.'s own top official for disaster relief has called Katrina one of "the largest, most destructive natural disasters ever," shamefully only a handful of nations – at last count just 25 nations of the 191 countries in the United Nations – have come forward to offer assistance.
5. Guess who IMPLORED Governor Kleenex to issue a rare MANDATORY evacuation of the city BEFORE the Hurricane struck, saving tens of thousands of lives? That’s right, the Dunce In Chief, George W. Bush.
6. The same guy who Kanye West claims “doesn’t care about black people” has more black people in higher positions of authority in his cabinet than Bill Clinton had in two terms. Pesky facts.
7. Despite a modest cut in funding to the Army Corp. of Engineers and the levee projects in New Orleans, the Corps admitted last week that the two levees which failed were both complete and in “good condition” and not part of the levees that were targeted for improvement.
8. I love how people say that Bush should have “known this was coming” and done more to avert it. Well sure, I suppose, but how about the f’ing Mayor and Governor taking a beating first? Go to www.nola.com and read about the 5-Part series written by the Times Picayune in 2002 (FIVE PARTS!) that basically laid out this disaster in shockingly accurate detail well in advance. How about the fact that the city and its leaders learned almost NOTHING from what was a dress-rehearsal last summer on Hurricane Ivan. Even lesser hurricane Georges in 1998 did a lot of flooding damage in parts of the city. But yeah, it’s Bush’s fault.
9. No matter how long it took for rescue buses to arrive, how can you combat the off-the-charts ignorance of the following snippet from a news article. When asked if he was glad to see rescue workers finally arrive, a man said: " no, I'm not glad to see them. They should have been here days ago. I ain't glad to see 'em. I'll be glad when 100 buses show up," said 46-year-old Michael Levy, whose words were echoed by those around him yelling, " , yeah! yeah!" "We've been sleeping on the ... ground like rats," Levy said. "I say burn this whole ... city down." REACT: Why yes indeed, burn that sucker down! And then we’ll blame George W. Bush!
10. In the end, some 100,000 estimated people were evacuated from a major metropolitan city that was 80% flooded with toxic waters. All told, there will be far less than the ESTIMATED 10,000 to 25,000 deaths predicted by government agencies in their simulated “models” of a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans on the nose. This was done under the strain of a hostile criminal element in the city that went unchecked by local police. This was done under the strain of a mayor and governor that made both critical mistakes in the early hours of the crisis.
Do I think we could have done better? Sure. But what exactly would have been “par” for such an unprecedented, dangerous, and complicated evacuation? Three days? Two? BOTTOM LINE IS THAT AS AMERICANS, OUR TWO BIGGEST FAULTS ARE IMPATIENCE AND ARROGANCE. We somehow expected our president to unleash a fleet of magic red carpets to somehow whisk away an entire inner-city in time for our re-runs of “Friends” at 7 p.m. We have the arrogance to believe that nothing bad should ever happen to America, and that such calamity only happens to “other countries.”
Here’s my challenge to any critic, or any other nation talking about “how can America not take care of its own refugees better than this. I’ll challenge any other country, or any other administration with the following.
Pick a large, mostly poor, urban city and flood it with water to 80%. Knockout all power, all telephone communication (land line and cell), and water. Make sure that hundreds of city owned emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire engines are stranded in waist deep water. Take out several key bridges leading into the city. Make sure that you have no good place to put the 100,000 people you are taking out of the city, except for one place that holds about 20,000. Make sure that place is 350 miles away. Make sure your hardened criminal/drug element of the city has free reign to loot and terrorize in the first 48 hours. Be sure to remember that this same element will murder cops, shoot at firemen, and even try to shoot down relief helicopters. Set some buildings on fire and a chemical plant, just to make it interesting. Then set daytime temperature to 93 degrees with humidity.
Okay, you’ve got everything in place, ready to go? You’ve got a thousand or more buses, all staffed with qualified drivers, all of them with a full tank of gas, and all of them with the necessary police escort to keep from getting hijacked once in the city? Good. Now, you’ve got the National Guard all ready, prepared to swoop into the flooded city and restore “order” – even though the minute one of them shoots a gun-toting looter beating up an old woman in a wheelchair, there will be a national outcry the likes that has never been heard? Make sure that a considerable amount of the people left in the city, are refusing to leave, saying they have nowhere else to go.
Good. Get started. I’ll sit here with my stopwatch, and see how quick and smoothly it will go with perfect “preparation” for such an enormous task.
The biggest disgrace in all of this, is that there are THOUSANDS of true heroes doing unbelievable work, and they are being completely ignored by the “instant media blame game” and the utterly inflammatory “professional race-baiters.” There are helicopter pilots flying nonstop in dangerous conditions. Doctors keeping people alive by hand-ventilating them for a week. Police trying to keep a city in chaos from completely imploding. Average citizens, wading through a ish soup of toxins and dangers to pull fellow citizens to safety. If you read enough on the web, and see enough photos like I have, you’ll see lots of whites helping blacks and blacks helping whites.
While I believe that last week was not our country’s finest hour, it was certainly not our worst. We did the best we could, given human imperfections and less than flawless local leadership. Thousands sacrificed their time, money, and sometimes lives to help others. And while the first response will be debated for a long time, I am confident that the follow through efforts this week, the next, and many weeks after that will showcase America’s better qualities.
Money will be offered generously. Homes will be opened to those who are displaced. Care will be given by those who know how. Let the critics and cynics say what they want. Those who matter in this relief effort, are probably too busy helping out to even care.
That was awesome.
^^
exactly
The lack of any accountability continues...
KATCWhite House rejects calls for firing of FEMA director
Sept 6
The White House is rejecting calls to fire the nation's top disaster chief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Critics are questioning whether Michael Brown is qualified to head up the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- which is being blamed for a slow federal response to the storm.
Brown served nine years as a commissioner with the Aurora (Colorado)-based International Arabian Horse Association, before leaving in February 2001.
...
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says "enormous progress" has been made since the storm hit eight days ago.
Hummm....I smell a Freedom Medal coming.
The only people who get fired by this administration are those that won't play the political blame-game...
Washington PostMichael Parker, the recently appointed leader of the Army Corps of Engineers, was abruptly forced to resign yesterday for failing to defend President Bush's proposed budget cuts.
Parker, a former House member from Mississippi who was confirmed as assistant Army secretary for civil works five months ago, was the first major administration official ousted since Bush took office. He had made no secret of his disdain for the Office of Management and Budget's efforts to rein in the Corps, and recently told a sympathetic House committee that he had requested $2 billion more than the OMB proposed in the president's budget. At a Senate hearing, he questioned the administration's decision to fund no new Corps projects, adding that he did not have a "warm and fuzzy feeling" for OMB officials.
Excellent post.
And the malfeasance continues by FEMA...
Numerous credible sources have come forward with examples of how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is deliberately sabotaging Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in New Orleans.
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard appeared on Meet the Press Sunday and broke down in tears as he described FEMA's criminal activities.
"We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines."
Why would FEMA, an organization supposedly tasked with helping in a time of crisis, deliberately cut police communication lines? This is a blatant example of sabotage and a sick push to make the disaster worse. In carrying out these actions, FEMA are no better than the animals who shot at rescue workers and helicopters.
We now have multiple reports of police being ordered to guard key infrastructures in order to defend them from FEMA federal agents. Sheriffs in numerous different counties are guarding highways to keep FEMA out. FEMA is being treated as the enemy because they are sabotaging key facilities in an effort to intentionally worsen the already desperate scenes of horror in New Orleans.
I don't really need to add anything to this thread, except that I want to laugh and point at Nbadan and his never dying love for himself.
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