SubscribeNow, I will tell you this--and I give the president some credit on this--he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is General Honore. And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussin' and people started movin'. And he's getting some stuff done. They oughta' give that guy--if they don't want to give it to me--give him full authority to get the job done, and we can save some people.That's the kind of decisive action we need from our pussy president. It must burn the military to hear all those "no-bullshit" qualities improperly ascribed to our Commander in Queef.
I hope that means he'll fly over New Orleans again.
Three days ago, police and national guard troops told citizens to head toward the Crescent City Connection Bridge to await transportation out of the area. The citizens trekked over to the Convention Center and waited for the buses which they were told would take them to Houston or Alabama or somewhere else, out of this area.That paragraph about trying to "impress the authorities" speaks volumes. I read that and I seriously wonder if any of those people are thinking: this is like being a slave; no power, no rights, living like animals at gunpoint, but if I put on a nice dance for the master, maybe he'll let me live a bit longer. Unbelievable.
It's been 3 days, and the buses have yet to appear.
Although obviously he has no exact count, he estimates more than 10,000 people are packed into and around and outside the convention center still waiting for the buses. They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them.
There are many infants and elderly people among them, as well as many people who were injured jumping out of windows to escape flood water and the like -- all of them in dire straights.
Any attempt to flag down police results in being told to get away at gunpoint. Hour after hour they watch buses pass by filled with people from other areas. Tensions are very high, and there has been at least one murder and several fights. 8 or 9 dead people have been stored in a freezer in the area, and 2 of these dead people are kids.
The people are so desperate that they're doing anything they can think of to impress the authorities enough to bring some buses. These things include standing in single file lines with the eldery in front, women and children next; sweeping up the area and cleaning the windows and anything else that would show the people are not barbarians.
The buses never stop.
In contrast, some residents of the French Quarter appear comfortable, well-fed and relaxed. About 150 New Orleans police officers have commandeered the Royal Omni Hotel, part of the international luxury chain of Omni hotels that is housed in an elegant 19th century building, complete with crystal chandeliers and a rooftop pool. "All of the officers that are here, I can tell you in a classical sense, are gladiators," says Capt. Kevin Anderson, commander of the Eighth District of the NOPD (French Quarter). "To be able to put your family's concerns aside to protect the citizens of New Orleans, it's just an awesome job," he says.Well, they've secured New Orleans, at least, the only part they care about. The rest of the city can go fuck itself.
Across the street from the Royal Omni at the Eighth District police department, several police officers keep a wary eye on the street with shotguns at the ready, while some fellow officers grill sausage links over charcoal barbecues. They are under strict orders not to communicate with the media. Capt. Anderson does confirm, however, that locations where officers were housed came under gunfire on Tuesday night. No officers were injured. "It is a very dangerous situation that we're in," Anderson says.
At that time [the '60s], the mayor [Vic Schiro] used to spill the beans to us about future plans for New Orleans, especially the ambitions of the Army Corps of Engineers, who back after WWII decided they knew more about the Mississippi River and the wetlands around New Orleans than Nature--they literally came down to Southern Louisiana and began building dikes, channels, canals, recoursing rivers, damming the hell out of a lot of the natural run offs, totally changing the drainage abilities of the Mississippi into the Gulf below New Orleans on the true Delta. The Corps of Second-rate Engineers--they were activated to build air bases, army bases, etc, in WWII--and they have a history since of fucking up most of the nation's biggest waterways with huge dams--they fucked up the Colorado River, for instance; and they also began building levees all up and down the Mississippi, and you see a few years ago when the Mighty Riv flooded the hell out of Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, etc., and the levees broke open as easily as those plastic bags they give you in the delis do--the COE was gonna stop all flooding in America, the idiot politicians trumpeted and they gave the Corps billions to practice their second-rate army-style engineering efforts with. These fools totally screwed up the Southern Louisiana natural drainage system of swamps, bayous, rivers, creeks, wetlands, marshes, as a result, they left New Orleans sitting like a sink drain, claiming these huge expensive pumps under the city--made by Halliburton's pump subsidiary I'm sure-- and really what they were actually doing was making arable land available to the big oil developers and land developers... What that idiot mayor told me at those breakfasts drove me eventually out of New Orleans as these crooked assholes's plans for New Orleans were despicable to me; they were intending to destroy the French Market with a super highway system...--they literally ripped up the New Orleans trolley system in a matter of a night or two in spite of a huge petition by NOLA citizens to stop them... Anyway, I loved New Orleans, it was so different an American city and even a different kind of Southern City, but the problem, it was becoming more and more, as more and more of the US Gulf Coast is becoming, a majority of minorities, especially blacks. Check out whose stranded in NOLA today; it ain't no white folks, or if they are, they're white trash, I gar-ron-tee you. When New Orleans is rebuilt, I am quite sure they will eliminate the black majority and like Manhattan, it will become a haven for filthy rich white folks.I'm omitting some intemperate comments about individuals and institutions that might constitute libel, but you get the idea.
why the fuck did bush, the fema/horse ass, chertoff, etc. need to waste time having a "briefing" on live TV that could have been done aboard AF1 on the way down?
This is not the response we want, not the kind of response the federal government should haveEarlier press conference with W (paraphrasing):
I'm happy with the response. The response was good. I'm just disappointed with the results
Me likies.
Honore said getting food and water to the people at the convention center was a difficult process. "If you ever have 20,000 people come to supper, you know what I'm talking about," the general said. "If it was easy, it would have been done already."
CNN's Barbara Starr, who is traveling with the three-star general, said Honore is "very determined to keep this looking like a humanitarian relief operation." (See the mayor's order to stop the talking and send soldiers to help -- 1:00)
"A few moments ago, he stopped a truck full of National Guard troops ... and said, 'Point your weapons down, this is not Iraq,'" Starr reported.
Residents who did not have personal transportation were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to. Approximately 120,000 residents (51,000 housing units x 2.4 persons/unit) do not have cars. A proposal made after the evacuation for Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished.
January 2001:
Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.
April 2001:
Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: 'Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program....' he said. 'Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.'
2001:
FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three 'likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country.'
December 2002:
After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael Brown, who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster management.
March 2003:
FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.
2003:
Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and recovery.
Summer 2004:
FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: 'You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it.'
June 2004:
The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: '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.'
June 2005:
Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.
August 2005:
While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.
A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA. Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.
Actions have consequences. No one could predict that a hurricane the size of Katrina would hit this year, but the slow federal response when it did happen was no accident. It was the result of four years of deliberate Republican policy and budget choices that favor ideology and partisan loyalty at the expense of operational competence. It's the Bush administration in a nutshell."
- an e-mail message from Professor Henry Breitrose, Stanford University.
"...it appears that the federal government did not follow up on an exercise last year that mostly predicted what happened in New Orleans — devastating flooding and hundreds of thousands stranded.
The scenario was dubbed Hurricane Pam: 120 mph winds, a massive storm surge, 20 feet of water in the city, 80 percent of buildings damaged, refugees on rooftops, possibly gun violence that would slow the rescue. [NBC Nightly News | September 2, 2005]
Rhetoric Not Matching in Relief
"The Iraqi insurgency is in its last throes. The economy is booming. Anybody who leaks a CIA agent's identity will be fired. Add another piece of White House rhetoric that doesn't match the public's view of reality: Help is on the way, Gulf Coast.
As New Orleans descended into anarchy, top Bush administration officials congratulated each other for jobs well done and spoke of water, food and troops pouring into the ravaged city. Television pictures told a different story.
'What it reminded me of the other day is "Baghdad Bob" saying there are no Americans at the airport,' said Rich Galen, a Republican consultant in Washington. He was referring to Saddam Hussein's reality-challenged minister of information who denied the existence of U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital.
To some critics, President Bush seemed to deny the existence of problems with hurricane relief this week. He waited until Friday to acknowledged that 'the results are not acceptable,' and even then the president parsed his words.
Republicans worry that he looks out of touch defending the chaotic emergency response.
'It's impossible to defend something like this happening in America,' said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
'No one can be happy with the kind of response which we've seen in New Orleans,' said Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.
Bush got himself in trouble by trying to put the best face on a horrible situation. The strategy is so common in Washington that operatives have a name for it, 'spin,' and the Bush White House has perfected the shady art."
"No matter how great a mayor is, and this mayor is great, they cannot function well without good communication," Senator Landrieu said. "No mayor could have kept control of this city without a functioning communication system. He couldn't call a press conference or the chief of police."
...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 — much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday.
"How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.
The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome.
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Everybody: Nagin is asking that you flood your elected representatives with phone calls, letters, emails, etc. demanding action. This is something you can do.
posted by taz at 5:30 AM on September 2, 2005