OLD General Discussion Thread 1:01 PM
Submitted by JustTalking on September 5, 2005 - 1:01pm.
that if I send a gift card tomorrow, it won't get there before Thursday. The earliest I can get it in the mail is tomorrow-should I hold off, coonbug, and wait until she gets there?
This is her work address, she will eventually receive it. I was just hoping to get as much help there before she went south as possible. You can rest assured that she will eventually use the money for her family first and if any is left over she will give to other families in need down there.
Thank you so much for any help you supply.
From Kevin Drum
BUSH AND KATRINA....In comments, Ben P notes that George Bush's approval ratings for his handling of Hurricane Katrina have fallen substantially since last week. These results are from Survey USA's 3-day tracking poll:
Wednesday: 48% approval
Thursday: 46% approval
Friday: 40% approval
Saturday: 41% approval
Sunday: 38% approval
Will "Operation Blame the Locals" prop these numbers up or just make things worse? Stay tuned.
WHAT HANDLING OF HURRICANE KATRINA?
It seems Katrina bitch-slapped the Bush Administration's alleged preparedness to respond to a national emergency. BushCo. has striped all of our federal emergency service funding to aid the idiotic war in Iraq and left our infrastructure decayed and inept to handle Mother Nature's wrath.
Anyone who believes BushCo. handled the aftermath of this hurricane - an aftermath that is STILL seeing folks trapped without food or fresh water - with any sort of finesse or competence is off his or her rocker, for sure.
Josh Marshall has written today on TPM that Rove is handling the WH spin cycle on Katrina. Through the hand of Rove, the story will be told (like WMD in Iraq) even though the WH response didn't happen, nor did FEMA or DHS. Judy Miller is probably working on it from her jail cell for Karl. No doubt he has the jail on speed dial.
they are going to get away with this. I hope I have just grown weary and cynical and that their lies will no longer work, but I won't believe it til I see it.
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We need to vote this thread up, so people can see it.
However, I don't hear him asking to federalize MS or AL....gee could it be they have Repug Male Governers.
Blanco is a Lady Dem, with mostly poor people in NO. Plus, they have control of Gas and OIL...hummmm the plot thickens, why they wanted to take control and make the Dem Gov look like she isn't doing her job. However, Being an intelligent women, will not back down to his threats, that the WH issued on Friday, do my way or else. She stood up against a Bully, who thinks women should be home with their children and not have a role in HIS Gov't, especially a DEM Women! You go girl! Ok back to getting my stuff to the Semi, heading for MS and LA...can't change the situaion, but can help the people in my small way.
the law firm continually told the female staff, off and on, that one or another was being arrogant. At a staff meeting one male attorney said it to one female staffer and all the women in tandem screamed "ASSERTIVE, not ARROGANT." That meme stopped from that point on. They got it.
I would rather spend my life searching for the truth than live a single day within the comfort of a lie. -- John Victor Ramses
See John's diary. Wes on Fox at 1:50 EDT, 12:50 CDT
Saw a picture of Condi loading a box of supplies into a pickup truck in Alabama. She has this look like, "I wish I was buying shoes"
going to watch Wes on Fox at 12:50 CDT.
Be back later....
It's like nothing horrible really happened because of all the good that's finally happening...The General deserves a medal for walking into that studio!
N.M. state police lend a helping hand
By Brandon Garcia | The New Mexican
September 5, 2005
A “moral obligation” called volunteers to take unprecedented action after perhaps the greatest natural disaster America has ever faced.
Twenty-one New Mexico State Police officers left for New Orleans on Sunday morning on a mission to enforce the law and help restore order to the devastated city.
Officers prepared to be self-sufficient for four days, Department of Public Safety spokesman Peter Olson said. They took weapons, tents, water, food and 500 gallons of gasoline, he said, and also received a battery of vaccinations for tetanus, hepatitis and rabies.
Officers hoped to make the 1,100-mile drive to Baton Rouge, La., in about 20 hours before deploying to New Orleans.
Though they’ll work in their New Mexico uniforms, the volunteers will be sworn in as Louisiana state police — a first, Olson said.
Olson said 100 officers responded to Saturday’s call for volunteers, which was the result of a plea for help by the Louisiana State Police. He also said New Mexico might send more officers shortly.
I would rather spend my life searching for the truth than live a single day within the comfort of a lie. -- John Victor Ramses
Yes, most certainly NO needs their help.
And re the numbering: we ain't going no where,,,so by the time Wes is in the WH, we will be saying, "LJM, go to post FOUR TRILLION FORTY FOUR and you will find it there!" LMAO
I would rather spend my life searching for the truth than live a single day within the comfort of a lie. -- John Victor Ramses
From:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/05/katrina.bush.ap/index.html
...
On his arrival here, Bush went to the Bethany World Prayer Center, a huge hall half covered with pallets and half filled with dining tables. Several people ran up to meet him as he and first lady Laura Bush wandered around the room. But just as many hung back and just looked on.
"I'm not star-struck. I need answers," said Mildred Brown, who has been there since Tuesday with her husband, mother-in-law and cousin. "I'm not interested in hand-shaking. I'm not interested in photo ops. This is going to take a lot of money."
on CNN now- Bush announcing slight delay in Roberts hearings- They're actually being forced to let the body get cold- LITERALLY.
Who's that young FOX, dark brown hair, nice looking, who is blaming the City of New Orleans for the failures to act and save people? I don't watch FOX much, so this guy I don't know and missed his name. NVM... doesn't matter... he obviously tried hard to cover for BushCo. Another man with silver hair blamed Homeland Security.
Bush is hoping his base will stick by him still as he sings his church hymn "Love Lifted Me" ... but I don't think sheeple love is going to lift him much longer. ugh!
I would rather spend my life searching for the truth than live a single day within the comfort of a lie. -- John Victor Ramses
from dkosopedia on my blog. Rate it up to get it on top?
Once in a while you get shown the light, In the strangest places if you look at it right.
--Hunter/Garcia
they'd like to add to the above referenced blog and would rate it up that would be good. Thanks.
Once in a while you get shown the light, In the strangest places if you look at it right.
--Hunter/Garcia
I think it would be great to have really tight, succint "sound bite" timelines. Like pia's article above on Fema condensed to a few key sentences, you know. Just the facts lined up. There is SO much over at Kos it's almost too bulky. If we could get some neat concise page..... I'm far too verbose to be that person, however!
Someone "short-winded" should mount it!
Thanks jen- I've been over there reading ALL the links. Wow. What a case. They have started the rewriting so rapidly it takes your breath away. CNN has announced "The NO Mayor is gonna have to go back and look at this and completely reorganize how you handle a disaster." I think it was Fox who interviewed an Admiral that tried to imply the victims only went "hours" without supplies but "it must have seemed much longer".... They are saying the levees broke tuesday, when it was Monday. And I really noticed strongly today that the anchors are hemming and hawing and stumbling when discussing ANY blame towards bushco. They are 100 times more timid suddenly.
I think a good list of all the FEMA/ DHS in N.O. 'turn-aways' would be effective. For starters: the WalMart water delivery, the Red Cross relief team, the fuel, they grounded the firefighting planes, cut communications lines, turned away volunteer firefighters, rescue boats and boaters, DHS refuses Canada's offer of aid, they did NOT give orders to the stationed Naval Ship or the National Guard who could not move without them...
The tracking of the National Weather reports alongside the response/lack of response needs to be compiled, and the levee issue has to be tracked all the way back several administrations as I've already heard Clinton blamed for the weak levees! This has to be refuted if in fact it's another lie.
It's hard work being on the Truth Patrol 24/7...
I would rather spend my life searching for the truth than live a single day within the comfort of a lie. -- John Victor Ramses
"Debate, Dialogue, Discussion, Disagreement - that's not wrong -that's not unpatriotic, that's one of the highest forms of patriotism and love of country, and we need to say it!" -Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.)
Can't type when hubby is in the background talkin' to me... and still going on and on about how brilliant Wes is. :| Sorry.... But Reg got it! Loved his environmental commentary. Overbuilding and commerce has been a priority, and it disturbed the environment, and we need to take care that we don't do that again so that in the event of a flood, the silt beds, levees, etc. are in place to help.
I love him. I love that he has environmental issues on his mind.
Did I say I love him? bwahaha!
I would rather spend my life searching for the truth than live a single day within the comfort of a lie. -- John Victor Ramses
I would rather spend my life searching for the truth than live a single day within the comfort of a lie. -- John Victor Ramses
"Debate, Dialogue, Discussion, Disagreement - that's not wrong -that's not unpatriotic, that's one of the highest forms of patriotism and love of country, and we need to say it!" -Gen. Wesley Clark(Ret.)
Just came on and saw the notice re Wes on Faux and switched it on just in time!
Red tie.
N.O. a wonderful place. There because of economics, hugh trading port or grain and oil. A whole coast at risk for a lot of reasons. Part of city not below sea level and did not flood. Take it one step at a time. Will take many years and billions of dollars to rebuild. Been contending theories about dealing with floods. Man's development contributed to vulnerability. There will always be a N.O. People want to return to their homes, friends, neighbors. A lot of things need to be done environmentally- look at where levies are, built up barrier islands, preserve wetlands.
Can you imagine in your wildest dream that Chimpy could elucidate the present and future situation in New Orleans as Wes just did - all in a short few minutes?
No way!
Ya see.....lemme eelewcidiate this fer ya...in other words....lemme tell you whatchya already might know...heh, heh, heh
....but it has to be done sensibly with attention to environmental concerns. The wet lands have to be restored, the barrier islands must be allowed to build up.......placement of the levies and their spillovers.....
"George Bush has had his day and he's bollixed it up."
Did you hear they have to dump all that sewage tainted with oil and gas into Lake Pontchatrain? The environmental disasters will be calculated after the human ones but both will be staggering.
guess they'll have to clean it up like they did that river in Ohio or PA that caught fire all the time. It was done, so there is hope for the lake.
....they were going to dump it. I figured there or the Gulf of Mexico. I guess the lake was the lesser of two evils. Can't imagine the long term environmental damage either way.
"George Bush has had his day and he's bollixed it up."
He knows just how - so brilliant he is, truly, and such patience with the mediocrity of our media... Clearly no "pol"...not an ignorant word strays from his mouth...EVER
Clearly no "pol"...not an ignorant word strays from his mouth...EVER
"George Bush has had his day and he's bollixed it up."
Wes, being his reassuring self, ticked off A,B,C,D,... of what they need to look at to rebuild in N.O. So there, Karl!
I get tired of hearing from the unconvinced that he has no domestic issue experience.
They don't realize that he once ran NATO, which is like being the governor of a small state and that he has a masters in economics. Couple those facts with the fact that he's an incredibly brilliant man who can pick up most any issue, develop it and flesh it out to its end in short form, and you've got yourself someone who could tackle ANY domestic issue.
has been in a meeting with W for the past hour and a half. I hope that she has James Lee Watt with her.
I would HATE to have a meeting with that thug!
I would rather spend my life searching for the truth than live a single day within the comfort of a lie. -- John Victor Ramses
I hope this is true that Blanco had James Lee Witt at the meeting with GWB. I would love to be a fly on the wall in that meeting......I must of been HOT!!!!! . Could someone confirm that this true?
so don't know whether this has been posted:
Just another instance of very experienced volunteer help being turned away by FEMA, post at Kos:
Snip...........
"Bill is a member of a volunteer firefighter team in the Houston area. He and his team have a lot of experience helping after hurricanes. And they also have special expertise -- a lot of them work for a living on oil infrastructure and repairs. Bill is a professional logistics expert whose assignments have included getting a client's tsunami-flattened distribution facility back operating within a couple of weeks, and pre-invasion logistics work in Kuwait.
On Monday night, his group assembled their rescue equipment and tools, and packed them into their boats along with all the emergency supplies they could carry. By Tuesday morning, they were almost to New Orleans. "We were stopped at gunpoint by FEMA and told to turn back," he told me. When I asked, he clarified that they did not point the guns at them, but they were carrying and displaying their weapons.
FEMA told him that no one was allowed to enter the city to help "until it was secured by the National Guard." The Houston team asked if they could wait. The FEMA staff told them yes, but that they shouldn't expect anything to change.
So they set up camp in the parking area where they had been stopped, and they waited. By Thursday night, when they were still waiting in the same place, some of the team returned to Houston. The rest decided to wait longer. And still nothing changed, so the remaining team members returned to Houston on Saturday night.
Needless to say, Bill is livid about this. I asked him why they had not been sent to some of the other communities in the hurricane-stricken area where security was not as much of an issue.
"We asked," he told me, "but they said that our expertise was more needed in the New Orleans area." The fucking catch-22 -- they were needed in New Orleans, so they weren't allowed to go elsewhere, but they weren't allowed to go into New Orleans, so the upshot was that they did nothing except sit and wait, and then go home in frustration.
What had him frosted more than anything else is that they also have very specific expertise, as individual professionals as well as a firefighter team, in dealing with damage to oil infrastructure in the aftermath of a natural disaster. "We've been doing this more than 10 years," he told me. "We are not amateurs, and we have an enormous amount of experience with areas which have been hit by hurricanes."
"A lot of the damaged oil facilities aren't even in the city of New Orleans itself," he told me, "so they weren't in an area that you would think would have looters or security problems that were different from any hurricane we've worked in. We're used to arriving and immediately going to work."
I'd like to collect an archive of these stories,.. including Alexm's peraonal account.
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/387
"Debate, Dialogue, Discussion, Disagreement - that's not wrong -that's not unpatriotic, that's one of the highest forms of patriotism and love of country, and we need to say it!" -Gen. Wesley Clark(Ret.)
Posted on last thread
Northern Command isn't happy
Northcom started planning before the storm even hit....We had the USS Bataan sailing almost behind the hurricane so once the hurricane made landfall, its search and rescue helicopters could be available almost immediately So, we had things ready.
The only caveat is: we have to wait until the president authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion; we have to wait for the president to give us permission.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/5167.html
BBC link
http://news.globalfreepress.com/movs/katrina/BBC_Katrina.mpg
Question.
Does the President have to obtain authorization from the Governor before he can deploy troops to that state? Or does he have absolute overriding authority in this matter?
"I am the blogger formerly known as clarkuistador"
Do you have proof that she did? Did she specifically request it in her Aug. 28 letter to the president?
I just want to have evidence when I go toe to toe with the freepers/idiots.
"I am the blogger formerly known as clarkuistador"
Lesson learned?
Earlier today we noted that in today's papers the Post passed on a claim from a "senior Bush official" that "as of Saturday [i.e.,Sept.4],
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[Gov.]Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency."
As TPM -- and probably half the blogosphere -- pointed out, there is voluminous information in the public record showing this to be demonstrably false.
The Post just ran this correction ...
A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26.
Good for them for correcting the record. But are they going to be taking more blind quotes from this senior official who got them to pass on misinformation to their readers?......
The rest at.....Talking Points Memo
"George Bush has had his day and he's bollixed it up."
Media Failures, Media Truths
by Hunter
Mon Sep 5th, 2005 at 11:51:00 PDT
Once is an accident. Twice is a plan. TPM, w/ my emphases:
As noted, the Washington Post got burned today by a "senior Bush official" who told them that Gov. Blanco of Louisiana had never declared a state of emergency in the site -- a claim the Post printed as fact. Yet the claim was demonstrably false and by late afternoon the Post had been compelled to print a correction.
This week's Newsweek contains the same false claim -- and though their recital of the anecdote is unsourced, common sense suggests that someone or some operation fed them both the same line, which neither organization checked out before running.
Monday's Times, not surprisingly, confirms that the White House damage control operation is being run by Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett.
Add it up.
So WaPo has made a correction; Newsweek hasn't. Will either one now report that a "senior Bush official" flatly lied to them, using the cover of reporter-promised anonymity to do it?
"George Bush has had his day and he's bollixed it up."
on my blog here. Direct link is to TPMCafe
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/5/132210/9983
Once in a while you get shown the light, In the strangest places if you look at it right.
--Hunter/Garcia
did Bush try to wrestle some extra control away from the Governor in exchange for NG help? Might this be why there was a delay?
Was he interviewed from Italy or is he back in the states? If he's back in the states, then whoa.....he was in Italy for like 48 hours. That's pretty hardcore.
"I am the blogger formerly known as clarkuistador"
He was in Little Rock. He must have just gotten back from Italy, and is due in Washington DC tomorrow for that Security conference. How does he do it?
He left on a Friday to go halfway around the world and is back by Monday.
U-N-R-E-A-L!
"I am the blogger formerly known as clarkuistador"
48 hours isn't even enough time to adjust to the jetlagg.
WES IS SUPERHUMAN!
"I am the blogger formerly known as clarkuistador"
Few Presidents are tested once as sorely as Bush, let alone twice. When terrorists simultaneously attacked the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, Bush went into hiding. When the news first reached him of the New York attacks, he froze like a deer in on-coming headlights and continued reading to children in a Florida classroom. Commentators may praise his bravado days later when he appeared at Ground Zero and, bullhorn in hand, successfully rescued his compromised reputation. A nation in need of leadership and reassurance was forgiving and, in Hollywood fashion, rallied round. Today, the situation is different. No longer believing the lies and subsequent miscalculations that have mired us in the mind-numbing desolation called Iraq, Bush has no political capital with which to trade. Bush’s failure is America’s failure. We stand humbled before world opinion.
In the days after Katrina wore herself out, while television broadcast continual scenes of death, devastation, and third-world deprivation, Bush’s smug and clueless disaster lieutenants, Homeland Insecurity czar Michael Chertoff and Emergency Mismanagement chief Michael Brown, denied there were problems -- let alone a crisis of unimaginable and frightening proportions. The Republicans are fond of railing against Washington’s pointy-headed bureaucrats, but this time the offenders were Bush men. And like their President, they proved to be cold, callous, and out of touch. A leader would have fired them. But Bush, who has no capacity for reappraising his own failures, let them stand. As long as they hold public positions, Chertoff and Brown will be the twin embodiments of a failure that can only be called inhumane.
Headline on FOX
Chertoff: We are pleased with the progress We all understood the mission
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/5/2124/00261
Apologies if you have already seen it, if not maybe recommend it.
Anyone else watching this seriously, seriously crazy Chertoff press conference? Named Lt. Col. Russel Honoree- who has among other things- told private industry to "get the damn phones down here & get the damn gas pumps on..."
WTF? WTF? WTF?
Donna wrote: She's still not found her disabled sister.
I thought I would repeat that Donna needs help for her 8 brothers and sisters and their families that lived in New Orleans (Kenner). Some have lost everything. Please send donations to her work place Brazile & Associates:
She said to mail money/gift cards to her work address:
http://www.brazileassociates.com/
Donna Brazile
P.O. Box 15369
Washington, DC 20003
BlueMoon is also taking payments thru PayPal. Contact him if you have questions about that please as I know very little about it.
Donna is traveling down to Baton Rouge on Thurs to meet up with the FOUND family members. She will be sending me an address to mail clothing essentials to. When I receive that address I will post it.
THANKS TO ANYBODY THAT IS OFFERING TO HELP.
Her story is on my blog.