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Brachy-Pride
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thanks for the info.
so sad, poor people
what will they do with the people? move them to another city?
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lightblue
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L'Boro, UK
Oct 2001
time: 05:32
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They say the city will unhabitable in large parts for 12-16 weeks as it will take that long to drain the water and restore water/power. I guess the aprts worst affected (ie total destruction of property) will take a lot longer to become livable again. A significant amount of people will probably never go back to new orleans. Atm they're brought under in sports stadiums, hotels, military bases and the like. Basically the US has 1M+ internal refugees.
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Bereta_Eder
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why almost all of the flood strikken people are black?
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lightblue
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L'Boro, UK
Oct 2001
time: 05:32
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Because 65% of the population of New Orleans was black to start with. And they were the least likely to evacuate because a lot don't own transport.
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lightblue
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L'Boro, UK
Oct 2001
time: 05:32
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Slight change of tack but i just watched the BBC 10 o'clock news. Was very moving some of the reports. The reporter went around in a little boat to some of the areas that hadn't seen any help yet. He picked up 5 kids in one house whose mother had died 3 days ago in the house due to lack of an oxygen tank (if i understood it correctly). They'd been in the house with their dead mother ever since. Was quite heart wrenching. Also the two middle aged brothers who wouldn't evacuate because they had the body of their mother in their house who died because she could not swim.
Pictures of bodies floating in the water and lying on the street, it was not a pretty sight, not dissimilar to some of the images from Banda Aceh or Sri Lanka 9 months ago.
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Sava
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GO GO GO!
Mar 2001
time: 23:32
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quote:
September 5, 2005
A Failure of Leadership
By BOB HERBERT
"Bush to New Orleans: Drop Dead"
Neither the death of the chief justice nor the frantic efforts of panicked White House political advisers can conceal the magnitude of the president's failure of leadership last week. The catastrophe in New Orleans billowed up like the howling winds of hell and was carried live and in color on television screens across the U.S. and around the world.
The Big Easy had turned into the Big Hurt, and the colossal failure of George W. Bush to intervene powerfully and immediately to rescue tens of thousands of American citizens who were suffering horribly and dying in agony was there for all the world to see.
Hospitals with deathly ill patients were left without power, with ventilators that didn't work, with floodwaters rising on the lower floors and with corpses rotting in the corridors and stairwells. People unable to breathe on their own, or with cancer or heart disease or kidney failure, slipped into comas and sank into their final sleep in front of helpless doctors and relatives. These were Americans in desperate trouble.
The president didn't seem to notice.
Death and the stink of decay were all over the city. Corpses were propped up in wheelchairs and on lawn furniture, or left to decompose on sunbaked sidewalks. Some floated by in water fouled by human feces.
Degenerates roamed the city, shooting at rescue workers, beating and robbing distraught residents and tourists, raping women and girls. The president of the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world didn't seem to notice.
Viewers could watch diabetics go into insulin shock on national television, and you could see babies with the pale, vacant look of hunger that we're more used to seeing in dispatches from the third world. You could see their mothers, dirty and hungry themselves, weeping.
Old, critically ill people were left to soil themselves and in some cases die like stray animals on the floor of an airport triage center. For days the president of the United States didn't seem to notice.
He would have noticed if the majority of these stricken folks had been white and prosperous. But they weren't. Most were black and poor, and thus, to the George W. Bush administration, still invisible.
After days of withering criticism from white and black Americans, from conservatives as well as liberals, from Republicans and Democrats, the president finally felt compelled to act, however feebly. (The chorus of criticism from nearly all quarters demanding that the president do something tells me that the nation as a whole is so much better than this administration.)
Mr. Bush flew south on Friday and proved (as if more proof were needed) that he didn't get it. Instead of urgently focusing on the people who were stranded, hungry, sick and dying, he engaged in small talk, reminiscing at one point about the days when he used to party in New Orleans, and mentioning that Trent Lott had lost one of his houses but that it would be replaced with "a fantastic house - and I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."
Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever by a president during a dire national emergency. What we witnessed, as clearly as the overwhelming agony of the city of New Orleans, was the dangerous incompetence and the staggering indifference to human suffering of the president and his administration.
And it is this incompetence and indifference to suffering (yes, the carnage continues to mount in Iraq) that makes it so hard to be optimistic about the prospects for the United States over the next few years. At a time when effective, innovative leadership is desperately needed to cope with matters of war and peace, terrorism and domestic security, the economic imperatives of globalization and the rising competition for oil, the United States is being led by a man who seems oblivious to the reality of his awesome responsibilities.
Like a boy being prepped for a second crack at a failed exam, Mr. Bush has been meeting with his handlers to see what steps can be taken to minimize the political fallout from this latest demonstration of his ineptitude. But this is not about politics. It's about competence. And when the president is so obviously clueless about matters so obviously important, it means that the rest of us, like the people left stranded in New Orleans, are in deep, deep trouble.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
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link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/o...article_popular
Couldn't have said it better myself. 
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lightblue
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L'Boro, UK
Oct 2001
time: 05:32
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Ouch that's some vitriol pouring out. Guess he has a point, from what I've seen over the last 5 years or so Bush does not have any natural empathy at all. I guess he also suffers from having to follow Clinton in this respect, who could make disadvantaged people feel like they really mattered (whatever he mgiht have thought to himself, the man was a better actor).
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The Emperor Fabulous
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Apolyton's Resident Actor-in-Training
Aug 1999
time: 00:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Winston
After having once again skimmed this entire thread, I move for it to eventually be archived as the ultimate prime example of clueless anti-"the man" circle-jerking.
I'd puke my guts out over it if I were actually one of the people affected on a personal level by the disaster.
You guys are just incredible, you've really gone over the top on this one. |
After having skimmed this entire thread, I have to say that I've seen a fair amount of dumb remarks by people on both sides of this issue (an issue we wouldn't be having, of course, had Bush done the job he was elected for.)
If Bush did it right, we wouldn't be having this discussion. He didn't, and so we are.
No one is blaming Bush for Katrina. We are angry at him, being our leader, for not leading. If Roosevelt had acted the way Bush has during Pearl Harbor, he would have been crucified.
If I were one of the victims, I would puke my guts out hearing you, a foreigner, say anything about fellow Americans lashing out at what they see went wrong. On some level, the poor leadership cost lives. Their lives. Their President let them down. My President let us down. Who are you to say anything?
After September 11th, it is obvious that Bush saw that he was falling heavily out of favor, listened to his advisors, and became the Cowboy that was going to destroy the badguys, and we rallied around him. However, that was when we were attacked by an enemy which caused the deaths of thousands of Americans. Now, ineptitude within our own nation has added to this horrible event.
He can try to become the rally point again, but it won't work. Bush will not have the same luck this time around.
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Edan
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Barbara Bush: Things Working Out "Very Well" for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans
quote:
Accompanying her husband, former President George H.W.Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated, "This is working very well for them."
The former First Lady's remarks were aired this evening on National Public Radio's "Marketplace" program.
She was part of a group in Houston today at the Astrodome that included her husband and former President Bill Clinton, who were chosen by her son, the current president, to head fundraising efforts for the recovery. Sen. Hilary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama were also present.
In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston."
Then she added: "What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this [she chuckles slightly]is working very well for them." |
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Brachy-Pride
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well, she is an old woman
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Guynemer
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Terrific.
Here's an idea: let's put former horse association officials in charge of EVERY Federal agency! Then the whole government will operate on the same level of efficiency and competence as FEMA.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:32
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You people should be ashamed of yourselves for questioning your government. It's very un-Danish. Don't you know that George W. Bush is great. The real fault is the media for exaggerating the story. Everything is fine in New Orleans. Crisis? What crisis?
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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:32
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Keith Olbermann just delivered this editorial. Holy ****.
quote:
SECAUCUS — 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 forseen," 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.
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"21st Century Marie Antioinette." Indeed.
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Sava
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GO GO GO!
Mar 2001
time: 23:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Whoha
Bush isn't going to lose too many points in the poll with images like this one coming out because sucking the least is actually an accomplishment. |
Actually, you have a point.
What I mean is, you are explaining why almost half the country is stupid. Because they are believing in this garbage. Yes, a picture of a few buses from the air. Nevermind the logistical fallacies of that argument, which I already pointed out.
Sorry Whoha, your propaganda doesn't work.
Bush is the one who has sucked the most in this whole disaster.
I'll quickly rehash the points about the buses...
not enough buses to move 100,000 in the time allotted... no drivers, no fuel, no effective plan for picking up and dropping off, no destination... they couldn't even have done it if they had a month to plan and rehearse it...
This little strawman about the buses doesn't even begin to excuse the massive failures of the Bush administration. FAILURE UPON FAILURE UPON FAILURE UPON FAILURE.
And probably tens of thousands of people are dead because of Bush's failure. That doesn't even take into account the despicable acts they perpetrated. The photo ops... the grounding of the rescue operations...
it's criminally negligent homicide.
And if America had any sense of moral justice, Bush would be hanging from a noose along Pennsylvania Ave... and every victim of this hurricane who lost a loved one because of his incompetence would be allowed to throw rocks at his flailing corpse.
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06-09-2005 01:28
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