| |
|
#211
09-05-2005, 10:52 AM
|
||||
|
||||
^ That's heart breaking... poor things
|
|
#212
09-05-2005, 11:09 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The Times-Picayune of New Orleans printed this editorial in its Sunday edition, criticizing the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina and calling on every FEMA official to be fired: An open letter to the President Dear Mr. President: We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right." Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism. Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It's accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718. How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks. Despite the city's multiple points of entry, our nation's bureaucrats spent days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city's stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies. Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city. Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning. Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach. We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame. Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don't know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city's death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher. It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren't they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn't suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials? State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn't have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially. In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn't known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We've provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day." Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President. Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a job."[/B] That's unbelievable. There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too. We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We're no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued. No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn't be reached. Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again. When you do, we will be the first to applaud. Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/04/tim...ial/index.html
__________________
 save the cheerleader - save the world
|
|
#213
09-05-2005, 11:14 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
__________________
save the cheerleader - save the world
|
|
#214
09-05-2005, 11:17 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
From Anne Rice, whom I met once and thought a real treasure - what a lady. Fortunately, it appears her former house on First Street, which was the subject of "The Witching Hour" was spared, a small consolation amongst the ramoant death and destruction, but that house holds a special place for me as a former girlfriend's parents owned it prior to Rice and I spent time there.
___________________________________________________________ September 4, 2005 Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? By ANNE RICE La Jolla, Calif. WHAT do people really know about New Orleans? Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land? The first literary magazine ever published in Louisiana was the work of black men, French-speaking poets and writers who brought together their work in three issues of a little book called L'Album Littéraire. That was in the 1840's, and by that time the city had a prosperous class of free black artisans, sculptors, businessmen, property owners, skilled laborers in all fields. Thousands of slaves lived on their own in the city, too, making a living at various jobs, and sending home a few dollars to their owners in the country at the end of the month. This is not to diminish the horror of the slave market in the middle of the famous St. Louis Hotel, or the injustice of the slave labor on plantations from one end of the state to the other. It is merely to say that it was never all "have or have not" in this strange and beautiful city. Later in the 19th century, as the Irish immigrants poured in by the thousands, filling the holds of ships that had emptied their cargoes of cotton in Liverpool, and as the German and Italian immigrants soon followed, a vital and complex culture emerged. Huge churches went up to serve the great faith of the city's European-born Catholics; convents and schools and orphanages were built for the newly arrived and the struggling; the city expanded in all directions with new neighborhoods of large, graceful houses, or areas of more humble cottages, even the smallest of which, with their floor-length shutters and deep-pitched roofs, possessed an undeniable Caribbean charm. Through this all, black culture never declined in Louisiana. In fact, New Orleans became home to blacks in a way, perhaps, that few other American cities have ever been. Dillard University and Xavier University became two of the most outstanding black colleges in America; and once the battles of desegregation had been won, black New Orleanians entered all levels of life, building a visible middle class that is absent in far too many Western and Northern American cities to this day. The influence of blacks on the music of the city and the nation is too immense and too well known to be described. It was black musicians coming down to New Orleans for work who nicknamed the city "the Big Easy" because it was a place where they could always find a job. But it's not fair to the nature of New Orleans to think of jazz and the blues as the poor man's music, or the music of the oppressed. Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy. Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was theirs. And so New Orleans prospered, slowly, unevenly, but surely - home to Protestants and Catholics, including the Irish parading through the old neighborhood on St. Patrick's Day as they hand out cabbages and potatoes and onions to the eager crowds; including the Italians, with their lavish St. Joseph's altars spread out with cakes and cookies in homes and restaurants and churches every March; including the uptown traditionalists who seek to preserve the peace and beauty of the Garden District; including the Germans with their clubs and traditions; including the black population playing an ever increasing role in the city's civic affairs. Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920's couldn't do. Nature had done what "modern life" with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn't do. It has done what racism couldn't do, and what segregation couldn't do either. Nature has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii. • I share this history for a reason - and to answer questions that have arisen these last few days. Almost as soon as the cameras began panning over the rooftops, and the helicopters began chopping free those trapped in their attics, a chorus of voices rose. "Why didn't they leave?" people asked both on and off camera. "Why did they stay there when they knew a storm was coming?" One reporter even asked me, "Why do people live in such a place?" Then as conditions became unbearable, the looters took to the streets. Windows were smashed, jewelry snatched, stores broken open, water and food and televisions carried out by fierce and uninhibited crowds. Now the voices grew even louder. How could these thieves loot and pillage in a time of such crisis? How could people shoot one another? Because the faces of those drowning and the faces of those looting were largely black faces, race came into the picture. What kind of people are these, the people of New Orleans, who stay in a city about to be flooded, and then turn on one another? Well, here's an answer. Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. They didn't have the money. They didn't have the vehicles. They didn't have any place to go. They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do - they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn. What's more, thousands more who could have left stayed behind to help others. They went out in the helicopters and pulled the survivors off rooftops; they went through the flooded streets in their boats trying to gather those they could find. Meanwhile, city officials tried desperately to alleviate the worsening conditions in the Superdome, while makeshift shelters and hotels and hospitals struggled. And where was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to stop the looting and care for the refugees. And it's true: eventually, help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid? Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That's my question. I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very gentleness that gives them their endurance. They will rebuild as they have after storms of the past; and they will stay in New Orleans because it is where they have always lived, where their mothers and their fathers lived, where their churches were built by their ancestors, where their family graves carry names that go back 200 years. They will stay in New Orleans where they can enjoy a sweetness of family life that other communities lost long ago. But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs. Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you. Anne Rice is the author of the forthcoming novel "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt."
__________________
save the cheerleader - save the world
|
|
#215
09-05-2005, 11:19 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Halliburton Subsidiary Taps Contract For Repairs
By Lolita C. Baldor Associated Press Monday, September 5, 2005; A20 An Arlington-based Halliburton Co. subsidiary that has been criticized for its reconstruction work in Iraq has begun tapping a $500 million Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and Marine facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root Services Inc., won the competitive bid contract last July to provide debris removal and other emergency work associated with natural disasters. Jan Davis, a spokeswoman for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, said yesterday that KBR would receive $12 million for work at the Naval Air Station at Pascagoula, Miss., the Naval Station at Gulfport, Miss., and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. KBR will receive $4.6 million for work at two smaller Navy facilities in New Orleans and others in the South. The company has provided similar work after major disasters in the United States and abroad for more than 15 years, including in Florida after Hurricane Andrew. KBR has been at the center of scrutiny for receiving a five-year, no-bid contract to restore Iraqi oil fields shortly before the war began in 2003. Halliburton has reported being paid $10.7 billion for Iraq-related government work during 2003 and 2004. The company reported its pretax profits from that work as $163 million. Pentagon auditors have questioned tens of millions of dollars of Halliburton charges for its operations there. Last month three congressional Democrats asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to investigate the demotion of a senior civilian Army official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, who publicly criticized the awarding of that contract. Vice President Cheney headed Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, and Democrats have questioned whether the firm received favorable treatment because of his connection. __________________________________________________________ this one was competitive and they are good at doing the work  but still 
__________________
save the cheerleader - save the world
|
|
#216
09-05-2005, 11:32 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
Goodness, what will that company do after Bush's 2nd term ends?!
|
|
#217
09-05-2005, 11:35 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
but here is an article that puts it into perspective: US: Halliburton Lobby Costs Drop by Maud S. Beelman, Boston Globe March 27th, 2004 WASHINGTON - Halliburton, the oil and construction conglomerate formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, dramatically reduced what it spent on lobbying Congress and the federal government after the Bush-Cheney administration took office in January 2001. During the last two years of the Clinton administration, Halliburton reported spending $1.2 million lobbying the Senate, House of Representatives, and various executive branch departments, according to records reviewed by the Globe. In comparison, during the first two years of the Bush administration, Halliburton reported spending just $600,000. Despite the dropoff in lobbying, the value of Halliburton's work began to increase in the run-up to the Iraq War, and eventually came to be worth more than $8 billion for overseeing aspects of the Iraqi reconstruction. Its federal contracts never exceeded $1 billion per year under the Clinton administration. A Halliburton spokeswoman said the cuts in lobbying funds reflected a decision to rely more on industrywide lobbyists than individuals representing the company's particular interests. But James Thurber, an American University professor who studies interest groups and lobbying, was skeptical of that explanation. "They're already in; they don't need to lobby any more," Thurber said of Halliburton. The flood of business to Halliburton for the Iraq reconstruction, coupled with allegations that it overcharged the government on some aspects of its contracts, has led some Democrats to contend the company may be benefiting from its association with the Bush administration. Cheney has denied playing any role in giving Halliburton contracts or expanding existing contracts. And last month, Halliburton launched a media campaign to counter suggestions that it had benefited from its association with Cheney, whose blind trust continues to receive payments from the company. The vice president has said he insured the payments so they would neither rise nor fall depending on changes in the company's business. "We're serving the troops because of what we know, not who we know," Dave Lesar, who succeeded Cheney as Halliburton's president and CEO, says in one television ad broadcast in Washington. Halliburton's lobbying activities are spelled out in documents submitted under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, which mandates that those who lobby Congress or the executive branch file twice-yearly reports on their activities. The latest report shows Halliburton spending $150,000 for the first six months of 2003. Reports for the second half of 2003 are not yet public. "In recent years, we have joined others in their efforts as a team approach versus an individual company effort," Wendy Hall, Halliburton's director of public relations, wrote in an e-mail when asked about the decline. "We are doing business in a completely different environment; issues have changed, budgets have changed, and the economy has changed." Under the Clinton administration, Halliburton's business grew but never exceeded $839 million per year, according to the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity. The Army Corps of Engineers has told members of Congress that Halliburton was awarded the Iraq contracts because it had won a competitively bid contract in December 2001 to support the military's operations abroad, beating out the previous contract holder, DynCorps, as well as Raytheon. That put it in a position to receive a no-bid classified order to design a contingency plan to deal with oil well fires in the event of a war in Iraq in the fall of 2002. After the invasion, the Corps greatly expanded Halliburton's contract without competitive bidding because, the Corps has said, the company was the only one in a position to implement the plan on time because it designed the plan. But critics have insisted that more of the billions of dollars in work being given to Halliburton should have been put out to competitive bid, and that the Bush administration should have done more to assure that the company was not amassing unreasonable profits. Companies employ lobbyists - often firms of lawyers or former government officials with strong political ties - to ensure their views are heard and their interests are cared for on Capitol Hill, at the White House, and throughout the federal government. Halliburton's chief lobbyist, for example, is Charles Dominy, a retired general with the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees its contracts in Iraq. Lobbying and employing former government officials are not the only source of influence in Washington. Campaign contributions offer a third corridor of access. In the last presidential election, Halliburton, its subsidiaries, and employees contributed $536,765 to federal candidates, party committees, and leadership PACs, or political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Ninety-seven percent of that, or $521,715, went to Republicans. The same trend was clear in the 1996 election cycle, when 96 percent of Halliburton's $448,563 in political contributions went to Republicans. So far in this latest presidential election cycle, 88 percent of Halliburton's giving has gone to Republicans, according to the agency. The lobbying reports offer the only quantifiable measure of a company's lobbying activities, but the Rev. Edward B. Arroyo, co-author of "The Ethics of Lobbying: Organized Interests, Political Power, and the Common Good," cautions against assuming a causal relationship between Halliburton's decreased spending on lobbying and Cheney's presence in the Bush administration. "There's obviously a correlation, a very crude correlation, about which party was in power in 1999-2000 and which party was in power in 2001, and, of course, the vice president was head of Halliburton," Arroyo said by phone from New Orleans, where he directs an ethics in public policy program at Loyola University in collaboration with Georgetown University. "But it's the deception of a correlation." "There's just a lot more types of lobbying that you don't have to register," including public relations strategies and grass-roots campaigns, he added. "Halliburton may be doing all kinds of lobbying that we can't get a handle on." http://www.corpwatch.org/print_article.php?id=11251
__________________
save the cheerleader - save the world
|
|
#218
09-05-2005, 11:46 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
No matter his personal life, Rich can turn a phrase
 September 4, 2005 Falluja Floods the Superdome By FRANK RICH AS the levees cracked open and ushered hell into New Orleans on Tuesday, President Bush once again chose to fly away from Washington, not toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate the many differences between a natural catastrophe and a terrorist attack. But character doesn't change: it is immutable, and it is destiny. As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2. After dispatching Katrina with a few sentences of sanctimonious boilerplate ("our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens"), he turned to his more important task. The war in Iraq is World War II. George W. Bush is F.D.R. And anyone who refuses to stay his course is soft on terrorism and guilty of a pre-9/11 "mind-set of isolation and retreat." Yet even as Mr. Bush promised "victory" (a word used nine times in this speech on Tuesday), he was standing at the totemic scene of his failure. It was along this same San Diego coastline that he declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln more than two years ago. For this return engagement, The Washington Post reported, the president's stage managers made sure he was positioned so that another hulking aircraft carrier nearby would stay off-camera, lest anyone be reminded of that premature end of "major combat operations." This administration would like us to forget a lot, starting with the simple fact that next Sunday is the fourth anniversary of the day we were attacked by Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Even before Katrina took command of the news, Sept. 11, 2005, was destined to be a half-forgotten occasion, distorted and sullied by a grotesquely inappropriate Pentagon-sponsored country music jamboree on the Mall. But hard as it is to reflect upon so much sorrow at once, we cannot allow ourselves to forget the real history surrounding 9/11; it is the Rosetta stone for what is happening now. If we are to pull ourselves out of the disasters of Katrina and Iraq alike, we must live in the real world, not the fantasyland of the administration's faith-based propaganda. Everything connects. Though history is supposed to occur first as tragedy, then as farce, even at this early stage we can see that tragedy is being repeated once more as tragedy. From the president's administration's inattention to threats before 9/11 to his disappearing act on the day itself to the reckless blundering in the ill-planned war of choice that was 9/11's bastard offspring, Katrina is déjÃ* vu with a vengeance. The president's declaration that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleezza Rice's "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." The administration's complete obliviousness to the possibilities for energy failures, food and water deprivation, and civil disorder in a major city under siege needs only the Donald Rumsfeld punch line of "Stuff happens" for a coup de grâce. How about shared sacrifice, so that this time we might get the job done right? After Mr. Bush's visit on "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Diane Sawyer reported on a postinterview conversation in which he said, "There won't have to be tax increases." But on a second go-round, even the right isn't so easily fooled by this drill (with the reliable exception of Peggy Noonan, who found much reassurance in Mr. Bush's initial autopilot statement about the hurricane, with its laundry list of tarps and blankets). This time the fecklessness and deceit were all too familiar. They couldn't be obliterated by a bullhorn or by the inspiring initial post-9/11 national unity that bolstered the president until he betrayed it. This time the heartlessness beneath the surface of his actions was more pronounced. You could almost see Mr. Bush's political base starting to crumble at its very epicenter, Fox News, by Thursday night. Even there it was impossible to ignore that the administration was no more successful at securing New Orleans than it had been at pacifying Falluja. A visibly exasperated Shepard Smith, covering the story on the ground in Louisiana, went further still, tossing hand grenades of harsh reality into Bill O'Reilly's usually spin-shellacked "No Spin Zone." Among other hard facts, Mr. Smith noted "that the haves of this city, the movers and shakers of this city, evacuated the city either immediately before or immediately after the storm." What he didn't have to say, since it was visible to the entire world, was that it was the poor who were left behind to drown. In that sense, the inequality of the suffering has not only exposed the sham of the relentless photo-ops with black schoolchildren whom the president trots out at campaign time to sell his "compassionate conservatism"; it has also positioned Katrina before a rapt late-summer audience as a replay of the sinking of the Titanic. New Orleans's first-class passengers made it safely into lifeboats; for those in steerage, it was a horrifying spectacle of every man, woman and child for himself. THE captain in this case, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was so oblivious to those on the lower decks that on Thursday he applauded the federal response to the still rampaging nightmare as "really exceptional." He told NPR that he had "not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water" - even though every television viewer in the country had been hearing of those 25,000 stranded refugees for at least a day. This Titanic syndrome, too, precisely echoes the post-9/11 wartime history of an administration that has rewarded the haves at home with economic goodies while leaving the have-nots to fight in Iraq without proper support in manpower or armor. Surely it's only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer. On Thursday morning, the president told Diane Sawyer that he hoped "people don't play politics during this period of time." Presumably that means that the photos of him wistfully surveying the Katrina damage from Air Force One won't be sold to campaign donors as the equivalent 9/11 photos were. Maybe he'll even call off the right-wing attack machine so it won't Swift-boat the Katrina survivors who emerge to ask tough questions as it has Cindy Sheehan and those New Jersey widows who had the gall to demand a formal 9/11 inquiry. But a president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy. Eventually we're going to have to examine the administration's behavior before, during and after this storm as closely as its history before, during and after 9/11. We're going to have to ask if troops and matériel of all kinds could have arrived faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire. We're going to have to ask why it took almost two days of people being without food, shelter and water for Mr. Bush to get back to Washington. Most of all, we're going to have to face the reality that with this disaster, the administration has again increased our vulnerability to the terrorists we were supposed to be fighting after 9/11. As Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, pointed out to The Washington Post last week in talking about the fallout from the war in Iraq, there have been twice as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq in the three years after 9/11 than in the three years before. Now, thanks to Mr. Bush's variously incompetent, diffident and hubristic mismanagement of the attack by Katrina, he has sent the entire world a simple and unambiguous message: whatever the explanation, the United States is unable to fight its current war and protect homeland security at the same time. The answers to what went wrong in Washington and on the Gulf Coast will come later, and, if the history of 9/11 is any guide, all too slowly, after the administration and its apologists erect every possible barrier to keep us from learning the truth. But as Americans dig out from Katrina and slouch toward another anniversary of Al Qaeda's strike, we have to acknowledge the full extent and urgency of our crisis. The world is more perilous than ever, and for now, to paraphrase Mr. Rumsfeld, we have no choice but to fight the war with the president we have. www.nytimes.com
__________________
save the cheerleader - save the world
|
|
#219
09-05-2005, 11:48 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
|
|
#220
09-05-2005, 11:56 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
I think they should reason all they can and if that does not work, they should sedate by force anyone who refuses to leave and then put them in the boat. If the dart kills them that is unfortunate, but the odds are they would have died anyway and their stubborness will not have caused the death of another waiting and the forcible removing of them will not endanger the rescue operators, God bless them for their efforts BTW.
_________________________________________________________________ September 5, 2005 Rescuers, Going Door to Door, Find Stubbornness and Silence By JERE LONGMAN NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 4 - The boat pulled up to the living room window on Read Boulevard early Sunday afternoon, and a volunteer rescuer, Stanley Patrick, began yelling: "Mr. Robert! Mr. Robert! Can you hear me?" There was no sound in response, only the lapping of water in this reeking New Orleans East neighborhood, where the rooftops of cars were still covered nearly a week after a levee broke and the city was inundated. Mr. Patrick grabbed a sledgehammer, broke through the window of the tidy brick house and sloshed down a hallway into a back bedroom. It seemed unlikely that he would encounter anyone alive in this toxic water, in this fetid heat. He found what he expected to find, an 83-year-old man, floating face down in stagnant water that had risen three and a half feet into the home. A Louisiana state trooper asked that the man not be identified in full because his family had not yet been notified. Rescuers were told there might be a woman in the house, too. "I didn't see her, but if he's dead, she's dead," Mr. Patrick said. "If he didn't leave, she didn't leave." As rescue operations went on, the frustrations of the police and volunteers continued to mount Sunday, as a growing number of those who had stayed in their homes seemed to be dead, and many of those who remained alive refused to leave. But Col. Terry Ebbert, director of the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security, said Sunday that he expected that nearly everyone would be removed from the city by Tuesday, as rescuers made block-by-block searches. He said he thought there were fewer than 1,000 residents left in the city. "We're going to remove them," he said. "People don't want to come out," said Capt. Tim Bayard, commander of the narcotics division of the New Orleans Police Department, who is supervising the water rescue effort. "They say they have enough water and food to sustain themselves. They don't understand. It's going to take six to eight weeks before the electricity comes on." The water has receded only about a foot in many places, he said, adding that it was still 20 feet deep in spots. "They need to come out," Captain Bayard said. But some residents fear that if they leave, their houses will be ransacked by looters, he said. "They've already lost their cars," he said. "All they have left is their house. They don't want those animals stealing from them. Write that, animals. Anybody that would take advantage of this is hardly better than animals. Not the people who are taking food and water and clothing. Those stealing TV's and shooting at police. What can you do with a TV? There's no electricity." Police have said that early rescue efforts were hampered when they encountered gunfire. It was also difficult to get enough of boats in the water because of bureaucratic foul-ups, Captain Bayard said. One day, as many as 300 boats were in the water, he said, but he could have used 1,000. "There was a breakdown in communication and coordination, and some people wanting to be lone stars and not cooperate," he said, declining to lay blame but saying federal officials were not at fault. "We have the boats now. Unfortunately, people don't want to utilize them." More than 10,000 people have been evacuated by boat, Captain Bayard said. Captain Bayard said he was reluctant to force anyone to leave against their will. If a boat capsized in a struggle, police officers and evacuees could drown or be subjected to disease, he said. But if ordered to remove residents, he would do so, he said. A volunteer rescuer, Morgan Lopez, said he and colleagues had all but forced four people from a home at Dwyer and Bundy Roads on Sunday, where a sea of raw sewage had reached the steps of the house. A woman, an 8-year-old child and the child's grandparents finally agreed to leave, Mr. Lopez said. "We acted like we were cops," Mr. Lopez said. "We were not letting them stay in that stuff. They had a lot of new clothes. Maybe they were trying to protect that." Mr. Lopez was one of about 40 workers from R&R Construction in Lake Charles, La., who volunteered their time in boats usually used for bass fishing. Two other R&R workers, Mr. Patrick and Scott Lovett, were dispatched to Read Boulevard to look for what they thought was an older couple. A shotgun rested in the boat next to Mr. Lovett, who said shots had been fired near him on occasion during the past week. "I don't feel like I'm in the U.S.," Mr. Lovett, 22, said. "I feel like I'm in a war. All the guns, the chaos." Mr. Patrick, 44, an ironworker, said he had also rescued victims after Hurricane Andrew hit Louisiana in 1992. The man on Read Boulevard may have tried to get into his attic and cut his way through the roof, but was perhaps too feeble or retreated in heat that would have topped 100 degrees, Mr. Patrick theorized, noting a ladder that led to the attic. The house appeared to be on a slight incline, and perhaps the man thought he was safe, Mr. Patrick said. "It's tragic," Mr. Patrick said. "The water rose in one night. These people probably didn't know. There's a lot more dead right here. I can smell it." He predicted that the death toll would be "astronomical." In coming days, the boat searches will shift from primarily a rescue mission to a recovery mission, once a sufficient morgue can be established, Captain Bayard said. Still, he said, the police, volunteers and the army would continue to look for survivors, and military trucks would patrol the streets in case those who had insisted to remain changed their minds - perhaps, he said, once they ran out of food or could no longer stand the smell of decay. "It's frustrating because they don't want to help themselves," Captain Bayard said. "But if they are going to come out, we're going to be there to pick them up. We're not going to turn our backs on them." www.nytimes.com
__________________
save the cheerleader - save the world Last edited by strandinthewind; 09-05-2005 at 11:59 AM..
|
|
#221
09-05-2005, 12:03 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
I do not see how FEMA is going to get out of this one, W as well. FEMA kept saying since Monday that it was in charge and was organizing things and that W had given it orders. How then can it claim that it was not in charge since Monday? It cannot have its cake and eat it too. Anyway, here is the article.
September 5, 2005 After Failures, Government Officials Play Blame Game By SCOTT SHANE This article was reported by Scott Shane, Eric Lipton and Christopher Drew and written by Mr. Shane. WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 - As the Bush administration tried to show a more forceful effort to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, government officials on Sunday escalated their criticism and sniping over who was to blame for the problems plaguing the initial response. While rescuers were still trying to reach people stranded by the floods, perhaps the only consensus among local, state and federal officials was that the system had failed. Some federal officials said uncertainty over who was in charge had contributed to delays in providing aid and imposing order, and officials in Louisiana complained that Washington disaster officials had blocked some aid efforts. Local and state resources were so weakened, said Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, that in the future federal authorities need to take "more of an upfront role earlier on, when we have these truly ultracatastrophes." But furious state and local officials insisted that the real problem was that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which Mr. Chertoff's department oversees, failed to deliver urgently needed help and, through incomprehensible red tape, even thwarted others' efforts to help. "We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water," said Denise Bottcher, press secretary for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana. "They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart." Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans expressed similar frustrations. "We're still fighting over authority," he told reporters on Saturday. "A bunch of people are the boss. The state and federal government are doing a two-step dance." In one of several such appeals, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, called on President Bush on Sunday to appoint an independent national commission to examine the relief effort. She also said that she intends to introduce legislation to remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and restore its previous status as an independent agency with cabinet-level status. Mr. Chertoff tried to deflect the criticism of his department and FEMA by saying there would be time later to decide what went wrong. "Whatever the criticisms and the after-action report may be about what was right and what was wrong looking back, what would be a horrible tragedy would be to distract ourselves from avoiding further problems because we're spending time talking about problems that have already occurred," he told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" on NBC. But local officials, who still feel overwhelmed by the continuing tragedy, demanded accountability and as well as action. "Why did it happen? Who needs to be fired?" asked Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, south of New Orleans. Far from deferring to state or local officials, FEMA asserted its authority and made things worse, Mr. Broussard complained on "Meet the Press." When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away, he said. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said. One sign of the continuing battle over who was in charge was Governor Blanco's refusal to sign an agreement proposed by the White House to share control of National Guard forces with the federal authorities. Under the White House plan, Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré would oversee both the National Guard and the active duty federal troops, reporting jointly to the president and Ms. Blanco. "She would lose control when she had been in control from the very beginning," said Ms. Bottcher, the governor's press secretary. Ms. Bottcher was one of several officials yesterday who said she believed FEMA had interfered with the delivery of aid, including offers from the mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, and the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson. Adam Sharp, a spokesman for Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said the problem was not who was in command. FEMA repeatedly held up assistance that could have been critical, he said. "FEMA has just been very slow to make these decisions," Mr. Sharp said. In a clear slap at Mr. Chertoff and the FEMA director, Michael D. Brown, Governor Blanco announced Saturday that she had hired James Lee Witt, the director of FEMA during the Clinton administration, to advise her on the recovery. Nearly every emergency worker told agonizing stories of communications failures, some of them most likely fatal to victims. Police officers called Senator Landrieu's Washington office because they could not reach commanders on the ground in New Orleans, Mr. Sharp said. Dr. Ross Judice, chief medical officer for a large ambulance company, recounted how on Tuesday, unable to find out when helicopters would land to pick up critically ill patients at the Superdome, he walked outside and discovered that two helicopters, donated by an oil services company, had been waiting in the parking lot. Louisiana and New Orleans have received a total of about $750 million in federal emergency and terrorism preparedness grants in the last four years, Homeland Security Department officials said. Mr. Chertoff said he recognized that the local government's capacity to respond to the disaster was severely compromised by the hurricane and flood. "What happened here was that essentially, the demolishment of that state and local infrastructure, and I think that really caused the cascading series of breakdowns," he said. But Mayor Nagin said the root of the breakdown was the failure of the federal government to deliver relief supplies and personnel quickly. "They kept promising and saying things would happen," he said. "I was getting excited and telling people that. They kept making promises and promises." Scott Shane and Eric Lipton reported from Washington, and Christopher Drew from New Orleans. Jeremy Alford contributed reporting from Baton Rouge, La., and Gardiner Harris from Lafayette, La. www.nytimes.com
__________________
save the cheerleader - save the world
|
|
#222
09-05-2005, 12:11 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Lawmakers Blast Officials For Inadequate Levee System
Monday, September 05, 2005 WASHINGTON — Projects designed to keep New Orleans from flooding in a hurricane prepared the city for a probable scenario, not the worst-case scenario. The network that was supposed to protect the below-sea-level city from flooding was built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane (search), the Army Corps of Engineers said. It was overwhelmed when Katrina's winds and storm surge came ashore a week ago as a Category 4 storm. That has left some lawmakers wondering why officials only considered the consequences of a moderate storm. "What that, in essence, says is that you're not going to worry about the biggest disasters that could occur, you're only going to worry about the smaller ones," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. "How many times do we have to see disaster overwhelm our preparedness before we recognize that we are playing Russian roulette with people's lives, with their livelihoods and with the life of whole communities?" Obey said. Louisiana lawmakers have long lamented that Corps of Engineers programs designed to protect New Orleans and surrounding areas were starved for cash. Corps officials, said, however, that funneling more money into the agency's levee repair programs wouldn't have totally averted disaster. The infrastructure around the city was designed to withstand only a Category 3. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, Corps of Engineers commander, said some flooding would have occurred even if the remaining repair projects planned for the levees had been completed. The infrastructure assumed that a storm bigger than a Category 3 has a very low probability of occurring. When the project was designed about 30 years ago, the corps believed it was protecting the city from an event that might occur only every 200 or 300 years. "We had an assurance that 99.5 percent this would be OK. We, unfortunately, have had that .5 percent activity here," Strock said. Former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., said everyone has known for years that the levees wouldn't stop a "once every hundred years" storm that could put New Orleans under 20 feet of water. The complaints and problems with corps funding go back to the Carter administration, and presidents since then have tried to draw money from the agency's projects to pay for other priorities. Mike Parker, a former Mississippi congressman who left as civilian head of the corps in 2002 after criticizing the White House budget office, said the funding problems occurred through Democratic and Republican administrations. "The corps requested money to complete the projects through the years, but the funding level wasn't given to them in order to do it," he said. It's the Bush administration taking the brunt of the heat now. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said New Orleans got an infusion of money for flood control projects in the late 1990s. "There was less money spent after that huge project, as, of course, there would be," Blunt said. "Any time you do a big building project, when that project's over, the next year you spend less money." Blunt suggested there might be a limit to the amount that federal programs can do. "This is not something that government can always prevent," he said. "You know, God is actually bigger and nature is bigger than we are, and this is one of those instances." Two Corps of Engineers projects were in place to control flooding and prepare for hurricane damage in southern Louisiana. One was a flood control project with channel and pumping station improvements for Southeast Louisiana; the other was a project to protect residents between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River levee from surges driven by a fast-moving category 3 storm. Each year since 2001, the corps asked for much more money for those two projects than the Bush administration was willing to request or Congress was willing to spend, according to figures compiled by Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record), D-La. In addition, funding for the two programs declined between fiscal years 2001 and 2004, although both saw slight increases this year. Much of the federal budget outside homeland security and defense has been held down while the administration tries to control deficits under control. Advocates also have pressed for money to restore the eroding Louisiana coastline as additional hurricane protection. In the future, Breaux said, the federal government must think about a system of levees designed for the once-a-century storm. "They're going to have to be built stronger. They're going to have to be built higher. They're going to have to be maintained," he said. "It looks like Baghdad underwater out there." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168501,00.html
__________________
save the cheerleader - save the world
|
|
#223
09-05-2005, 12:16 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Look at what Houston did in 48 hours as opposed to what FEMA, the people in charge, did in about 120 or so hours - I mean really
(emphasis supplied)Houston Pitches In Monday, September 05, 2005 By Greta Van Susteren I could write story after story about what I hear from the evacuees at the Houston Astrodome (search) and each story would break your heart. You walk through the Astrodome (or the other shelters) and you feel a mixture of grief for the evacuees and inspiration from the many people trying to help. As you know, words are grossly inadequate in explaining the depth of the despair that is felt. The video from New Orleans (search), Mississippi (search), Alabama (search) and all the shelters better conveys this nightmare. So today I will leave it to the video we show on FOX News Channel to explain the pain. Video is much better than me trying to tell you in print... it is raw. There are a few things I would like to say about Houston/Texas, etc. I have been here in Houston for many days and have a very small world — meaning that I only know what is going on in the area immediately around me (Houston.) I am "wall-to-wall" Houston relief efforts. I know that my colleagues in New Orleans, Mississippi, etc., are seeing things that I am not. From time to time I hear their reports and the reports are bleak (to put it lightly.) Here in Houston I almost feel like I am in a magical city — there is an incredible outpouring of help. You would be inspired by the help to the people who need it so much. I have spoken to literally hundreds of evacuees and each — 100 percent of those I have spoken to — are in awe of what Texas has done. Each expresses enormous gratitude to the people of Texas. I have been to the three major shelters in Houston — each is unbelievable and each, while housing thousands, was set up overnight. People don't wait in lines for services like medicine and food — instead they get provided for quickly and with dignity. Every place you turn around, there is help. The shelters and volunteers are efficient and treat people with great dignity. I went to the newest shelter last night — the Houston City Convention Center and I was very impressed. They have air mattresses (not just cots), thicker air mattresses for older people so did not have a hard time in and out of bed, showers, game rooms for the kids, food looked great, a computer room, library, movie theatre size screen for movies, clothes, medical care, etc.... and all done within hours of making the decision to do it! I watched a crowd of kids under two feet tall playing the game "duck, duck, goose" with volunteers. The kids were all having fun — squealing with laughter. The kids are kept busy by volunteers so that the parents can address the obviously more serious and distressing matters — missing family members, no homes and no money. You would not believe what the city of Houston (and Texas) accomplished in less than 48 hours! I really have never seen anything like this! The George R. Brown Convention Center is so clean you can eat off the floor and the service appears to be top notch. I watched carefully the service to make sure I got it right and I asked people staying there. You can get medical care and even dental care right on the premises... all set up in less than 48 hours! I met private citizens — all pitching in. I was told corporations were also pitching in — one local company in Houston came in and built 80 showers in the Convention Center within hours of the Friday morning decision that they needed to open still another shelter. The help to fellow Americans here in Texas is not only extraordinary — but the fact that it is so well coordinated with no time is mind-boggling. I have been stopped by many local Houstonians thanking me for the nice things I have been saying on the air about Texas and Houston. I have told each of them, "Don't thank me, I am only saying what I see." And, yes, I am seeing a much different picture than the devastation seen by my colleagues in other states. Let me make one thing plain — yes, things are going well in Houston but the evacuees have been through hell and that hell will continue. No matter how great the support is here in Houston, it does not erase the immense loss. In time, there will also be too much pressure on this area alone. We can't expect Texas to do this alone and they can't. They need other people and places to help. They need contributions so please give. I do know that many other states and citizens are helping a great deal — this help is great — but I suspect more help will be needed. I know it will be much appreciated. This is a BIG job! I have seen some odd things outside — not inside — the Astrodome. There is one fellow with a guitar strapped around his neck who keeps coming up to me at our live site location asking me to put him on the air. He says, "I am the first to have written a song about Hurricane Katrina." He is not an evacuee. I have politely said to him many times that we are not profiling those who are writing songs... we are trying to get the word about what is going on at the Astrodome and the various ways people can help. I am not sure he truly "gets it." . . . . http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168491,00.html
__________________
save the cheerleader - save the world
|
|
#225
09-05-2005, 12:38 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
|
 |
|
|
John McVie Signed Autographed Card SuperStars MusiCards #176
$34.95
Fleetwood Mac John McVie Vintage Guitar Pick - 1993 US Tour
$29.99
Fleetwood Mac Tour John McVie Bass Guitar Pick
$25.00
8x10 Print Fleetwood Mac Peter Green Mick Fleetwood John McVie 1969 MEF
$14.99
Fleetwood Mac John McVie Vintage Tour Guitar Pick
$49.99
Linear Mode
