All My Fault!

[SuperScout]

Thank you for reminding me again of how filled with humility you are. I needed that.

Disaster relief efforts: it has to start at the local level, and it would have helped if the locals had evidenced some level of concern and preparation. If the mayor declares a mandatory evacuation, and then fails to provide the means for egress (that's getting out of town for you folks in Rio Linda), he has just demonstrated a leadership failure. If the mayor knew he had a gang problem in NO, as apparently the Feds did as evidenced in their report, and subsequently failed to do anything about it, it's another leadership failure.

If the governor knows that an emergency has been declared by higher authority, and then fails to pre-position HER national guard forces into staging areas for rapid deployment in crisis zones, then it's a leadership failure. If she failed to plan for the resources needed to deploy them into crisis areas, it's another leadership failure on her part.

If you think that the President was just riding around on his bicycle and not alert to the realities of the world, as he is on a 24/7 day basis, then it's a presumption failure on your part. No one can be President and ever really go a vacation.

If you think that Air Force C5A's are fully loaded with emergency relief supplies, military police, sand bag fillers, and field hospitals, with engines idling on some fantasy-land runway just waiting for a Force 5 hurricane to hit, then it's a reality failure on your part.

Never did I ask you to wear the shoe, but I did adjure those, any and every one of those whose feet fit it to start dancing. No go outside and unwind those panties that are strangling you.

[BLUEHAWK]

WHO'S "facts"????????????????

Under the conditions of:
- A totally unpredictable hurricane storm path
- Extreme human suffering
- Zero electricity
- Zero potable or fresh water
- Zero phone service
- Zero computer capability
- Zero functioning sewerage
- Capitalist greed
- A biblical flood
- Mass hysteria
- Looting
- Rape
- Total destruction of most other infrastructure and economy in the region many miles north, east and west of the Gulf coast

IN LESS THAN ONE WEEK... tens of thousands of stranded desparate Americans have been rescued, evacuated and relocated from a living hell, by thousands of dedicated and brave Americans, using a blank check approach to the financial and human resource expense of the efforts, mobilizing all military and law enforcement forces and any available equipment from many adjacent and other States. Our domestic United States Navy, Army, Coast Guard and Air Force have been mobilized into the battle to save lives and restore order throughout our entire Gulf Coast. We have yet to call upon our beloved Marine Corps. But, should we feel that need, the circle will be unbroken.

Anybody ready to mess with us!?!

Breeches in the levees have been closed off to the degree possible until New Orleans can be unwatered.

Meantime, the "Congressional Black Caucus" (and certain other notable talking heads) saw fit to assemble in prime time for the purpose of criticizing those efforts. Their particular form of "assistance" in a time of crisis was to cast blame, and be flagrantly racist. Their cowardice and outstandingly ignominious indecency shall not be forgotten. They have disgraced the honor of Dr. King. Where he would have counseled focused patience, cooperation and personal effort, they (and their apologists) sought selfish political aims, fomenting discord and disharmony, uppermost.

Sentor Rodham-Clinton's best contribution was to call for a blue ribbon "Katrina Commission"... before the dead, maimed, separated and destroyed have even begun to be helped or counted. She joins herself with Mrs. Sheehan and Hanoi Jane amongst the ranks of cowards.

The upside? We now know (without any further doubt) their true stripes.

They have cashed in their last chip, and the last of their nine lives has been lived out... in accordance with the manner and way in which it has been their demand.

Violent hoodlums (or domestic terrorists?) set back rescue efforts by about two days of time when they decided it would be fun and advisable to fire weapons at police, firefighters, health workers and private contractors. So, America had to send in the Eighty Deuce airborne, who do NOT "like to be shot at." Therefore, deduct two days of time that had to be wasted while those folks set the rest of us back from the rescue work.

Some others decided this would be THE best time to set more fires in New Orleans.

In less than one week.

I do not apologize to the dissatisfied amongst our people for anything.

Ya'll dudes/dudettes could not even get your dishwasher fixed in one week's time.

That, begins my refutation.

Sir Blue

[Jerry D]

What Brice said I've loaded C5's and it take a few hours just to fill up their tanks with JP4!

I've been reading newspapers and following the news on several Networks and so far Philly and LA haven't opened nary a single shelter for the huddled masses from New Orleans.... Where is the Love of the brotherly city of Philadelphia. There are shelters being opened in Texas, Missouri, Georgia, Arizona, SC, Minnesota, Maryland, Florida, Michigan, Colorado, Utah,Tenn, West Virginia, and many others. But not a peep out of PA or California except to complain how badly the po' folks in N.O. are being treated. Where is the BIG donation from Rainbow/Push ? or the fabled NAACP ? Nascar gave 1 Mill, Carl Edwards and Jack Roush donated their combined money from the Busch race Sat and Kyle Bush and Hendricks Motorsports donated their combined Nextel Cup race winnings to the Hurricane relief effort also. So can't Jessie and Big Al spare a dime for their brothers in New Orleans? Just my thoughts . Hex even the League of the South (according to the Southern Poverty Law Center claim they are a Hate group:btw "I disagree with them on that") have a Hurricane Relief Charity fund and have been donating to help the people of Mississippi,Alabama and Louisiana.

Oops while I was writing the News just said the FIRST refugees from New Orleans have arrived in California so I guess I have to let LA off the hook

[exlrrp]

I don't usually buzz MSNBC (its terminally conservaitive) but Keith Olbermans comments are so right to the point that I'm posting it all: "
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 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."



What Keith Olbermann, noted Conservative, said!
Stay good
James

[Gimpy]

Keith Olbermann AND James said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BLUEHAWK]

Originally posted by exlrrp ..."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."

Stay good
James

One assumes that, when speaking for "our ability to rely...", he was actually speaking only for his OWN INability to rely, no?

And furthermore, if the administration was, in fact, "damaged", it was not by their own hand.

[SuperScout]

Sen. Bill Frist rode to the rescue in more ways than one last week, with his call for a comprehensive congressional investigation into the failings of planning and execution of preparing for Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing relief effort.

Frist's efforts weren't intended as a slam at President Bush, who has taken a pummeling in the media from Democrats in Congress, their operatives, and cooperative journalists who were willing to set facts aside for the opportunity to create a political fire storm around the Republican president.

Instead, Frist's call for an investigation sent many Democrats running for cover. "If you look at the history of appropriations and funding of federal dollars, no delegation served their state and major cities better than Louisiana," says a Senate staffer. "In the end, if the Democrats want to place blame, they know the behavior of their party members, for a generation really the only party in power in New Orleans and Louisiana, is damning, and they don't want to draw any more attention to the issue than the media wants to."

Senate Appropriations Committee staff late last week were drawing up statistics on just where the hundreds of millions of dollars set aside for New Orleans over the years, on everything from community support, federal policing dollars, emergency preparedness, and levy control and modernization.

"Let's put it this way," says an Appropriations staffer. "There is a fair degree of certainty up here that dollars that should have gone for projects and programs that might have been helpful in New Orleans' time of need were never used for those purposes. If I were a local politician or a state or local bureaucrat down there, I'd be nervous about now."

Further lost in the aftermath of Katrina's furor was the fact that neither New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin nor Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco had wanted to order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, a city of 485,000 people. Both politicians had been avoiding the issue until Saturday, August 27, when President Bush called both Democrats and, according to congressional and White House sources, essentially demanded that a mandatory evacuation be ordered. The order was made on the 28th.

At a news conference announcing the evacuation, Nagin also went on the record predicting that the storm's surge would top the city's protective levees, yet in the aftermath, Nagin was quick to place blame for the levees on Washington.

"There is absolutely no question that federal support should have been put into place sooner and that we were caught flat-footed," says a Homeland Security Department staffer. "But when everything is said and done, nobody is going to want to be in the way of the political fallout that comes from a thorough investigation of what happened down there. And that includes Democrats."

By late Sunday, what had emerged was a picture less to do with Washington, and far more to do with incompetence on the state and local level. Federal emergency preparedness officials were poring over Louisiana's and New Orleans' emergency plans. "There is a very good reason everyone down there has clammed up about beating on the President," says the Homeland Security staffer. "The only people who continue to do it are the likes of [Tim] Russert and the New York Times, and they are just feeding off the tragedy for political gain, nothing more. In the end, it's the very people they have been listening to for the past week that they will have to put under a microscope."

[MarineAO]

Having lived in Louisiana and after being down there till the Sunday before land fall and hearing the mayor and the governor on the T.V. before the storm hit I will tell you that those two had NO CLUE as to what there jobs were. The dumbass mayor stated that he did not know IF HE COULD LEGALLY ORDER A MANDATORY EVACUATION! I heard him say that live on the TV news during a press conference. Now on the other hand in Jefferson Parish they did call for a mandatory evacuation and the people left, I was one of them, myself and a brother, nephew, his wife and a brother in law were the last of the family to leave. I lay blame (a good part) on the government of the state and the city that bunch of asshats did not know what they were doing and were totally lost and looked and sounded like total incompetents. One of the reasons I left LA was do to the total lack of government to do it's job and the idiots that keep electing them and then want to blame some one else. As far as I'm concerned bury the city and call it a day.

[SuperScout]

By Robert Tracinski
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicles, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed; they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

"'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets", she said. "They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will."

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

[BLUEHAWK]

These speak for themselves, and I hope to live long enough to see the responsible state and local officials in NO and Louisiana fry:

AETCNS 090605174: Little Rock AFB Airmen, C-130's vital to saving lives
http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/pa/a.../090605174.htm

AETCNS 090605175: AFRS seeking delayed entry program members impacted by Hurricane Katrina
http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/pa/a.../090605175.htm

AETCNS 090605176: Couple wed outside Keesler shelter
http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/pa/a.../090605176.htm

AETCNS 090605177: Altus AFB, Jackson County DHS send supplies to Gulf Coast hurricane victims
http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/pa/a.../090605177.htm

AETCNS 090605178: Civil engineers use 'dominator' for rescue
http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/pa/a.../090605178.htm

AETCNS 090605179: Defense secretary, generals tour Keesler http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/pa/a.../090605179.htm

AETCNS 090605180: Keesler Airmen, Sailors, Marines rally to aid local community
http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/pa/a.../090605180.htm

AETCNS 090605181: AFOATS organizations hit hard by Katrina http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/pa/a.../090605181.htm

AETCNS 090605182: Base recovery efforts already showing results
http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/pa/a.../090605182.htm