Posted on 09/01/2005 12:02:28 PM PDT by Esther Ruth
'A scene of anarchy'
CNN's Chris Lawrence in New Orleans, Louisiana
It's hard to believe this is New Orleans.
We spent the last few hours at the New Orleans Convention Center. There are thousands of people lying in the street.
We saw mothers holding babies, some of them just three, four and five months old, living in horrible conditions. Diapers littered the ground. Feces were on the ground. Sewage was spilled all around.
These people are being forced to live like animals. When you look at the mothers, your heart just breaks.
Some of the images we have gathered are very, very graphic.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
FEMA has suspended operations according to my friend-not safe. I don't know what is worse killing people by dehydration (it's murder now-they know these people have no food and water for four days) or lying about killing people while they are killing people...they act like thay have everything under control and they do not.
So, I guess we just let the people at the dome die?
Apparently the pols in NO have been too busy raking in the graft for the past umpteen years, just assuming this wouldn't happen. It is obvious there was no plan in place for anything except the instructions, "head for the Silverdome!"
There is a lesson to be learned here - other than "do not elect crooked Liberals". That lesson is,... owning a vehicle and having gasoline gives you a measure of freedom. Freedom to escape a disaster like this, freedom to leave the city without the aid of your city government, freedom to flee for your lives if necessary.
Forget for a second about those who either stayed to protect their property or else mistakenly thought nothing could possibly happen. A huge portion of these people you see are not these people. Instead, what we see exhibited here are wards of the state. They get welfare checks, "free" medical care, city transportation, housing or housing subsidies and numerous other "services". All they have to do is show up at the polls and keep voting in their crooked benefactors. But, what they don't have is the freedom to get out of their self-imposed trap. They have become slaves to their warders and their own lusts.
And now this...
This is the vision Liberals have for all of us. They want us all to be herded in to central cities just like these people, living in apartment blocks, dependent on "public" transportation and personally disarmed. They also want to the rest of the country to return to a pristine condition which would then be a resort and playground for themselves.
This is about freedom, folks. You see what happens when you don't have it but have to depend entirely upon your friendly politicians and bureaucrats!
Every time you pull up to that empty gas pump in the coming days, think about it. This isn't just about "alternative energy" and preventing global warming these people are braying about. It is about your freedom to escape their predatory clutches and mind-numbing control freak ways.
Our available gasoline and our automobiles are an essential part of our freedom. Liberals and their environmentalis buddies want to all that away so they can control your lives and fortunes for their benefit and utopian schemes.
LOL! And don't forget government cheese!
He thinks "what is happening is actually a very efficient and quick response, under the circumstances". We have eyes and ears, we can see just the opposite.
He should be fired and replaced after this..
sw
Golly..FEMA Director just told the Americans to do the same thing..."take a deep breath".
sw
Anybody who was responsible for a child and did not evacuate that child should be criminally charged. There were days of warnings. All this baloney about having no transportation - there was a TRAFFIC JAM around Walmart during the looting. The entire mess is disgusting.
" What worries me about this is that even today, the public still gets most of its news from the MSM, especially during crises such as this one. The more the MSM loses it, the more it's going cause the public to turn against Bush, Congress and government in general (but especially Bush himself, of course). "
I promise you that tonight we will see news anchors showing the absolute worst aspects of this crisis.
If the hysterical coverage we have seen this afternoon holds -
you will hear anchors comparing " the sea of humanity fleeing their homes with nothing ,but, the clothes on their backs "- to prior humanitarian disasters they have covered in the third world.
You will hear reports of babies dying and dead bodies ( post flooding ) everywhere.
I have heard this all day, but, have seen no documentation except 2 elderly people covered in blankets at the Superdome.
You may- may hear reports about lawless bands of marauders.
I predict that some anchor will say " Some are asking if it's time for the US to ask the international community for help."
The only " some " asking this was that Marxist female WH correspondent with the English accent.
The reporters on scene are becoming hysterical.
They need to cowboy up and get a grip.
If they can't handle the horrors , they need to get out of the way and stop inflaming the situation.
Most of the media , with the exception of the most of the FOX crew, has gone wobbly.
No, but we need to appreciate how difficult the task at hand is, and not be quick criticize the people who are doing everything they can to help. There ARE huge resources being poured in, but logistics of mounting this huge relief effort in a completely inundated urban area, with decimated communications and power infrastructures, are very complicated and challenging.
I'll save my criticism for the huge number of people who stuck their heads in the sand for years, refusing to face the fact that developing an ever larger urban area in this location was just building the inevitable disaster larger and larger.
How would you know which way to head for a passable route out? I think the vast majority of people are doing whatever they can to help themselves. For the people in the Superdome, unfortunately, there probably aren't any options with a higher probability of success than waiting to be bused to the Astrodome. Just doing "something" is not smarter than doing nothing, if doing nothing has a higher probability of success.
As for me, there's no way I'd be living in a place that's a disaster waiting to happen. But I have more options, and more ability to analyze risks, than most of the people who are stuck there.
It would not be that difficult to drop food and water on that bridge I saw at Fox news where all those people are waiting for help. If news guys can get in then others can too with food and water. The past is past...no matter who stuck their head in the sand years ago, people need help now- not excuses. There is no excuse for this chaos in NO.
I'm sure there are some, but portable radios aren't a widespread item anymore. Most radios are now part of plug-in only stereo systems, since many people primarily listen to CDs and ipods when moving around. And batteries don't last long if they're getting heavy use, which would almost certainly have been the case in the first couple of days. Many were probably used up in flashlights at night.
Partly this is learned helplessness, but partly it's also the result of an increasingly high-technology-dependent society. Most people can use the Internet now, but few know how to use a ham radio -- it's only in rare situations that the latter is useful. Cities are very reliant on buildings that are very efficient when there's a power supply, but almost completely non-functional when they're not. People know lots of ways to help themselves, but most of those ways aren't useful or available in this situation, even though they're the most important skills for self-sufficiency under normal and near-normal conditions.
My hunch is that they don't have that much footage. For the first few days they just showed the same clips over and over. It seems that the cable channels don't really have huge teams of reporters or a lot of equipment in scene. They just buy footage from local stations.
What really cracked me up is how MSNBC has one of their anchors doing a show on New Orleans "live and direct from Aruba".
The "law and order conservative"-types on this site have different priorities, first comes shooting, or at least jailing the looters. Helping people as Christ told us to do, well, that can wait.
I'm not saying we should let them die, but that it was the first line of defense that failed--not the federal government. And surely more people ARE going to die if the peple continue attacking those trying to help them.
Yeah, but how many percent of the people we're seeing on TV went through the scenario you described?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.