Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

In Nursing Home, a Fight Lost to Rising Waters (Broussard less than truthful on Meet The Press)
New York Times ^ | September 7, 2005 with Update 9-11-05 | GARDINER HARRIS

Posted on 09/10/2005 7:25:02 AM PDT by jrusty101

Edited on 09/11/2005 5:24:32 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]

St. Bernard Parish officials say that 32 of the home's roughly 60 residents died on Aug. 29, more than a week ago.

**********
Update 9-11-11
**********

From Lies.com

"..And finally, on the question I raised a few days ago about Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard’s tearful story about his emergency manager’s mother drowning in a St. Bernard nursing home, I think the evidence shows pretty clearly that Broussard was embellishing the story. Readers helpfully pointed me to the following news accounts:

New York Times: In nursing home, a fight lost to rising waters.

Newsday: Desperately seeking survivors.

MSNBC: This anger comes from watching death.

From the MSNBC item:

The man he was talking about is Thomas Rodrigue, who told “Dateline” that his 92-year-old mother was one of 32 elderly people found dead at the St. Rita’s nursing home.

***********
MSNBC Quote:
"..The man he was talking about is Thomas Rodrigue, who told “Dateline” that his 92-year-old mother was one of 32 elderly people found dead at the St. Rita’s nursing home..."
***********

But the 32 people who died at St. Rita’s nursing home didn’t die on Friday; they died earlier in the week, when the floodwaters first inundated the low-lying facility. Rather than being attributable to the federal authorities’ slow response (which was pretty much the point of Broussard’s version of the story), the death of those senior citizens was more the fault of local authorities (who failed to evacuate them) than of federal officials (who wouldn’t have been there in time to rescue them under the best of circumstances).

So, assuming the MSNBC story is accurate, Broussard’s story was at least significantly embellished. The tear-jerking account of the repeated calls to momma were fictional (or at least were displaced from their actual time of occurrence, which would have to have been before or during the storm, not during the several days afterward when FEMA was MIA). And if that part was fiction, it would mean that Broussard, for all the apparent sincerity in his emotional on-air breakdown, was willing to lie in order to make his story work better as political theater, which in turn makes it harder for me to credit the rest of the slow-FEMA-response anecdotes he described .."


TOPICS: Breaking News; Extended News; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aaron; broussard; home; hurricane; katrina; lacogwheelturns; meetthepress; mtp; nursing; stbernard; stritas
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 141-148 next last
To: moog

Yep, if the truth is on your side use it, not screaming hyperbole, to refute your enemies.


21 posted on 09/10/2005 7:52:43 AM PDT by wtc911 (see my profile for how to contribute to a pentagon heroes fund)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: jrusty101
Broussard seemed to be faking his story at the time.

He had the same fake expressions and tears as Cindy Sheehan. A good number of the Dems' friends are sociopaths who pretend emotion, in order to get what they want.

Speaking of fakes...

Terry Ebbert, head of the New Orleans Department of Homeland Security angrily asked why we could help tsunami victims but we couldn't help the flooded folks of New Orleans.

Ebbert neglected to mention that two or three days before his "angry" outburst, he was assuring the world that the levee breach could be fixed in a few hours and the waters were only rising slowly.

Is T. Ebbert [NOLA DHS chief] responsible for delay in large-scale response to levee breach?

22 posted on 09/10/2005 7:53:45 AM PDT by syriacus (I think we can get [the breach] stabilized in a few hours - Terry Ebbert, NO Homeland Sec., Aug31)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jrusty101

Well, it worked didn't it.

I fail to understand why those on the right continue to pretend we are winning.

Even Rush is delusional, (or maybe he is just trying to buck us up).

I have said for years that we need to go on the offense with the MSM, reporter by reporter, and ruin them.

How long will we continue to cower?


23 posted on 09/10/2005 7:56:38 AM PDT by roses of sharon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: wtc911

Yep, if the truth is on your side use it, not screaming hyperbole, to refute your enemies.

Exactly. Present your side and let the other side scream. You'll be the better person and people will see that.


24 posted on 09/10/2005 7:56:50 AM PDT by moog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: wtc911

I think President Bush has done a good job doing that and the American people aren't blaming him, thank goodness, but those who are are looking stupider with each passing day.


25 posted on 09/10/2005 8:00:07 AM PDT by moog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: moog
I hope every Freeper is writing to their lefty local newspaper and refuting their lies.

Just do it!
26 posted on 09/10/2005 8:07:31 AM PDT by cgbg (A cigar a day keeps secular Puritans away.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: cgbg
I hope every Freeper is writing to their lefty local newspaper and refuting their lies. Just do it! Exactly!!!
27 posted on 09/10/2005 8:10:01 AM PDT by moog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: jrusty101
Broussard's national, tearful, bush-bashing perfomance was apparently a complete lie. How incredibly despicable. Equally at fault is the NY Slimes who reports in this article about the fate of those at the St. Rita Nursing Home but fail to mention Broussard's now apparent lies. How could the media not question this? The city employee who lost his momma were apparently the only people in New Orleans with phone service on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and even Friday when I guess her battery died. I am disgusted. Broussard needs to be outed now otherwise his tearful lies will become part of our national memory.
:-(

From the first source I found:

Now, with the Gulf Coast mired in a crisis more typical of the Third World, where is the social contract? "We have been abandoned by our own country," said Aaron Broussard, president of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish. Broussard told the now oft-repeated tale of a city employee's mother trapped inside St. Rita's Nursing Home near New Orleans. She called her son for days, asking if rescuers were coming.

"And he said, 'Yeah, mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night."

28 posted on 09/10/2005 8:15:19 AM PDT by Tunehead54 (Nothing funny here ;-)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: syriacus
I goof on the link

Is T. Ebbert [NOLA DHS chief] responsible for delay in large-scale response to levee breach?

29 posted on 09/10/2005 8:17:17 AM PDT by syriacus (I think we can get [the breach] stabilized in a few hours - Terry Ebbert, NO Homeland Sec., Aug31)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: jrusty101

He's been busted by the Feds and will probably end up in jail.


30 posted on 09/10/2005 8:42:13 AM PDT by shield (The Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God!!!! by Dr. H. Ross, Astrophysicist)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shield

They should add on some fraud charges for that pathetic crying scene he tried to perform.


31 posted on 09/10/2005 8:52:50 AM PDT by kenth (north Georgia mountains - prayers for all our neighbors in the gulf coast.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: kenth

Deflection from his troubles....or since he's running for re-election he's trying to make sure he wins.


32 posted on 09/10/2005 9:05:49 AM PDT by shield (The Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God!!!! by Dr. H. Ross, Astrophysicist)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: jrusty101
A sampling of how this is used to blame the feds - one thing I've seen (or actually not seen) is much of anything detailing who the "First Responders" are and why we call them that. Hint: We've passed out billions to them and its not FEMA or ANY national agency. :-(

< ... Snip > Mr. Broussard recalled he told her “somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday. And she drowned Friday night,” sobbed the parish president, breaking down. “She drowned on Friday night.”

Choking back tears, he pressed on, ignoring the interjections of moderator Tim Russert. “Nobody’s coming to get her, nobody’s coming to get her: The secretary’s promise, everybody’s promise. They’ve had press conferences — I’m sick of the press conferences. For God’s sakes, shut up and send somebody.” His raw frustration with the plodding, inept response of the federal government to the cataclysmic nightmare on the Gulf Coast was palpable.

President Bush, who waited two days after Katrina landed and a day after levee breaks drowned New Orleans to leave his Texas ranch and follow the federal response from Washington, proclaimed that “in America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need.” But those who were abandoned believe otherwise.

Families of the very young and very old who succumbed to the abandonment know better. A quarter of New Orleans’ 480,000 residents who live below the poverty line and had to fend for themselves when all hell broke loose know better.

Four years ago the government got a wake-up call about how unprepared it was to handle the worst. A huge bureaucracy called the Department of Homeland Security was formed and tens of billions of taxpayer dollars were spent to beef up the nation’s disaster response system. Never again would the federal government bungle its way through the worst wrought by man or nature.

Then Katrina hit and destroyed that myth. Unlike 9/11, the government knew a powerful hurricane had its eye on New Orleans in time to prepare for a worst-case scenario. For years it knew how vulnerable the city’s levee system was to unpredictable hurricane forces.

Yet when Katrina’s floodwaters breached New Orleans levees and drowned the city, federal disaster officials were watching from afar like the rest of us. Only after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff noted that it looked “as if an atomic bomb had been dropped” on the Big Easy did a sweeping relief effort swing into action. But everything was a day (or days) late and a dollar (or dollars) short.

Bureaucratic red tape tangled rescue and relief operations from Alabama to Mississippi and down to Louisiana. By the time logistics could be figured out and emergency operations enacted, people were dead or dying who might have survived if the threat of impending disaster had been taken seriously.

The anarchy and chaos that rocked places where people had nothing to lose after days of no food, water, shelter, or communication might have been mitigated if the government hadn’t waited until after the levees broke to organize resources, search and rescue missions, and massive evacuations.

Instead, the world watched in stunned disbelief as the last remaining superpower appeared powerless to help untold thousands, now called refugees, who were stuck in hot, stinking, dark arenas with nowhere to go and no way to get there.

Out of the prolonged suffering of those waiting desperately to be saved from the worst came a harsh realization. After all the talk about improving national security through heightened awareness and coordination of responsible agencies, the government can’t bail anyone out.

It has no more — and maybe less — capability to protect the public than it did on Sept. 11, 2001. Four years after violent disaster hobbled the homeland with numbing ferocity, the United States appears as impotent as it was then to effectively safeguard its citizens from utter devastation.

It’s a sobering discovery to make when it matters that expected help is not on the way. To paraphrase the emotional parish president, no Desperately seeking survivors

Source: Katrina’s victims feel a sense of abandonment

A couple more references to Broussard's crocodile tears:

Louisiana Nursing Homes Now Vacated, Many Elderly Feared Dead

Desperately seeking survivors

33 posted on 09/10/2005 9:11:57 AM PDT by Tunehead54 (Nothing funny here ;-)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jrusty101
Broussard less than truthful on Meet The Press

Welcome to FreeRepublic.

To help prevent duplicate postings, please don't write your own headlines. It's OK to put comments in parentheses, as I've done above.

34 posted on 09/10/2005 9:26:28 AM PDT by Admin Moderator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tunehead54
The anarchy and chaos that rocked places where people had nothing to lose after days of no food, water, shelter, or communication might have been mitigated if the government hadn’t waited until after the levees broke to organize resources, search and rescue missions, and massive evacuations.

After the hurricane hit, everyone was pretty sure that NO had dodged a bullet. However, it was patently obvious to all that Mississippi and Alabama had not. By far the greater devistation was in Mississippi. They were assured by the locals that the levees were holding and turned to the rescue operations and to getting aid to the people in MS and AL. The locals should have been more than able to get the people out of NO.

By Tuesday, when the levees broke ( a day AFTER the hurricane) assets that were pointed toward the greater hit areas had to be turned back to NO. Because of the ineptness of the LA authorities, the people of MS were denied the relief they had a right to expect because all assets were turning to LA.

The MSM is going to have a lot to answer for in the coming days. They have outright lied, ignored their fellow Americans, and have failed to dig into the real cause of the confusion. Like WHY was the plan filed with FEMA not followed?

35 posted on 09/10/2005 9:37:02 AM PDT by McGavin999 (We're a First World Country with a Third World Press (Except for Hume & Garrett ))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: nov7freedomday

Throw a rock at a pack of dogs, the one that yelps got hit.


36 posted on 09/10/2005 10:04:48 AM PDT by Ursus arctos horribilis ("It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!" Emiliano Zapata 1879-1919)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Williams

Uh, pubbies Lott, Levitte and Jindal already have, it is all Bush's fault.


37 posted on 09/10/2005 10:06:53 AM PDT by Ursus arctos horribilis ("It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!" Emiliano Zapata 1879-1919)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: wtc911

Without a text or well rehearsed mantra, Hannity is a loser. That boy is slower than molasses in January when it comes to thinking fast on his feet.


38 posted on 09/10/2005 10:09:43 AM PDT by Ursus arctos horribilis ("It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!" Emiliano Zapata 1879-1919)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: McGavin999

"The MSM is going to have a lot to answer for in the coming days. They have outright lied, ignored their fellow Americans, and have failed to dig into the real cause of the confusion. Like WHY was the plan filed with FEMA not followed?"

To get answers, someone must ask the questions, and it ain't gonna happen. In the aftermath, if a prominent pubbie starts to, the lefty MSM mantra is already in place to shoot him down as playing the blame game, it is time to move on, yadda, yadda, yadda ya.


39 posted on 09/10/2005 10:14:30 AM PDT by Ursus arctos horribilis ("It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!" Emiliano Zapata 1879-1919)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]

To: Tunehead54; jrusty101
Oops! Sorry I seriously messed up the link - I went back to it because I want to email her to note how seriously misinformed she seems to be. ;-) Katrina’s victims feel a sense of abandonment

40 posted on 09/10/2005 10:23:12 AM PDT by Tunehead54 (Nothing funny here ;-)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 141-148 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson