New thread
First?
Wow...a brand new thread
Did Blanco just correct the President while he was talking?
Thank you, Sweet Girl! You work very hard! Thank you!
US Military delivering 2000 gallons of diesel....NOPD is about to try to reopen their HQ and presence in the city.
Thank You for your service
XIV
-- Can I buy you a month worth of Pizza? :-)
Prayers for ALL!
BREAKING: Firefighters and their families being held hostage - approx 50 people- in St Charles (parrish)
Repeat after me.
You are getting sleepy......very sleeeeepyyyy.
Thank you for all you are doing fellow android! ;)
I wanted to post fom work but couldn't. I was reading about those posts re Jack Cafferty on CNN and his spewing Anti-Bush crap. That clown should go back to reporting about cats in trees on WPIX- a freaking WB station in NY. Yes, those are his credidentials. Who does this guy think he is? I'm seething.
Could you ever image Part IV?
Thank you, ma'am!
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it expects to fully remove the flooding from New Orleans within 80 days from the time the city's inoperable levee pumps are restored. Meanwhile, with all the sandbags, "City look more like Baghdad than the Big Easy," says a CNN reporter at the airport. Plus, an CNBC video clip shows a New Orleans police officer shouting into a bullhorn: "We got food and water on the way. We got medical equipment on the way. I'm going to get you all out of here safely. We moved 30,000 out of the Superdome and we can get you out of here."
Hmmm, how long to restore power or get generators and then its 80 days to pump the water out? This is one big, ugly mess.
schu
Isn't it amazing that it is our military, which the left loves to hate, that is doing a great job.
Shoutcast streaming audio SCANNER list
http://www.shoutcast.com/directory/?s=scanner&numresult=25
"FEMA has not been "incompetent"."
“Yeah. Isn't it amazing that the Governors of Mississippi and Alabama both just said FEMA has been "outstanding" and has responded to every request. FEMA works fine when there is leadership. Nothing works fine when you've got a government like Lousiana voted for itself."
Check out this post on another blog about your point: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007442.php#c32
"This is the price of federalism. It’s a control issue. The federal government cannot be any more efficient in disaster relief than the affected state and local governments permit. Louisiana has the most corrupt and inefficient state government in the United States. New Orleans has the most corrupt and inefficient municipal government of any major city in the United States. The local ruling elites like it that way – they keep their power and their corrupt ways of doing business.They’ve been driving honest businesses and people away for scores of years. This was true a long time ago and is true now. Read:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_08_31_05ng.html - Will New Orleans Recover? which says:
"And the locals and outsiders who try to help New Orleans in the weeks and months to come will do so with no local institutional infrastructure to back them up. New Orleans has no real competent government or civil infrastructure — and no aggressive media or organized citizens’ groups to prod public officials in the right direction during what will be, in the best-case scenario, a painstaking path to normalcy.... But the city’s decline over the past three decades has left it impoverished and lacking the resources to build its economy from within. New Orleans can’t take care of itself even when it is not 80 percent underwater ...
... it’s up to New Orleans, not the feds, to dig deep within itself to rebuild its economic and social infrastructure before the tourists ever will flock back to pump cash into the city’s economy. It will take a miracle. New Orleans has experienced a steady brain drain and fiscal drain for decades, as affluent corporations and individuals have fled, leaving behind a large population of people dependent on the government. Socially, New Orleans is one of America’s last helpless cities—just at the moment when it must do all it can to help itself survive."
I read a blog post this morning (can’t remember where) by a Mississippi River shipping guy who had grown up in New Orleans saying that shipping companies had been leaving the Port of New Orleans for as long as he’d been in business, in favor of other River ports, because it cost too much to do business at the Port of New Orleans due to theft and corruption.Then check out how New Orleans elites behaved during the 1927 flood, in this book:
RISING TIDE: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
and compare that with what is going on now, as reported here (New Orleans live blog:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/
"The following is the result of an interview I just conducted via cell phone with a New Orleans citizen stranded at the Convention Center. I don't know what you're hearing in the mainstream media or in the press conferences from the city and state officials, but here is the truth:"Bigfoot" is a bar manager and DJ on Bourbon Street, and is a local personality and icon in the city. He is a lifelong resident of the city, born and raised. He rode out the storm itself in the Iberville Projects because he knew he would be above any flood waters. Here is his story as told to me moments ago. I took notes while he talked and then I asked some questions:
Three days ago, police and national guard troops told citizens to head toward the Crescent City Connection Bridge to await transportation out of the area. The citizens trekked over to the Convention Center and waited for the buses which they were told would take them to Houston or Alabama or somewhere else, out of this area. It's been 3 days, and the buses have yet to appear.
Although obviously he has no exact count, he estimates more than 10,000 people are packed into and around and outside the convention center still waiting for the buses. They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them.
There are many infants and elderly people among them, as well as many people who were injured jumping out of windows to escape flood water and the like -- all of them in dire straights.
Any attempt to flag down police results in being told to get away at gunpoint. Hour after hour they watch buses pass by filled with people from other areas. Tensions are very high, and there has been at least one murder and several fights. 8 or 9 dead people have been stored in a freezer in the area, and 2 of these dead people are kids.
The people are so desperate that they're doing anything they can think of to impress the authorities enough to bring some buses. These things include standing in single file lines with the eldery in front, women and children next; sweeping up the area and cleaning the windows and anything else that would show the people are not barbarians.
The buses never stop.
Before the supplies were pitched off the bridge today, people had to break into buildings in the area to try to find food and water for their families. There was not enough. This spurred many families to break into cars to try to escape the city. There was no police response to the auto thefts until the mob reached the rich area -- Saulet Condos -- once they tried to get cars from there... well then the whole swat teams began showing up with rifles pointed. Snipers got on the roof and told people to get back ..."
If you've read RISING TIDE, it is obvious that the behavior of New Orleans elites and the government they control has not changed in the least since 1927. Them first and to hell with everyone else.
I.e., the reason Louisiana Governor Blanco refused to suspend habeas corpus and declare martial law for days after such was obviously necessary, and still refuses to formally ask for federal military assistance in restoring order (the first two are legal prerequisites to the third – legal words of art are required for the third), is that Louisiana & New Orleans elites would no longer be able to have special protection and most especially control over the relief efforts.
Honest, efficient, government is the last thing they want, and “federal military assistance in restoring order” would provide just that.
Look carefully at what is going on, and consider how Louisiana & New Orleans government are loathe to give up control of public order and relief to the federal government.
It’s about power. They really, really, really, don’t want to cede power to the federal government. This drastically limits what the federal government can do to help.
Anyone with experience in emergency management can tell you how essential it is that one person and one organization be ultimately in charge of major disasters. Lousiana and New Orleans elites, and the governments they control, do not want that to happen. Honest, efficient, government is their enemy."
Did anyone hear that idiot on MSNBC - president of National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans?
Of course he's blaming the federal government for everything. When asked if he had a share in the blame because he was a former mayor, he said "Absolutely not." because, he says, all NO mayors have lobbied the feds constantly to help them with the levees. Unbelievable.
This disaster has made me realize that having a liberal in charge of local government is not merely a nuisance, it can be life-threatening in the event of an emergency.