Hurricane Katrina

[HMVNipper]

I'm posting this to ask all my fellow Beatlelinkers for good thoughts and prayers. My brother David and his wife, who live in Biloxi, Mississippi, were right in the path of Hurricane Katrina. My mother heard from him this morning before all the phone service and electricity went out, and they had chosen (foolishly, I think, but that's neither here nor there now) to ride the storm out in his father in law's home, just a few blocks from the beach.

Last thing my mother heard this morning, they were on the second floor of the house because there was 5-8 feet of water in the first floor. They were there with David's father in law Kenny, Kenny's two elderly siblings, and two of my sister in law's sibs, as well as at least three other families from the same block whose houses weren't high enough for them to escape the flood. I have no idea exactly how many people are in the house or how much, if any, clean water, food, etc., they have. I know they are in dire straits -- the governor of Mississippi was on CNN tonight saying he didn't know when the rescue crews would be able to get through to the hardest hit areas to see if anyone rode out the storm safely.

My brother and his wife have lost everything -- they were living in a one-story cottage on his father in law's property while having a house built. It has been flooded and the roof is gone. All their clothes are gone. All their posessions from 16 years of marriage are gone. Their computers are gone. Both of their cars are gone. The house they were having built in a nearby suburb that was nearing completion is gone and is probably going to have to be written off as a total loss. My brother recently started a new job working for the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi, and today was supposed to be opening day -- he may not even have a job when this is all over, if the devastation they are reporting is to be believed.

I'm extremely worried right now -- no one has heard from them since this morning, and the full brunt of the storm hadn't hit yet at that point. None of us can reach anyone, all the phone lines and emergency numbers are out. We don't even know if the house survived the storm. Please, everyone, send good thoughts and prayers their way, and for everyone else touched by this catastrophe. (And I will also say that our own Kat and Sleepy are in my thoughts as well, as they live in Louisiana, as well as my friend Bruce Spizer, who lives in New Orleans.)

I will keep you updated as soon as I know anything, but now we don't know when we will get any information, but your thoughts and prayers will mean a lot to me and my parents and the rest of my family.

[Scouser]

I've been praying and chanting since last night.

I sincerely hope everyone is safe. My best friend's brother, who is really just the sweetest guy ever, lives in New Orleans. Last I heard he was leaving the city, but that was late last night.

When Katrina was still a tropical storm, I giggled about it, because Katrina just happens to be my given name. I never even thought it would turn into a hurricane. Now there's just nothing cute about it at all.

Sending all my love
~Layla

[beatlelover45223]

Your family is definitely in my prayers Susan, we are expecting quite a bit of rain, high winds etc; in my area for a couple of days along with tornado possibilities...

To top that all off a rail car sitting by some homes(all by itself?) today here in my city started spewing toxic plastic gases hundreds of feet in the air, nearly a 1000 people were evacuated from their homes, along with 74 business' shut down, curfews are in effect for the affected area( several miles from me ) police and fire are all on duty, Red Cross is here, along with all types of government agency's, schools in the area are closed, they are using a very large church right now to house those evacuated, now this weather heading our way, the good thing will be the rain, to help keep those gases down...
My thoughts and prayers also go to those people who initially had a great amount of exposure to the toxic leak.

[Lynner]

Oh Susan, I hope all will be okay with with you brother, his family and their friends. Sorry to hear that they've lost so much. Prayers will be said, of course.


Nancy, I hope the people in your area are okay, too.

Kat and Sleepy, if/when you read this, please let us know how you're doing.

[matt5]

I have only recently begun to comprehend the magnitude of this storm. I think everything will turn out in the end. Humans have an amazing ability to recover and rebuild.

[chaitanya]

My thoughts and prayers for all who suffering this tornado.

Hope all Blinkers are ok !

[twovirgins]

*sends good thoughts*

[sourmilkpinky]

and they had chosen (foolishly, I think, but that's neither here nor there now) to ride the storm out in his father in law's home, just a few blocks from the beach.


We might just have simliar views on this.

My prayers go out to your brother and his family, to my brother-in-law who lives in Waveland, MS and all the other people that are going through this.

My brother-in-law gathered up his family and many belongings and left the state so I know they are safe..not sure if they will have a home to go back to.

[HMVNipper]

Yes, Pinky, we do indeed have similar views on this. When we spoke to my brother before the storm and suggested that they leave, he said, "Kenny doesn't believe in leaving, the family rode out Camille, we don't leave." Well, I'm sorry, but that's about the f'n STUPIDEST thing I have ever heard...a category 4 or 5 hurricane is coming your way, you freakin' LEAVE. My mom said "well, what would they have come back to?" but my feeling is, if you are going to lose all your material things anyway, at least save your LIFE.

Your brother in law was very smart, Pinky, and my brother was extremely stupid. I am angry as hell that they could all be so absolutely moronic after all the stories of people who try to ride out such storms and what happened to them, and think that they could be stronger than mother nature. And I will be honest and say that I am frightened as hell.

We haven't heard a thing since yesterday morning when he called with the info before the power went out. They're saying Biloxi is under 20 feet of water as far as six miles inland, Kenny's house is less than a mile from the beach. The governor of MS says he doesn't know when help will get to people there, they can't get anyone in. 50 people are already confirmed dead in Biloxi. We don't even know if the roof of Kenny's house held up or what is happening and have no way of finding out. We can't reach anyone at all -- not even the other members of my sister in law's family who live in Atlanta and Knoxville. (The remnants of the storm are affecting them now, that surely has something to do with it.)

I will keep you apprised. Thanks everyone for the prayers and good thoughts.

[Starry-eyed]

I'll definitely keep your family in my prayers. Please keep us posted if you hear anything.

[Sally]

My heart goes out to all involved.

[ImaginePeace78]

I'll keep your family in my prayers, Susan. I've read a lot of stories in the paper about people who didn't leave. I don't know, if the mayor's saying there's a mandatory evacuation, you better leave! But people didn't listen. Possessions can be replaced (in time), but your life cannot be replaced. It's a shame these people did not listen and leave.
-Kristi

[beatlelover45223]

Oh Susan, still no news, I am sorry! I am keeping them in my prayers...

[sourmilkpinky]

My continued prayers....

[lovely rita mcc]

oh! :afraid2: i´ve being listening about all of this at the news...it´s horrible..all my prayers are with you and your family!! :heart1:

[chaitanya]

New Orleans flooded......omg.....

http://www.repubblica.it/2003/e/gallerie/esteri/neworleans/ap67032353008185439_big.jpg

[Beatle_4]

The wife and I have been watching CNN for the last little while and the reports that keep coming out are just incredible. It's almost hard to fathom the destruction that has occured.

Susan, we here have our fingers crossed and are hoping that your Brother and his relatives down there are safe and sound. Hopefully you will hear from them soon.

[Siobhan]

My thoughts are with you and your family Susan, as well as everyone hit by this hurricaine. I hope your brother and his family are safe.

[bearkat77]

Kat and Sleepy, if/when you read this, please let us know how you're doing.

Sleepy and I are alright. Katrina did not make it up to us. She began heading NE by the time she hit land.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by this hurricane, especially Susan's brother and his family.

[HMVNipper]

GOOD NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!

My mother got through to Lowana's sister Lisa in Atlanta, and she had gotten a text message from their other sister in Biloxi. Everyone is safe!

Right after my mom spoke to Lisa, my brother managed to get a call through. They are all safe, the house and cottage and eight vehicles are a total loss, as are the belongings they had in a storage locker. A cousin who lives 20 miles north had virtually no damage (miraculously) and so they are all going to go to his house, where they will probably have to sleep on the floor for a month or so, but they are all okay.

One thing that did come out of this -- Kenny, David's father in law, has said that he is going to leave Biloxi for good now. He's 74 years old, this was too much for him. Mom said that David and Lowana are considering much of the same, they aren't sure what happened to the house that was being built, but they are considering writing it off and moving someplace further from the coast. It's just something they will have to deal with as the next few months pass.

Thank you all SO MUCH for your kind words, prayers and thoughts. It means more than you will ever know. I knew I could count on Beatlelinkers, the best people on the planet!

[MonaMe577]

I'm glad that everything turned out all right for you and your family. :smile1: Possessions can always be replaced, but life is precious.

Not to say that I'm not sorry about everything they've lost--I feel awful that things like that have to happen to anyone. Were any of their things insured? At least then, it wouldn't be a total loss.

[Beatle_4]

Hurrrraaaayyyy.......

Good to hear they made it through it allright.

Now we will all hope for the best for everyone else.

[sourmilkpinky]

Very good to hear they are safe.
Loss of property is devastating but as Nancy said can eventually be replaced.

[Lynner]

Oh Susan, how relieved you must be! Thank goodness all are okay. Sorry that they suffered so much material loss, of course, but - they are safe. Yay!

[beatlelover45223]

I am so glad to read your good news Susan, I am so sorry for all their material loss. All those poor people in the storm area are in my thoughts and prayers....

[beatlegirl9977]

I'm glad everything turned out okay and everyone was safe, Susan (but you already knew that ;)).

I just got off the phone with my dad--he lives in Tuscaloosa AL (which is pretty darn far inland from the gulf) and he said that part of the roof on his house got torn up and needs to be replaced and there was damage to the siding on the house as well...but everyone is ok, nothing else got really damaged.

[sourmilkpinky]

It is going to be a slow recovery there. I talked to my brother-in-law last night and he said that they aren't letting anyone back in his area, not even insurance agents. He is hoping to be able to go back this weekend and see the damage. He lives in a brick house so he is hopeful that it is salvagable. I forgot to ask him if he took his Harley with him..hmmm.

[DizzymissLizzy909]

I'm relieved to hear all is ok with your family, Kat, as well I'm glad to read your good news Susan. :smile1:
What a devestating tragedy for so many people. I feel absolutely horrible about what people in the hurricane's path are going through. It will take a long time for homes and properties to recover, and probably even longer for people to get over this disaster emotionally. Prayers to all who are suffering during this time. :heart1:

[HMVNipper]

Thank you, all, for your kind words and good thoughts. David and Lowana and the rest of their family are not out of the woods yet -- there is still the problem of lack of basic supplies and disease and God knows what else. I will keep everyone posted if I hear more news.

Pinky, I am glad your brother in law is okay, sorry that he can't get back yet, but it's probably better that way. I'm not so sure I'd want to go back and see that devastation firsthand.

Oh, and just another little note -- Beatles book author Bruce Spizer lives in New Orleans. I have no idea where he is, whether he evacuated days ago or is stuck someplace, but watching the footage of that beautiful city flooding to the gills has made me think about him, and now that I know my brother is okay I can allow myself the luxury of worrying about Bruce, who is a friend. Let's all think good thoughts for him as well.

[HMVNipper]

Good news about Bruce Spizer -- he and his family got to Houston before the storm hit, but have no idea when they will be able to go back to New Orleans, or what they will find when they get there. But he's okay, thank God.

[GeorgieGirl]

How can we help? I'm willing to give direct donations to families in need. Or to the Red Cross. Or, I'm willing to send items of need. I have a garage full of decent household items, including furniture. I suppose they need money more than anything. Let us/me know. I'd like to help someone directly. I donated to other disasters and have know idea if it helped. Susan, I'm very sorry...

My daughter's (ex) boyfriend's family lives in New Orleans (she was there last year on a visit). We met them all in Vegas in July, and they were telling us about the levy they live by. Anyways, even though they just split, she felt she had to call and verify they were okay... they too lost everything. They got out before the hit. They flew to Texas. They are safe but have nothing left.

[Celebrian]

When the Earth speaks, She never whispers.

My heart goes out to those who have suffered from the devastation. I am glad to hear that people hear have made it through the storm.

[HMVNipper]

Here is a list of organizations to give money and aid. Be sure to specify that it is for Hurricane Katrina Relief. Any of these organizations are reputable and your money will get to the right place:

Organizations doing work in the Gulf and accepting monetary donations:

American Red Cross
1-800-HELP NOW (English)
1-800-257-7575 (Spanish)

America's Second Harvest
1-800-344-8070

Operation Blessing
1-800-436-6348

These organizations are accepting monetary donations and volunteers:

Adventist Community Services
1-800-381-7171

Catholic Charities, USA
1-800-919-9338

Christian Disaster Response
941-956-5183 or 941-551-9554

Christian Reformed World Relief Community
1-800-848-5818

Church World Service
1-800-297-1516 Ex: 222

Convoy Of Hope
417-823-8998

Lutheran Disaster Response
1-800-638-3522

Mennonite Disaster Service
717-859-2210

Nazarene Disaster Response
1-888-256-5886

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
1-800-872-3283

Salvation Army
1-800-SAL-ARMY

Southern Baptist Convention-Disaster Relief
1-800-462-8657 Ex: 6440

United Methodist Committee on Relief
1-800-554-8583

[Siobhan]

I'm so pleased your family are ok Susan. It is terrible that they have lost everything, as have so many, but at least they are alive and well.

[HMVNipper]

Just FYI, here is a report of damage in Mississippi alone, town by town. My brother lives in Biloxi.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/12523270.htm#biloxi

Posted on Wed, Aug. 31, 2005



Town by town reports


Staff and news services

Overall: Highway 90 buried under inches - or feet - of sand . . . communications down, transportation systems demolished . . . medical services crippled. . . High-water marks set by Camille shattered.

Bay St. Louis: Bridge connection to Biloxi demolished.

Biloxi: Legacy Towers condos survive. . . Ryans, Red Lobster, Olive Garden washed away along U.S. 90. . . Lighthouse still standing. Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge gone. Bottom floor of the library and the home of Jefferson Davis home, Beauvoir destroyed. . . . Sharkshead Souvenir City gone. . . Edgewater Village strip shopping center gutted . . . Also gone: the steeple of historic Hansboro Presbyterian Church; Waters Edge II apartments; Diamondhead Yacht Club, the old neon McDonald's sign on Pass Road . . . Massive damage in east end of city. . . almost total devastation primarily south of the railroad tracks near Lee Street, Point Cadet and Casino Row. . . Beau Rivage still stands. . . Hard Rock Casino, scheduled to open in early September, suffered 50 percent damages. The signature guitar, said to be the world's largest, still stands. . . At least five casinos out of commission. . . St. Thomas the Apostlic Catholic Church, which sits on U.S. 90, is gone.

D'Iberville: New addition to Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church of D'Iberville destroyed; damage to sanctuary. . . Structural damage to D'Iberville High School.

Gulfport: Gulf Coast Medical Center lost power and evacuated patients to Alabama hospitals . . . Miss. State Port lost its lifting facilities and cranes. . . Historical Grass Lawn building destroyed. . . Fun Time USA left with only bumper boats, pool and go-cart track . . . Numerous businesses and homes on Pass Road damaged or destroyed. . . Dozens of homes missing on Beach Boulevard. . . Fire chief estimates 75 percent of buildings have major roof damage, "if they have a roof left at all" . . . the storm surge crossed the CSX railroad tracks. . . Heavy damage to Memorial Hospital . . . First floor of the Armed Forces Retirement Home flooded . . . 3 of 4 walls have collapsed at Harrison Central 9th Grade School in North Gulfport. . . At least three firehouses have taken significant damage . . .

Hancock County: Emergency Operations Center swamped . . . back of the county courthouse gave way . . .

Harrison County: Old courthouse building destroyed. Unconfirmed reports of up to 80 fatalities. . . Damage to virtually all shelters . . . Lyman Elementary lost two buildings. People were moved to another building on campus safely. . . Woolmarket Elementary lost its roof . . . West Wortham Elementary has signficant roof damage.

Hattiesburg: A number of businesses and homes damaged in the area. . . U.S. 49 and Highway 11 shut down. . . Wind speeds of 95 mph.

Jackson County: Open Springs Hospital remained open for emergency treatment . . . Roof peeling off Emergency Operations Center.

Long Beach: Most buildings within 200 yards of U.S. 90 disappeared . . . Stately homes and apartment complexes that lined the shore are gone . . . First Baptist Church is leveled.

Moss Point: Floodwater surrounded two hotels full of guests . . . Much of downtown destroyed . . . Twenty feet of water flooded most of the city.

Pascagoula: Six blocks of Market Street destroyed . . . The Jackson County Emergency Management Agency had to relocate to the courthouse after the roof came off their building downtown. . . The roof also came off the gym at St. Martin High School. . . Reports of flooding in the Chipley area.

Pass Christian: Bridge to Bay St. Louis destroyed, along with several other bridges . . . Harbor and beachfront community gone. . . In eastern part of city, water rose to more than 20 feet above ground level . . . Flooding on Beatline Road at the 90-degree turn. . . . House in the middle of the road on Second Street.

[HMVNipper]

This is the link to the website for the Biloxi/Gulfport newspaper. There are too many articles to post individually.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/

[beatlegirl9977]

Musician Fats Domino is among the thousands of people who are unaccounted for following the floods in New Orleans. The article says that he lived in the 9th Ward of the city, which, from what I've read elsewhere, is one of the most devastated areas of the city.

Hurricane Katrina felt across entertainment world
http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusgen/ap09-01-142932.asp?t=apent&vts=9120051918

NEW YORK, Sept. 1 — The suffering of New Orleans, long a culturally rich city, is being felt across the entertainment world.
Many celebrities with relatives or other ties to the flooded city and the Gulf Coast have voiced their empathy for those devastated by Hurricane Katrina; some have been directly affected.
Fats Domino, a native of New Orleans, was missing, his longtime agent, Al Embry, said Thursday. The 77-year-old R&B legend and his family had remained at their home in the city's low-lying 9th ward district.
Master P, also a New Orleans native, told The Associated Press that his uncle, father-in-law and sister-in-law, among others, were unaccounted for. His father was missing until recently.
''We just got caravans of family members (evacuated),'' Master P told the AP Thursday. ''It's just devastating.''
The rapper-producer, who also said his houses and those of his family members were under water, said he had created a foundation called Team Rescue and had helicopters searching for his missing family members.
Blues legend B.B. King, a native of Mississippi, also said he had loved ones in the area.
''I have some friends and family down in New Orleans, and also on the Gulf coast of Mississippi,'' King told the AP. ''I've tried to call them several times but I can't get through to them so I don't know where they are.''
Harry Connick Jr., who grew up in New Orleans, told NBC's ''Today'' show the city's residents are ''freakishly strong'' and would rebuild.
He compared the rejuvenating spirit of New Yorkers after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to those in the hurricane-ravaged city.
Connick developed his music in jazz bands and at clubs in the French Quarter. His father, Harry Connick Sr., served as the city's district attorney for 29 years before retiring in 2003.
''It is hard to sit in silence, to watch one's youth wash away,'' the jazz musician said in a statement on his Web site. ''New Orleans is my essence, my soul, my muse, and I can only dream that one day she will recapture her glory.''
Patricia Clarkson said her mother, New Orleans councilwoman Jackie Clarkson, had stayed at the side of Mayor Ray Nagin while Katrina ravaged the city.
''She's all right, otherwise I wouldn't be here,'' Clarkson said at the Venice Film Festival in Italy, where she was promoting her new movie.
Rapper Juvenile, who left New Orleans before the hurricane hit, lost his home, but counted himself lucky.
''I am obviously devastated by my personal loss but thank God that I was able to get my family out to safety while many families were not so fortunate,'' Juvenile said in a statement. ''I have lost some friends and to their families I send my deepest condolences.''
Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirner said he was anxiously watching news reports on television, hoping to see if his house in New Orleans had escaped destruction.
''We are, you know, examining our silver lining and being very lucky that we're out of harm's way,'' said Pirner, who was visiting his hometown of Minneapolis when the hurricane struck. ''Our place in Minneapolis might be filling up with New Orleans transplants.''
Ellen DeGeneres, a Louisiana native, said her 82-year-old aunt's home in Pass Christian, Miss., had been destroyed.
''She has nothing,'' DeGeneres told AP Radio. ''She grabbed four pictures out of her house. She's lost her entire life.''
Britney Spears, who was raised in Kentwood, La., posted a message on her Web site saying her family was safe and that her ''thoughts and prayers go out to everyone'' on the Gulf Coast.
Morgan Freeman, whose Mississippi Delta home received only rain and high winds, helped organize an online auction to raise funds for the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
''Charity begins at home,'' the Oscar-winning actor said. ''We call on anybody who has even the thought (of giving) to get beyond the thought and help these people.''

[Beatle_4]

NEW YORK (AP) - Fats Domino apparently rode out the hurricane in his New Orleans home and was rescued by boat from his flooded neighborhood, his daughter Karen Domino White said Thursday.

The 77-year-old R&B legend had been reported missing Thursday by his longtime agent, Al Embry, and his niece, Checquoline Davis.

White said late Thursday that she saw a photograph of her father that had been taken Monday by the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The photo showed Domino, whose real name is Antoine Domino, in jeans and a blue-striped shirt being helped off a boat by rescuers.

"We're very relieved," White said in a telephone interview.

White said she has been unable to speak to Domino and had no information on his wife, Rosemary, or any other family members in the flooded city.

Domino, who has rarely appeared in public in recent years, has a home in the 9th ward, a low-lying area of the flooded city. On Sunday night, Embry said he spoke over the phone to Domino, who told him that he planned to remain in New Orleans despite the order to evacuate.

Getting information on possible missing persons has been nearly impossible as phone lines for hospitals and police haven't been working.

Domino has sold more than 110 million records in his long career, including the legendary singles "Blueberry Hill" and "Ain't That a Shame."

His 1950 recording of "The Fat Man" is sometimes called the first real rock 'n' roll record. He was among the first honorees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
************************************************** ********On a personal note...I was at a local second hand store and saw a copy of "Fats Domino's Greatest Hits" on sale for $2.00 and almost bought it. Instead, I bought a pair of blue jeans. I now wish I had bought the record just in case, God forbid, something terrible had happened to this gifted musician and singer.

How many here remember Richie Cunningham's (Happy Days) theme song?

"I Found My Thrill, On Blueberry Hill". Fats Domino.

[beatlelover45223]

what I am appalled at is, the out right looting, I heard that helicoptors flying in supplies were shot at, and had to turn away... :afraid2:


Has anyone read anything about relief offered to the US by any other countries?, I just wondered, I have been at work the last couple of days, and have been totally cut from news except the little I was able to read on Yahoo. :thinker:

[HMVNipper]

Has anyone read anything about relief offered to the US by any other countries?, I just wondered, I have been at work the last couple of days, and have been totally cut from news except the little I was able to read on Yahoo. :thinker:

Honey, the U.S. government hasn't even gotten aid to these people yet. And yet we managed to get aid to the tsunami victims almost immediately, halfway across the world -- and no one was loath to come knocking at our door for help.

As far as I know, there have been no offers of help from any other countries, but do you really expect that anyone else will help us when we are hated by the vast majority of the world? Nope, it's fine for other countries to expect us to help them, but they'll all sit back and watch if Americans are suffering. I bet they're dancing in the streets in terrorist countries -- Americans suffering and dying, and they didn't even have to martyr themselves for it to happen! (Okay, call me bitter, but in this case it's personal -- my brother has lost everything and if not for his brother in law in TN and his sister in law and her husband in GA, who managed to get in with some clothing and food, they'd still have nothing, because no one from the government has shown up yet...)

[Zimmerman The Gnome]

There are very good reasons why America is not the most liked country in the world but thats another story.


The UK is giving aid, Tony Blair has said this morning.

[sourmilkpinky]

Honey, the U.S. government hasn't even gotten aid to these people yet. And yet we managed to get aid to the tsunami victims almost immediately, halfway across the world -- and no one was loath to come knocking at our door for help.

As far as I know, there have been no offers of help from any other countries, but do you really expect that anyone else will help us when we are hated by the vast majority of the world? Nope, it's fine for other countries to expect us to help them, but they'll all sit back and watch if Americans are suffering. I bet they're dancing in the streets in terrorist countries -- Americans suffering and dying, and they didn't even have to martyr themselves for it to happen! (Okay, call me bitter, but in this case it's personal -- my brother has lost everything and if not for his brother in law in TN and his sister in law and her husband in GA, who managed to get in with some clothing and food, they'd still have nothing, because no one from the government has shown up yet...)


:angry1: :rolleyes: :ignore:

[HMVNipper]

Thank you for the info about the UK, Zim. I did not think the British would let us down.

And yes, I am well aware why the US is not liked around the world, and I could go on a real tear about what I think of our government. But I don't want to get into politics...it'll make me angry and probably piss off more than a few people here because I don't like our government very much either.

That is all I want to say, please don't leap on me even if you don't agree with me, I'm not trying to start a political argument. These are MY OPINIONS, I know that many people here don't agree with my opinion of the US Government, let's just agree to disagree and leave it at that.

I'm very tense right now anyway because of the situation with my brother, so please consider that I'm probably saying a lot of volatile things due to anger and stress, okay?

[sourmilkpinky]

Whether you dislike the government or not...to say because no one from the government has shown up yet...) is slanderous.....in my opinion.

[HMVNipper]

It's not, Pinky, because no one HAS. If they get there today, okay, but my brother called yesterday and said that if not for his relatives in TN and GA, they would still have NOTHING in terms of food and supplies and water, because absolutely no one from FEMA or any other government agency, federal OR state, has shown up in Biloxi yet. Since he is contacting us from the center of the disaster, I tend to think he's telling us the truth.

[Zimmerman The Gnome]

I don't think you want people from the Government turning up. George Bush is touring the area this afternoon. What the bloody point of that? Will this make people feel better? I don't think so. It's like if something happens here the Queen sends a letter or Prince Charles comes and walks round? It's pointless and a waste of money. Get the red cross in, the military, emergancy services. Anyone but a guy in a suit!

[HMVNipper]

I agree, Zim, Bush showing up is pointless. They say it's for "morale." Gimme a break. He isn't even going to get out down on the ground in New Orleans, and that's probably because someone'd shoot him, there's such anarchy there right now! Heaven help the man if he runs into my brother in Biloxi, I'm sure he'll get an earful! :scream2:

However, it would be a GOOD thing if government agencies such as FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) showed up and started the assessment of the damage so that people could get money to rebuild...and they haven't yet. The Red Cross hasn't really gotten in either, only in minimal ways. (And the Red Cross isn't a government agency in this country.) And part of the reason there's such anarchy in New Orleans is because the military hasn't gone in either, since most of the LA, MS and AL National Guard troops are currently in Iraq...instead of doing what NATIONAL GUARD is supposed to do, and keeping watch on the HOME FRONT...

[sourmilkpinky]

my prayers go out to all the Get the red cross in, the military, emergancy services that are there, and go there. I pray that the 'good citizens' of America don't take potshots at them.

[Zimmerman The Gnome]

I pray that the 'good citizens' of America don't take potshots at them.

I agree. What bloody morons are looting guns and shooting at rescue helicopters? IDIOTS!:angry1:

[HMVNipper]

That's true, I can't understand that either. :nono3:

[HMVNipper]

Just FYI, my mother just called me, she quite literally just got off the phone with my brother. No one from any government agency has arrived yet. Another cousin from Pensacola came yesterday and took what laundry and clothing they could salvage BACK to Pensacola with her to wash/clean it. SHE was the one that supplied them with 800 numbers for FEMA and other agencies, not anyone from any of those agencies. Since David has limited resources with a cell phone, my mother here in New York has to make the calls for information for him. He has yet to see anyone "official" where he lives. They are going back to their house for the final time today to see what they can salvage, but there's not a whole hell of a lot.

At any rate, I sincerely hope no one thinks I'm "slandering" our government any longer...they HAVE NOT SHOWN UP, and I think my source is pretty damn reliable.

[Sally]

Honey, the U.S. government hasn't even gotten aid to these people yet. And yet we managed to get aid to the tsunami victims almost immediately, halfway across the world -- and no one was loath to come knocking at our door for help.

As far as I know, there have been no offers of help from any other countries, but do you really expect that anyone else will help us when we are hated by the vast majority of the world? Nope, it's fine for other countries to expect us to help them, but they'll all sit back and watch if Americans are suffering. I bet they're dancing in the streets in terrorist countries -- Americans suffering and dying, and they didn't even have to martyr themselves for it to happen! (Okay, call me bitter, but in this case it's personal -- my brother has lost everything and if not for his brother in law in TN and his sister in law and her husband in GA, who managed to get in with some clothing and food, they'd still have nothing, because no one from the government has shown up yet...)

As Z said, we have plenty of reason to hate your government however we do not hate the American people so I think that is unfair.

Also the US is the richest country in the world and shouldn't need outside aid and even though they have given aid to other countries they have only ever given minimal amounts so ask your government where the aid is.

I feel for the people involved I really do and I just cannot comprehend how useless how Bush is, he has the money and the power and the resources to help but he it just too thick to know how to handle it.

People in the UK are feeling for you guys, we do not hate you and we have given aid anyway and happy to do so however questions should be asked as to why the Americans and the British are wasting lives Iraq for a pointless war meaning that the troops needed to help you guys aren't there.

[saziontherun]

I did not think the British would let us down.

Even "Old Europe" won't let you down, HMV!

In the newspaper today I was reading that Gerhard Schröder has ordered to send water purification plants your way. That may not sound like much but let's not forget that the USA aren't a poor country like Sri Lanka or India, where the tsunami happened.
The Germans may not be respected much in the USA because they said "no" to the war and still they do their best to help, even if they have their own problems because the money is tight...

Not that I want to compare your brother's fate with the price for oil - and I don't - but even over here we have noticed Katrina, the price for petrol has soared up 2 days ago...

[chaitanya]

Italia. A questo flusso di aiuti si aggiunge quello degli altri paesi, grandi e piccoli. Per quel che riguarda il nostro paese, il ministro delle Attività produttive, Claudio Scajola, su indicazione del presidente del Consiglio Berlusconi, ha deciso di mettere a disposizione una parte delle scorte petrolifere strategiche italiane. E poi non mancano le raccolte di fondi avviate in alcune regioni italiane, a cominciare da Abruzzo e Toscana, e la disponibilità della Protezione civile. Gli uomini guidati da Bertolaso hanno comunicato al Fema, la protezione civile Usa, di poter spedire nel giro di poche ore pompe, generatori di corrente, torri faro, battelli gonfiabili, tende e potabilizzatori. Due C-130 dell'Aeronautica militare sono a disposizione, pronti per essere caricati e partire.
Infine la Caritas Italiana, che invita a donare aiuti (specificando nella causale "USA-uragano 2005") tramite: c/c postale n. 347013

Italy can supply money,pumps,inflating boats,tents and light genarators.
2 C-130 of Italy Air Force are ready to go...

[HMVNipper]

I wasn't trying to insult people from other countries when I made my comment about no one jumping to help us because they hate us, and if I inadvertantly insulted any of our European, South American, Asian or other members, I am truly sorry.

I know we're not a poor country, but sometimes even the big guy needs help. Of course, the fact that the members of the National Guard from the affected states are busy off protecting Baghdad leaves no one to protect the people where they live -- which is my biggest bone to pick with the current administration. National Guard is supposed to be a homefront military, but because Bush is pretty much conducting a "backdoor" draft by sending National Guard troops overseas so his administration can say "see, there's no draft, there's no war..." we are left with no homefront aid. "Homeland Security" my butt!

My mother has been trying to get through to FEMA all day, all she gets are busy signals and holds that last for hours. You can see why my brother can't do it, with no phone other than a cell phone that takes hours to charge in a car, he can't be on hold for that length of time. We still have no answers. The horror stories on the news are beyond the beyond. New Orleans is a war zone with refugees. And it boggles my mind, not so much that we DID help the tsunami victims (as we should have), but that we managed to get help to those people within 24-48 hours, and yet here it's been nearly five days and there's been no help right here in our own country. Flyovers by the President are all well and good, but for God's sake, get the freakin' REGULAR ARMY in there if you have to and HELP!!!

I am tense, angry and frustrated -- so, as I said before, my intention is not to insult anyone (not even my fellow American members who disagree with me when it comes to Bush), but I guess it is to vent this frustration. And I'm sorry, but I get the impression that this administration doesn't really care -- Bush won the election, he got his second term, he's a lame duck president, he doesn't have to "win hearts and minds" anymore, so he does whatever the hell he wants when he gets around to it. To him, it's more important to win hearts and minds in Baghdad than it is to do something for Americans who are desperate and dying. And I also can't help but think that if most of the people left in New Orleans were of a "lighter hue," if you get my drift, help would have been a lot faster in coming. And to me, that is the most repugnant and reprehensible thing -- that it is clear that the administration considers these people somehow expendible. For shame!! :nono5:

[Hari's Chick]

While we do not have close family in the area, we have family history. My eldest brother visits every year for Mardi Gras and the jazz festival with his family, so they keep touch with our creole roots. For them it is a thread of family history...where he can experience the food and culture of my Grandfather, whom he was super close to. All the stories of his visits go through my mind now...

My heart goes out to you and your brother, Nipper.

God bless all the people there, may their lives find some repair and some peace... those who have escaped the tragedy. Why is it always the poor and the minorities who get neglected in the Bush scheme of things? How many lives could have been saved if FEMA had not dropped the ball??? All those souls are on those who neglected to pay attention and do their jobs. "While you're busy sinking birdies and keeping your scorecards...the devil's been busy in your backyard..." :(

[Hari's Chick]

I also can't help but think that if most of the people left in New Orleans were of a "lighter hue," if you get my drift, help would have been a lot faster in coming. And to me, that is the most repugnant and reprehensible thing -- that it is clear that the administration considers these people somehow expendible. For shame!! :nono5:

I entirely agree, Nipper!

[Hari's Chick]

Here is a relief effort you can contribute to via paypal~

http://www.ffl.org/html/volunteer.html

[MaccaGirl2891]

One of the volunteer clubs that I'm in at school might be going to Louisiana during fall break to help out the many people down there that need it, but I don't know if I would be allowed to go or not. I'm praying super-hard for them!

[DizzymissLizzy909]

As far as I know, there have been no offers of help from any other countries, but do you really expect that anyone else will help us when we are hated by the vast majority of the world? Nope, it's fine for other countries to expect us to help them, but they'll all sit back and watch if Americans are suffering.

I'm sure to a certain extent you're right, Susan, but it truly depresses me that some countries feel that way. This should not be about politics - this was a natural disaster, which no one could have ever prevented, and human beings are dying out there due to an act of nature, not like a war the government got involved in! This should be about helping people who got stuck in a very unfortunate circumstance, not nations withholding aid because they just have something personal against Bush. :rolleyes:

People should be worried about political beliefs some other time when those poor folks aren't going through such a tragedy and living this past week in panic and sadness.

[matt5]

Australia, Japan Among Nations Offering Aid
Friday, September 02, 2005

WASHINGTON — In an accelerating drive, more than three dozen countries have pledged assistance in connection with the Hurricane Katrina (search) disaster.

The offers blur political lines. Cuba and Venezuela, for instance, have offered to help despite political differences with Washington. Oil giant Saudi Arabia and tiny countries like Dominica, are among the nations making pledges.

Australia announced a donation of $8 million to the American Red Cross. "The United States is so often at the forefront of international aid efforts to help less fortunate nations," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer (search) said.

"So it is only fitting that Australia should contribute to the daunting task of helping the thousands of American citizens whose lives have been thrown into turmoil by this unprecedented disaster," he said.

Japan said it would contribute $200,000 to the American Red Cross (search) for its relief operations. Upon request, Japan is prepared to provide up to $300,000 in tents, blankets, power generators, portable water tanks, and other equipment, the Japanese Embassy said.

The United States historically has aided victims of disasters, but it is not universally recognized as providing the level of aid expected of a rich nation.

In July, President Bush resisted British Prime Minister Tony Blair's (search) ambitious goals for assisting Africa, though Bush took steps to double U.S. aid to more than $8.6 billion by 2010.

The United States, the world's largest economy, lags behind other rich nations in the percentage of its giving to nations in Africa, the world's poorest continent.

By Friday, offers had been received from Russia, Japan, Canada, France, Honduras, Germany, Venezuela, Jamaica, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, China, South Korea, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, Guatemala, Paraguay, Belgium, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Italy, Guyana, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Austria, Lithuania, Spain, Dominica, Norway, Cuba and Bahamas

[DizzymissLizzy909]

By Friday, offers had been received from Russia, Japan, Canada, France, Honduras, Germany, Venezuela, Jamaica, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, China, South Korea, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, Guatemala, Paraguay, Belgium, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Italy, Guyana, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Austria, Lithuania, Spain, Dominica, Norway, Cuba and Bahamas

I think I read we're sending four ships down south to help in Louisiana... leaving Canada completely defenseless. :wink1:

Honestly, though, it's nice to hear more nations have been pledging their aid.

[HMVNipper]

I'm sure to a certain extent you're right, Susan, but it truly depresses me that some countries feel that way. This should not be about politics - this was a natural disaster, which no one could have ever prevented, and human beings are dying out there due to an act of nature, not like a war the government got involved in! This should be about helping people who got stuck in a very unfortunate circumstance, not nations withholding aid because they just have something personal against Bush. :rolleyes:

People should be worried about political beliefs some other time when those poor folks aren't going through such a tragedy and living this past week in panic and sadness.

I agree with you, Lizzy, but unfortunately politics enters into everything in today's world, and let's face it, while the people and governments of other countries don't hate American PEOPLE, I can't say the same about them and their feelings about our government. And I don't exactly blame them, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to alienate the rest of the world big time.

Thank you for posting that article about countries offering aid, Matt, it makes me feel better. Maybe Lizzy's right and they're putting politics aside now.

[beatlegirl9977]

This should be about helping people who got stuck in a very unfortunate circumstance, not nations withholding aid because they just have something personal against Bush. :rolleyes:

You got that right! It makes me sick seeing toddlers dying in their mothers' arms on tv and help is STILL not arriving where it's most needed. I understand that it's extremely difficult to even navigate around the city right now, but people who ARE following directions they're given to congregate at certain areas for help are still getting the shaft. Ok, so maybe those people who DID have a choice whether or not to evacuate made a bad decision... Does that warrant them not receiving basic necessities that every human being deserves?? :scream2:

[sourmilkpinky]

they oughta just blast Beatle music over the area....and sooth the souls

[beatlebangs1964]

Amen, Sisters!

Hats off to my mother who has said she wants to have a family stay in one of her rental units. They would be provided with bedding and other necessities and I suggested going on grocery runs for them. My church is very serious about this and has gotten involved in a lot of outreach programs. Meanwhile, these are some ways we all can help:

www.habitatforhumanity.com
www.redcross.org
www.salvationarmy.com
www.stvincentdepaul.com

I've said many times that I can't bang on the drum loudly enough for these organizations. Habitat, in my town has been known to send their proceeds to families in need during natural disasters. Please, if anybody has any fixtures or tools or building equipment they don't need, CALL Habitat!

If you have clothing you can part with that is clean and in good condition, CALL any of your local outreach programs; drive to a place sheltering people displaced by the storm and deliver same; get with people you know are working on behalf of those displaced; throw a block party and charge people a nominal fee, like $2-$5.00 a plate and send the proceeds to a reputable organization like Habitat who will help those directly impacted. I can't stress this enough. St. Vincent de Paul is a long established group who is known for their work with those in most dire need. The St. Vincent truck will be making rounds throughout town and making sure all items donated go to those most directly affected.

We can make a difference!

[Sally]

I still don't think its a case of recieving aid and money from other countries cos I believe the US has more than enough funds being the richest country on earth. I think its down to the US government who has let their people down big time, i just cannot understand it, that man can't even look after his own people, what the hell is going on?!!!!

I feel angry for the victims they do not deserved to be treated like that, Bush needs bringing down, he is an ape, he has caused nothing but death and destruction since he came into office and he is letting death and destruction happen under his nose and all he is concerned about it oil prices.

[beatlelover45223]

The 8 local television stations in my city got together this evening for a collection telethon, that was something to see, all those rival tv stations coming together for one cause, aid to their fellow human beings, 300 from our local energy provider have been down there since the start of all this, tons and tons of semi's have left our area with supplies they are taking to arranged distribution areas down south, to prevent rioting and looting... We have several local families sheltering family and friends from the hurricane area, one woman has 45 people in her 3 bedroom home(all relatives), one man gave his home as a donation, he said he felt that this was what he was supposed to do, all the colleges in my area are making room for misplaced college students to attend schools here, without any type of admission entrance(applications etc:), people are opening their homes and hearts to the victims... does the heart good to see so many calling everywhere to see how they can lend a hand.... :heart1:

[Sally]

The 8 local television stations in my city got together this evening for a collection telethon, that was something to see, all those rival tv stations coming together for one cause, aid to their fellow human beings, 300 from our local energy provider have been down there since the start of all this, tons and tons of semi's have left our area with supplies they are taking to arranged distribution areas down south, to prevent rioting and looting... We have several local families sheltering family and friends from the hurricane area, one woman has 45 people in her 3 bedroom home(all relatives), one man gave his home as a donation, he said he felt that this was what he was supposed to do, all the colleges in my area are making room for misplaced college students to attend schools here, without any type of admission entrance(applications etc:), people are opening their homes and hearts to the victims... does the heart good to see so many calling everywhere to see how they can lend a hand.... :heart1:

Thats great.

[Beatle_4]

I know a lot of this boards members live in the U.S. and are starting to see the price of gas going sky high because of what has happened down south. I found a link that, if you feel a gas station is gouging it's customers, you can report it.

http://gaswatch.energy.gov/

I'm not sure how accurate it is but I thought I would post it just in case it does prove to be usefull.

BTW.... I also heard what Lizzy said about the ships from here in Canada. They are supposed to be leaving from Halifax harbour sometime this coming week. A company here in Hamilton has already sent a transport truck full of equiptment for clean up as well as a busload of it's employees. I've also heard there are a couple more Hamilton area companies that will be sending people and supplies down to help out.

[HMVNipper]

I still don't think its a case of recieving aid and money from other countries cos I believe the US has more than enough funds being the richest country on earth. I think its down to the US government who has let their people down big time, i just cannot understand it, that man can't even look after his own people, what the hell is going on?!!!!

I feel angry for the victims they do not deserved to be treated like that, Bush needs bringing down, he is an ape, he has caused nothing but death and destruction since he came into office and he is letting death and destruction happen under his nose and all he is concerned about it oil prices.

I absolutely agree with you, Sally, the man is an incompetent as far as I am concerned. I believe this is because the strategy of the Bush administration has been to WIN AN ELECTION, but once in office, they all have no freakin' clue. Kind of like going in and starting a war, but having no freakin' clue about ENDING IT...but that's a different rant for a different day.

Read what I said above about how he doesn't have to win hearts and minds...he has nothing to lose, he got his second term (even if he stole his first one) and doesn't give a crap about anything but the lining of his own pockets. Don't let his "concern" about oil prices fool you, he loves that the prices are so high because it makes him richer.

This SHOULD be about people -- unfortnately, it is also always, always, always about politics.

The opinions expressed above are mine -- so if you don't agree with me, don't jump on me, please. (Good God am I sick of justifying every single strong opinion I hold... :rolleyes: )

[HMVNipper]

Just a few editorials and articles about the incompetence of the administration's response. I will make several posts of pertinent things.

The editorial below was in the NY Times on Thursday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/opinion/01thu1.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20O p%2dEd%2fEditorials

September 1, 2005
Waiting for a Leader
George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

[HMVNipper]

Below is an article by Times Columnist Paul Krugman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/opinion/02krugman.html?incamp=article_popular

September 2, 2005
A Can't-Do Government
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"

Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.

Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."

In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.

Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.

Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

[HMVNipper]

And another by columnist Maureen Dowd. Take particular note of the words "incompetent government":

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/opinion/03dowd.html?incamp=article_popular

September 3, 2005
United States of Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD
Stuff happens.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.

W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

[HMVNipper]

And another about the dismissal of the tragedy because so many of the victims happen to be black and poor. As I said in a previous post, this particularly disgusts me -- if a lot of Dubya's white friends were involved, you can bet your bippy help would have been there a lot sooner. (And my family is white, so don't think I'm saying this because I am personally affected -- I think it's sick and disgusting that so many victims of this tragedy are apparently considered expendible):

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/national/nationalspecial/02discrim.html?ei=5070&en=a40c25aa9c2bfe6e&ex=1125892800&pagewanted=print

September 2, 2005
From Margins of Society to Center of the Tragedy
By DAVID GONZALEZ
The scenes of floating corpses, scavengers fighting for food and desperate throngs seeking any way out of New Orleans have been tragic enough. But for many African-American leaders, there is a growing outrage that many of those still stuck at the center of this tragedy were people who for generations had been pushed to the margins of society.

The victims, they note, were largely black and poor, those who toiled in the background of the tourist havens, living in tumbledown neighborhoods that were long known to be vulnerable to disaster if the levees failed. Without so much as a car or bus fare to escape ahead of time, they found themselves left behind by a failure to plan for their rescue should the dreaded day ever arrive.

"If you know that terror is approaching in terms of hurricanes, and you've already seen the damage they've done in Florida and elsewhere, what in God's name were you thinking?" said the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "I think a lot of it has to do with race and class. The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people."

In the days since neighborhoods and towns along the Gulf Coast were wiped out by the winds and water, there has been a growing sense that race and class are the unspoken markers of who got out and who got stuck. Just as in developing countries where the failures of rural development policies become glaringly clear at times of natural disasters like floods or drought, many national leaders said, some of the United States' poorest cities have been left vulnerable by federal policies.

"No one would have checked on a lot of the black people in these parishes while the sun shined," said Mayor Milton D. Tutwiler of Winstonville, Miss. "So am I surprised that no one has come to help us now? No."

The subject is roiling black-oriented Web sites and message boards, and many black officials say it is a prime subject of conversation around the country. Some African-Americans have described the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina as "our tsunami," while noting that there has yet to be a response equal to that which followed the Asian tragedy.

Roosevelt F. Dorn, the mayor of Inglewood, Calif., and the president of the National Association of Black Mayors, said relief and rescue officials needed to act faster.

"I have a list of black mayors in Mississippi and Alabama who are crying out for help," Mr. Dorn said. "Their cities are gone and they are in despair. And no one has answered their cries."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said cities had been dismissed by the Bush administration because Mr. Bush received few urban votes.

"Many black people feel that their race, their property conditions and their voting patterns have been a factor in the response," Mr. Jackson said, after meeting with Louisiana officials yesterday. "I'm not saying that myself, but what's self-evident is that you have many poor people without a way out."

In New Orleans, the disaster's impact underscores the intersection of race and class in a city where fully two-thirds of its residents are black and more than a quarter of the city lives in poverty. In the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood, which was inundated by the floodwaters, more than 98 percent of the residents are black and more than a third live in poverty.

Spencer R. Crew, president and chief executive officer of the national Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, said the aftermath of the hurricane would force people to confront inequality.

"Most cities have a hidden or not always talked about poor population, black and white, and most of the time we look past them," Dr. Crew said. "This is a moment in time when we can't look past them. Their plight is coming to the forefront now. They were the ones less able to hop in a car and less able to drive off."

That disparity has been criticized as a "disgrace" by Charles B. Rangel, the senior Democratic congressman from New York City, who said it was made all the worse by the failure of government officials to have planned.

"I assume the president's going to say he got bad intelligence, Mr. Rangel said, adding that the danger to the levees was clear.

"I think that wherever you see poverty, whether it's in the white rural community or the black urban community, you see that the resources have been sucked up into the war and tax cuts for the rich," he said.

Outside Brooklyn Law School yesterday, a man selling recordings of famous African-Americans was upset at the failure to have prepared for the worst. The man, who said his name was Muhammad Ali, drew a damning conclusion about the failure to protect New Orleans.

"Blacks ain't worth it," he said. "New Orleans is a hopeless case."

Among the messages and essays circulating in cyberspace that lament the lost lives and missed opportunities is one by Mark Naison, a white professor of African-American Studies at Fordham University in the Bronx.

"Is this what the pioneers of the civil rights movement fought to achieve, a society where many black people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty as they were by segregation laws?" Mr. Naison wrote. "If Sept. 11 showed the power of a nation united in response to a devastating attack, Hurricane Katrina reveals the fault lines of a region and a nation, rent by profound social divisions."

That sentiment was shared by members of other minority groups who understand the bizarre equality of poverty.

"We tend to think of natural disasters as somehow even-handed, as somehow random," said Martín Espada, an English professor at the University of Massachusetts and poet of a decidedly leftist political bent who is Puerto Rican. "Yet it has always been thus: poor people are in danger. That is what it means to be poor. It's dangerous to be poor. It's dangerous to be black. It's dangerous to be Latino."

This Sunday there will be prayers. In pews from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast, the faithful will come together and pray for those who lived and those who died. They will seek to understand something that has yet to be fully comprehended.

Some may talk of a divine hand behind all of this. But others have already noted the absence of a human one.

"Everything is God's will," said Charles Steele Jr., the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. "But there's a certain amount of common sense that God gives to individuals to prepare for certain things."

That means, Mr. Steele said, not waiting until the eve of crisis.

"Most of the people that live in the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable are black and poor," he said. "So it comes down to a lack of sensitivity on the part of people in Washington that you need to help poor folks. It's as simple as that."

[sourmilkpinky]

I also found it upsetting to see so many able bodies loaded on to busses leaving to find assistance elsewhere, instead of picking up a shovel and lending a hand to restore their beautiful city.

[sourmilkpinky]

I will try my hand at a few other articles: the first by, James S Robbins

September 02, 2005, 7:19 a.m.
Where are the Guardsmen?
Right where they ought to be.



So is the war in Iraq causing troop shortfalls for hurricane relief in New Orleans?




In a word, no.

A look at the numbers should dispel that notion. Take the Army for example. There are 1,012,000 soldiers on active duty, in the Reserves, or in the National Guard. Of them, 261,000 are deployed overseas in 120 countries. Iraq accounts for 103,000 soldiers, or 10.2 percent of the Army.

That’s all? Yes, 10.2 percent. That datum is significant in itself, a good one to keep handy the next time someone talks about how our forces are stretched too thin, our troops are at the breaking point, and so forth. If you add in Afghanistan (15,000) and the support troops in Kuwait (10,000) you still only have 12.6 percent.

So where are the rest? 751,000 (74.2 percent) are in the U.S. About half are active duty, and half Guard and Reserve. The Guard is the real issue of course — the Left wants you to believe that the country has been denuded of its citizen soldiers, and that Louisiana has suffered inordinately because Guardsmen and women who would have been available to be mobilized by the state to stop looting and aid in reconstruction are instead risking their lives in Iraq.

Not hardly. According to Lieutenant General H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, 75 percent of the Army and Air National Guard are available nationwide. In addition, the federal government has agreed since the conflict in Iraq started not to mobilize more than 50 percent of Guard assets in any given state, in order to leave sufficient resources for governors to respond to emergencies.

In Louisiana only about a third of Guard personnel are deployed, and they will be returning in about a week as part of their normal rotation. The Mississippi Guard has 40 percent overseas. But Louisiana and Mississippi are not alone in this effort — under terms of Emergency Management Assistance Compacts (EMACs) between the states, Guard personnel are heading to the area from West Virginia, D.C., New Mexico, Utah, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Alabama, Washington, Indiana, Georgia, Kentucky, and Michigan. Thousands have already arrived, and more will over the next day or so.

The New York Times has called the military response “a costly game of catch up.” Catching up compared to what, one wonders. National Guard units were mobilized immediately; 7,500 troops from four states were on the ground within 24 hours of Katrina — a commendable response given the disruptions to the transportation infrastructure. The DOD response is well ahead of the 1992 Hurricane Andrew timetable. Back then, the support request took nine days to crawl through the bureaucracy. The reaction this time was less than three days officially, and DOD had been pre-staging assets in anticipation of the aid request from the moment Katrina hit. DOD cannot act independently of course; the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the lead agency. Requests for assistance have to be routed from local officials through FEMA to U.S. Northern Command and then to the necessary components. In practice, this means state officials have to assess damage and determine relief requirements; FEMA has to come up with a plan for integrating the military into the overall effort; DOD has to begin to pack and move the appropriate materiel, and deploy sufficient forces. This has all largely been or is being accomplished. Seven thousand mostly Navy and other specialized assets are currently in the area directly supporting hurricane relief, and a much larger number of other forces are en route. The process has been functioning remarkably smoothly under the circumstances.

It is hard to understand what more should, or realistically could have been done up to this point. A disaster of this magnitude is certain to be politicized, but it seems early in the game to be assessing blame for a response effort that has only been underway a few days in a crisis that is still developing; particularly such a rapid response. Moreover, it is simply not plausible to use the situation to critique the force structure in Iraq. The Guard is demonstrating that it can fulfill both its state and federal responsibilities, as it was designed and intended to do. Of course, it is impossible to win in these situations; critics will always find a way. A year ago after Hurricane Charley, the president was accused of responding too quickly, allegedly to curry favor with Florida voters. Back then only a few fringe characters tried to make the Iraq/Guard connection. It is a shame that the Times has drifted in their direction.

— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and an NRO contributor.

[sourmilkpinky]

from www.wlbt.com the FEMA fact sheet:

Katrina - FEMA - Fact Sheet
Email to a Friend Printer Friendly Version



Some facts about how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is responding to Hurricane Katrina.

FINDING LOST LOVED ONES

The FEMA Web site lists 12 on-line sites to assist with locating missing persons.
SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAMS

Eighteen of FEMAs Urban Search and Rescue task forces and two Incident Support Teams are working in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Eight swift water teams from California are also deployed
All 28 of FEMAs teams are activated for response, with the balance staged, enroute or mobilized.
MEDICAL ASSISTANCE

Fifty-one teams from the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) have been deployed, including five Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs) that are supporting New Orleans medical facilities and hospitals not fully operational. These teams have truckloads of medical equipment and supplies with them and are trained to handle trauma, pediatrics, surgery and mental health problems.
Additional teams are staged in Anniston, Ala.; Camp Shelby, Miss.; and Baton Rogue, La., and will move out as conditions permit.
NDMS has identified 2,600 hospital beds in a 12-state area around the affected area and is working with the U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to move patients to these facilities.
SHELTERS

As of early August 31, more than 54,000 people were in 317 shelters.
FEMA is working with a multi-state housing task force to address expected continued sheltering and eventual housing needs.
More than 82,000 meals have been served in the impacted areas.
USDAs Food and Nutrition Service is providing food at shelters and mass feeding sites and issuing emergency food stamps, infant formula and food packages to households in need.
EMERGENCY SUPPLIES

More than 1,700 trucks have been mobilized through federal, state and contract sources to supply ice, water and supplies.
These supplies and equipment are being moved into the hardest-hit areas as quickly as possible, especially water, ice, meals, medical supplies, and generators.
Damaged and closed roads and bridges are delaying relief efforts.
EVACUEE COORDINATION

FEMA is coordinating logistics with the U.S. Department of Transportation and Louisiana National Guard in support of the ground evacuation of refugees sheltered at the Superdome in New Orleans to the Houston Astrodome in Harris County, Texas.
TRANSPORTATION ISSUES

A team of 66 transportation experts is supporting state and local officials in the damage assessment of highways, railroads, airports, transit systems, ports and pipelines.
The Department of Transportation is supporting detour planning and critical transportation system repairs. (Sources: Federal Emergency Management Agency)
On the Web: www.fema.gov




All content © Copyright 2001 - 2005 WorldNow and WLBT. All Rights Reserved.
For more information on this site, please read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

[sourmilkpinky]

and I believe that 'of course it could have been handled better'. I would rather see Americans being part of the solution than part of the problem.

I have heard of no one that doesn't have the desire to see help arrive for everyone affected by this.

[Sally]

We over here are all feeling for the people involved, politics aside our hearts really do go out, its just terrible.

I cannot understand why if the media can get in by helicopter why they can't do something to help too.

[beatlegirl9977]

I cannot understand why if the media can get in by helicopter why they can't do something to help too.
You know, I was just thinking the same thing. Reporters are able to get to "ground zero" as it were for days now, going where the people who need help are at....why can't help get in as easily?

[MonaMe577]

Wanted to share a few that I read this morning in the San Jose Mercury News. Here's a column from the editorial page. Certain passages literally made my jaw drop--the ignorance of some people!

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/12542143.htm

NATURAL DISASTER IS NO TIME FOR BIGOTRY
It Was a Hurricane, Not God's Message

By Leonard Pitts Jr.


Does it really matter?

The city is flooded, people are homeless and hungry and scared and dead. Shouldn't this be a time for giving money and saying prayers? Should we really care about the color of the people looting in the hurricane zone? Or that Louisiana is a red state? Or that some of the dead are gay?

Apparently, that kind of thing matters to some of us. It matters, for instance, to a black man who posted a note in an online forum saying he is embarrassed by news footage showing that most of the looters are black. It matters to the white people who have sent me notes daring me to explain why blacks are "running amok.'' It matters to the author of a note circulating on the Internet who says it would be a "problem'' for a liberal in a blue state to send relief money to a red state.

And it matters to a group called Repent America, which has issued a statement saying the storm was God's way of canceling a gay festival that was to have taken place in New Orleans this week.

It's as tiresome as it is predictable. American disunion being what it is these days, some of us look at even a natural disaster through the distorting prism of bigotry, rancor and fear.

Let me say a few things here. The first is that the city of New Orleans is, according to the last census, 67.3 percent black. Given that looting is predictable under any significant breakdown of social order, who would you expect to find out there smashing windows when the lights go out? Ethnic Hawaiians?

Besides which, white folks loot too. Only it's not called looting when they do it. I refer you to a widely circulated news photo of a white couple wading through chest-high water after, in the words of the caption, ``finding'' food.

I'm sorry, but I have little patience for black people who find shame in this looting. Less patience for white ones who find vindication of their bigotry. It makes me angry that some people think these are the conversations we should be having now.

Our countrymen are in dire straits. We are talking in large part about those who had no means of escape, no cars or credit cards, no way to book a flight, reserve a room, buy a bus ticket, hop a train.

They are, by and large, the poorest and most meager among us and they are living through hell right now. Death toll rising like floodwaters, probably heading into the thousands, corpses floating down the street, and some liberal twit is joking -- God, I hope he was joking -- that the blue states should let the red one suffer? People clinging to rooftops, a great city turned into a steaming, stinking primordial swamp, and some alleged Christians think it's a victory for heterosexuality?

Memo to all these nitwits: It was a hurricane, not God's stamp of approval for your small-mindedness and hate.

Tragedy often becomes a stage for the best of human character. But it seems as if this tragedy is also destined to be a stage for the worst, a spotlight on the divisions that have lately grown so much wider between us.

And then there is the TV reporter who met a distraught man in the aftermath of the storm. He told her how his house had broken in two. How he tried to hold onto his wife as the storm and the water raged. How she told him, "You can't hold me,'' and asked him to take care of the kids and the grandkids. How he lost his grip and she was swept away.

The man was crying as he told the story and it seemed as if the reporter was weeping too. For the record, he was black and she was white. But in that moment, they were just two human beings meeting at an intersection of inconsolable loss.

There are times when nothing else matters.

LEONARD PITTS JR., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a columnist for the Miami Herald.

[beatlegirl9977]

I also found it upsetting to see so many able bodies loaded on to busses leaving to find assistance elsewhere, instead of picking up a shovel and lending a hand to restore their beautiful city.
If there's no food or clean water to be had, it's not surprising that people are leaving--people can't be expected to live, much less work, if they don't have what they need to survive. I'm sure many of those people who are evacuating don't have any plans to come back--everything they had is gone, and they probably wouldn't want to rebuild in the same spot where so much had happened.

[MonaMe577]

Again from the Merc. This one's a letter to the editor, but a very well-written one that I found particularly moving.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/12546727.htm

* * *

I'm on my soap box, so put up with me for a few minutes.

I'm outraged and nauseated about what's happening in the Katrina aftermath, for at least 4 reasons:

1) The decent into looting and gunfire and lawlessness makes me ashamed to live in this country. I seriously thought about moving to Canada or Britain this afternoon. I know that 30% of the people in New Orleans live below the poverty line, and as such that this should not be unexpected. But large numbers of people in other countries live in far more poverty than we do and they do not act like this in a disaster. Further, it's our fault and our government's fault for having done nothing about this poverty.

2) The media is treating this as a sensational news day! What a great way to gain readers/watchers. It makes me feel sick and ashamed to hear their broadcasts. Responsible newscasters should be reporting factually (without reshowing the same provocative pictures again and again), giving us a good idea of the real extent of the damage, of the need and of the tragedy, and telling us practically what we can do to help. I've heard a lot of broadcasters suggesting donations to the Red Cross (and I tried unsuccessfully to call to make a donation tonight), but no one has asked me to pray, or to offer my home, or to support in any other way.

3) There is no one in charge! Hello --- where is the President, where is the governor, where is mayor Guillanni? The convention center in New Orleans has disintegrated into complete chaos without food, water, or any direction or help for anyone. At the very least the governor or FEMA should have dispatched someone to there, some on charismatic (like Bill Clinton, thank you very much), to take charge and rally the people there to fend for themselves to the extent possible. Organization and mission takes a lot of people's minds off themselves and tragedy and would at least remove the garbage, help organize triage, etc.

4) This didn't have to happen! We'd been warned again and again t hat anything over a category 3 hurricane could cause this damage. After the two major earthquakes in CA in the last 20 years, Caltrans has retrofitted most highways and bridges to withstand a major earthquake. Why was the budget for levees in New Orleans reduced year after year (down $71 million again last year)?

So what can we do?

Pray

Donate money, and donate it to a variety of legitimate capable organizations including and not limited to the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, church groups, etc.

Offer to help anyone directly or indirectly involved in this tragedy or in the effort to remediate it. Bring a meal and a bottle of wine to a National Guard wife whose husband is helping the relief effort. If you can help directly do it now!

Make sure it never happens again, and learn that when tragedy and disaster strikes closer to home, we need to respond with selflessness and goodness to all in need around us no matter our own circumstance.

Vote, and vote out all the Republican and Democratic old guard, national and local, that have contributed to the immoral status quo that has allowed this disaster to occur and has responded to it with such ineptitude.

Michael Wheatley, San Jose

[MonaMe577]

Or how about this one, from MSNBC. God, I feel so awful for the people who were supposed to graduate this semester!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9181647/

KATRINA FORCES TULANE TO CANCEL FALL SEMESTER
New Orleans school encourages 8,000 undergrads to earn credits elsewhere

The Associated Press
Updated: 1:51 a.m. ET Sept. 3, 2005


Tulane University canceled its fall semester Friday because of Hurricane Katrina and encouraged its students to take classes at others schools while New Orleans tries to clean up from the flooding.

Across town, the University of New Orleans campus appeared to be about two-thirds above water and the university said it planned to have Internet classes ready by October and satellite campuses open as soon as it could.

Dillard University said it wasn’t ready to give up on the semester either but officials were still considering how to proceed.

The hurricane left as many as 100,000 college students in the New Orleans area reconsidering their fall semester as conditions in the hard-hit city worsened, according to the American Council on Education. Officials said it likely would be months before New Orleans was functioning again.

Several schools already have offered to take in displaced Gulf Coast college students.

To help the students and their universities, the American Council on Education announced guidelines Friday that reflect the financial fears of the waterlogged Gulf Coast schools that don’t want to lose their students for good.

The statement released by the higher education group asked that the schools taking displaced Gulf Coast students in enroll them as visitors rather than transfers. It also asked that they not charge tuition to students who already paid fall tuition. For those who haven’t paid, it said the schools should charge the same tuition as the students’ original schools and send the money to those schools.

Many colleges already had offered to accept students without charging them extra, though the financial details of the offers have not all been clear.

The hurricane has left officials at many of the New Orleans-area colleges struggling to communicate with the outside world.

Tulane and the University of New Orleans both turned to the Internet to announce their plans Friday.

Tulane President Scott Cowen, working from Houston, wrote on the private university’s Web site that the school of 8,000 undergraduates was canceling the fall semester but that it would accept credit from any regionally accredited university and was encouraging students to take courses they would otherwise be taking at Tulane.

School plans to keep sports teams playing
Cowen also said the school would work to keep its sports teams together and continuing to represent Tulane by relying on other schools for practice and playing facilities.

“Our student-athletes are an integral part of this plan. We want our athletes to carry the torch, face, and name of Tulane University during this difficult time,” he said.

The football team set up temporary quarters at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It’s first game will still be Sept. 17 against Mississippi State.

“It’s something that we want to do for New Orleans,” said Tulane linebacker Antonio Mason.

Marvalene Hughes, president of Dillard University, a historically black college in New Orleans, said she was planning further discussions with staff Friday night but was exploring a range of options and was not yet prepared to give up on the semester.

“I don’t give up that easily,” said Hughes, who has been president for just two months and was staying with family in Alabama.

There was no immediate word from other colleges but Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the Washington-based American Council on Education, said he expected most schools in New Orleans would be closed until at least January.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[sourmilkpinky]

This is the kind of help that makes me proud to be an American :)

[beatlegirl9977]

I was wondering if Jerry Lewis would mention anything about hurricane relief during the MD telethon this weekend, and I found this article:

Jerry Lewis' telethon to aid 'his kids,' hurricane victims
http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusgen/ap09-02-222139.asp?t=apent&vts=9320051102

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Sept. 2 — Jerry Lewis can pinpoint the moment he knew his Labor Day telethon had to be more than another chapter in his long effort to help children with muscular dystrophy. It had to benefit hurricane victims, too.
A TV news report on lost youngsters in New Orleans, followed by footage of an elderly woman being pushed through flooded streets on a mattress, moved him to act.
''I had a box of Kleenex and I'm bawling like a child and I'm not believing it,'' Lewis told The Associated Press. ''If I had the slightest chance of helping them a little, how do you not? ... These people are in trouble now.''
Knowing the remarkable compassion of children with muscular dystrophy, Lewis said he's confident ''his kids'' agree with his decision.
The actor-comedian announced this week that he's splitting the telethon's attention between the Muscular Dystrophy Association's needs and those of victims of hurricane Katrina and is asking donors to divide their compassion.
''If you want to send me 20 bucks for my kids, send 10. Send the other 10 to these people in this trouble. The disaster is literally that and it has to be addressed,'' the actor-comedian told a news conference.
Celebrities will appeal for hurricane help during the first four hours of the telethon and its concluding four hours. The broadcast begins at 9 p.m. EDT Sunday and ends at 5:30 p.m. EDT Monday (check local listings for station).
A special 800 phone number will be used for the Katrina donations, with proceeds going to the Salvation Army in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Several other hurricane benefits featuring celebrities and musical acts are planned over the coming days.
Lewis, 79, will address viewers in taped remarks scheduled to open his telethon at the Beverly Hilton hotel.
''I know my kids will understand if I hold up the beginning of their show because there are hundreds of thousands of people who know now what suffering is. ... They are running out of time. And we, as generous and loving Americans, must help them.''
The telethon, in its 40th year, will be carried by about 200 TV stations. The event raised nearly $60 million last year, and Lewis has made a point of saying that each year his goal is to raise $1 more.
Falling short won't bother him, he said during an interview in a large hotel office room bustling with dozens of telethon workers.
''I don't care if we don't raise 8 cents for my kids. I'll find another way to get it,'' he said.
The Muscular Dystrophy Association, whose research and services benefit more than 1 million Americans affected by neuromuscular diseases, said this week it was donating $1 million to hurricane relief.

[twovirgins]

Mayor to feds: 'Get off your asses'
Transcript of radio interview with New Orleans' Nagin

Friday, September 2, 2005; Posted: 2:59 p.m. EDT (18:59 GMT)


New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin speaks Saturday,

Mayor vents anger in radio interview (12:09)

Military's largest-ever disaster response is on (2:40)

New Orleans' disaster was long forewarned (2:40)
RELATED
Gallery: After Katrina


New Orleans (Louisiana)
Ray Nagin
Louisiana
George W. Bush
or Create Your Own
Manage Alerts | What Is This? (CNN) -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin blasted the slow pace of federal and state relief efforts in an expletive-laced interview with local radio station WWL-AM.

The following is a transcript of WWL correspondent Garland Robinette's interview with Nagin on Thursday night. Robinette asked the mayor about his conversation with President Bush:

NAGIN: I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice. And that I have been all around this city, and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we're outmanned in just about every respect. (Listen to the mayor express his frustration in this video -- 12:09)

You know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people, thousands of people that were stuck in attics, man, old ladies. ... You pull off the doggone ventilator vent and you look down there and they're standing in there in water up to their freaking necks.

And they don't have a clue what's going on down here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn -- excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed.

WWL: Did you say to the president of the United States, "I need the military in here"?

NAGIN: I said, "I need everything."

Now, I will tell you this -- and I give the president some credit on this -- he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore.

And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he's getting some stuff done.

They ought to give that guy -- if they don't want to give it to me, give him full authority to get the job done, and we can save some people.

WWL: What do you need right now to get control of this situation?

NAGIN: I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.

I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."

That's -- they're thinking small, man. And this is a major, major, major deal. And I can't emphasize it enough, man. This is crazy.

I've got 15,000 to 20,000 people over at the convention center. It's bursting at the seams. The poor people in Plaquemines Parish. ... We don't have anything, and we're sharing with our brothers in Plaquemines Parish.

It's awful down here, man.

WWL: Do you believe that the president is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can't do anything until [Louisiana Gov.] Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?

NAGIN: I have no idea what they're doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you.

We're getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, "I've been in my attic. I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck. I don't think I can hold out." And that's happening as we speak.

You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, "Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do. Figure it out."

WWL: Who'd you say that to?

NAGIN: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it.

And they allowed that pumping station next to Pumping Station 6 to go under water. Our sewage and water board people ... stayed there and endangered their lives.

And what happened when that pumping station went down, the water started flowing again in the city, and it starting getting to levels that probably killed more people.

In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes in the city. That's a power station over there.

So there's no water flowing anywhere on the east bank of Orleans Parish. So our critical water supply was destroyed because of lack of action.

WWL: Why couldn't they drop the 3,000-pound sandbags or the containers that they were talking about earlier? Was it an engineering feat that just couldn't be done?

NAGIN: They said it was some pulleys that they had to manufacture. But, you know, in a state of emergency, man, you are creative, you figure out ways to get stuff done.

Then they told me that they went overnight, and they built 17 concrete structures and they had the pulleys on them and they were going to drop them.

I flew over that thing yesterday, and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening. And they're feeding the public a line of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here.

WWL: If some of the public called and they're right, that there's a law that the president, that the federal government can't do anything without local or state requests, would you request martial law?

NAGIN: I've already called for martial law in the city of New Orleans. We did that a few days ago.

WWL: Did the governor do that, too?

NAGIN: I don't know. I don't think so.

But we called for martial law when we realized that the looting was getting out of control. And we redirected all of our police officers back to patrolling the streets. They were dead-tired from saving people, but they worked all night because we thought this thing was going to blow wide open last night. And so we redirected all of our resources, and we hold it under check.

I'm not sure if we can do that another night with the current resources.

And I am telling you right now: They're showing all these reports of people looting and doing all that weird stuff, and they are doing that, but people are desperate and they're trying to find food and water, the majority of them.

Now you got some knuckleheads out there, and they are taking advantage of this lawless -- this situation where, you know, we can't really control it, and they're doing some awful, awful things. But that's a small majority of the people. Most people are looking to try and survive.

And one of the things people -- nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.

You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.

And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we're not overrun.

WWL: Well, you and I must be in the minority. Because apparently there's a section of our citizenry out there that thinks because of a law that says the federal government can't come in unless requested by the proper people, that everything that's going on to this point has been done as good as it can possibly be.

NAGIN: Really?

WWL: I know you don't feel that way.

NAGIN: Well, did the tsunami victims request? Did it go through a formal process to request?

You know, did the Iraqi people request that we go in there? Did they ask us to go in there? What is more important?

And I'll tell you, man, I'm probably going get in a whole bunch of trouble. I'm probably going to get in so much trouble it ain't even funny. You probably won't even want to deal with me after this interview is over.

WWL: You and I will be in the funny place together.

NAGIN: But we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.

Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up -- you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.

You know, I'm not one of those drug addicts. I am thinking very clearly.

And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.

WWL: What can we do here?

NAGIN: Keep talking about it.

WWL: We'll do that. What else can we do?

[twovirgins]

NAGIN: Organize people to write letters and make calls to their congressmen, to the president, to the governor. Flood their doggone offices with requests to do something. This is ridiculous.

I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count.

Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.

WWL: I'll say it right now, you're the only politician that's called and called for arms like this. And if -- whatever it takes, the governor, president -- whatever law precedent it takes, whatever it takes, I bet that the people listening to you are on your side.

NAGIN: Well, I hope so, Garland. I am just -- I'm at the point now where it don't matter. People are dying. They don't have homes. They don't have jobs. The city of New Orleans will never be the same in this time.

WWL: We're both pretty speechless here.

NAGIN: Yeah, I don't know what to say. I got to go.

WWL: OK. Keep in touch. Keep in touch.

[HMVNipper]

This is the kind of help that makes me proud to be an American :)

Yeah, well, the lack of swift response from our GOVERNMENT makes ME ashamed. And no spin-doctoring article from some right-wing rag is going to make me believe any differently, sorry. Not when I am hearing things about how badly this has been dealt with FIRST HAND from someone CURRENTLY INSIDE THE AREA.

It's TAKING "regular people" to do things because the people in freakin' CHARGE are doing NOTHING or taking too long to do too little. So in that sense, I am proud of the American people. But I am sure ashamed of our officials.

Oh, and thank you for posting that transcript, Erik, I would think that Mayor Nagin is in the BEST position to discuss how totally incompetent the administration has been in this disaster.

[HMVNipper]

If there's no food or clean water to be had, it's not surprising that people are leaving--people can't be expected to live, much less work, if they don't have what they need to survive. I'm sure many of those people who are evacuating don't have any plans to come back--everything they had is gone, and they probably wouldn't want to rebuild in the same spot where so much had happened.

I agree, Tina...sorry, I'm going to be blunt here, but when the so-called "able-bodied" people are staggering through polluted water, no food or clean drinking water, no electricity, no air conditioning (in stifling conditions, it's been in the upper 90s down there on the Gulf Coast), and stewing in their own s**t, expecting them to "stay and help rebuild their beautiful city" is a crock of crap. There IS no "beautiful city" anymore, don't be naive... :rolleyes: Come on, would YOU stay?

Yes, I'm angry. I'm DAMN angry. Gimme a break. :scream2:

[sourmilkpinky]

I am just saying that the response from colleges across the country is very heart-warming...I know my daughters alma matter is also waiving tuition to students that need replacing for fall sememster for college...This makes me happy. I believe this is what will truly help the people...

[HMVNipper]

I am just saying that the response from colleges across the country is very heart-warming...I know my daughters alma matter is also waiving tuition to students that need replacing for fall sememster for college...This makes me happy. I believe this is what will truly help the people...

It IS heart-warming, indeed. But the MAJORITY of people who need help in this disaster are NOT college students. And you know what else? The various colleges across the country started offering their help and their campuses DAYS ago, long before anyone "official" showed up in the area. So who had the better and swifter response, eh? The colleges, or the administration? Gee, my vote goes for the colleges...

[sourmilkpinky]

Well I think it is time for me to step out of this topic. I will just end by quoting something I heard recently "if you depend on the government, you are bound to be dissappointed."

My bet goes to your fellow man....why alienate them.

[HMVNipper]

Gotta love the spin-doctoring... :rolleyes: I love how conservatives run when liberals turn out to be correct...

These people are not "depending" on the government, they are asking for help that they NEED. And I do not think that this is too much to ask in a disaster. My brother doesn't depend on the government for anything, he and his wife and his sister in law and his brother in law all held good jobs in Biloxi, they weren't on welfare. His father in law retired from a civilian positon at Keesler AFB. These are not indigents -- but they need help from officials NOW. And even the people left in New Orleans, many of whom are poor and dependent on the government for day to day subsistence, should not be denied it now, when they really need it in order not to die as if this was a third-world country.

[sourmilkpinky]

Gotta love the spin-doctoring... :rolleyes: I love how conservatives run when liberals turn out to be correct...

These people are not "depending" on the government, they are asking for help that they NEED. And I do not think that this is too much to ask in a disaster.
I don't think that attack was called for

[HMVNipper]

Well, gee, I've been feeling pretty attacked here all day, when all I've been doing is posting facts and my OWN opinions. I never said anyone had to agree. Was the posting of that neo-fascist right-wing article to counter what I posted from the Times something I shouldn't have perceived as an attack because I am a liberal? Only the most extreme of right-wing publications actually think the handling of this disaster was in any way good -- even the more conservative-leaning mainstream papers are agreeing that this could have been done better.

And as I have said repeatedly -- my brother is in the middle of the mess. I tend to think he's not making things up. And Mayor Nagin of New Orleans is certainly in the BEST position to say that this whole thing stinks. So let's see...who would YOU believe?

[beatlegirl9977]

Um, maybe I'm mistaken here, but who ELSE can those people depend on right now BUT the government/police/National Guard/etc. to keep them safe and to help them literally survive?? :confused:

[HMVNipper]

Um, maybe I'm mistaken here, but who ELSE can those people depend on right now BUT the government/police/National Guard/etc. to keep them safe and to help them literally survive?? :confused:

Thank you. My point exactly.

[Sally]

Bush's way of ethnic cleansing has been mentioned in our media because most the people stranded are poor. Not sure how true that is and its abit extreme.

[HMVNipper]

Bush's way of ethnic cleansing has been mentioned in our media because most the people stranded are poor. Not sure how true that is and its abit extreme.

It is a bit extreme...I think to call it ethnic cleansing is a bit much. Even Bush and Co. would not stoop that low.

I DO think, however, that because most of the people left are black and poor, they haven't jumped to it as fast as they ought. I don't know if it's intentional, but it sure does show a lack of compassion for the less fortunate parts of our society whether they mean it to or not.

[MonaMe577]

I DO think, however, that because most of the people left are black and poor, they haven't jumped to it as fast as they ought. I don't know if it's intentional, but it sure does show a lack of compassion for the less fortunate parts of our society whether they mean it to or not.

Sad but true. That was one of the things that shocked me in the first article I posted. The caption under a photo of black survivors rummaging through a store said that they were "looting", while a photo of white survivors doing the exact same thing said they were "finding food." Unbelievable. Not even a tragedy like this can make some people put aside their biases.

[HMVNipper]

Sad but true. That was one of the things that shocked me in the first article I posted. The caption under a photo of black survivors rummaging through a store said that they were "looting", while a photo of white survivors doing the exact same thing said they were "finding food." Unbelievable. Not even a tragedy like this can make some people put aside their biases.

It is just another example of how totally polarized this country is. That is appalling.

[Rellevart]

A little late to the party, but can I please ask that ALL OF YOU regardless of political affiliation, quit the personal attacks on each other and play nice? Posting articles and opinions is all well and good, but please, don't fall into that "People/things/articles which support my point of view are virtuous and holy and perfect and people/things/articles which oppose my point of view are biased and irreputable" trap. It is fine to express one's opinions and to disagree with one another but the patronizing and eye-rolling when somebody expresses a differing point of view is not acceptable.

I feel there is no doubt that the rescue/aid efforts could have been run much better, but a bunch of people throwing crap at each other on an internet message board as to what the "ultimate truth" is isn't going to help those people or help each other.

Take it down a notch, please. Thanks. :smile1:

PS - And anybody who starts arguing with this post saying it wasn't THEM causing a problem, it was the EVIL OTHER PEOPLE, you are totally going to be sent to your room without dinner and your hand smacked. I'm serious.

[luvsthebeatles]

My prayers to everyone that has been hurt by the hurricane. :heart1:

[JDanRyan]

The following link is a good one for straight on information:

http://mgno.com/

In light of all the contention here with regards to how valid a source is, a few words of intro:

The person maintaining this blog is a disaster engineer at an Internet hosting company, who started his log before Katrina hit to keep in touch with the company's customers. He's made it clear which side of the fence he's on, discussing his service during Gulf War I and making it clear what he feels about media spin and grafting racial issues on this story.

His job has been to maintain the servers at the company, located in downtown N'awlins. His vantage point, a few blocks from the Superdome, has made him a valuable witness first hand to what's going on, and his accounts are chilling. He's honest, straightforward, no-nonsense and has tales to tell without spin. He also has stills posted he's taken throughout the crisis.

No matter what your opinion, his accounts are compelling reading. No understanding of this crisis is complete without reading these posts.

[Beatle_4]

I know this is a very touchy subject and it will be debated for some time to come. Who could have/should have done what, for who and when but if I may interject a little humour into it. I found a link to a site which uses a flash cartoon that sort of sums up what a lot of people have been saying. Maybe not so much on this board but I have read it on Excite, Yahoo, and on MSN boards.

WARNING The language is crude and the page does say... Viewer Discretion Is Advised. If the mods here feel it is inappropriate, delete it then.

http://www.illwillpress.com/kat.html

[HMVNipper]

I think posting a link to a controversial page is fine, Ed. And I think that Lynner and Rellevart would probably agree. There's nothing wrong with a link to something off-site that could be crude, it isn't like you posted the crude stuff itself right here!

[HMVNipper]

I got an email from my brother!!! Thought you would all want to see it, so I'm posting it here. Interesting how it took the "family network" to get supplies to them...no mention of anyone else...

Anyway...

***************

Got a rare opp'y to be in a powered and connected building today and get online, so if any of y'all send replies I may not see them for a while.

I have received so many Emails of thoughts, prayers, and support, and my family and I couldn't possibly be more grateful. I wish I had time to reply to each of you individually today. However, as I only have limited time on line right now, in order to save time I'm sending out this same reply to each of you who have checked in (I'm copy/pasting it to each of you); I will try to get with each of you individually as soon as I am able, and please accept my apologies if I do not do so right away. Remember, friends don't have expiration dates.

Our families are all alive and reasonably well. Some perspective for those who were not aware of my logistics: My wife and I lived in a group of 3 family homes in East Biloxi...next door to us was my Dad-in-law and 2 of my wife's siblings, and next door to that 2 of my Dad-in-law's siblings.

We rode out the storm on the 2nd floor of my Dad-in-law's house, going under the same assumption as everyone else - "it couldn't be worse than Camille (1969, worst (until now) storm to ever hit the USA) was". My Dad-in-law's house did not flood during Camille...the 3 houses are at around 20 ft elevation...a "neighborhood high spot" if you will.

Wrong. All 3 of our houses were flooded by Katrina (around 6 ft), and all contents, except what we could salvage the last few days, ruined. However, it was a blessing that we stayed....we pulled out 4 neighboring families as the water rose and they rode out the storm with us upstairs.

We are also blessed in that we are able to stay at our cousin's house in West Biloxi...he sustained a bit of roof damage but otherwise is in good shape. He also has a generator so we are able to keep our elderly relatives cool when needed. Our extended family support system has also kicked in and so we are in good shape as to supplies, etc. (When one relative from Pensacola, who we had helped empty out HER house after Hurricane Ivan flooded her out last year, arrived the other day, I told her, "We had hoped you would NEVER return the favor!" She said, "Neither did I!").

So, while I'm technically "homeless", I consider myself and my family members to be FAR more fortunate than so many others throughout the Coast (and N.O. of course) who are in far, far worse shape. We will be OK.

Thanks to all for thoughts and prayers, and we'll talk again as I am able.

Please feel free to forward this along to any others in whichever of my "personal networks" you might be a part of, who might be interested.

-Dave R.

[Rellevart]

If the mods here feel it is inappropriate, delete it then.

Not a prob. I think you gave all the appropriate caveats so that anybody who wouldn't want to see anything crude wouldn't click. Thanks. :smile1:

[donnamariemoreno27]

I know this is a very touchy subject and it will be debated for some time to come. Who could have/should have done what, for who and when but if I may interject a little humour into it. I found a link to a site which uses a flash cartoon that sort of sums up what a lot of people have been saying. Maybe not so much on this board but I have read it on Excite, Yahoo, and on MSN boards.

WARNING The language is crude and the page does say... Viewer Discretion Is Advised. If the mods here feel it is inappropriate, delete it then.

http://www.illwillpress.com/kat.html

Beatle 4...I completely AGREE with what the "cartoon squirrel is saying" cuz it's TRUE!!! Reporter's STOP REPORTING and get out there to HELP anyone you see that is stranded, especially the elderly & little childern!!!

Donna~

[beatlebangs1964]

Susan, I am in full agreement with all you have said. My state has set up an emergency shelter and people are coming in via chartered bus, cars and Greyhound at an alarming rate. The sad thing is that the stadia are ill equipped to house them; there are not enough toilets and the disaster in the affected states is growing increasingly alarming.

The bright side to this hellish ordeal is that it is giving us all a chance to step up to the plate for others and extend ourselves as well as some olive branches to those in dire need.

[Sally]

A little late to the party, but can I please ask that ALL OF YOU regardless of political affiliation, quit the personal attacks on each other and play nice? Posting articles and opinions is all well and good, but please, don't fall into that "People/things/articles which support my point of view are virtuous and holy and perfect and people/things/articles which oppose my point of view are biased and irreputable" trap. It is fine to express one's opinions and to disagree with one another but the patronizing and eye-rolling when somebody expresses a differing point of view is not acceptable.

I feel there is no doubt that the rescue/aid efforts could have been run much better, but a bunch of people throwing crap at each other on an internet message board as to what the "ultimate truth" is isn't going to help those people or help each other.

Take it down a notch, please. Thanks. :smile1:

PS - And anybody who starts arguing with this post saying it wasn't THEM causing a problem, it was the EVIL OTHER PEOPLE, you are totally going to be sent to your room without dinner and your hand smacked. I'm serious.

Very well said Rell :teeth1:

Can I just say that we in the UK are thinking of you people right now, its incomprehensible to us that an area the size of our whole nation is going through so much at the moment.

[Lynner]

Suz, Thanks for stepping in. Haven't been around much lately.


We all have our opinons on this and how getting aid is being handled. We may not all agree, but fighting amongst ourselves does no good to the people in the Southern US. No one should feel they have to defend their opinion. Not everyone is going to agree.

What I think is wonderful is various organizations sending help. People helping each other. That's so good.

[Rellevart]

What I find really ironic is that two feuding local bands are holding hurricane relief concerts in 3 weeks, one on Friday, one on Saturday, one on the north side, one on the south side, and they were announced within a few hours of each other. Ha, I applaud both of them for trying to do something to help, but it's TOTALLY a competition between them. I'm sure after it's all over, they'll both be posting that THEIRS was the more successful...tee hee...

I hope they're both successful though, those people down there can use all the help they can get.

[beatlebangs1964]

Life is very short and there's no ti-i-i-i-ime for fussing and fighting, my friends. :smile1:

[ShowTunes]

I also found it upsetting to see so many able bodies loaded on to busses leaving to find assistance elsewhere, instead of picking up a shovel and lending a hand to restore their beautiful city.

Oh? And what are they going to eat while they do this? The dead floating bodies? (Mmm, Sweeney Todd-brand meat pies!) What are they going to drink? The nice contaminated flood waters? (Mmm, spicy!) Where are they going to sleep? How are they going to earn a living? What will they do with their children? What will they wear, and where will they store their clothes? How will they wash? Where will they go to the bathroom? What, exactly, can they do at this point besides slog around in the water? I am eager to hear your solutions to these interesting logistical problems.

[ShowTunes]

Um, maybe I'm mistaken here, but who ELSE can those people depend on right now BUT the government/police/National Guard/etc. to keep them safe and to help them literally survive?? :confused:

Exactly! I mean, isn't that the POINT of having government/police/National Guard?

[ShowTunes]

I know this is a very touchy subject and it will be debated for some time to come. Who could have/should have done what, for who and when but if I may interject a little humour into it. I found a link to a site which uses a flash cartoon that sort of sums up what a lot of people have been saying. Maybe not so much on this board but I have read it on Excite, Yahoo, and on MSN boards.

WARNING The language is crude and the page does say... Viewer Discretion Is Advised. If the mods here feel it is inappropriate, delete it then.

http://www.illwillpress.com/kat.html

It's a great cartoon!

[ShowTunes]

Last Friday KRMA-TV (one of Denver's PBS stations), the Red Cross, and our NBC affiliate teamed up for a quick telethon in aid of the Katrina victims. It ran from 7 to 11 PM, and I was one of the last people they were able to squeeze in to volunteer--there were many more volunteers (from both KRMA and the Red Cross) than they could accommodate!

We're not yet sure of the exact total we raised in the 4 hours, because many calls were rolled over to a call center in California, but we know we raised AT LEAST $300,000 just from the calls we got in Denver, and we expect that total to double--from all accounts, both phone banks were jammed with calls! (I was on door/greeter/general grunt duty, so I didn't take calls, but everyone told me they were just overwhelmed.) The Mayor and the Governor both came to urge people to donate. At the end, the head of the Denver chapter of the Red Cross told us that we had just provided them with the largest one-day total that the Denver chapter had EVER received, and we were also the FIRST PBS station to raise money for the hurricane victims!

This telethon was conceived on Tuesday by the KRMA president/general manager and put together in 48 hours. I can't tell you how proud I am of the stations, the volunteers, and the generous people within the broadcast area (mostly Colorado and Wyoming). I most sincerely hope that other stations jump on the bandwagon and raise money as well!

[HMVNipper]

This account below is from one of my brother's relatives, writing from San Antonio about David's niece, Dora. This appeared on the website for WLOX, the local Biloxi TV station. They have a lot of news other than this if you care to go check it out, the website is www.wlox.com (http://www.wlox.com/) :

http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=3782912&nav=6DJHduh7

P Lamey-Doxstater - San Antonio, TX
This is to let you know that I've heard from Jimmy who got home from Lake Charles this evening & he is fine. Dora made it through Katrina physically but mentally she has probably lost most of her belongings. Her dads house in D'Iberville flooded several feet & with the receeding of the waters they've pulled all the flooring out & hauled out the ruined belongings. She works for the Beau Rivage Casino in Events Dept so I'm not sure what will happen there. There were several casinos on the Hwy 90 main road through Biloxi. Her casino was flooded up to the second floor (her floor) so it will be a while before they know what will happen to her job. Electricity, phone lines, water, etc are gone & out for awhile? Dora's grandfather & relatives (one aunt works @ Sun Herald) all made it through alive but are not as lucky. The second story of his house was a refuge for 21 people, mostly related to her but some neighbors, even one in a wheelchair. Their cars are a total loss - some on top of each other. They lost all their furnishings & personal items in three homes all were back-to-back in the same block. Since these were people who've lived through many such storms they thought this one would not be any worse than before....their only "salvation" was that they all "lived" through it. They will all have to rebuild & start over. Thanks for your prayers for safety. Say one for restoration for all involved from Katrina.

*********

I should add that the "grandfather" who saved 21 people is my brother's father in law, Kenny Lamey. So for those who think they "should have left," and "got what they deserved for staying," I say this -- yes, I thought initially that it was foolish for them to stay. I would have left, I admit it. But if they had not remained, if they had not been there to offer refuge to those other people, 21 people would probably have died when their homes flooded. Just ponder that before you say they do not deserve assistance in their time of need.

My brother has STILL not seen any officials in Biloxi.

[HMVNipper]

Here is an op-ed piece from yesterday's NY Times by Anne Rice, the writer, a native of New Orleans. She now lives in California, but not because she particularly wanted to leave -- her health forced her to leave her beloved city. Her criticisms are right on, IMO.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/opinion/04rice.html?pagewanted=2

September 4, 2005
Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?

By ANNE RICE

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."

[Roxy Starkey]

I'm so sad about it. Been watching and reading the news and it is a total dissaster :sad1:

My prayers are with every one who's affected. May the people who died there rest in peace.

[twovirgins]

Heres a transcript from "Now with Bill Moyers "Sept 20th 2002 three years ago






MOYERS: Welcome to NOW.


Sometimes the devil really is in the details. Consider the annual report just out from the E.P.A. on trends in air pollution. For the first time in six years, it leaves out any discussion of global warming. The White House simply doesn't want anyone to take climate change seriously, or to connect the dots between our addiction to fossil fuels and a hotter planet.

This summer, however, we may have seen a glimpse of what's in store. Nearly half the U.S. was affected by drought during the hottest, driest season since the 1930s. And Europe had the opposite extreme: the worst floods in more than a century.

Down in Louisiana's bayou country, the water also rises. A few weeks ago, we showed you how the coastline there is disappearing into the Gulf because of human activity. We return to New Orleans tonight because if this keeps up, the streetcar named Desire could be swept away by the muddy waters of the Delta.

NPR's Daniel Zwerlding and NOW'S William Brangham have our report.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: When travelers rate their favorite cities around the world, they put New Orleans near the top of the list... Cajun culture... The Mississippi...The French Quarter.

But a scientist named Joe Suhayda sees a more troubling vision of this city.

JOE SUHAYDA: What we have here is a surveying rod and it has the lengths marked along the length of the rod. So what I'm going to do is go ahead and extend this.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Can I help you here?

JOE SUHAYDA: Yes. Go ahead and hold that.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Suhayda studies hurricanes. And he's brought me to the French Quarter to show what could happen if the most powerful kind of hurricane hits New Orleans.

JOE SUHAYDA: So this indicates the depth of water that would occur above this ground in a category five hurricane.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: It's hard to comprehend, really.

JOE SUHAYDA: It is really, to think that that much water would occur during this catastrophic storm.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So basically the part of New Orleans that most people in the United States and around the world think of as New Orleans would disappear under water.

JOE SUHAYDA:: That's right. During the worst of the storm, most of this area would be covered by 15 to 20 feet of water.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Do you expect this kind of hurricane and this kind of flooding to hit New Orleans in our lifetime?

JOE SUHAYDA: Well, there... I would say the probability is yes. In terms of past experience, we've had three storms that were near-misses that could've done at least something close to this.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So emergency management officials are trying to get ready... they're playing a hurricane version of war games.

WALTER MAESTRI: A couple of days ago we actually had an exercise where we brought a fictitious Category Five hurricane--

DANIEL ZWERDLING: The worst.

WALTER MAESTRI: --the absolute worst, into the metropolitan area

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Walter Maestri is basically the czar of public emergencies in Jefferson Parish. It's the biggest suburb in the region.

WALTER MAESTRI: Well, when the exercise was completed it was evident that we were going to lose a lot of people we changed the name of the storm from Delaney to K-Y-A-G-B... kiss your ass goodbye... because anybody who was here as that Category Five storm came across... was gone.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: The American Red Cross lists the worst natural disasters that might strike America. They worry about earthquakes in California, and tropical storms in Florida. But they say the biggest catastrophe could be a hurricane hitting New Orleans.

People have known for centuries that they picked a risky spot to build this city. In fact, some of the first French settlers wanted to abandon it.

The biggest river on the continent snakes around it. Most of the land here is below sea level. And every time people tried to expand the city, the Mississippi promptly flooded it.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Why did people stay here? I'm, it became obvious very, very quickly after the French came that this was a really lousy place to live.

OLIVER HOUCK: They made a lot of money. They made a lot of money because they were the transfer point for all the shipping that came out of the belly of the country and went to France and went to South America and went to England and all of the ships coming in, you had to pass by New Orleans.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So they launched what's become one of the biggest construction projects in history. To protect their investments. As of today, the us arm has built 2000 miles of levees to stop the Mississippi from flooding. And until recently, scientists thought that these walls of soil and concrete and steel had made New Orleans safe. They never dreamed that the levees would come back to haunt them.

OLIVER HOUCK: So the irony of history and the evolution of the problem has been that we've been like one of those old citadels in an adventure story, defended ourselves against the enemy that we knew, which was the river. But to the rear and to the flank was this other threat that we're only beginning now to appreciate, and it may be too late to prevent.

WALTER CRONKITE (FROM TAPE): The remnants of killer Hurricane Camille continued to spread death and destruction...

DANIEL ZWERDLING: In 1969, Hurricane Camille rattled the country...it was a rare Category 5. Here's the problem: when government officials built the levees to protect New Orleans, they designed them to hold off much smaller kinds of storms. They didn't expect that a hurricane as big as Camille would show up in our lifetimes...or our grandchildren's lifetimes.

WALTER CRONKITE: Hurricane Camille was by any yardstick the greatest storm of any kind ever to hit the nation...

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Camille missed New Orleans, but not by much. And it suggested that maybe officials had been short sighted.

Then nature shook the nation again in 1992. Remember Hurricane Andrew? That was another Category Five storm — Andrew was the most expensive natural disaster in America's history. And the center of the storm didn't even hit a city.

Well after Andrew, officials in Louisiana began to worry more about New Orleans. They came up with elaborate evacuation plans:

PROMOTIONAL VIDEO: "If the warning goes out, by all means, evacuate!"


DANIEL ZWERDLING: And then another storm came that a lot of those plans wouldn't work:

JOE SUHAYDA: Well, Hurricane Georges was one for which the track was to the East of the City and had the potential of flooding the City.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: At the last minute, Georges faded and veered away from the city... And that was lucky.

JOE SUHAYDA: What happened to the people that did evacuate is that they got into massive traffic jams and many of them spent the worst part of the hurricane either on a-- on the highway, stopped, or had pulled off to the side of the road.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: I'm trying to picture tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people trapped in these traffic jams as the hurricane is hitting the City and the water level is starting to rise. What would happen to them?

JOE SUHAYDA: They would be washed away and there would be really no way for the help, there is public help emergency services people to get to them to help them.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And on top of those worries: scientists say that the threat to New Orleans keeps getting bigger.

New Orleans has always had a huge natural shield that helps protect it from storms: there are miles and miles of wetlands, between the city and the Gulf of Mexico. When a hurricane blows over them, it loses some of its power. But as we reported a couple of weeks ago, this shield is breaking apart.

And here's the irony: the wetlands are disappearing because of the levees. The very levees that were supposed to protect New Orleans. They stopped the Mississippi River from flooding, but it turns out that they also triggered an environmental chain reaction, which is starving the wetlands to death.

Scientists say if this shield keeps crumbling over the next few decades, then it won't take a giant storm to cause a disaster. A much weaker, more common kind of hurricane could devastate New Orleans.

WALTER MAESTRI: And here we will have all of the different operations of local government that have responsibility to actually carry out specific function...


DANIEL ZWERDLING: Back at his command center, Walter Maestri is coordinating how government officials would handle the emergency.

WALTER MAESTRI: We've got emergency medical here, public works i here, resource management...

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Maestri says consider this troubling fact: more than a million people live in this area, and they're stuck in a geological trap.

WALTER MAESTRI: New Orleans is, if you think about it, it's a soup bowl. Think of a soup bowl. And the soup bowl-- the high edges of the soup bowl-- is the Mississippi River. It's amazing to say, but the highest elevation in the city of New Orleans is at the Mississippi River.

[twovirgins]

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Maestri says, imagine what happens if a hurricane like Andrew comes raging up from the Gulf:

WALTER MAESTRI: The hurricane is spinning counter-clockwise. It's been pushing in front of it water from the Gulf of Mexico for days. It's now got a wall of water in front of it some 30, 40 feet high. As it approaches the levies of the-- the-- that surround the city, it tops those levees. As the storm continues to pass over. Now Lake Ponchetrain, that water from Lake Ponchartrain is now pushed on to that - those population which has been fleeing from the western side and everybody's caught in the middle. The bowl now completely fills. And we've now got the entire community underwater some 20, 30 feet underwater. Everything is lost.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Remember the levees which the Army built, to hold smaller floods out of the bowl? Maestri says now those levees would doom the city. Because they'd trap the water in.

WALTER MAESTRI: It's going to look like a massive shipwreck. There's going to be-- there's going to be, you know-- everything that that the water has carried in is going to be there. Alligators, moccasins, you know every kind of rodent that you could think of.

All of your sewage treatment plants are under water. And of course the material is flowing free in the community. Disease becomes a distinct possibility now. The petrochemicals that are produced all up and down the Mississippi River --much of that has floated into this bowl. I mean this has become, you know, the biggest toxic waste dump in the world now. Is the city of New Orleans because of what has happened.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Federal officials say that nobody in America has confronted these conditions before. Not across an entire city. Not after an earthquake. Not after floods. Not even after September 11th:

So they've gone to the US Army Corps of Engineers, and they've asked them to figure out — How would the city even begin to function? Jay Combe has spent the last few years assembling a doomsday manual.

JAY COMBE: Street signs will be gone. The things that you normally think, "Well, I'm going 'round the corner of Broadway and St. Charles," and that place won't be there.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So Combe's been mapping crucial structures with longitude and latitude, because he says emergency crews will have to use navigation devices just to find out where they are.

And Combe says, how will they get the water out of the city? For the past hundred years, New Orleans has operated one of the biggest pumping systems in the world. Every time there's a major rain, colossal turbines suck up the water and pump it out of "The Bowl." Combe says that won't work after a big hurricane.

JAY COMBE: The problem is that the city's been under water, the pumps are flooded. They don't operate now. We have to get the pumps back in operation and in order to get the pumps back in operation, we have to get the water out of the city.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Catch-22

JAY COMBE: That's correct.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And here's perhaps the most troubling question of all: if a huge hurricane does hit New Orleans, how many people will die?

JAY COMBE: I think of a terrible disaster. I think of 100,000, and that's just my guess. I think that there's a terrible lack of perception. The last serious hurricane we had here was in 1965. That's close to 40 years ago.

[twovirgins]

So, we've dodged bullets three times since Betsy and I'm not sure we can keep counting on the hurricane changing its mind and going someplace else.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Stories about disasters in America usually end on an optimistic note. People rebound. The nation rebuilds. Life gradually gets back to normal. But officials in Louisiana are facing another possibility: If a monster storm strikes New Orleans, this city might never come back.

DANIEL ZWERDLING (ADDRESSING SUHAYDA): Are you seriously suggesting that the nation might have to abandon the city of New Orleans?


JOE SUHAYDA: I think there would be some concern perhaps of rather than trying to rebuild the city would be then to just demolish those areas that couldn't be refurbished, reclaimed and basically start from some kind of scratch or blank slate, so to speak.

WALTER MAESTRI: And if I'm the Senator from South Dakota or North Dakota or wherever, you know, am I going to want to vote the kind of massive funding that it's going to take to rebuild it, given the fact that nobody can promise me that it's not gonna happen again two weeks later.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Officials are stunned by this scenario: They say there's got to be something they can do to save New Orleans and save people's lives. So they're thinking about building more levees and building them higher. They're thinking about building new highways, so people can evacuate faster. And they're calling for a massive project to rebuild some of the vanishing wetlands.

But scientists like Joe Suhayda say these projects would take decades. He says America can't wait that long. New Orleans is going to drown and it needs a life raft, now.

JOE SUHAYDA:: What we have here is an example of the kind of structure that would be part of the community haven wall.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Suhayda wants to build a massive wall around the historic heart of New Orleans. It'd be like the walls that protected medieval cities. He says that way, at least the core of New Orleans might survive.

This particular wall we're on is just a tiny example but Suhayda's version would be three stories high and miles around.

JOE SUHAYDA: It'd take about 12 miles to protect a critical part of the City where we have the central business district, where we have several hospitals-the governmental buildings the schools and other areas that could be used for shelters.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Suhayda pictures the scene unfolding like a disaster movie: the hurricane's approaching...government officials sound the alarm: get to the haven, if you can.


JOE SUHAYDA: And so through gates like this people would come in buses, walking or automobiles and get behind the wall.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: This is amazing to think about. I'm envisioning those last few minutes when the government knows it's going to have to close this gate and all the other gates and the wall, and people are either going to be in and protected or out and in danger of dying, I mean is there a siren that says, you know, "Everybody get inside the gate. Two minutes left. One minute left"?

JOE SUHAYDA: Well it would come down, of course, to a decision to actually close the gates. I can imagine people trying to carry their dogs, and their-their prized possessions, and fighting-- winds that at this point would be very very strong-- which would make, you know, walking-- over the ground very very difficult. Some people probably falling down and-- and-- and-needing help and maybe they'll be crews and people available that would actually go out and try to assist these people by picking them up or putting them in wheelchairs or some such things to expedite the whole movement...

But there'd come a time when-- the decision would have to be made to-- stop-any entrance to the haven.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: We've tried to find scientists who'd say that these predictions of doom could never really come true and we haven't been able to find them. The main debate seems to be, when the country is facing different kinds of threats, which ones should get the most attention? The federal government has been cutting money from hurricane protection projects. Partly to pay for the war against terrorists.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Do you think that the President of the United States and Congress understand that people like you and the scientists studying this think the city of New Orleans could very possibly disappear?

WALTER MAESTRI: I think they know that, I think that they've been told that. I don't know that anybody, though, psychologically, you know has come to grips with that as-- as a-- a potential real situation. Just like none of us could possibly come to grips with the loss of the World Trade Center. And it's still hard for me to envision that it's gone. You know and it's impossible for someone like me to think that the French Quarter of New Orleans could be gone.

[HMVNipper]

Well, Erik, thank you for posting this...this isn't the only account of such a disaster that was out there for years.

My husband pointed out that when Bush's appointee for PBS chief came on board, it's interesting that NOW is one of the shows that he was quick to crack down on and target as being too liberal in its presentation, and it was quickly canned under pressure from the White House...

Well, as Will Rogers said, "I don't have to make this stuff up, I just read the newspaper..."

The lying and hypocracy of the administration and their utterly stupid and pathetic ignorance is beyond belief. They seem to believe fully Ronald Reagan's words: "Facts are stupid things."

I was watching BBC News tonight and they actually had a reporter who asked a National Guard Captain in New Orleans, "if you could get in here now and get people out so quickly, how come you couldn't get in days ago?" and he said she responded that they were ready the day the storm hit -- but that they couldn't go anywhere without orders, and they HAD no orders until two or three days ago. Ummm...the "Commander in Chief" is the one who mobilizes the troops...but he's been too busy reminiscing about his "drinkin' days in N'awlins" to give a crap. He is an ignoramus to the nth degree, and if this is his brand of "compassionate conservatism," I would rather have my toenails pulled out with red-hot tongs.

My mother, by the way, thanks everyone who has sent good wishes...and I can't repeat what she said about some of the things I have been told by others that have not been so nice.

[sourmilkpinky]

The doctrine of posse comitatus specifically prohibits the federal government to activate US troops anywhere within the United States; the National Guards are all under the command and control of the governors of their specific states, and cannot be mobilized unless and until their respective governors order them. The Louisiana National Guard has yet to be activated for rescue or relief. Their governor, did, however finally allow in National Guard units from other states. Look closely at the shoulder insignia; the guardsmen and women in New Orleans are from Mississippi, another state that could use their services. Colorado, and other National Guard units are covering Mississippi in their absence.

[GeorgieGirl]

Well, I wrote my president a letter, via the White House. I emailed it this morning. I'm a tax paying American and at the very least want my opinion heard.

September 5, 2005

George Bush
President

Dear President Bush,

First, I’m disappointed you no longer have an email address. If you do have one, it’s well hidden on the website. Of course you can’t personally answer email, but you should have a staff to do that for you. When President Clinton was in the White House, one of my young daughter’s thrills was emailing her president.

But I’m not a young child. I’m a 52 year-old tax paying American born citizen who is in total and complete shock over your administrations handling of Katrina enough so to try to contact her leader.

Since watching and reading everything that’s available both on TV and the internet, I have decided that since I live in Southern California, and being as we will no doubt have the “big earthquake,” and seeing how my government can not protect and serve her people, I am going to prepare for a disaster. I am going to have enough water, food and medication to last two weeks.

Since this has happened, I have learned that the director of FEMA has no experience and that he took care of horses, not people prior to this post. How can I get a job in your administration? I believe I have more experience working with people than he does. You need to fire him right now and hire someone who is experienced.

I learned that money needed to shore up the levies in New Orleans was denied. I learned that our greatest scientists of all time knew that this hurricane was of biblical proportion but nothing was done to help the poorest of the poor, the old and infirmed to get out of the gulf coast, or be cared for in its aftermath. I learned that you were on vacation and Condolezza Rice was shopping for shoes.

When you finally made it to the gulf, everyone was watching you on TV to hear what might have been your most important speech. What you said left us stunned. You talked about your partying in New Orleans. You said “something good” was going to come out of this disaster! You had a smirk on your face.

I have never agreed with your war in Iraq. And I say your war because it seems to me that the people who attacked us on 9/11 are not in Iraq. I’m saddened that our country is so far in debt that my great-great-grandchildren will be paying for this war. I am fed up with the open borders in California where illegals are using all of the resources that MAYBE could be reserved for Americans in crises. I’m fed up that other countries are surpassing America in medical advances because of your stand on stem-cell research.

All those issues aside, somewhere in the back of my mind I thought you knew what you were doing enough to help us in national crises. Or, the people you oversee knew what to do.

For the first three days I was terrified we might have another emergency. Any terrorist could see we were crippled.

I have no idea what’s going to happen next in our country, but I’m going to prepare for the worst because it only takes care of other countries, and their wars and indigents, and not their own hard working, tax paying people.

Sincerely,


(I signed my name and address)

[HMVNipper]

Boy, Georgie, I love the letter, but if I were you I'd be waiting for the Secret Service to show up at my door...in "Shrub's Amerika" talk like that is "Un-American." :rolleyes:

I agree with you one thousand percent. And I can't believe that there is one person who considers him- or herself a patriotic American who wouldn't. But some people are very blinkered and blinded by ignorance and I can only feel sorry for such rigid, unbending idologues.

I think it is only a matter of time until another terrorist group sees how incompetent our leadership is in time of crisis and strikes again. I fear for my country, because it is clear that we are being led by blithering idiots. If they can't help their own when the crisis is NOT from outside, how the hell could they help us if there was another terrorist attack?

Sometimes I think that Bush WANTS to "bring on the apocalypse." Well, he's managing to do it...

[GeorgieGirl]

Boy, Georgie, I love the letter, but if I were you I'd be waiting for the Secret Service to show up at my door...in "Shrub's Amerika" talk like that is "Un-American." :rolleyes:



I'm sure they have received millions of letters. We shouldn't be afraid to write to him. And, to be honest, they most likely don't have any extra Home Land Security people available to come after me! I've written to him before, and to other Presidents. We need to tell our President what we're thinking. We have to put our elect officals on notice that we're paying attention.

[JDanRyan]

The doctrine of posse comitatus specifically prohibits the federal government to activate US troops anywhere within the United States; the National Guards are all under the command and control of the governors of their specific states, and cannot be mobilized unless and until their respective governors order them. The Louisiana National Guard has yet to be activated for rescue or relief. Their governor, did, however finally allow in National Guard units from other states. Look closely at the shoulder insignia; the guardsmen and women in New Orleans are from Mississippi, another state that could use their services. Colorado, and other National Guard units are covering Mississippi in their absence.

Not quite; the President has always had the right to activate the National Guard for participation in federal missions. In fact, the Army National Guard is and has always been a branch of the United States Army, summonable by presidential order for use as needed. This is why national guard are often the first ones on the scene when the President declares a national state of emergency (active force most readily available to deploy to the field), and why so many of them were called up for Iraq when force levels needed to be shored up.

Further reading on the subject may be found at the following:

http://www.arng.army.mil/About_Us/

http://www.army.com/enlist/guard01.html

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/arng.htm

http://www.answers.com/topic/united-states-national-guard

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112001/

[GeorgieGirl]

Senior Bush (and Barbara) are on Larry King tonight. They're busy doing damage control. They're talking about their son being on his knees praying to God for strength.

http://photobucket.com/albums/a202/beatlefreak/th_thparty-smiley-048.gif
I'm sorry but the 'dance man' had to make an appearance.

[HMVNipper]

I'm sure they have received millions of letters. We shouldn't be afraid to write to him. And, to be honest, they most likely don't have any extra Home Land Security people available to come after me! I've written to him before, and to other Presidents. We need to tell our President what we're thinking. We have to put our elect officals on notice that we're paying attention.

Don't get me wrong, Georgie, I agree with you totally. I just don't think Shrub listens much, he's too busy "on his knees praying to God." What, does he think God is going to drop assistance from the sky? Get off your freakin' knees and stop "conferring," (I heard on the news today that he has four "conferences" scheduled today to "discuss the Katrina issue" :rolleyes: ) and freakin' ACT LIKE A PRESIDENT and not a moron...

The thing is, I don't think he really gives a damn if people write to him -- he's a lame duck president, he has nothing to lose, his popularity can go into the toilet, but he's still in charge for three more years...unless he's impeached for this incompetence. Considering the Republicans saw fit to impeach Clinton for the heinous crime of sleeping with a woman other than his wife and then saying he didn't, I think the atrocities Bush is committing are FAR WORSE, considering they are costing American lives...

[FPSHOT]

Bill Clinton still has an e-mail address, I get mail from him very regular, I even sent him a Birthday congrats ..that was before Katrina ...

Bush.....as far as I know he got elected...by personal votes....

It takes a lot to get eyes opened finally...

[HMVNipper]

Bush.....as far as I know he got elected...by personal votes....

It takes a lot to get eyes opened finally...

Yeah, so he says...I'm not so sure I believe that, though...I know he didn't get MY personal vote...

And some people have open eyes, but wear ideological blinders...

[FPSHOT]

The farther one travels
The less one knows
The less one really knows

I am so sorry for all those in trouble due to Katrina...

[Lynner]

I know politics more or less have to come into play on this, but can we all respect others' opinons? Or at least recognize that our opinons aren't the only ones out there? This is a very important topic - Rell' and I have talked about this and don't want it closed, so could people please just pull the claws in a little? Feelings are getting hurt all around.

[FPSHOT]

I think I respected people's opinions and only reflected my opinion from observations but if that offended anyone, I am sorry, the most important thing here is the sorrow of people who are in trouble and who have lost....politics is a minor issue...

Like Bill Clinton said yesterday..."not now"

[HMVNipper]

Sorry, Lynn, if you and Suz think that I'm coming on too strong about this...but I feel very strongly about this and am angry as hell that my brother has YET to see anyone from any of the agencies that are supposed to assist in situations like this. Now that New Orleans is evacauated, it's about time someone paid attention to Biloxi and Gulfport, but I don't see that happening at all.

I am not trying to "hurt anyone's feelings," but you know what? My feelings have been hurt by a lot of insensitive people, both in this thread and in PMs. And while it's very easy to say "turn the other cheek," when I tried I got it slapped too.

I will try to rein in my feelings, but this IS a political issue and I DO think the administration's handling of it sucks. And I think most of us here are in agreement that that is true. I have no patience with fools. I don't think my opinions are more valid or better than anyone else's, and I would not disrespect a dissenting opinion if the people with those differing opinions were at least civil about mine. But, frankly, I have not seen that yet and don't expect to -- after all, I'm just a dirty rotten liberal... :rolleyes:

Sorry, I will make an effort to be less angry.

[HMVNipper]

I think I respected people's opinions and only reflected my opinion from observations but if that offended anyone, I am sorry, the most important thing here is the sorrow of people who are in trouble and who have lost....politics is a minor issue...

Like Bill Clinton said yesterday..."not now"

You DID respect people's opinions, Rob, unlike some.

And unfortunately, as long as our government continues to be unresponsive and incompetent, politics is NOT a minor issue regarding the hurricane. Would that it was...

[BeatleChick]

So very, very sorry for everyone here who has been affected by this situation. My heart goes out to you all... Such a difficult situation this is, and so sad that it's taken such a toll... *hugs* to everyone...

....

Our family is doing our part to help out (making donations everywhere we can, etc)... Here's a bit about what my dad (a State employee) is in charge of co-ordinating...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/kgtv/20050906/lo_kgtv/2920282

San Diego May See 600 More Evacuees

San Diego is getting ready to receive as many as 600 hurricane victims from the Gulf Coast.

"We do expect some more but we don't know exactly when," said Denise Price, a spokeswoman for Deputy Mayor Toni Atkins, said Monday, a day after 80 hurricane victims were airlifted out of New Orleans and brought to San Diego by chartered jet.

The rescue effort will be coordinated by the Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Price said.

The airlift that brought 80 hurricane victims to San Diego was undertaken by businessman David Perez, who told reporters he was frustrated by the slow moving recovery efforts of local, state and federal officials. He chartered a 737 and took it to Louisiana, bringing back the group.

Monday Perez collected the group from Kearny High School -- where they were sheltered by the Red Cross -- and took them shopping at Wal-Mart, then to a hotel, according to Gayle Falkenthal, spokeswoman for the Red Cross San Diego chapter.

Once Perez took the hurricane victims away, Red Cross workers began dismantling their makeshift shelter, some of them interrupting their work to race to a brushfire that threatened about 100 homes in Rancho Penasquitos.

The Red Cross, in anticipation of a new wave of refugees, has arranged to use a San Diego State University gymnasium as a shelter for up to 600 people.

"We're kind of on alert," Price said.


....

He (dad) worked overtime this weekend to help set things up, and to bring in the resources needed to house all of the 600 people that will take up refuge at State. He's very happy to be able to be involved in the efforts being made to help everyone out. He'll be overseeing this for the long term. I'm so happy that our family is able to do our part...

[btw, my dad works in the "Physical Plant" at State--he's one of the big heads in that dept--and he oversees all of the construction, matinence, etc, on the campus. In fact, he basically built (oversaw the building of/drew up plans for/dealt with the contractors and constructions crews, and whatnot) Peterson Gym, and he does all of the renovations on it, etc, every few years...]

[sourmilkpinky]

My prayers go out to your brother and his family, to my brother-in-law who lives in Waveland, MS and all the other people that are going through this.

My brother-in-law gathered up his family and many belongings and left the state so I know they are safe..not sure if they will have a home to go back to.



Just an update on this for the people that have been asking.

My brother-in-law now has a better view of what he has to go back to. He has been contacted by FEMA who has surveyed his home. The surge was at 28' at the coast and 14' at his home...the house is still standing, with the roof attached to an extent. The house is full of mud. He is not sure how his insurance will handle the damage. He is also unsure about his job or when he can return...more word on this coming later this week.
Until then, his family is settling in with friends & family in another state and plan on returning as soon as possible to begin the rebuilding.

thank you for all the thoughts and prayers, they are appreciated.

[FPSHOT]

I read things from the Bill Clinton foundation because I admire Bill Clinton....and often I get an e-mail about updates and things being done...

Today I got this one and yes I know it is maybe not from mr. Clinton himself but he does lead this foundation and it shows feeling...something I quite miss from things I see from mr. B and no I am not after a political discussion, but I just want to forward to you all what is written and may there are members who want to donate;


Dear Rob,

Like all Americans, my thoughts and prayers are with those affected by Hurricane Katrina. On Monday, Hillary and I met with survivors who are being temporarily housed in Houston, and I can tell you that these people desperately need our help. Fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, grandparents and cousins have been separated in this devastating tragedy. The stories I heard from the survivors I’ve met are heart wrenching and horrific and we can help alleviate their suffering and make sure that this time our response meets their needs. We do not know the loss of life yet, nor can we be sure how long the recovery and rebuilding efforts will take, but we do know that we must help these good people rebuild their homes and communities, and reestablish their lives.

That is why I am asking you today to make a special contribution to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund.

In this time of tragedy, Americans must work together to help those affected by this disaster of unspeakable proportions. That’s why Former President Bush and I created the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. With your generous contribution, we will work with the governors of the affected states to ensure that the Fund’s contributions are directed where they are most needed.

At this moment, your donation --whatever you can give-- is the most efficient way to help your fellow citizens in need.

I call on everyone to give what they can of their time or money to help those in need. The American spirit is astounding and I am constantly amazed by the fortitude and generosity of the citizens of this great country – we have seen a lot of this throughout this past week and I am confident this will continue and together we will make a difference.

Please visit www.BushClintonKatrinaFund.org and support this critical effort.

Sincerely,
Bill Clinton

[Blgmama]

I wasn't trying to insult people from other countries when I made my comment about no one jumping to help us because they hate us, and if I inadvertantly insulted any of our European, South American, Asian or other members, I am truly sorry.

I know we're not a poor country, but sometimes even the big guy needs help. Of course, the fact that the members of the National Guard from the affected states are busy off protecting Baghdad leaves no one to protect the people where they live -- which is my biggest bone to pick with the current administration. National Guard is supposed to be a homefront military, but because Bush is pretty much conducting a "backdoor" draft by sending National Guard troops overseas so his administration can say "see, there's no draft, there's no war..." we are left with no homefront aid. "Homeland Security" my butt!

My mother has been trying to get through to FEMA all day, all she gets are busy signals and holds that last for hours. You can see why my brother can't do it, with no phone other than a cell phone that takes hours to charge in a car, he can't be on hold for that length of time. We still have no answers. The horror stories on the news are beyond the beyond. New Orleans is a war zone with refugees. And it boggles my mind, not so much that we DID help the tsunami victims (as we should have), but that we managed to get help to those people within 24-48 hours, and yet here it's been nearly five days and there's been no help right here in our own country. Flyovers by the President are all well and good, but for God's sake, get the freakin' REGULAR ARMY in there if you have to and HELP!!!

I am tense, angry and frustrated -- so, as I said before, my intention is not to insult anyone (not even my fellow American members who disagree with me when it comes to Bush), but I guess it is to vent this frustration. And I'm sorry, but I get the impression that this administration doesn't really care -- Bush won the election, he got his second term, he's a lame duck president, he doesn't have to "win hearts and minds" anymore, so he does whatever the hell he wants when he gets around to it. To him, it's more important to win hearts and minds in Baghdad than it is to do something for Americans who are desperate and dying. And I also can't help but think that if most of the people left in New Orleans were of a "lighter hue," if you get my drift, help would have been a lot faster in coming. And to me, that is the most repugnant and reprehensible thing -- that it is clear that the administration considers these people somehow expendible. For shame!! :nono5:


GW is a WAR PRESIDENT...........to hell with everything else.............

didn't want my thoughts to effect your opinion of Roy Orbison

[GeorgieGirl]

HMVNipper, Don't get me wrong, Georgie, I agree with you totally. I just don't think Shrub listens much, he's too busy "on his knees praying to God."

I thought it was total damage control! I'm on your page!

My feelings aren't hurt. Who has hurt feelings? I think this is a great discussion here. Why can't we talk about wars and calamities? In memory of John Lennon and George Harrison, I think we should. What better place? My goodness many of you are long time friends. Nothing wrong with expressing opinions, and better yet when you're not afraid to do so.

[Blgmama]

Wanted to share a few that I read this morning in the San Jose Mercury News. Here's a column from the editorial page. Certain passages literally made my jaw drop--the ignorance of some people!

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/12542143.htm

NATURAL DISASTER IS NO TIME FOR BIGOTRY
It Was a Hurricane, Not God's Message

By Leonard Pitts Jr.


Does it really matter?

The city is flooded, people are homeless and hungry and scared and dead. Shouldn't this be a time for giving money and saying prayers? Should we really care about the color of the people looting in the hurricane zone? Or that Louisiana is a red state? Or that some of the dead are gay?

Apparently, that kind of thing matters to some of us. It matters, for instance, to a black man who posted a note in an online forum saying he is embarrassed by news footage showing that most of the looters are black. It matters to the white people who have sent me notes daring me to explain why blacks are "running amok.'' It matters to the author of a note circulating on the Internet who says it would be a "problem'' for a liberal in a blue state to send relief money to a red state.

And it matters to a group called Repent America, which has issued a statement saying the storm was God's way of canceling a gay festival that was to have taken place in New Orleans this week.

It's as tiresome as it is predictable. American disunion being what it is these days, some of us look at even a natural disaster through the distorting prism of bigotry, rancor and fear.

Let me say a few things here. The first is that the city of New Orleans is, according to the last census, 67.3 percent black. Given that looting is predictable under any significant breakdown of social order, who would you expect to find out there smashing windows when the lights go out? Ethnic Hawaiians?

Besides which, white folks loot too. Only it's not called looting when they do it. I refer you to a widely circulated news photo of a white couple wading through chest-high water after, in the words of the caption, ``finding'' food.

I'm sorry, but I have little patience for black people who find shame in this looting. Less patience for white ones who find vindication of their bigotry. It makes me angry that some people think these are the conversations we should be having now.

Our countrymen are in dire straits. We are talking in large part about those who had no means of escape, no cars or credit cards, no way to book a flight, reserve a room, buy a bus ticket, hop a train.

They are, by and large, the poorest and most meager among us and they are living through hell right now. Death toll rising like floodwaters, probably heading into the thousands, corpses floating down the street, and some liberal twit is joking -- God, I hope he was joking -- that the blue states should let the red one suffer? People clinging to rooftops, a great city turned into a steaming, stinking primordial swamp, and some alleged Christians think it's a victory for heterosexuality?

Memo to all these nitwits: It was a hurricane, not God's stamp of approval for your small-mindedness and hate.

Tragedy often becomes a stage for the best of human character. But it seems as if this tragedy is also destined to be a stage for the worst, a spotlight on the divisions that have lately grown so much wider between us.

And then there is the TV reporter who met a distraught man in the aftermath of the storm. He told her how his house had broken in two. How he tried to hold onto his wife as the storm and the water raged. How she told him, "You can't hold me,'' and asked him to take care of the kids and the grandkids. How he lost his grip and she was swept away.

The man was crying as he told the story and it seemed as if the reporter was weeping too. For the record, he was black and she was white. But in that moment, they were just two human beings meeting at an intersection of inconsolable loss.

There are times when nothing else matters.

LEONARD PITTS JR., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a columnist for the Miami Herald.


It doesn't matter, black, white, red, brown, gay or straight........we are all God's people..........and this should be one of those times when Nothing else matters...........(red or blue)........where's the help? where's the boats? where's the meat? HELP is what's needed.........

[GeorgieGirl]

The problem with using the term God in all of this, is there are some individuals (ministers) running around talking for everyone's faith. They seem to crave the spotlight. They are Bible banging their way across the disaster zone trying to get on every TV show they can. I heard one say this disaster is because we don't have prayer in school! And the next news reporter who uses the phrase "doing God's work," ought to be fired. What happened to reporting facts? Reporters are out of control. I saw one wading in waist deep polluted water saying, oh, this is polluted water. DUH?

The news is afraid of the facts. They are hog-tied by Washington. It's no secret the government controls our news. It's why the top of the hour on most news stations is all about a celebrities. This disaster has forced the news to report...news, but they're not reporting everything.

What about all the animals they were forced to leave. They were not allowed to bring them. I would have died with my cat. Why couldn't they take them with them? Many people are out of their minds for loss of their pets.

My heart goes out to all those in the disaster area. I sure hope someone knows what they're doing, especially relocating people all over the country. It's total insanity.

[HMVNipper]

HMVNipper,

I thought it was total damage control! I'm on your page!

My feelings aren't hurt. Who has hurt feelings? I think this is a great discussion here. Why can't we talk about wars and calamities? In memory of John Lennon and George Harrison, I think we should. What better place? My goodness many of you are long time friends. Nothing wrong with expressing opinions, and better yet when you're not afraid to do so.

I agree with you, Georgie, a thousand percent!

The people with the hurt feelings are probably the blinded ideologues among us who cannot stand to admit that their Shrub might just be wrong or handling something badly. I can certainly take it if people don't like MY point of view, but my experience with reactionaries is that they are, to quote Shakespeare, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." If they can't win a debate, they either start screaming or they leave the discussion, because they can't stand to possibly be mistaken. Sad, really, but there ya go. The really interesting thing is that even some of the most hard-core conservatives are NOT pleased with the administration and the way this has (not) been handled. IMO, only the most rigid thinkers would still defend the man at this point.

[HMVNipper]

The problem with using the term God in all of this, is there are some individuals (ministers) running around talking for everyone's faith. They seem to crave the spotlight. They are Bible banging their way across the disaster zone trying to get on every TV show they can. I heard one say this disaster is because we don't have prayer in school! And the next news reporter who uses the phrase "doing God's work," ought to be fired. What happened to reporting facts? Reporters are out of control. I saw one wading in waist deep polluted water saying, oh, this is polluted water. DUH?

The news is afraid of the facts. They are hog-tied by Washington. It's no secret the government controls our news. It's why the top of the hour on most news stations is all about a celebrities. This disaster has forced the news to report...news, but they're not reporting everything.



Oh boy, did you strike a nerve here with me! I agree, all this talk about "God" is just nauseating -- yet another example of certain individuals deciding to speak for everyone. Well, as a non-Christian AND a non-believer, they don't speak for ME...and the idea that some of them are actually going around saying that this is because we don't allow prayer in public school is beyond belief! I swear, some of these people will go to any lengths... :rolleyes:

As for the news -- well, I hardly ever watch US-based news anymore. I watch the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS sometimes, and I watch the BBC World News, and when we used to get the Canadian news I used to watch The National from CBC, but I find US news to be freakin' useless...you are absolutely right when you say that the administration has the media's hands tied...and yet they still have the nerve to talk about the "liberal media??" What is wrong with this picture? I firmly believe in freedom of the press and freedom of information, and yet it is clear that the powers that be in Washington do not...

[Lynner]

Had a PTA meeting last night and the children at our school want to help, so we are collecting money to send to (I believe) the Salvation army. I think it's wonderful that the children want to help. We discussed this at the dinner table the other day. Partly to assure my son that we were safe and also to explain what has happened and how we can help.

[sourmilkpinky]

I found out today that my daughter's school 'adopted' a school in New Orleans. They began communication and orginization to help get the school back on it's feet and doors open. She may get a chance to go down there as well.

[sourmilkpinky]

What better place? My goodness many of you are long time friends. Nothing wrong with expressing opinions, and better yet when you're not afraid to do so.


I had to laugh at that statement. Nice thought tho.

[GeorgieGirl]

Eric Clapton is helping out...I like to think if George were around, he'd be playing at a benefit concert. John would most likely be speaking out against the government... I wonder if Yoko is going to donate? She lives in the good ole USA. I also wonder if Olivia Harrison is going to help out. She's from L.A.

[FPSHOT]

Does it matter where you come from, in disasters?

I never matters to me...

All the seperate issues in this thread... I really wonder why it is being brought back...politics...religion....those are things we will never agree on... face the tragedy and learn from it...and make better decisions next time ...

[HMVNipper]

My son only just starts school today, but we've already discussed doing some fundraisers through the PTA and the kids themselves. I am getting info about where to send actual items like clothes and household goods. I think it will be good for our students to be doing something to help!

We've discussed this in our house a lot over the past week because Jamie has been very worried about Uncle Dave and Aunt Lowana and we have to keep telling him that they are okay. This can be very scary for little kids who don't understand exactly what happened.

[GeorgieGirl]

All the seperate issues in this thread... I really wonder why it is being brought back...politics...religion....those are things we will never agree on... face the tragedy and learn from it...and make better decisions next time ...

There are a lot of hurting people in our country. Many issues are coming up. I'm glad everyone is talking.

[HMVNipper]

There are a lot of hurting people in our country. Many issues are coming up. I'm glad everyone is talking.

Me too, too bad some people (including the powers that be) aren't willing to listen...

[MonaMe577]

Check this out! Even Jacko's getting in on the action. Let's go, already, Washington...

http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=200748

Jackson Writes Song for Katrina Victims
Sep 6, 5:08 PM EST

The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- Michael Jackson has written a song to help raise funds for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and will soon record it.

Tentatively titled, "From the Bottom of My Heart," the singer plans to ask other musicians to join him in recording it, his spokeswoman, Raymone K. Bain, said Tuesday.

Jackson hopes to record the song within two weeks in the style of "We Are the World," which he co-wrote and produced in 1985 to raise money for famine relief efforts in Africa.

"It pains me to watch the human suffering taking place in the gulf region of my country," Jackson, 47, said in a statement. "I will be reaching out to others within the music industry to join me in helping to bring relief and hope to these resilient people who have lost everything."

Jackson has been mostly reclusive since he was acquitted of child molestation charges in California on June 13.

He has been spending much of his time in Bahrain as the guest of Sheik Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, whose label, 2 Seas Records, will produce the single.

[beatlebangs1964]

I've been getting a lot of e-mails from my church about Katrina. A number of parishioners, my mother included have gotten together to collect furniture and somebody's truck to make deliveries to displaced families.

There are thousands of people staying at the convention centers, arenas and concert halls in my state. There has been a large influx of people and I want to do whatever I can to make their stay as pleasant as possible.

Susan, thank you for the updates on David and family. I will keep praying for everybody and for repairs for the losses incurred. Things we can do on the homefront to help are:

1) Check local news websites for help and outreach programs. They can direct you to places where your volunteer service is sorely needed. For people involved with churches, get with your church to see what outreach programs are being offered.

2) If you have building supplies, fixtures or appliances, please DONATE them to Habitat for Humanity. Habitat will send a truck over to pick up the goods and they are sending their profits for relief for people devastated by Katrina. They are also using their supplies and those donated for the displaced people. Habitat is a wonderful humanitarian organization and is a good place to start.

3) Call the Red Cross at 1-800-HELP-NOW , Goodwill & Salvation Army at 1-800-SAL-ARMY. Get with the St. Vincent de Paul Society and Habitat for Humanity. I can't bang on the drum loudly enough for these humanitarian groups. The St. Vincent truck has been making many stops throughout my town. Their websites are as follows:

www.habitatforhumanity.com (http://www.habitatforhumanity.com)
www.redcross.org (http://www.redcross.org/)
www.goodwill.com (http://www.goodwill.com/)
www.salvationarmy.com (http://www.salvationarmy.com/)

[IWantToTellYou]

Wow.

A lot of people have a lot of differing opinions on how this disaster is being handled, not only by the US government, but also of allied governments.

First of all -- Susan, I am sorry to hear of your brother's loss. It must be awful, and I cannot fathom what he and his family must be going through right now. It is great news to hear that they are okay, and that is what matters the most.

Secondly -- I find that with these types of natural disasters most countries of the world take a little too much time in responding. As far as I know, or from what I have read, the Canadian governement pleged to send troops to help out. I am not sure if they were deployed already or not? It was the same thing with the tsunami. Too little, too late, and I am talking about all of the countries that had helped out. If the governments of the world cannot help out, because they hate the US government, well that is really selfish and stupid. These are innocent people we are talking about. Why punish the innocent because the government sucks?

Things in the Big Easy have gotten steadily worse. If the NOPD do not receive help soon, the chaos will be much worse than it already is. It is horrible to see how fellow human beings treat each other in times of desperation. No regard for people or property - every man for himself.

I will surely donate to the Red Cross, like I did for the tsunami, it won't be much, but at this point every little bit helps.

In passing did anyone watch the benefit concert?

[GeorgieGirl]

YUP, watched it live and in reruns... Very good ...

[Beatle_4]

Wow.

As far as I know, or from what I have read, the Canadian governement pleged to send troops to help out. I am not sure if they were deployed already or not?


Just read on Yahoo that 2 frigates, a cruiser or battleship (not sure which), and a Coast Guard cutter, loaded with water, food, supplies and military personal have left Halifax harbour and should arrive in N.O. by Sunday or Monday.

[beatlelover45223]

We have lots of local policemen and firemen in my area, that have gone down to relieve their brothers in NO and Alabama, one set of the cops came home yesterday, they have more lined up to go down to help out, they are taking their vacation time etc; :cool1:

[twovirgins]

why am I not suprised???????????when does the corruption end folks??
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050910/pl_nm/contracts_dc;_ylt=AhMOAHO.2rRizHMx4XU2eYes0NUE;_yl u=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-


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Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals Sat Sep 10,11:03 AM ET



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.


At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Experts say it has been common practice in both Republican and Democratic administrations for policy makers to take lobbying jobs once they leave office, and many of the same companies seeking contracts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have already received billions of dollars for work in Iraq.

Halliburton alone has earned more than $9 billion. Pentagon audits released by Democrats in June showed $1.03 billion in "questioned" costs and $422 million in "unsupported" costs for Halliburton's work in Iraq.

But the web of Bush administration connections is attracting renewed attention from watchdog groups in the post-Katrina reconstruction rush. Congress has already appropriated more than $60 billion in emergency funding as a down payment on recovery efforts projected to cost well over $100 billion.

"The government has got to stop stacking senior positions with people who are repeatedly cashing in on the public trust in order to further private commercial interests," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.

TWO BUSH APPOINTEES AT HALLIBURTON

Allbaugh formally registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root in February.

In lobbying disclosure forms filed with the Senate, Allbaugh said his goal was to "educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues affecting Kellogg Brown and Root."

Melissa Norcross, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said Allbaugh has not, since he was hired, "consulted on any specific contracts that the company is considering pursuing, nor has he been tasked by the company with any lobbying responsibilities."

Allbaugh is also a friend of Michael Brown, director of FEMA who was removed as head of Katrina disaster relief and sent back to Washington amid allegations he had padded his resume.

A few months after Allbaugh was hired by Halliburton, the company retained another high-level Bush appointee, Kirk Van Tine.

Van Tine registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton six months after resigning as deputy transportation secretary, a position he held from December 2003 to December 2004.

On Friday, Kellogg Brown & Root received $29.8 million in Pentagon contracts to begin rebuilding Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi. Norcross said the work was covered under a contract that the company negotiated before Allbaugh was hired.

Halliburton continues to be a source of income for Cheney, who served as its chief executive officer from 1995 until 2000 when he joined the Republican ticket for the White House. According to tax filings released in April, Cheney's income included $194,852 in deferred pay from the company, which has also won billion-dollar government contracts in Iraq.

Cheney's office said the amount of deferred compensation is fixed and is not affected by Halliburton's current economic performance or earnings.

Allbaugh's other major client, Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group, has updated its Web site to say: "Hurricane Recovery Projects -- Apply Here!"

Shaw said on Thursday it has received a $100 million emergency FEMA contract for housing management and construction. Shaw also clinched a $100 million order on Friday from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Shaw Group spokesman Chris Sammons said Allbaugh was providing the company with "general consulting on business matters," and would not say whether he played a direct role in any of the Katrina deals. "We don't comment on specific consulting activities," he said.

[Sally]

why am I not suprised???????????when does the corruption end folks??
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050910/pl_nm/contracts_dc;_ylt=AhMOAHO.2rRizHMx4XU2eYes0NUE;_yl u=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-


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Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals Sat Sep 10,11:03 AM ET



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.


At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Experts say it has been common practice in both Republican and Democratic administrations for policy makers to take lobbying jobs once they leave office, and many of the same companies seeking contracts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have already received billions of dollars for work in Iraq.

Halliburton alone has earned more than $9 billion. Pentagon audits released by Democrats in June showed $1.03 billion in "questioned" costs and $422 million in "unsupported" costs for Halliburton's work in Iraq.

But the web of Bush administration connections is attracting renewed attention from watchdog groups in the post-Katrina reconstruction rush. Congress has already appropriated more than $60 billion in emergency funding as a down payment on recovery efforts projected to cost well over $100 billion.

"The government has got to stop stacking senior positions with people who are repeatedly cashing in on the public trust in order to further private commercial interests," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.

TWO BUSH APPOINTEES AT HALLIBURTON

Allbaugh formally registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root in February.

In lobbying disclosure forms filed with the Senate, Allbaugh said his goal was to "educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues affecting Kellogg Brown and Root."

Melissa Norcross, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said Allbaugh has not, since he was hired, "consulted on any specific contracts that the company is considering pursuing, nor has he been tasked by the company with any lobbying responsibilities."

Allbaugh is also a friend of Michael Brown, director of FEMA who was removed as head of Katrina disaster relief and sent back to Washington amid allegations he had padded his resume.

A few months after Allbaugh was hired by Halliburton, the company retained another high-level Bush appointee, Kirk Van Tine.

Van Tine registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton six months after resigning as deputy transportation secretary, a position he held from December 2003 to December 2004.

On Friday, Kellogg Brown & Root received $29.8 million in Pentagon contracts to begin rebuilding Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi. Norcross said the work was covered under a contract that the company negotiated before Allbaugh was hired.

Halliburton continues to be a source of income for Cheney, who served as its chief executive officer from 1995 until 2000 when he joined the Republican ticket for the White House. According to tax filings released in April, Cheney's income included $194,852 in deferred pay from the company, which has also won billion-dollar government contracts in Iraq.

Cheney's office said the amount of deferred compensation is fixed and is not affected by Halliburton's current economic performance or earnings.

Allbaugh's other major client, Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group, has updated its Web site to say: "Hurricane Recovery Projects -- Apply Here!"

Shaw said on Thursday it has received a $100 million emergency FEMA contract for housing management and construction. Shaw also clinched a $100 million order on Friday from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Shaw Group spokesman Chris Sammons said Allbaugh was providing the company with "general consulting on business matters," and would not say whether he played a direct role in any of the Katrina deals. "We don't comment on specific consulting activities," he said.

Corruption never ends in any government especially yours and mine.

[HMVNipper]

A friend sent me this link. It is mind boggling how the President and his cronies can say they "knew nothing about the potential disaster that could befall New Orleans." Talk about passing the buck!

****************

Last year, National Geographic did a story on what would be likely to happen if a powerful hurricane hit New Orleans. Its conclusions were eerily accurate.

Equally scary, it paints a frightening picture of changes in the waters near New Orleans. Given its conclusions, it appears to have been only a matter of time before disaster struck.

You'll find the story at:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5

[GeorgieGirl]

I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 last night.... The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. SHAME on GW BUSH for giving jobs to his already oil rich friends instead of giving the jobs to people who live in LA. WHY is our nation putting up with this?

[HMVNipper]

Here's an interesting article that might answer the question, Georgie -- it seems the kid gloves are off when it comes to the media and the moron...and apparently, even conservative commentators like Tim Russert are incensed over this debacle. (FYI, I have had to post this in two posts.)

******************

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TV_KATRINA_WILLIAMS?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=ENTERTAINMENT&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Sep 11, 2:00 PM EDT

NBC's Williams: Journalists' Gloves Off

By DAVID BAUDER
AP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- NBC's Brian Williams says the lasting legacy of Hurricane Katrina for journalists may be the end of an unusual four-year period of deference to people in power.

There were so many angry, even incredulous, questions put to Bush administration officials about the response to Katrina that the Salon Web site compiled a "Reporters Gone Wild" video clip. Tim Russert, Anderson Cooper, Ted Koppel and Shepard Smith were among the stars.

The mute button seemingly in place since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been turned off.

"By dint of the fact that our country was hit we've offered a preponderance of the benefit of the doubt over the past couple of years," the "Nightly News" anchorman said. "Perhaps we've taken something off our fastball and perhaps this is the story that brings a healthy amount of cynicism back to a news media known for it."

Williams spent much of the past two weeks in New Orleans, huddling in the Superdome with suffering residents and giving one of the first warnings on the "Today" show that the levees had been breached.

Hundreds of reporters, in all media, did heroic work on the Gulf Coast in the deadly storm's aftermath. None arguably was as financially and symbolically important to his company as the job turned in by Williams.

It could solidify his spot as network news' top anchor. He was NBC News' point person at a time its rivals had none, since replacements haven't been named for the late Peter Jennings at ABC News or Dan Rather at CBS.

"Nightly News" viewership the week after the storm jumped 2.5 million from the week before, its lead over second-place ABC increasing to 1.1 million from 300,000, according to Nielsen Media Research. A Williams-anchored "Dateline NBC" special about Katrina was the most-watched program all week.

When ABC and CBS settle on succession plans, they'll be playing catch-up.

Williams increased the value of his stock by aggressively seizing an opportunity, said Jeff Alan, author of "Anchoring America: The Changing Face of Network News."

"Brian handled this as professionally as any of the reporters down there and maybe more so," Alan said. "Brian knew how much was at stake here. Brian took his anchor hat off and put his human being hat on in a lot of the broadcasts that I saw."

Williams said he's focused on a story that will preoccupy the country for many months and probably play a key role in deciding the nation's next president.

"I have not seen an inch of my own coverage," he said. "I have very little sense of it and I'm probably the last judge of my own work. I tried to call them as I saw them. And if I let my emotion or anger get the better of me, what some would have called a failing of a journalist I think should be taken the other way around on this story."

[HMVNipper]

Pointed criticism of the government response has been posted on his daily Web log, particularly on Labor Day when he wrote about food and water being dropped to survivors: "There was water, there was food, and there were choppers to drop both. Why no one was able to combine them in an air drop is a cruel and criminal mystery of this dark chapter in our recent history. The words `failure of imagination' come to mind."

His blog also reprinted in full a National Weather Service bulletin from the morning before the storm struck that gave a prescient road map to the destruction, including power outages and water shortages that "will make human suffering incredible by modern standards."

Williams said he sensed trouble brewing already that Sunday, Aug. 28. At the Superdome, he saw National Guardsman barking orders at people seeking shelter, and patting down small children and the elderly for weapons. The crowd was angry about being forced to stand in line in the rain even though there was a large overhang a few yards away, he said.

"I went back to my hotel to get a few hours of sleep before they sealed the Dome at 6 the next morning thinking, `This is not good,'" he said.

He was one of a few reporters stationed at the dome as it degenerated into a house of horrors, and used his cell phone to snap a picture of its damaged roof that was widely circulated on NBC and MSNBC.

"I can't shake the belief that I got to know people who aren't with us anymore," he said.

One imaginative piece was produced simply by using a camcorder at the Baton Rouge airport on Labor Day when Williams and a crew returned, illustrating how the airport itself was filled with hundreds of compelling human stories.

About the only blemish on Williams' record was NBC's failure to lead its Aug. 30 "Nightly News" with the levees breaking in New Orleans, said Andrew Tyndall, a consultant who studies news content. NBC says that criticism is unfair, since the levee breaches were one of several angles Williams touched upon at the opening of that newscast.

Williams has had a hellish travelogue the past year, including Banda Aceh after the tsunami and a battleground in Mosul, Iraq, filled with the dead and dying. He never thought he'd see such suffering in his own country.

"I measure my words very carefully," he said. "I guard my opinions very carefully. To me, this was life and death.

"I refuse to believe that anyone I met at the dome has lesser value than anybody in my family that I go home to. I don't believe that about this country. I don't want that to be the lesson in this. I was angry. People were going without and dying in the wealthiest country the world has ever known."

---

On the Net:

http://www.msnbc.com

---

EDITOR'S NOTE - David Bauder can be reached at dbauder(at)ap.org

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[GeorgieGirl]

It just gets better and better...


September 11th, 2005 7:37 pm
Overkill: Feared Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans

By Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo / Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0910-07.htm)

NEW ORLEANS -- Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.

"This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS (Continental United States)," a heavily armed Blackwater mercenary told us as we stood on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. "We're much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq."

Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences. Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as 2 weeks ago.

What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the federal and Louisiana state governments.

Blackwater is one of the leading private "security" firms servicing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has several US government contracts and has provided security for many senior US diplomats, foreign dignitaries and corporations. The company rose to international prominence after 4 of its men were killed in Fallujah and two of their charred bodies were hung from a bridge in March 2004. Those killings sparked the massive US retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees.

As the threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons. This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass' claim that "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons."

Officially, Blackwater says it forces are in New Orleans to "join the Hurricane Relief Effort." A statement on the company's website (http://www.blackwaterusa.com/), dated September 1, advertises airlift services, security services and crowd control. The company, according to news reports, has since begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties. But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by 2 Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law enforcement activities including "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals."

That raises a key question: under what authority are Blackwater's men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security. "We believe we've got the right mix of personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of public safety." he said.

But in an hour-long conversation with several Blackwater mercenaries, we heard a different story. The men we spoke with said they are indeed on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Louisiana governor's office and that some of them are sleeping in camps organized by Homeland Security in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. One of them wore a gold Louisiana state law enforcement badge and said he had been "deputized" by the governor. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also to use lethal force. We encountered the Blackwater forces as we walked through the streets of the largely deserted French Quarter. We were talking with 2 New York Police officers when an unmarked car without license plates sped up next to us and stopped. Inside were 3 men, dressed in khaki uniforms, flak jackets and wielding automatic weapons. "Y'all know where the Blackwater guys are?" they asked. One of the police officers responded, "There are a bunch of them around here," and pointed down the road.

"Blackwater?" we asked. "The guys who are in Iraq?"

"Yeah," said the officer. "They're all over the place."

A short while later, as we continued down Bourbon Street, we ran into the men from the car. They wore Blackwater ID badges on their arms.

"When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that in?,'" said one of the Blackwater men. He was wearing his company ID around his neck in a carrying case with the phrase "Operation Iraqi Freedom" printed on it. After bragging about how he drives around Iraq in a "State Department issued level 5, explosion proof BMW," he said he was "just trying to get back to Kirkuk (in the north of Iraq) where the real action is." Later we overheard him on his cell phone complaining that Blackwater was only paying $350 a day plus per diem. That is much less than the men make serving in more dangerous conditions in Iraq. Two men we spoke with said they plan on returning to Iraq in October. But, as one mercenary said, they've been told they could be in New Orleans for up to 6 months. "This is a trend," he told us. "You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."

If Blackwater's reputation and record in Iraq are any indication of the kind of "services" the company offers, the people of New Orleans have much to fear.

[BeatleChick]

why am I not suprised???????????when does the corruption end folks??
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050910/pl_nm/contracts_dc;_ylt=AhMOAHO.2rRizHMx4XU2eYes0NUE;_yl u=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals Sat Sep 10,11:03 AM ET



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.


At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Experts say it has been common practice in both Republican and Democratic administrations for policy makers to take lobbying jobs once they leave office, and many of the same companies seeking contracts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have already received billions of dollars for work in Iraq.

Halliburton alone has earned more than $9 billion. Pentagon audits released by Democrats in June showed $1.03 billion in "questioned" costs and $422 million in "unsupported" costs for Halliburton's work in Iraq.

But the web of Bush administration connections is attracting renewed attention from watchdog groups in the post-Katrina reconstruction rush. Congress has already appropriated more than $60 billion in emergency funding as a down payment on recovery efforts projected to cost well over $100 billion.

"The government has got to stop stacking senior positions with people who are repeatedly cashing in on the public trust in order to further private commercial interests," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.

TWO BUSH APPOINTEES AT HALLIBURTON

Allbaugh formally registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root in February.

In lobbying disclosure forms filed with the Senate, Allbaugh said his goal was to "educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues affecting Kellogg Brown and Root."

Melissa Norcross, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said Allbaugh has not, since he was hired, "consulted on any specific contracts that the company is considering pursuing, nor has he been tasked by the company with any lobbying responsibilities."

Allbaugh is also a friend of Michael Brown, director of FEMA who was removed as head of Katrina disaster relief and sent back to Washington amid allegations he had padded his resume.

A few months after Allbaugh was hired by Halliburton, the company retained another high-level Bush appointee, Kirk Van Tine.

Van Tine registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton six months after resigning as deputy transportation secretary, a position he held from December 2003 to December 2004.

On Friday, Kellogg Brown & Root received $29.8 million in Pentagon contracts to begin rebuilding Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi. Norcross said the work was covered under a contract that the company negotiated before Allbaugh was hired.

Halliburton continues to be a source of income for Cheney, who served as its chief executive officer from 1995 until 2000 when he joined the Republican ticket for the White House. According to tax filings released in April, Cheney's income included $194,852 in deferred pay from the company, which has also won billion-dollar government contracts in Iraq.

Cheney's office said the amount of deferred compensation is fixed and is not affected by Halliburton's current economic performance or earnings.

Allbaugh's other major client, Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group, has updated its Web site to say: "Hurricane Recovery Projects -- Apply Here!"

Shaw said on Thursday it has received a $100 million emergency FEMA contract for housing management and construction. Shaw also clinched a $100 million order on Friday from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Shaw Group spokesman Chris Sammons said Allbaugh was providing the company with "general consulting on business matters," and would not say whether he played a direct role in any of the Katrina deals. "We don't comment on specific consulting activities," he said.

Yes... did not surprise me one bit. Saw this one coming, didn't we? Lovely that all his buddies are so willing to help out, isn't it? *sigh* This government... yes, very corrupt... Anything to make a buck and gain more power... Very sad that they're using such a tragic event like this to (again) further themselves toward those goals...

[Hari's Chick]

Dear Friend,

I was riding in a car last week with an old friend.

He worked with me many years ago to set up a nationwide network of student run citizen groups.

Now, he is organizing in Ohio for congressional redistricting reform.

We were talking about New Orleans.

And his snap observation?

Those people in New Orleans should have gotten out when they were told to evacuate.

Many did, but what if some 100,000 couldn’t, I asked?

If it were me, I would have crawled out, he said.

What if there was no way out – no car, sickness, caring for ailing relatives, no seats on public transportation, streets blocked, nowhere to go, fear of the unknown?

There always is a way, he said.

And this from a highly educated and accomplished “liberal.”

Many in America are in denial.

Especially “highly educated” America is in denial.

They know, but still are in denial, about the deep poverty of tens of millions in our midst.

Ancient Chinese proverb – To know and not to act is not to know.

Even after television showed the poor – day after day – being left behind in New Orleans, many in America remained in denial.

How else to explain the poverty of response from both the Democrats and Republicans?

Watching the disaster in New Orleans made me think back over 80 years to Huey Long, the former Governor and Senator from Louisiana.


Long’s mission – defend the people against the avarice of corporate America.

He taxed the oil companies to pay for text books for the children of Louisiana.

His response to poverty?

Share the wealth – with those who worked to create it.

Long’s was a detailed program – during the 1930s Depression – which would impose a capital tax that would prevent any family from owning a fortune of more than $5 million or more 350 times that of the average family.

And it would have imposed an income tax that would prohibit a family from earning more than one million dollars a year, or more than 300 times the income of the average family.

The income from these taxes would provide every family in the country with a home valued at not less than $5,000.

The government would further guarantee that every family would receive an annual income of $2,000 to $3,000.

He knew that defending the people meant a showdown with the greed of corporations and their super-rich bosses.

His expected run for the Presidency on a wave of popular support for his Share the Wealth platform pushed Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats to enact more of the New Deal.

With his dramatic proposals, Long got people thinking about the concentration of wealth.

That was then.

Now, Katrina has exposed to all the mass poverty in our midst.

A quarter of America’s working families are living in poverty.

And yet, the ratio of average annual large company CEO pay (now $11.8 million) to average worker pay (now $27,460) spiked up last year from 301-to-1 in 2003 to 431-to-1 in 2004.

If the minimum wage had risen as fast as CEO pay since 1990, the lowest paid workers in the US would be earning $23.03 an hour today, not $5.15 an hour.

Some of the nation’s most enlightened wealthy are fearful of what these numbers portend.

Led by William Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins, more than 1,000 of these wealthy Americans have organized to defend taxes on the super wealthy.

Gates and Collins argue that individual wealth is a product not only of hard work and smart choices but of the society that provides the fertile soil for success.

They don’t subscribe to the “Great Man” theory of wealth creation but contend that society’s investments – such as public works, government research, economic development, education, and health care – all contribute to any individual’s good fortune.


They have written a blockbuster book – Wealth and Our Commonwealth – Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes.

In response to New Orleans, will the Democratic Party stand up with William Gates Sr. and say out loud – tax accumulated fortunes, defend the estate tax, and defend our progressive income tax structure?

Will the Democratic Party stand against the massive redistribution of wealth and income upward over the past twenty years from the many to the few?

The corporate Democrats fear opening up this topic of fair return for hard work done – staying silent on a living wage demand.

They want the business campaign money too much.

This despite the falling median household income, now in its fifth straight year, and the widening gap between rich and poor.

And so, the issue of the rising poverty rate and the widening gap between rich and poor will remain untouched.

The wealth gap, the income gap and mass poverty are too hot to handle by the corporate Democrats and Republicans alike.

Now, I ask you to help us to put poverty and the wealth gap back on the action table.

Very few young Americans know about the history of Huey Long’s Share the Wealth program.

Fewer still know that William Gates Sr. – father of Microsoft multi-billionaire Bill Gates – has helped organize over 1,000 wealthy Americans to argue for taxing accumulated fortunes.

Share the information.

Share the reality.

Thank you for your ongoing support and bright horizons.

*****

[beatlebangs1964]

Susan, thank you for that link.

I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 last night.... The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. SHAME on GW BUSH for giving jobs to his already oil rich friends instead of giving the jobs to people who live in LA. WHY is our nation putting up with this?

I agree, GGirl...I saw that movie in June of '04 the day it opened...that brainwashing scene where those soldiers were chanting, "burn the m**f** down" was SCARY! Those kids were being bloody BRAINWASHED!

The whole thing smacks of Robin Hood in Reverse - taking from the already poor to provide more for the rich. There are many people in my state who need jobs.

On September 9, 2005 Howard Dean said what my relatives have been saying all along - about how the richer had options and a way of leaving the affected states sooner, but it was those who were poor and in many cases minorities who took the brunt of the slow response to the disaster. Dean's contention was that race and class did indeed have some influence on who was helped sooner - I can't help but think, based on all I've seen, read and spoken with in person that Dean is right.

The article Erik quoted above (with link) is a good description of what is happening right now...kind of makes me think of buzzards...Halliburton being the biggest government buzzard of all!

[sourmilkpinky]

finding a survivor after 18 days is a miracle

[chaitanya]

no comment...


http://www.forpitssake.org/katrina.html

[GeorgieGirl]

Okay, I started bawling when I clicked on that link...

[BeatleChick]

Yea... me too... so sad that this has not just affected people, but also the other beings that we all love. So sad that so many of them have been left behind, to attempt to fend for themselves... I'm an animal person (and, yes, very much a human rights activist, too), and so, as well as having made donations to help my fellow men (and women) through this tough time, I've donated money and supplies, also, to help out my fellow creatures.

Thanks, *so much* for posting that, Claudio, to remind us that humans were not the only victims (love the Gandhi quote in there, too. Says a lot, doesn't it? Always been a favorite of mine.)

[beatlelover45223]

The animal shelter here in my city received 100 animals this past weekend, and several hundred more have been brought into no kill shelters, Petsmart had 30 dogs last weekend that were up for adoption, all these animals were rescued from the flood area, the 200+ plus will be held for 60 days at the SPCA to see if their families can find them(then they will be put up for adoption), there is an area where they are keeping track of what dogs were sent where for the survivors to try and locate them, I gave money to animal rescues to provide food for these animals that were found and being kept in place X till they could be shipped out to other areas that could shelter them... made me cry too to see this video, plus the song was so poignant by Sara McLaughlin....

[beatlelover45223]

no comment...


http://www.forpitssake.org/katrina.html

((hugs)) Claudio, thanks for posting this.... :cry5:

[beatlebangs1964]

Although I can't stand the song bySarah McLachlan (sp), it underscored the tragedy that has affected the pets as well. The picture of the beagle got to me -- I have a beagle. And the mama dog, the chocolate lab mix looking mama dog...somewhere she has puppies...I wonder why that link wasn't "for pets' sakes." That was very sad.

I saw a man on the news tonight who mourned the death of his dog and the loss of everything he owned. That link...it got to me. :cry1: