So Scott McClellan doesn't want to play the blame game; unless, of course. it's to blame the Democrats in Louisiana. Well, I have a few suggestions of where the blame belongs on both sides of the aisle. ( I am by no means an apologist for the Bush administration. Personally I believe they are heartless and that there is a new level of hell waiting for all of them when they finally depart this earth. )
First and foremost the blame lies with the Senate who confirmed Michael Brown in 42 minutes of non-hearing hearings. Most of the 42 minutes was spent commending him; everone who voted to confirm the least qualified candidate to head the Federal Emergency Management stand up and admit you're part of the problem. Democrats who have been saying they have to pick their battles carefully; get a grip-fight every single appointment. Don't wait for the "right" battle; you tried that and ended up with an evacuee population such as this country has never seen.
The Bush family has shown their true colors and absolute lack of connection to the least amoung us in the latest and greatest PR fiasco. President Clinton; I am so disappointed in you; please stand up and speak to the lack of experience and utter contempt these people have for the majority of americans in this nation. Senator Clinton; stop pandering to the middle, take a stand, just once stand up for something more important than any higher office you may aspire too. Because right now, I wouldn't vote for you for dogcatcher. You have shown zero leadership in your five years in office. It's disgraceful. The Democratic party needs to embrace Vice-President Al Gore; he has proven to be one of the most compassionate and intelligent persons over the past five years. Think about it; if Terry McAuliffe had supported Gore we might have won the election in Novemeber. Remember, the majority of Americans voted for him in 2000 and would have voted for him again in 2004. He's a leader; Clinton is making nice with the very same people who tried blaming him for the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001; they are trying to figure out a way to place the blame for FEMA's lack of reponse to Katrina at his feet also and he's out making commercials and public appearances with a man who despises him and everything he stands for. It's embarrassing.
The Democrats cannot forget Karl Rove's hand is in all of this spin-control. He still needs to go; add the political response ato Katrina to the outting of Valerie Plame and get rid of Bush's brain. He is a danger to the Republic.
Brownie, who was doing a heck of a job needs to be sent packing back to Oklahoma and not just DC; Michael Chertoff also has to be sent packing and replaced by someone with actual emergency management experience. FEMA needs to come out from under the aegis of Homeland Security. I'm still not sure what Homeland Security has done to make this country safer on any level. Like every other Bush initiative it reacts after the fact; granted most corporations in this country function this way; but most of them are a mess. Oh right, so is the country. Bush needs to get sent back to Crawford and Cheney needs to return to Wyoming where he can continue to suck the life out of everything he comes into contact with. Condi can go wherever she wants as long as it is very clear she does not represent america ever again. The damage this administration has done to our reputation at home and abroad is beyond words. The "war on terror" has to end. Would someone please explain to me exactly how one wages a war against an emotion? The correct phrase should be "War on Terrorism" regardless that's not winnable either at least not as long as we continue to harbor home grown terrorists such as the Klan and White separatist groups and support government sponsored terrorism ala the Brits in northern Ireland.
11 September, 2005
09 September, 2005
Our Reputation abroad
Here are just a few of the stories from around the world concerning the damage W and his administration have done to our countries reputation. From the Scotsman.com
FROM SCOTSMAN.COM
Heroes: Victims of Katrina
My heart goes out to all the people who have suffered - or, sorry to say, continue to suffer - from the effects of hurricane Katrina.
The images from the Gulf states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are particularly harrowing. Now, unsurprisingly given the "Escape from New York" state of siege, there are reports of murder, rape and gunfire.
Despite this, the vast majority of citizens appear to be remaining as calm and law-abiding as can be expected.
However, I am not alone in being disturbed by the decision of the US authorities to order troops to "shoot to kill" when they encounter looters. If my family was dying of hunger and thirst as the corpse-ridden floodwaters rose, with chemical plants exploding in the distance, I'd break a window or two if it meant the difference between life and death.
Perhaps order would be restored quicker if those troops brought more in the way of, oh I don't know, food, water, medical supplies and sandbags.
FROM The Independent online
The city where the dead are left lying on the streets
In a makeshift grave on the streets of New Orleans lies the body of Vera Smith. She was an ordinary woman who, like thousands of her neighbours, died because she was poor. Abandoned to her fate as the waters rose around her, Vera's tragedy symbolises the great divide in America today
By Andrew Buncombe in New Orleans
Published: 06 September 2005
However Vera Smith may have lived her life, one thing was certain. In death, she had no dignity. Killed in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, her body lay under a tarpaulin at the junction of Magazine Street and Jackson Avenue for five full days. Not her friends, her grieving husband, not her neighbours could persuade the authorities to take her corpse away.
Finally, disgusted by the way she had been abandoned - and concerned, too, about the health implications of advancing decomposition - her friends buried her in a makeshift grave. A local man fashioned a simple cross, and on top of the soil that was shovelled over her body he placed a white plastic sheet and wrote "Here Lies Vera. God Help Us."
The overwhelming majority of the people who died or suffered in this disaster were, like Vera, the poor - that segment of American society that so often appears to be overlooked or deliberately ignored. These were the people unable to evacuate, who had nowhere else to go or else no means of getting there. These were the people who simply did not have the resources to get a body taken to the morgue.
As the floodwaters are pumped out of New Orleans' streets, rescue workers are bracing themselves for further grisly discoveries and a death toll that will evenually reach tens of thousands.
With the authorities overwhelmed by the effort to find and rescue the living, they have been forced to abandon the dead where they lie or, more often, where they float. Vera, aged 65, was apparently killed by a hit-and-run driver as New Orleans descended into chaos and anarchy the day after the storm struck. Nothing better underlines the breakdown in the civic ability to respond to this disaster than those police officers who shrugged their shoulders helplessly when they were asked to remove Vera's body.
"She had gone out to the shop to get something. We knew it was going to close. We did not want to run out of anything," Vera's husband, Max Keene, 59, told The Independent yesterday, standing outside the couple's humble rented home in the neighbourhood known as Irish Channel. "I did not know what had happened to her. A guy came round to say she was lying by the side of the road with a piece of cardboard over her. It was me that went and put the tarp over her."
He added: "I spoke to the police and asked them to take her away but they just told me to get the hell out of there. It was dark and they were clearing the streets."
Max and Vera were not married in the formal sense but they had been together for 25 years. They had met when she was working as a waitress in a bar and he was working off-shore for one of the many oil companies that operate in the Gulf of Mexico.
There was nothing particular that struck Max about Vera, he recalled, but he liked her sense of fun, her spirit. She liked clothes and shoes and shopping and - like many people in this city - sometimes she liked a drink. She also liked books and every Sunday she went to the local Catholic church, St Mary's Assumption. Smith was her name from her first marriage; she was originally from Mexico.
"She was married, her old man left her. I had a different girlfriend then, she left me. It was the right time. We just got together. Every now and then it happens that way," said Mr Keene, tears in the corners of his eyes. "We used to lie in bed. I'd drink bourbon, she'd read books."
Who knows how many other stories there are like Vera's; how many other bodies lie scattered across this besieged city? Local officials refuse to predict a total but one thing is certain, the city is littered with abandoned corpses. They are left in the street, in buildings, in the backs of trucks wrapped in sheets with a name tag attached. One woman's body was discovered sitting upright in a chair at the back of a dental surgery. The rescue workers have had to leave them and instead concentrate on those who are alive.
Harold Brandt, a doctor from Baton Rouge who has been assisting rescue crews as they search the still flooded areas of the city for survivors, said the biggest concerns was the number of bodies that may be discovered in attics."One of the things with Hurricane Betsy [in 1965] was that people climbed into their attics to avoid the rising water and then they had no way to escape and they drowned. Now, veterans of hurricanes will always put an axe in their attic."
Vera, of course, was not killed by the hurricane - as Max Keene stresses. The couple had survived the storm and, knowing they would face days with out electricity or water - or any assistance from the authorities, Vera was on her way to the local store for supplies when she was knocked down.
Patrick McCarthy, a retired electrician, was one those who helped bury her. "If you need a metaphor for failure, this is as good as it gets," he said. "Everybody should be buried. [This is] an insult to our humanity."
and from the BBC:
Why does the US need our money?
The Red Cross is appealing for people overseas to contribute money to its Hurricane Katrina Appeal. But why does the world's richest nation need handouts?
The world's only superpower has been forced to turn to aid agencies to speed up the humanitarian effort in the wake of Katrina.
Seemingly unable to draw on its wealth at short notice to immediately respond to the disaster, charities in other countries, such as the British Red Cross, are now launching appeals to raise money.
In addition half a million military ration packs worth an estimated £3m have been flown out from the UK and more are expected to follow.
The public in many countries are accustomed to providing aid to poverty stricken developing nations, but the need to provide assistance to the most opulent country in the world may leave many perplexed.
Sympathy
It is not a position the US is used to being in either. President George W Bush seemed to initially dismiss suggestions of receiving foreign assistance.
"I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we haven't asked for it," he said. "I do expect a lot of sympathy, and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country is going to rise up and take care of it.''
Later, US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said "no offers of assistance will be refused''.
The gross national income of the US is $37,870 per capita, according to the World Bank. It is just $810 for tsunami-hit Indonesia and $200 for poverty-stricken Niger.
And, national wealth aside, Americans have a strong track record of generosity concerning disasters on their own soil. They gave $2bn following the 11 September attacks.
'Unprecedented'
The British Red Cross says the appeal is about getting money quickly to speed up the aid effort, but admits it does raise questions about measures the US Government has in place to deal with large-scale domestic disasters.
"We have been asked for help by our sister organisation in the US," says a spokesman. "This is the biggest humanitarian operation in its 125-year history, we are looking at an area the size of Great Britain that has been devastated.
"But there are broader political questions about the response of the richest country in the world to such a disaster on its own soil. Hopefully they will be addressed in the fullness of time and lessons will be learned."
No country has enough rations to deal with such an immediate need and so an appeal for outside help is inevitable, say experts.
The Ministry of Defence's director of logistics operations, Brigadier Chris Steirn, who co-ordinates the distribution of all military supplies, says: "You don't have billions of rations stacked up in one place and so they are quite often traded between nations."
But will the British public be as keen to make donations as they were after recent disasters, such as the Asian tsunami and famines in Niger and Sudan?
Cathy Pharoah, a researcher at the Charities Aid Foundation, points out that it is difficult to predict how people will react because such devastation in such an affluent country is unprecedented in recent times.
But she believes harrowing images depicting "human suffering" in the media will loosen British purse strings.
"People wanted to see that the government of a highly developed western country were putting the money in, but when human need stories begin to emerge, people will respond."
• Donations can be made directly to the American Red Cross online at www.redcross.org, or by calling 001-800-4357 669.
• UK taxpayers wanting to Gift Aid a contribution can donate at www.redcross.org.uk/katrina
It's disgusting and now the Rove machine has kicked into high gear and everyone is blaming the Mayor of New Orleans & the Governor of Louisiana. The Bush administration couldn't be bothered to show up to save lives of needy americans but they are out in full PR mode to spin the story and the media is letting them do it. Shame on you, Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell et al. Stop blaming the victims. The Governor declared a state of emergency on Sunday when they ordered the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans; FEMA was on the ground and did nothing for days. In order for a state to evacuate it's citizens it needs the money; LA is a poor state and they did not have the money; the feds stood by. Cheney finally emerged from the Wyoming wilderness to hand out more no-bid contracts to halliburton and count his wind-fall oil company profits.
What's the difference between the Bush administration and shoes? Shoes have soles. The Bush administration is looking forward to rebuilding New Orleans in their image a corporate welfare state and the poor be damned. If we don't demand more from out leaders and get rid of these guys; including the spineless democrats who allowed Brownie to be confirmed we are doomed.
Yes, that's right, all of the democrats who are complaining about Brown allowed him to be confirmed in the first place. His confirmation hearing took all of 42 minutes. No one questioned his lack of emergency management experience. Nor did they question Chertoff's lack of experience; hell he doesn't even know that Louisiana is a state and New Orleans is a city. The response of this government to Hurricane Katrina is compassionate conservatisim in action. We have to stop this now. We should have stopped it sooner; Demand all public officials be held accountable. If you have democratic senators and congressmen make them act according to democratic principles and stop pandering to the corporate interests.
FROM SCOTSMAN.COM
Heroes: Victims of Katrina
My heart goes out to all the people who have suffered - or, sorry to say, continue to suffer - from the effects of hurricane Katrina.
The images from the Gulf states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are particularly harrowing. Now, unsurprisingly given the "Escape from New York" state of siege, there are reports of murder, rape and gunfire.
Despite this, the vast majority of citizens appear to be remaining as calm and law-abiding as can be expected.
However, I am not alone in being disturbed by the decision of the US authorities to order troops to "shoot to kill" when they encounter looters. If my family was dying of hunger and thirst as the corpse-ridden floodwaters rose, with chemical plants exploding in the distance, I'd break a window or two if it meant the difference between life and death.
Perhaps order would be restored quicker if those troops brought more in the way of, oh I don't know, food, water, medical supplies and sandbags.
FROM The Independent online
The city where the dead are left lying on the streets
In a makeshift grave on the streets of New Orleans lies the body of Vera Smith. She was an ordinary woman who, like thousands of her neighbours, died because she was poor. Abandoned to her fate as the waters rose around her, Vera's tragedy symbolises the great divide in America today
By Andrew Buncombe in New Orleans
Published: 06 September 2005
However Vera Smith may have lived her life, one thing was certain. In death, she had no dignity. Killed in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, her body lay under a tarpaulin at the junction of Magazine Street and Jackson Avenue for five full days. Not her friends, her grieving husband, not her neighbours could persuade the authorities to take her corpse away.
Finally, disgusted by the way she had been abandoned - and concerned, too, about the health implications of advancing decomposition - her friends buried her in a makeshift grave. A local man fashioned a simple cross, and on top of the soil that was shovelled over her body he placed a white plastic sheet and wrote "Here Lies Vera. God Help Us."
The overwhelming majority of the people who died or suffered in this disaster were, like Vera, the poor - that segment of American society that so often appears to be overlooked or deliberately ignored. These were the people unable to evacuate, who had nowhere else to go or else no means of getting there. These were the people who simply did not have the resources to get a body taken to the morgue.
As the floodwaters are pumped out of New Orleans' streets, rescue workers are bracing themselves for further grisly discoveries and a death toll that will evenually reach tens of thousands.
With the authorities overwhelmed by the effort to find and rescue the living, they have been forced to abandon the dead where they lie or, more often, where they float. Vera, aged 65, was apparently killed by a hit-and-run driver as New Orleans descended into chaos and anarchy the day after the storm struck. Nothing better underlines the breakdown in the civic ability to respond to this disaster than those police officers who shrugged their shoulders helplessly when they were asked to remove Vera's body.
"She had gone out to the shop to get something. We knew it was going to close. We did not want to run out of anything," Vera's husband, Max Keene, 59, told The Independent yesterday, standing outside the couple's humble rented home in the neighbourhood known as Irish Channel. "I did not know what had happened to her. A guy came round to say she was lying by the side of the road with a piece of cardboard over her. It was me that went and put the tarp over her."
He added: "I spoke to the police and asked them to take her away but they just told me to get the hell out of there. It was dark and they were clearing the streets."
Max and Vera were not married in the formal sense but they had been together for 25 years. They had met when she was working as a waitress in a bar and he was working off-shore for one of the many oil companies that operate in the Gulf of Mexico.
There was nothing particular that struck Max about Vera, he recalled, but he liked her sense of fun, her spirit. She liked clothes and shoes and shopping and - like many people in this city - sometimes she liked a drink. She also liked books and every Sunday she went to the local Catholic church, St Mary's Assumption. Smith was her name from her first marriage; she was originally from Mexico.
"She was married, her old man left her. I had a different girlfriend then, she left me. It was the right time. We just got together. Every now and then it happens that way," said Mr Keene, tears in the corners of his eyes. "We used to lie in bed. I'd drink bourbon, she'd read books."
Who knows how many other stories there are like Vera's; how many other bodies lie scattered across this besieged city? Local officials refuse to predict a total but one thing is certain, the city is littered with abandoned corpses. They are left in the street, in buildings, in the backs of trucks wrapped in sheets with a name tag attached. One woman's body was discovered sitting upright in a chair at the back of a dental surgery. The rescue workers have had to leave them and instead concentrate on those who are alive.
Harold Brandt, a doctor from Baton Rouge who has been assisting rescue crews as they search the still flooded areas of the city for survivors, said the biggest concerns was the number of bodies that may be discovered in attics."One of the things with Hurricane Betsy [in 1965] was that people climbed into their attics to avoid the rising water and then they had no way to escape and they drowned. Now, veterans of hurricanes will always put an axe in their attic."
Vera, of course, was not killed by the hurricane - as Max Keene stresses. The couple had survived the storm and, knowing they would face days with out electricity or water - or any assistance from the authorities, Vera was on her way to the local store for supplies when she was knocked down.
Patrick McCarthy, a retired electrician, was one those who helped bury her. "If you need a metaphor for failure, this is as good as it gets," he said. "Everybody should be buried. [This is] an insult to our humanity."
and from the BBC:
Why does the US need our money?
The Red Cross is appealing for people overseas to contribute money to its Hurricane Katrina Appeal. But why does the world's richest nation need handouts?
The world's only superpower has been forced to turn to aid agencies to speed up the humanitarian effort in the wake of Katrina.
Seemingly unable to draw on its wealth at short notice to immediately respond to the disaster, charities in other countries, such as the British Red Cross, are now launching appeals to raise money.
In addition half a million military ration packs worth an estimated £3m have been flown out from the UK and more are expected to follow.
The public in many countries are accustomed to providing aid to poverty stricken developing nations, but the need to provide assistance to the most opulent country in the world may leave many perplexed.
Sympathy
It is not a position the US is used to being in either. President George W Bush seemed to initially dismiss suggestions of receiving foreign assistance.
"I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we haven't asked for it," he said. "I do expect a lot of sympathy, and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country is going to rise up and take care of it.''
Later, US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said "no offers of assistance will be refused''.
The gross national income of the US is $37,870 per capita, according to the World Bank. It is just $810 for tsunami-hit Indonesia and $200 for poverty-stricken Niger.
And, national wealth aside, Americans have a strong track record of generosity concerning disasters on their own soil. They gave $2bn following the 11 September attacks.
'Unprecedented'
The British Red Cross says the appeal is about getting money quickly to speed up the aid effort, but admits it does raise questions about measures the US Government has in place to deal with large-scale domestic disasters.
"We have been asked for help by our sister organisation in the US," says a spokesman. "This is the biggest humanitarian operation in its 125-year history, we are looking at an area the size of Great Britain that has been devastated.
"But there are broader political questions about the response of the richest country in the world to such a disaster on its own soil. Hopefully they will be addressed in the fullness of time and lessons will be learned."
No country has enough rations to deal with such an immediate need and so an appeal for outside help is inevitable, say experts.
The Ministry of Defence's director of logistics operations, Brigadier Chris Steirn, who co-ordinates the distribution of all military supplies, says: "You don't have billions of rations stacked up in one place and so they are quite often traded between nations."
But will the British public be as keen to make donations as they were after recent disasters, such as the Asian tsunami and famines in Niger and Sudan?
Cathy Pharoah, a researcher at the Charities Aid Foundation, points out that it is difficult to predict how people will react because such devastation in such an affluent country is unprecedented in recent times.
But she believes harrowing images depicting "human suffering" in the media will loosen British purse strings.
"People wanted to see that the government of a highly developed western country were putting the money in, but when human need stories begin to emerge, people will respond."
• Donations can be made directly to the American Red Cross online at www.redcross.org, or by calling 001-800-4357 669.
• UK taxpayers wanting to Gift Aid a contribution can donate at www.redcross.org.uk/katrina
It's disgusting and now the Rove machine has kicked into high gear and everyone is blaming the Mayor of New Orleans & the Governor of Louisiana. The Bush administration couldn't be bothered to show up to save lives of needy americans but they are out in full PR mode to spin the story and the media is letting them do it. Shame on you, Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell et al. Stop blaming the victims. The Governor declared a state of emergency on Sunday when they ordered the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans; FEMA was on the ground and did nothing for days. In order for a state to evacuate it's citizens it needs the money; LA is a poor state and they did not have the money; the feds stood by. Cheney finally emerged from the Wyoming wilderness to hand out more no-bid contracts to halliburton and count his wind-fall oil company profits.
What's the difference between the Bush administration and shoes? Shoes have soles. The Bush administration is looking forward to rebuilding New Orleans in their image a corporate welfare state and the poor be damned. If we don't demand more from out leaders and get rid of these guys; including the spineless democrats who allowed Brownie to be confirmed we are doomed.
Yes, that's right, all of the democrats who are complaining about Brown allowed him to be confirmed in the first place. His confirmation hearing took all of 42 minutes. No one questioned his lack of emergency management experience. Nor did they question Chertoff's lack of experience; hell he doesn't even know that Louisiana is a state and New Orleans is a city. The response of this government to Hurricane Katrina is compassionate conservatisim in action. We have to stop this now. We should have stopped it sooner; Demand all public officials be held accountable. If you have democratic senators and congressmen make them act according to democratic principles and stop pandering to the corporate interests.
01 September, 2005
Katrina
Where is the leader we need in light of the catastrophe along the Gulf Coast? W. was playing golf. Condi was attending a Broadway comedy. Thousands were stranded in a city that was under a mandatory evacuation order. Only problem with the order was there was no contingency plan for those unable to leave the city. The levees that should have been shored up years ago, except the feds took the money they promised back under the guise of homeland security & the need to fight the war in Iraq. Much like W. promised New York $85 billion to rebuild after the Trade Center collapsed and then reniged on that money. It was more important that his friends got their tax cuts and corporate welfare, while those in this country who do the work and suffer the most from catastrophe are left to fend for themselves.
Somehow W. thinks flying over the disaster area somehow gives him an idea of what it is like on the ground. I watch the images on television and am heartbroken. I hear newspeople overwhelmed by the devastation they are in the middle of and I am speechless; I don't have the words for the anguish I feel for those who somehow, have to regroup, relocate at least for months. And then I hear "compassionate conservatives" like Denny Hastert say, why should we rebuild New Orleans? It's not really that important. Is he kidding me?
Somehow W. thinks flying over the disaster area somehow gives him an idea of what it is like on the ground. I watch the images on television and am heartbroken. I hear newspeople overwhelmed by the devastation they are in the middle of and I am speechless; I don't have the words for the anguish I feel for those who somehow, have to regroup, relocate at least for months. And then I hear "compassionate conservatives" like Denny Hastert say, why should we rebuild New Orleans? It's not really that important. Is he kidding me?
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