Surely she's a "sis" not a "bro"..

totster

If she runs she wins.

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Condi vs. Hillary ? what a handsome bitch contest would that be. Would be very refreshing. Why do American women have more balls than men ?

Hillary should win the Democratic nomination. By virtue of the campaign money she'll have.

'Clinton' name has that star aura about it. A lot of the pixie dust has fallen on Hillary.

[ Why do American women have more balls than men ?

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Than "American Men"...

totster

[ Why do American women have more balls than men ?

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Than "American Men"...

totster

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Not true. Every men.

"Get off your asses and let's do something," the mayor told WWL-AM Thursday night in a rambling interview in which he cursed, yelled and ultimately burst into tears. At one point he said: "Excuse my French — everybody in America — but I am pis5ed."

This was what the Mayor of New Orleans said.

I too was pis5ed last night.

I propose we float Thomas down the Mississippi River and moor his tonnage to block up the gaps in the tidal defences.

Like the little Dutch Boy.

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Jack of all trades that I am, alas the only floating of which I am capable, is that induced by the generous God, Bachus.

Thomas - I don't like Bush much too, but there's nothing a President can do, he has no resources under his control that he can deploy. He signs Laws. He's not like Tony Blair who can make things happen.

Governor of Louisiana is the one to make the request centrally, say for army deployment.

Boon Mee, is that correct?

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Is the President not Commander in Chief?

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The Goverener of the state in question has to resquest aid from the federal goverenment before they will step in.

The only Bush is gulity of is making speeches on the White House lawn before he really knew what was going on, which just shows his stupidity and I think makes him look like he doesn't care because him didn't take the time to get the info right. Not that I think he really cares anyway.

Chalk it up to poor planning on part of the state and local governments. I do believe heads will roll there before anywhere else.

The mayor of New Orleans was certainly one unhappy camper. http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/nagin.transcript/index.html

Compare his interview to the governor of LA. who spent 2 min thanking federal officials.

cv

Well, i'd trust CNN more than FOX.I have no reason not to believe the jurno that was interviewed saying that suv's full of men were patrolling the streats armed with automatic weapons.

"Suv's full of men were patrolling the street armed with Automatic Weapons"...

Are you sure? And did any other Journalists substantiate this fact?

He said the he saw with his own eyes a guys body with his head blown off...I tend to belive it.

.....And I surmise that this was caused by the Suv's full of men that were patrolling the streets armed with Automatic Weapons?

BTW, the reporter was not white either.

And?

I guess the truth hurts - watching news can give you a dose of reality if one acts like an animal one is treated as such. Rapes/Murders/Assaults/theft aren't acceptable even if one is desperate.    (theft clothing, food, meds is acceptable from stores - anything else is not)

So what is and who exactly does the truth hurt then?

Not me...

Before the National Guard units finally arrived, yes there are/were some areas of lawlessness in the city when all authority was near non- existant. . Yes, there was some of that before, But some of the news reports were making it out that the WHOLE city is like that.

And that is not the truth.

As for Watching News giving a dose of reality?

You really don't need to watch the News for that.

I find it interesting that most of those people in despair are black. Coincidence ?

I believe this is part of what Spee was referring to earlier, not the time. Undoubtedly, the 'race card' will be pathetically or justifiably (to some, not me) dragged out later, or likely sooner (ie "if this were in a whitebread area, quicker response etc)

.....And so are you absolutely positive that's has no factor in this mess? I wish I had the luxury of thinking like that.

Yet Condolezza Rice thinks the same way as you, she dismissed those same critisisms from several Black leaders...

And yes, Condi is Black.....

( Or I think she is.... )

Nonsense, it's a serious catastrophe combined with a serious lack of aftermath preparedness on this scale and confused chain of command it appears. Lessons WILL undoubtedly be learned.

I dissagree with the nonsense part, but the rest, well, that we can mostly agree on...National Guard arrives Four Days after the hurricane hit?

At least some things were done today with the evacuation of some and the food and water finally coming....Better late than never, I say......

......Oh well...at least President Bush came and got his Photo Ops in Biloxi , Miss.....

That should placate the "Brothers" ( as Boon Mee puts it.....) all the way over in New Orleans Convention Center and in the Superdome......

Every picture tells a story - a selction from some of today's US newspapers:

Brilliant - nice post.

Excellent toons Thomas. Especially the "bureaucracy" one.

cv

The BBC has just run a special from the USA disaster area using the same journalists who covered the Tsunami.

It was a chilling indictment of the lack of response from the responsible authorities.

The political and social consequences alone of these terrible scenes are going to enormous.

It is enough that black citizens have been forgotten and deserted by a government whose lack of concern is tantamount to gross negligence, and other disadvantaged are forgotten: hospital patients evacuated into the he££ of sports domes and left to die; prisoners locked in jails that are flooded; predominantly white police forces more concerned with their own safety unable to perceive the plight of the citizens they should "serve and protect".

However this storm has reduced all to the same level. Before being rich really meant something in the USA - the best services and facilities available only to those who had money - but now, with no electricity, no water, no gas, and no access to those large bank accounts or productive share portfolios - the rich are suffering too.

And amongst the rich are the articulate who can see all this and will express their unbelief that a nation so rich and powerful as the USA is unable to react in time with the most elemental disaster relief to an event taking place deep within its own heartland.

Each death through negligence and incompetence should hammer a nail in Bush's presidency deeper than any Watergate, Monica Lewinsky or the losing of the war in Iraq.

Naive matey!!!

Got any arguments to back up your expletive, or was it as read, signifying nothing.

They are stuck there because they are poor. It is not because they are black. One woman interviewed said she didn't leave because her car's brakes didn't pass inspection recently and she didn't get her paycheck yet. Every city has written evacuation plans for many different scenarios. What was the (black) mayor of New Orleans' plan? When asked by a reporter he launched into one of his tirades about where was the outside help. So far the city has demonstrated a plan to move people to the SuperDome but that seems to be it. Where in their plan are the water tankers and trucks with MREs from the local national guard food locker? I'd be curious to know when the city of NO's emergency evacuation plan was last updated and carried out on a dry run. It will take awhile to sort this out.

The prisoners you inquired about were set free. They were released without supervision.

Correcetion: some prisoners were released others were moved to safer facilities.

Correcetion: some prisoners were released others were moved to safer facilities.

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At least 4 days after the hurricane struck and the flooding began.

Well, I guarentee the Rangers & Seals that have just been dropped into the 'war zone' in New Orleans are not laughing.

It's animals in there shooting at helicopters. Looks like Mogodishu all over again.

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Well, since we are all technically animals, I'd like to ask you a question: which animal is the most despicable - an opportunistic looter from the underclass of poor, uneducated, and disaster-stricken population from the slum areas of NOs, or your good 'ole rich-boy, white president, who seems to always be preoccupied on another vacation whenever another one of these "animals" is caught in a catastrophic trap, either in NOs or Iraq?

Bringing a shopping cart is wise.

I'd bring a canoe....

I'd pinch

1) Recordable DVD player

2) 52 inch television

3) New Playstation

4) 18 year old marooned Creole daughter with big knockers.

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Are you aware that under the current state of lawlessness rape is a serious problem at the moment? Why would you make a joke like this if you viewed said 18-year-old as a human being? I think a lot of you people have been in LOS too long.

Perhaps a Ming vase or Ching dynasty bronze censer.

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A Ming vase or Ching (sic) dynasty bronze censers are rather scarce in the French Quarter!

But on the subject of hurricanes which come in thirty year cycles and we’re just in the middle of the current peak. In ten years, it will taper off. No one knows why. It just happens. Period. Everyone can put away the tinfoil-global-warming hat…

US NEWS)—Measured by the dollar value of the damage they caused, 2004 was the worst hurricane season on record, and the 10 most costly hurricanes to hit the U.S. mainland have all occurred since 1992. But only one of those makes the list of the 10 strongest hurricanes in American history. Much of the increased damage, it turns out, is a result of booming coastal development rather than worsening storms.

But that doesn’t change the fact that there has been a steep uptick in the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic over the past decade. From 1970 to 1994, there were an average of 8.6 tropical storms, 5 hurricanes, and 1.5 major hurricanes per year in the Atlantic; from 1995 onward, those numbers have jumped to 13.6 storms, 7.8 hurricanes, and 3.8 major hurricanes.

Most scientists agree that the increased frequencies are part of a natural cycle. For all the destructive power of a fully formed hurricane, a nascent tropical cyclone is a fairly fussy thing, requiring just the right conditions in the sea and the air to develop. No one is quite sure why, but every two or three decades, the tropical Atlantic seems to swing back and forth between conditions that favor hurricane development–warm surface temperatures that give the storms more energy, for example–and conditions that tend to impede them, such as strong crosswinds that disrupt the forming cyclones. We’ve been in a hurricane-friendly period since about 1995, and there’s no telling whether we’re halfway through it, or only a third.

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First of all, your source is what - US News? - what a joke. And I'm sure you watch Fox News for its serious journalism.

Yes hurricanes happen in cycles, but right now even scientists cannot conclusively rule out the effect of global warming on the current trend.

But you are going to do it for us with 1 article from the news tabloid rag US News

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Ever see the movie (old one) "Red Dawn" where America is invaded and folks come together against a common enemy?

Well, in New Orleans right now, that ain't happening. The 'brothers' in the 'hood' are shooting at the helicopters trying to help them. And the cops are breaking into ATMs.

It's unreal...

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Let me tell you something about the "brothers in the hood". The ones who have not yet been killed in Iraq or by the state-sponsored death penalty, are doing exactly what your good 'ol stupid white boy George W. has done: used circumstance and misfortune to take advantage of an opportunity. Isn't that the American way that you libertarians boast so much about?

I don't support the looting of either "brothers in the hood" or good ole white boys, but as long as we're on the subject of animals, which ones are worse: "brothers in the hood" from the lowest socio-economic demographic looting for a few or several hundred dollars and joining in the escalating anarchy, or:

one of the stupidest presidents in U.S. history from the highest socio-economic demographic in the land asleep at the wheel even after ample and well-documented evidence of an impending attack (vacation again; and I bet you think only the "brothers from the hood" goof off), lying to build a case for war, passing the blame, protecting his other white, socio-economically advantaged friends from taking the well-deserved blame of cheating hundreds of employees (Kenneth Lay comes to mind among others), and using the "brothers from the hood" and poor white kids to fight for "freedom" and "civilization", in what has become a festering inferno of anarchy and a global spectacle of his own staggering greed and stupidity. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, more white good ole boys make, ahem, a killing from corrupt Halliburton contracts among others.

All this and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (and yes, that's FEDERAL) can't even get buses, airlifts, or dependable relief to the Superdome for more than 4 days!

Not all animals come at you with angry black faces. Some of them come with smiling white faces to hug your black grandmother for a photo op, said little red riding hood.

Yeah, the same smiling white faces that posted state troopers in black electoral precints during the first "election", among other things, says the wolf.

New Orleans crisis shames Americans

At the end of an unforgettable week, one broadcaster on Friday bitterly encapsulated the sense of burning shame and anger that many American citizens are feeling.

The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better.

It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the invulnerability of the American Dream.

The party in power in Washington, is always happy to convey the impression of 50 states, moving forward together in social and economic harmony towards a bigger and better America.

That is what presidential campaigning is all about.

But what the devastating consequences of Katrina have shown - along with the response to it - is that for too long now, the fabric of this complex and overstretched country, especially in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, has been neglected and ignored.

Borrowed time

The fitting metaphors relating to the New Orleans debacle are almost too numerous to mention.

First there was an extraordinary complacency, mixed together with what seemed like over-reaction, before the storm.

A genuinely heroic mayor orders a total evacuation of the city the day before Katrina arrives, knowing that for decades now, New Orleans has been living on borrowed time.

The National Guard and federal emergency personnel stay tucked up at home.

The havoc of Katrina had been predicted countless times on a local and federal level - even to the point where it was acknowledged that tens of thousands of the poorest residents would not be able to leave the city in advance.

No official plan was ever put in place for them.

Abandoned to the elements

The famous levees that were breached could have been strengthened and raised at what now seems like a trifling cost of a few billion dollars.

The Bush administration, together with Congress, cut the budgets for flood protection and army engineers, while local politicians failed to generate any enthusiasm for local tax increases.

New Orleans partied-on just hoping for the best, abandoned by anyone in national authority who could have put the money into really protecting the city.

Meanwhile, the poorest were similarly abandoned, as the horrifying images and stories from the Superdome and Convention Center prove.

The truth was simple and apparent to all. If journalists were there with cameras beaming the suffering live across America, where were the officers and troops?

The neglect that meant it took five days to get water, food, and medical care to thousands of mainly orderly African-American citizens desperately sheltering in huge downtown buildings of their native city, has been going on historically, for as long as the inadequate levees have been there.

Divided city

I should make a confession at this point: I have been to New Orleans on assignment three times in as many years, and I was smitten by the Big Easy, with its unique charms and temperament.

But behind the elegant intoxicants of the French Quarter, it was clearly a city grotesquely divided on several levels. It has twice the national average poverty rate.

The government approach to such deprivation looked more like thoughtless containment than anything else.

The nightly shootings and drugs-related homicides of recent years pointed to a small but vicious culture of largely black-on-black crime that everyone knew existed, but no-one seemed to have any real answers for.

Again, no-one wanted to pick up the bill or deal with the realities of race relations in the 21st Century.

Too often in the so-called "New South", they still look positively 19th Century.

"Shoot the looters" is good rhetoric, but no lasting solution.

Uneasy paradox

It is astonishing to me that so many Americans seem shocked by the existence of such concentrated poverty and social neglect in their own country.

In the workout room of the condo where I am currently staying in the affluent LA neighbourhood of Santa Monica, an executive and his personal trainer ignored the anguished television reports blaring above their heads on Friday evening.

Either they did not care, or it was somehow too painful to discuss.

When President Bush told "Good Morning America" on Thursday morning that nobody could have "anticipated" the breach of the New Orleans levees, it pointed to not only a remote leader in denial, but a whole political class.

The uneasy paradox which so many live with in this country - of being first-and-foremost rugged individuals, out to plunder what they can and paying as little tax as they can get away with, while at the same time believing that America is a robust, model society - has reached a crisis point this week.

Will there be real investment, or just more buck-passing between federal agencies and states?

The country has to choose whether it wants to rebuild the levees and destroyed communities, with no expense spared for the future - or once again brush off that responsibility, and blame the other guy.

By Matt Wells BBC

I must be stuck in the Twilight Zone, I agree with most of what TM has to say (without the drama)

Wasn't there a hurricane in Cuba last year.

And nobody perished, because the Cuban army came along when the weather forecast was issued and made everyone get in army trucks and took them off into the hills.

You didn't have any choice in the matter, whereby you could stay behind for a loot, if you didn't get in the truck they'd make you get in.

Thanks for the article TM. Anyone who claims this has nothing to do with race, doesn't know the history of the United States and should refrain from making empty comments.

but but didn't you see Bush photo op ? he was holding a young black lady in his arms ? doesn't it mean anything ?

Well, it definitely proves that some have a better public relations strategy than others.

Geraldo crying live on Faux ? what a traitor !!!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/02.html#a4763

actor/rapper Kayne West on nationally televised Hurricane Katrina relief show

"George Bush doesn't care about black people," West said. "They're saying black families are looting and white families are just looking for food...they're giving the (Army) permission to shoot us"

http://www.zebrality.com/media/2005/kanye.avi

Why do people hate America ?

Blacks were looting for TV and guns. Whites were looting for beers. Now who is the smart one ?

"Why do people hate America ? "

ok, but now you're generalizing this to all of America, the same place that Kayne West and I among others, come from. As you can see, it is a place of vast differences.

"Why do people hate America ? "

ok, but now you're generalizing this to all of America, the same place that Kayne West and I among others, come from.  As you can see, it is a place of vast differences.

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I was being sarcastic but I don't think you got it. Probably wrong emoticon

oh, well excuse me for not being able to decipher your sarcasm from your usual diatribes (no emoticon needed).

I have worked for the Red Cross most of my life, either as a volunteer or employed by the ICRC or the Danish Red Cross.

In all that time only once did I work on relief to a natural disaster (that is, if you don't call famine a natural disaster).

That was my first job as a volunteer, still at school, in 1963 in Skopje the capital of Macedonia (then in Yugoslavia). The city was hit by an earthquake killing 1000's and making hundreds of thousands homeless.

Skopje is/was in a relative remote mountainous area in a communist state, completely cut off as a result of this disaster.

The Red Cross and other relief agencies, from all over Europe (non-communist states as well as communist states), were on the ground and running within 24 hours.