The first head rolls?

US emergency aid chief sidelined

The top US emergencies official has been removed from his role managing the Katrina relief effort on the ground, the federal government has announced.

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is being sent back to Washington from Louisiana where he has been overseeing aid work.

He is being replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm Thad W Allen.

Announcing the reshuffle, Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff said Mr Brown would remain head of Fema.

Halliburton hired for storm cleanup

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3335685

Halliburton hired for storm cleanup

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3335685

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Who else.

It's interesting to note that most conservative republicans, especially the hard core supporters of the Bush administration, continue to constantly blame the state government of Louisiana, and the local city government of New Orleans ( both democratic ones, by the way...Hmmmm.... ), while seemingly denying of any federal culpability themselves for the disaterous mishandling of the aftermath of Katrina - Even Jon Stuart ran a bit on his "Daily Show" that showed montages of republican leaders , from Bush all the way down to Senator Orin Hatch, blaming the state and local governments of Louisiana , all saying basically the same thing, as if they were reading from a script... )

Well, it's good to know that at least some Republicans ( seeing the writing on the wall , so to speak... ) are starting to break with the official party line, and actually admit that the Federal government shares some of the blame.....You know the Administration is in a Pickle when even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of the biggest Bush supporters around, mind you - criticizes the inept way the federal government responded to the disaster.....

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_sho...l?article=60076

http://nsnlb.us.publicus.com/apps/pbcs.dll...9090002/-1/news

Who knew? :D

Halliburton hired for storm cleanup

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3335685

Who else.

Indeed.

They just happen to be the best at what they do so what's the gripe?

Who ya gonna call besides them? Who's got the infrastructure to do a job like that but Big H, eh?

Chicken Little Retraction

Death Toll in New Orleans May Be Lower Than First Feared

NEW ORLEANS (NY Times)

The first organized effort to scour the city for its dead has turned up far fewer bodies than expected, officials said Friday. That raised hopes that the death toll from Hurricane Katrina might be much lower than the 10,000 that the mayor and others had predicted. As the floodwater continued to recede, police officers, National Guard members and members of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army began to canvass street to street and house to house in the first phase of a hunt to find, remove and identify the dead.

“There’s some encouragement in what we found in the initial sweeps,” Col. Terry J. Ebbert, the city’s director of homeland security, said. “The numbers so far are relatively minor as compared with the dire predictions of 10,000.”

"The specter of a five-figure toll was raised this week, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered 25,000 body bags flown to a temporary morgue in St. Gabriel. The official state death count stood at 118. Mississippi reported 211. Colonel Ebbert, who would not provide figures for New Orleans, said it would take two weeks before the search for the dead here could yield a reliable assessment."

What? You mean it’s not really the end of the world? Hold the presses! We need to find gloom and doom elsewhere!

"Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans went to Dallas, touring shelters and visiting family members who had evacuated there. He joined Dallas leaders in announcing a citywide relief fund and denouncing the federal emergency agency for what they called its continuing slow response to the crisis."

“It’s a doggone shame that these survivors had to wait in the hot sun for FEMA yesterday, and FEMA didn’t arrive,” Mr. Nagin said.

Still playing that same old tune, Mayor Negligent? Keep blaming FEMA. That way no one will place the blame where it really belongs, namely on your corrupt head!

Perhaps the most promising development to emerge was the first detailed timetable for draining New Orleans. The Army Corps of Engineers said a new computer model showed that all areas of the city would be pumped dry by Oct. 18, about 40 days from the estimate.

"The corps had previously said only that the work would take 24 to 80 days. And for the first time since the hurricane slammed into the Gulf Coast, government and utility officials offered a time frame for restoring electricity to the New Orleans downtown business district. They said they hoped to have power turned on and much of the debris cleaned up by the end of next week."

Amazing, isn’t it? All those dire predictions by the mainstream media seem to be drying up .. along with the city of New Orleans. The Katrina Katastrophe is subsiding too quickly. Look for the MSM to go hunting for another way to attack the Bush administration real soon now. The MSM is like a two-year-old child with an extremely short attention span and a tendency to throw temper tantrums when they don’t get what they want.

Folks along the Gulf Coast will still be trying to put their lives back together years from now but the MSM will have completely forgotten about them. The recovery efforts will continue in a sharply reduced media vacuum. The MSM had their fun, rushing to the area long before FEMA could get mobilized just so they could point the finger of blame at FEMA while the local leaders got a pass on their negligence and failure to respond.

Gotta find something else to blame Bush for now, eh?

Chicken Little Retraction

Death Toll in New Orleans May Be Lower Than First Feared

...

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Oh, well that's OK then.

What's a couple of pickaninies anyway?

Blacks fault lack of local leadership

By Brian DeBose

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

September 10, 2005

Some in the black community are beginning to question what happened to the black leadership during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, especially in the city of New Orleans.

While a few black leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Congressional Black Caucus, have singled out the president for blame, others say Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who is black, is responsible for the dismal response to the flooding that stranded thousands in the city's poorest sections.

"Mayor Nagin has blamed everyone else except himself," said the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny.

"The mayor failed in his duty to evacuate and protect the people of New Orleans. ... The truth is, black people died not because of President Bush or racism, they died because of their unhealthy dependence on the government and the incompetence of Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco," he said.

As news and images of the dead, stranded, sick and hungry waiting days for help inundated Americans over the last two weeks, public officials at every level have sought to deflect blame. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael D. Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff have pointed their fingers at the first responders in New Orleans and Louisiana, while the mayor and the governor have sought to tag the Bush administration with botching the emergency response.

The New Orleans mayor has criticized the president for the slow response and the resulting loss of life, but recent reports show he failed to follow through on his own city's emergency-response plan, which acknowledged that thousands of the city's poorest residents would have no way to evacuate the city.

He took a second hit when an Associated Press photo showed 2,000 school buses under water and parked in a lot, unused in the evacuation. Reports say those buses could have ferried thousands of residents to safety outside New Orleans had they been deployed.

Black political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of "The Disappearance of Black Leadership," said the problem lies with the current focus of black leadership, in both the elected and activist crowd, away from the poor and toward the new majority of middle-class black Americans.

"In the past two decades, there has been a middle-class-focused leadership," Mr. Hutchinson said. "It is one thing to talk about affirmative action and moving people into top management positions in corporate America, but that does not do anything for the black poor."

Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said there is plenty of blame for all governments -- local, state and federal.

"Something like this has been predicted for years and years, and it seems none of [the government officials] did anything about it to stop it, not simply for people who had nothing before the storm and now have less than nothing, but for everyone there," Mr. Bond said.

But taking a cue from prominent black leaders, Rep. Charles B. Rangel, New York Democrat, put the blame on Mr. Bush and his record as commander in chief. "The president's policies in Iraq contributed to the slow response of federal troops who should have been on alert even before the hurricane struck."

"Now, as bedlam reigns in New Orleans, 35 percent of Louisiana's and 37 percent of Mississippi's National Guard troops are in Iraq. The hurricane is clear evidence of how the war directly affects the domestic security of our country," he said.

Mr. Peterson, however, chastised those who would lay all the blame at the feet of Mr. Bush.

"If black folks want to blame someone for this tragedy, they only need to look in the mirror. Hopefully, this will help black people realize the folly of depending on the government or leaders and serve as a notice to avert future tragedies in other cities," he said.

Blacks fault lack of local leadership

By Brian DeBose

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

September 10, 2005

...

Well of course it's those poor black MF's own fault.

Those rich SOBs with the government and all their resources could have done nothing to help their fellow citizens in the Union because they were on holiday or too busy saving their own asses.

How stupid of the blacks not to vote for someone able to carry them on his own shoulders across the levee.

They disserve to die, chocking in their own excrement for such an error of judgment.

Still playing that same old tune, Mayor Negligent? Keep blaming FEMA. That way no one will place the blame where it really belongs, namely on your corrupt head!   

Still blaming the Mayor of New Orleans? Talk about playing that same old tune....

Granted, I admit he did many silly things during the disaster, but come on, that line, it's getting pretty tired now...But I know that Karl Rove is writing new material even as we speak...

By the way, what happened to the head of FEMA, Mike Brown?

( Speaking of FEMA, I hear those debit cards FEMA gave to the Refugees in Huston worked really well, Boon Mee..... )

Gotta find something else to blame Bush for now, eh?

I guess that's why Bush approval rating is so high now?

Don't worry, more Administration heads are going to roll in the press... It's only beginning....

Polls are a small sample estrapolated....sure worked when they said Kerry was going to win the election. Polls are meaningless.

Blacks fault lack of local leadership

By Brian DeBose

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

September 10, 2005

...

Well of course it's those poor black MF's own fault.

Those rich SOBs with the government and all their resources could have done nothing to help their fellow citizens in the Union because they were on holiday or too busy saving their own asses.

How stupid of the blacks not to vote for someone able to carry them on his own shoulders across the levee.

They disserve to die, chocking in their own excrement for such an error of judgment.

What next?

I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the Conservative Republicans and their followers start spinning that poor Blacks in New Orleans were indeed responsible for Hurricane Katrina coming to the Gulf states in the first place!

Polls are a small sample estrapolated....sure worked when they said Kerry was going to win the election. Polls are meaningless.

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Brit, Kerry did win, his votes were just not properly counted, that's all

Blacks fault lack of local leadership

By Brian DeBose

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

September 10, 2005

...

Well of course it's those poor black MF's own fault.

Those rich SOBs with the government and all their resources could have done nothing to help their fellow citizens in the Union because they were on holiday or too busy saving their own asses.

How stupid of the blacks not to vote for someone able to carry them on his own shoulders across the levee.

They disserve to die, chocking in their own excrement for such an error of judgment.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Now you are starting to sound like a real republican. You need to throw your blind support for the Iraq war in this mess and you will become a real NeoCon supporter.

Blacks fault lack of local leadership

By Brian DeBose

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

September 10, 2005

...

Well of course it's those poor black MF's own fault.

Those rich SOBs with the government and all their resources could have done nothing to help their fellow citizens in the Union because they were on holiday or too busy saving their own asses.

How stupid of the blacks not to vote for someone able to carry them on his own shoulders across the levee.

They disserve to die, chocking in their own excrement for such an error of judgment.

Now you are starting to sound like a real republican. You need to throw your blind support for the Iraq war in this mess and you will become a real NeoCon supporter.

Mr. Butterfly, I believe Mr. TM 's statement was being sarcastic in tone...

Mr. Butterfly, I believe Mr. TM 's statement was being sarcastic in tone... 

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I knew that, just a cheap blow to remind him who he has been supporting from the beginning

Blacks fault lack of local leadership

By Brian DeBose

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

September 10, 2005

...

Well of course it's those poor black MF's own fault.

Those rich SOBs with the government and all their resources could have done nothing to help their fellow citizens in the Union because they were on holiday or too busy saving their own asses.

How stupid of the blacks not to vote for someone able to carry them on his own shoulders across the levee.

They disserve to die, chocking in their own excrement for such an error of judgment.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Now you are starting to sound like a real republican. You need to throw your blind support for the Iraq war in this mess and you will become a real NeoCon supporter.

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Mr. Butterfly, I believe Mr. TM 's statement was being sarcastic in tone...

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The child would never understand...

Kat's right on the money.  FEMA not only was supposed to ..........

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Sorry, Steven, but you and Kat are at the least misdirected and more likely very mistaken.

As indicated in this post:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?sh...ic=41508&st=225

The mayor has the primary responsibility for evacuating and taking care of the people in the event of impending disaster.

The governor and all the resources at her disposal are the second line of preparation, defense and caregiving.

FEMA's responsibility is to go in and help local authorities respond to a disaster after it happens, and after local authorities make arrangements with the federal government to supercede all the various state and local laws and procedures.

While FEMA's response could easily be classified as unremarkable, and I would certainly not dispute that, it is nonsensical to place the entire blame on FEMA, or the President as the ultimate boss of FEMA.

You want to argue that FEMA got there late? That their response could have been better? That someone should be held partially responsible? Sure, I'll go along with that.

But tell me one large government bureaucracy that works well under any presidential administration? It's a real easy number. You make it by putting your thumb and forefinger together and making a circle. Things happen at the federal level despite the bureaucracy, not because of it.

But before we even get to that point, let's operate as things in America are designed to operate, from the bottom up rather than the top down.

Q. Who is the main person responsible for a person's welfare?

A. The person themself of course.

Q. Who is the local authority repsonsible for helping local citizens when they are overwhelmed?

A. The mayor.

Q. Who is the regional authority responsible for helping the mayor and local citizens, when they are overwhelmed?

A. The governor.

Q. Who is the national authority responsible for helping the local citizens, the mayor and the governor, when they are overwhelmed?

A. The federal and charitable agencies, as well as individual donors.

Last time I checked, this is what happened:

- The mayor choked and failed in both planning and in execution of emergency plans.

- The governor choked and failed in both planning and execution of emergency plans.

- The federal agencies admittedly got there late, but they got there, and most of what happened there happened because of them, not despite them. (contrary to popular opinion)

So fine, you want to blame FEMA and Bush for everything that went wrong. Feel free. Be my guest. It won't change the fact that for the large percentile, your energies in extolling blame would be very much misdirected.

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It's a wasted effort trying to discuss this issue with you, because your explanations and defense of the federal response defy common sense and actual events. You cannot see around your own partisan half-truths and try to condescendingly ignore arguments which you can't refute.

There is no denying that there is plenty of blame to go around, on all levels of government. There is also no denying that the federal government ignored urgent warnings about the exact scenario for at least a year, AND diverted funds for levee reinforcement to local drilling cronies in Alaska. Was it FEMA who mad this decision? --- no, it was George Bush. He also reorganized the structure of FEMA with the full knowledge of this information, and installed one of his fellow dummy good-time boys, sparking a major brain-drain of real emergency response experts. But hey, FEMA is now under the structural command of Homeland Security, and what a spectacular effect they have had on the security of American people in a real emergency.

All levels of government had a well-established estimate of the damage, the numbers of displaced, and the logistical issues such as evacuation and exit destinations in the case of a real emergency. This entails major interstate cooperation and planning on the local and federal level to move and relocate up to a million people in enough time to realistically save lives. HELLO? We were talking about SAVING lives, right - or were we?

Furthermore, the Army Corps of Engineers previously reported that the levees could not withstand a category 3 hurricane, and they knew that Katrina was category 4 at landfall. Any idiot knows that even the most well-executed local emergency plans were going to fail without immediate federal assistance. Sooo, where the &lt;deleted&gt; were they?

Well, the National Guard, which exists for exactly this kind of scenario, was in Iraq.

Even if the mayor and governor, and anyone else, counted too much on the illusion that this couldn't happen, when it DID happen and they cried out for help, it wasn't coming until 5 days later. There is no existing excuse for this pathetic display of neglect. If you are going to argue that immediate response and evacuation were not the federal government's primary responsibility, or that the welfare of the populace in an emergency situation supercedes political notions of individual responsibility, then please explain to me how you rationalize the government's current activity in Iraq? Short answer: you can't, unless you admit a major contradiction, or actually start naming some bare non-partisan facts.

Go ahead, ignore me all you want

we have the results of the Bush Administration's incompetence and intentional neglect in NOs

What do you mean by this, kat?

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What I mean by this, can be summed up by reading the time table on TM's post #216.

What I mean by this, is that we've always had the theories and arguments of the conservative neo-libertarians, to be decoded by a few who really knew what they were saying, and now we have the actual results.

"less government, every man responsible for themself," etc. is nothing more than an excuse and a new cloak for old right-wing agendas and neo-facists to abandon everyone except themselves.

That's what I mean by this.

Blacks fault lack of local leadership

By Brian DeBose

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

September 10, 2005

Some in the black community are beginning to question what happened to the black leadership during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, especially in the city of New Orleans.

    While a few black leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Congressional Black Caucus, have singled out the president for blame, others say Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who is black, is responsible for the dismal response to the flooding that stranded thousands in the city's poorest sections.

    "Mayor Nagin has blamed everyone else except himself," said the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny.

     "The mayor failed in his duty to evacuate and protect the people of New Orleans. ... The truth is, black people died not because of President Bush or racism, they died because of their unhealthy dependence on the government and the incompetence of Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco," he said.

     As news and images of the dead, stranded, sick and hungry waiting days for help inundated Americans over the last two weeks, public officials at every level have sought to deflect blame. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael D. Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff have pointed their fingers at the first responders in New Orleans and Louisiana, while the mayor and the governor have sought to tag the Bush administration with botching the emergency response.

     The New Orleans mayor has criticized the president for the slow response and the resulting loss of life, but recent reports show he failed to follow through on his own city's emergency-response plan, which acknowledged that thousands of the city's poorest residents would have no way to evacuate the city.

     He took a second hit when an Associated Press photo showed 2,000 school buses under water and parked in a lot, unused in the evacuation. Reports say those buses could have ferried thousands of residents to safety outside New Orleans had they been deployed.

    Black political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of "The Disappearance of Black Leadership," said the problem lies with the current focus of black leadership, in both the elected and activist crowd, away from the poor and toward the new majority of middle-class black Americans.

     "In the past two decades, there has been a middle-class-focused leadership," Mr. Hutchinson said. "It is one thing to talk about affirmative action and moving people into top management positions in corporate America, but that does not do anything for the black poor."

    Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said there is plenty of blame for all governments -- local, state and federal.

     "Something like this has been predicted for years and years, and it seems none of [the government officials] did anything about it to stop it, not simply for people who had nothing before the storm and now have less than nothing, but for everyone there," Mr. Bond said.

    But taking a cue from prominent black leaders, Rep. Charles B. Rangel, New York Democrat, put the blame on Mr. Bush and his record as commander in chief. "The president's policies in Iraq contributed to the slow response of federal troops who should have been on alert even before the hurricane struck."

    "Now, as bedlam reigns in New Orleans, 35 percent of Louisiana's and 37 percent of Mississippi's National Guard troops are in Iraq. The hurricane is clear evidence of how the war directly affects the domestic security of our country," he said.

    Mr. Peterson, however, chastised those who would lay all the blame at the feet of Mr. Bush.

     "If black folks want to blame someone for this tragedy, they only need to look in the mirror. Hopefully, this will help black people realize the folly of depending on the government or leaders and serve as a notice to avert future tragedies in other cities," he said.

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blah, blah, blah, blah and the organizations responsible for these comments have links to the Republican Party and receive funding from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative propaganda machine. It's just more partisan ass-kissing as usual.

edit

Wow!

Kat - you're really incensed re this issue or what!

Apologies to George/Dr. Pat but come on over to the Bearpit and we'll really have some fun!

Wow!

Kat - you're really incensed re this issue or what!

Apologies to George/Dr. Pat but come on over to the Bearpit and we'll really have some fun!

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You certainly make up for your lack of reasoned response with being patronising don't you?

But there is no way getting round it, Kat has destroyed any semblance of argument you may have had.

Hurts to be beaten by a women does it?

TM - Boonie hasnt been beaten nor has Kat - these are opinions and only have weight to those that spout them.

TM - Boonie hasnt been beaten nor has Kat - these are opinions and only have weight to those that spout them.

Good 'ol TM - got his Master Troll hat on today or what?

You afraid to get into a little 'debate' in the Bearpit as well there Tom?

TM - Boonie hasnt been beaten nor has Kat - these are opinions and only have weight to those that spout them.

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Good 'ol TM - got his Master Troll hat on today or what?

You afraid to get into a little 'debate' in the Bearpit as well there Tom?

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Boon Me, still trying to recruit innocent souls to that psycho political forum for right wing nutters ? aren't you a mod there ?

TM - Boonie hasnt been beaten nor has Kat - these are opinions and only have weight to those that spout them.

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I f you can't see Boonee's response is that of a loser, then it's more than opinions your rose-coloured glasses are able to filter.

TM - Boonie hasnt been beaten nor has Kat - these are opinions and only have weight to those that spout them.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Good 'ol TM - got his Master Troll hat on today or what?

You afraid to get into a little 'debate' in the Bearpit as well there Tom?

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I'm happy to see you beaten and ridiculed here.

Anyway wouldn't want to embarrass you in front of your mates.

TM - Boonie hasnt been beaten nor has Kat - these are opinions and only have weight to those that spout them.

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I f you can't see Boonee's response is that of a loser, then it's more than opinions your rose-coloured glasses are able to filter.

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Hey TM, why don't you check the tits thread

Great little numbers over there, will take some of your steam off

until your next trip to Pattaya that is

TM - Boonie hasnt been beaten nor has Kat - these are opinions and only have weight to those that spout them.

Good 'ol TM - got his Master Troll hat on today or what?

You afraid to get into a little 'debate' in the Bearpit as well there Tom?

Boon Me, still trying to recruit innocent souls to that psycho political forum for right wing nutters ? aren't you a mod there ?

I am indeed.

In terms of 'right-wing' nutters' we got more on the Left lately but that's OK there B-Fly. You've been Banned for Life haven't you!

I am indeed.

In terms of 'right-wing' nutters' we got more on the Left lately but that's OK there B-Fly.  You've been Banned for Life haven't you!

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I was also banned from a left wing website for being too "conservative" to give you a clue