Quote: Rob Kamphausen said: politics? are you fucking kidding me?
fuck you.
not the time.
Quote: Poverty Lad said: No, Rob, Fuck YOU.
If anything in UID's post preceding is true, then this disaster is squarely laid at Bush's feet. People died, are dying, because of his blundering badly with the issues at hand.
Not the time? You're right, the time was several years ago. But now all we can do is shake our heads and help the survivors as best we can.
I couldn't have said it better myself Poverty Lad.
I'm wondering when those times for politics finally roll around. With Iraq, another debacle that was predicted and the advice unheeded, we're now being told by the people Robbie agrees with here on these boards that the time for pointing fingers is over and pointless. With 9/11 as the Salon story points out, FEMA was another agency that warned that terror in New York as well as a hurricane in New Orleans was one of the TOP 3 MOST LIKELY disasters on the U.S.
This (or "these" rather) was/were not a situation(s) that couldn't have been predicted. It was predicted and was IGNORED.
It's predictable that you don't want your hero Bush to face any accountability but his fuck up's are mounting and people are dying again on U.S. soil on account of his fuck up's. Can it be you don't want these quyestions to be asked because it goes to the heart of the issue. These deaths can be laid at Bush's doorstep. And thus his policies, drained resources funneling towards Iraq, and those who support him making all these disastrous descisions are also at fault here?
And I think that "FUCK YOU" was directed squarely at me. You might want to curse:
Quote: Reuters:Bush administration funding cuts forced federal engineers to delay improvements on the levees, floodgates and pumping stations that failed to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, agency documents showed on Thursday.
This is his disaster, he owns it. Kamphausen curses or otherwise. You may be mad at politics being injected into this disaster. However as i'm pointing out, this is a disater on this level BECAUSE of politics!
Some questions that need answers:
Why were millions diverted from civil engineering projects in New Orleans to Iraq?
Why did Bush stay on vacation even after the Nat’l Hurricane Center predicted this catastrophe?
Why did it take 3 days for Bush to take action after Katrina hit?
How can the oil companies’ profits be so high yet there are nationwide shortages?
Why are thousands not receiving the treatment and protection they need even now?
How prepared are we for the next natural disaster or even a terrorist attack?
And now I hear Bush has refused aid from Canada and Jamaica and that federal aid isn't coming in quickly because they don't want to impede state and local efforts! Jeez! Sounds like conservative ideology at work there!
Meanwhile, Condi's playing tennis and attending Broadway shows rather than attending Cabinet meetings, Cabinet secretaries are trying to get their staffs to attend the war parade, the RNC is working on tax cuts and the President, who knows what he's doing? One may start getting the impression that New Orleans isn't that big a priority both before and now after this disaster.
Look below. One can question our leadership and also focus on the disaster at hand. AT THE SAME TIME!!! You're in New York, I'm sure you've seen THIS then.
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.
A man covers the body of a man who died Thursday outside the Convention Center in New Orleans
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else. --Will Rogers
"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." - George W. Bush
I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would .. try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. - Condoleeza Rice
Barbara Bush: It's Good Enough for the Poor
To comfort the powerless and make the powerful uncomfortable.
