Third World America Courtesy of Compassionate Republicans
It appears that the Bush administration is busy showing the American publiic, not to mention the entire world, that America's citizens are no more important to them than those who have been subjegated or killed in Iraq. The proof is in the policy...
President Bush suspends part of the law protecting wages paid by federal contractors in rebuilding effort. CNN video, Katrina wage outrage
Bush signed an Executive Order for an OPEN ENDED waiver (entire Gulf Coast devastated region) of the laws that protect a worker from wage discrimination and exploitation. He has even included areas in Florida that did not suffer damage from Katrina. The same laws that protect workers are not being waived in leui of Federal contractors such as Halliburton, who have seen massive profits over the past few years. The Rebublican controlled government has given themselves NINE raises since the last raise in minimum wage for America...when gas cost less that 95 cents a gallon. Bush is effectively choking the less fortunate of America and bolstering the wealthy yet again. It is odd that this, along with several stories concerning the underhanded tricks going on seem to be disappearing off the internet very quickly. This is more important that hearing about Natalee Holloway after she walked off with three stangers...this is a natural disaster that qualifies as a NATIONAL DISASTER and Bush and his Republican controlled Congress are going to squeeze the life out of us if we allow them to.
I did not vote for him...
Hurricane Katrina wreaked havok on the Gulf Coast. Many were overshadowed by the devastation in New Orleans. For instance, it took eight days for FEMA to establish the FIRST aid station in Biloxi, Mississippi. On National television and internet clips, we all saw Bush pat Michael Brown of FEMA on the back and say "Brownie, you're doin a heck of a job" The question is...what was he doing a "heck of a job" concerning? He was not helping those afflicted in the manner they needed.
Bush sent Cheney to survey the damage and an ER doctor in Mississippi did many Americans a service by pilfering Cheney with his own stones, in other words, telling him EXACTLY what he told Senator Leahey last year......go f**k yourself. Of course, off camera Cheney's thugs cuffed and detained the man for a short time. I didn't see Cheney cuffed and detained for telling a U.S. Senator the same thing. What is interesting, though, is before Cheney toured the area people were calling for Brown to be fired but Bush left him in charge. After Cheney went to the Gulf area, Brown was subsequently replaced as head of hurricane relief operations.
Does anyone doubt who is in charge?
Although the effort was trumpeted in the media as an example of grassroots ingenuity in the face of disaster, local officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency have nixed an attempt by Houston activists to set up a low-power radio station at the Astrodome that would have broadcast Hurricane Katrina relief information for evacuees.
The project was unplugged even though it had key support. On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission quickly granted temporary licenses to broadcast inside the Astrodome and the adjacent Reliant Center. The station was also backed by the Houston Mayor’s office and Texas governor Rick Perry. But local officials said FEMA bureaucrats KO’d the station—dubbed KAMP “Dome City Radio”—because of “security concerns.”
“They wanted unlimited access to the buildings, which we could not give to anyone in the media,” said Gloria Roemer, a spokesperson for Harris County, which has jurisdiction over the Astrodome complex. Currently reporters are allowed in only on 15-minute guided tours.
According to Roemer, FEMA officials also believed they could not allocate “scarce” electricity, office space, and phone and Internet access to the volunteer station—even though activists say they offered to run the station on batteries and use their own cellphones.
Supporters of KAMP, which was set to launch at 95.3 FM, blame red tape and bureaucrats seeking to “manage the news.” FEMA Nixes Grassroots Radio Station for Hurricane Evacuees
What is it they do not want reporters to find out or see in the Astrodome?
The Bush administration has also called for a ban on the press when it comes to recovery of the victims who perished, claiming that it is out of dignity and respect for the families. Is that so? Then ow do you explain the lack of dignity some victims have been afforded by the military leaving them lying on the streets and conducting business around them without even acknowledging that they were laying there? They have been afforded very little dignity in death up to this point..
CNN argued before a judge in Texas saying "It is not the place of government to replace its own internal judgment for that of a free and independent media."
Because of controversy about how FEMA and other agencies handled the disaster response, CNN lawyers argued, "it is even more vitally important for the public, Congress and the administration to have an independent view of the conduct of this important phase of the operation." The "zero access" orders were withdrawn after the judge sided with CNN. U.S. won't ban media from New Orleans searches
Trying to block American citizens from knowing the truth about what is going on seems to be not so popular...or easy to get away with at home like it is in Iraq.
The federal government’s relief agency said Friday it will discontinue its program to distribute $2,000 debit cards to hurricane victims and use bank deposits instead, two days after hastily announcing the novel plan to provide quick relief.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it will scrap the program once officials finish distributing cards this weekend at shelters in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, where many of the evacuees were moved. No cards will be issued to victims in other states.
Hurricane victims at other locations will have to apply for expedited aid through the agency’s traditional route — filling out information on FEMA’s Web site to receive direct bank deposits, FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule said. FEMA to stop giving out debit cards
I was guessing this would only happen in Houston...a boon for Tom Delay to add money to his district and surrounding areas...but the program is cancelled after only two days? For everybody else displaced...what bank? It already seemed a pittance considering the U.S. gave every family relocated from the Gaza Strip a good deal more than that to relocate...giving them more help than our own citizens and then refusing the aid that Israel offered us in the wake of Katrina.
I suppose you could say that many in the Republican party that claim to represent all of American can not walk the walk or as my friend says they can't cash the check they are writing (her words were obviously more dramatic). For instance...
Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
Good job, Baker...you and your wealthy associates that have told The Wall Street Journal that they wanted to rid New Orleans of the "black and poor"...good example of compassionate conservative are you not? Let him know what you think of his remarks...Washington DC Office: Congressman Richard Baker, 341 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 Phone: 202-225-3901 - Fax: 202-225-7313. Baton Rouge Office: Congressman Richard Baker, 5555 Hilton Avenue, Suite 100, Baton Rouge, LA 70808 Phone: 225-929-7711 or toll-free (in LA only) 800-892-1253 - Fax: 225-929-7688]
Republican Tom Delay visited a shelter and likened it to camping out, asking some young hurricane survivors, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"
Yes Sir, Tom...they lost everything they had other than their very life...they are having a blast!
Compassion does not live in the Halls of Congress or the Oval Office.
Pundits like Rush Limbaugh with his Fraudian slip when he referred to the Mayor aof New Orleans as "Nayger"
Pundit Mark Williams of California said.....they didn't have the necessary brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane and then when it hit them- stood on the side of the convention Center expiring while reporters were coming and going..(speaking of the black population that could not or did not evacuate). He also expounds his ideals of what race has to do with anything...The only role race plays in this is that the American black population has been the prototype for an entire race of people being, being turned into a group of dependents of the government--trapped there, I'm using that word very loosely are screaming we want help, we want help.. You can see the clip of the interview under the heading of Mark Williams sinks to a new Low.
Shining examples of America's self rightousness...and it begins at home...
By the way, George...this was not a terrorist attack and calling upon the atrocities of 9/11 will not bolster you...
so can the comparison
.
Katrina's Coverup Has Begun...
In an effort to show the world that it's finally on top of the catastrophe unleashed by Hurricane Katrina more than a week ago, the Bush administration is producing a seemingly impressive battery of statistics.
Since Friday, as criticism has mounted against the administration for its perceived failure to act sooner, officials have sought to tangibly catalog crucial results, such as "lives saved," "people assisted" and "citizens evacuated."
But a closer look at the administration's claims shows some of the most important numbers seem to contradict each other, including assertions made as recently as Tuesday afternoon about the number of people rescued from life-threatening situations.
In other cases, the numbers seem, at best, to be crude estimates, though they are not presented that way when uttered or released by administration officials.
You can find the article here...Administration's figures on response don't appear to add up
NEW ORLEANS — The U.S. agency leading Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts said Tuesday that it does not want the news media to photograph the dead as they are recovered.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected journalists' requests to accompany rescue boats searching for storm victims.
The article is here...FEMA Wants No Photos of Dead
Michael Brown of FEMA did not even think to send aid until after Katrina made landfall...WASHINGTON (AP) -- The top U.S. disaster official waited hours after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast before he proposed to his boss sending at least 1,000 Homeland Security workers into the region to support rescuers, internal documents show.
Part of the mission, according to the documents obtained by The Associated Press, was to ''convey a positive image'' about the government's response for victims.
Acknowledging that such a move would take two days, Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29
The article is here.
According to the Denver Post, survivors are being locked and fenced in like a concentration camp. The military is stationed at entrances to the impromptu Camp Katrina.
If I didn't know better, I'd have thought I was peering through the fence at a concentration camp.
The signs on the buildings say "Community College of Aurora," though for now they're serving as an impromptu Camp Katrina. About 160 hurricane survivors are being housed in the dorms, surrounded by fences, roadblocks, security guards and enough armed police officers to invade Grenada.
There's a credentials unit to process every visitor, an intake unit to provide identification tags and a bag of clothes to every evacuee, several Salvation Army food stations, portable toilets, shuttle buses, a green army-tent chapel with church services three times a day and a communications team to keep reporters as far away from actual news as possible.
The article is here...Evacuees' stories are moving, but fence isn't
Mississippi saw their FIRST FEMA aid station EIGHT DAYS AFTER the need for it materialized and there are still people who need help that FEMA has not gotten to...but civilians volunteers have gotten to them so why can FEMA not help them?
Why is the U.S. government treating these survivors like they are almost insurgents? Trying to keep reporters away from them and fences...the whole mentality is wrong and should send a strong message to all Americans.
Considering that before we invaded Iraq, Barbera Bush posed a question in an interview as to why should I trouble my beautiful mind with thoughts of body bags and her most recent statement was that the survivors are doing well in the Houston Astrodome since they were underpriveledged anyway, are all those less fortunate to be treated with the least RESPECT we can give them?
FEMA does not want us to see the dead like Bush does not want us to see the dead from Iraq. Is America going to tolerate more Bush coverup? This is not Iraq, this is home.
Tom Delay and Homeland Security aides are again pummeling Gov. Blanco from Louisiana. She gave early warning of the need for assistence just like the officials in Alabama and Mississippi...Blanco is the only Democrat of the three. Does this seem political? It does to me.
Delay has also cancelled hearings on the Katrina "lack of aid" fiasco (article) and is blaming it on the locals. It is hard to believe people in Texas would want such a coward to represent them.
Please do not let the incompetence in DC be forgotton...or forgiven.
Katrina, The Bush Blame Game and the Stupidity of America...
OK boys and girls...
According to the New York Times, Republican Aides have admitted that blaming State and Local officials for the incompetence was Rove's idea to take the heat off of Bush.
Governor Blanco asked for aid by August 28, 2005
The battered Louisiana Governor is now being blamed by the Bush administration for dragging her feet. My question is how could she have been dragging her feet to get relief for New Orleans if she asked Bush for aid to evacuate New Orleans BEFORE Katrina came ashore?
If you want to blame it on someone for dragging their feet, it was not Blanco.
The Mayor and Police Chief of New Orleans stayed with their people through it all
To try and blame these man shows blatent stupidity as well because both stayed with the people of New Orleans under the same conditions they were in. They did all they could to save lives. The Republican controlled Congress was not forgiving when they slashed budgets all across America, cutting funds for first responders and such. New Orleans' Mayor has been a rock under the worst of circumstances and any coward who would attempt to say he did not help as best he could would most likely be one who would desert everyone else to save their own skin in such a traumatic situation. The same goes for New Orleans' Police Chief.
The States of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi all sent Bush Emergency Declarations before Katrina hit because budget cuts had left all three without the means to handle all of the preparations.
NORTHCOM prepared for Katrina in order to respond to her aftermath. They had strict orders NOT TO GO ANYWHERE. All they could do is sit on their hands and watch people die because they were not allowed to go help without Bush's say-so.
If you want to cast blame, put such blame on the one's deserving of it.
It's bad enough to have American citizens being hung out to dry like this. Add to that the incompetence of this administration and then fanatical religios idiots that claim Katrina was God's retribution...Scarborough has stated that gays, our backing of Israel's pullout of Gaza, and such pissed God off so he punished us with Katrina. Christian fanatics and extremists like Scarborough or Pat Robertson are no better than Islamic extremists like Bin Laden.
Otherwise it would be preferable that you not expose American stupidity to the entire world...we look bad enough already...
Katrina Aftermath - The State of Insanity...
Reading the news today and watching the live feeds from Baton Rouge is really depressing.
FEMA officials made an appearance at Bay-St. Lewis, Mississippi today. They were seen at the demolished bridge in town (what used to be town), not inspecting the damage but apparently having a kind of "class photo" of themselves next to the devastation...and then they left. They lined up for a group photo next to this ruined and unusable bridge just to take their picture and then left. At 'a boy...good job...
St. Bernard Parrish has an Environmental disaster underway with very little to no help. Some kind of oil facility has split in half and oil is leaking in masssive amounts. They are searching for the dead while looking for survivors that did not have the financial means to leave before Katrina hit...65 confirmed dead so far just there with 300 body bags ordered. Thank you Canada for the rescue crews that have come down to help there.
In New Orleans, there was some bad news, 7 people have been shot (5 of which have died) for either brandishing arms or shooting at contractors that were trying to work on the levee. With all that New Orleans has gone through, I do not think anyone can feel better about more deaths.
There have been private buses turn up under the pretense of evacuating survivors only to try and charge these victims $100.00 a head after getting on the bus...that did not go over well with locals and ended quickly.
There is good news from New Orleans being that more survivors have been found and evacuated from rooftops, etc. and there have been no deaths today at the M*A*S*H type unit at the airport but there have been three live births of healthy babies!
Bush Administration Blames Local Government
Bush and his administration is starting to place the blame for the slow response on the Mayor of New Orleans, local law enforcement and the Govenor of Louisiana. I would like to point out serious flaws in this blame game. The Bush administration made severe cuts in every state's budget and slashed between 70-80% of Louisiana's budget for the programs they had for hurricane preparedness and Emergency Management. The Feds are also heaping blame on the Govenor for not ASKING the Federal govt. for aid. WTF??? Any person with any grasp of their mental facilities had no problem seeing that help was needed...DESPERATELY. With funding severely cut by the Bush administration, any amount of common sense on the part of the Bush administration would allow them to realize that the city no longer had the ability to combat such a crisis. Blaming those who had to deal with the immediate aftermath does not get Chertoff off the hook for clearly having no idea of what he is doing, Brown off the hook for his incompetence or Bush off the hook for his delay in getting involved.
Bush has asked the Govenor to give the Federal government full control of the rescue and aid efforts which the Governor wisely refused. She then hired Clinton's FEMA Chief to advise her and to work for the State of Louisiana. I would bet that if the Federal government took over, the press would be giving us the same horse puckey that we get from Iraq...we would ONLY be told what they want us to know and we would be deliberately denied the whole truth because it would embarrass them.
It is also an outrage that when Bush flew over New Orleans, all aid was halted. It pissed people off when Bush caused delays when he showed up at a Nascar event last year but this time it could have meant life or death. Somebody needs to give George an extensive psychiatric evaluation...people were dropping dead from lack of food, water and medication and all aid is HALTED because he FINALLY decides to get involved and do his job?
It is contradictory in the highest sense that the Bush PR is going into overdrive and calls for medical help are going out, yet American doctors who have showed up to help are being turned away...>article.
Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food now that the Feds came in. You can find the article here. What purpose does it serve to stop more aid from getting to those who need it? Chertoff as head of Homeland Security has proven his incompetence and disregard for the victims in New Orleans.
Tim Russert called Chertoff to the carpet on Meet The Press...about time someone did. You can find the transcript here.
The evacuees are being bused and flown out of Loisiana without being given any idea of where they are being taken. How are these people supposed to connect with surviving family members if nobody is told where they are being taken? This is an atrocious way to treat these people.
We finally are seeing how Michael Brown came to have his job at FEMA and what he did before he came to FEMA. Life before FEMA found Brown working for the International Arabian Horse Association (IAHA)...his biggest responsibility was to qualify judges for horse shows. He was asked to resign after 11 years because of a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervisory failures. Supervisory failures? Is that not what we are seeing now? That sure is great qualification for FEMA, is it not? He came to FEMA in 2001 at the suggestion of a buddy (Joseph Allbaugh, who was a colledge roommate) and was appointed the Chief of FEMA when his buddy (Allbaugh) quit in 2003. It has been said by Bush that Brown has handled more than 164 emergency situations as of 2004. Let me ask you...does that include the emergency hurricane relief funds given to a Florida County (unnamed on purpose) That did not suffer hurricane damage? Did it include those hard hit Florida Counties that got shafted and did not get as much aid as they needed? You get the idea...
Yeah buddy...Brown is da man!
It has been revealed that there was a plan for a hurricane in New Orleans...Brown chose to ignore it.
Katrina And Her Predecessor...
It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.
But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however, the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.
The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level, more than eight feet below in places, so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
Does this sound about right? This was not written about Katrina...it was written about her predecessor, PAM. Have you not heard about PAM? Pam was an imaginary, hypothetical hurricane invented for a simulation for the purpose of disaster preparedness scenarios for New Orleans. Too bad the Bush administration gutted the funding for Louisiana that was earmarked for shoring up the levee that broke, Emergency services/First Responders and drained the outlying marshes that have always been a barrier to help subdue the effects of hurricanes before they reach populated areas.
For George Bush and all those who are trying to assert that we could not possibly have been prepared for such a catastrophe as we are facing now, I would like to point out that this is a piece of a National Geographic article that was witten almost a YEAR ago in October 2004. If National Geographic knew, everybody knew.
George Bush needs to stop making excuses.
According to reports from Baton Rouge, there have been hundreds rescued from roofs and attics in New Orleans within the last 24 hours. There is not enough help. For those trying to deal with the rescue, some are running out of gas for the equipment they have to use. This is day 5 after Katrina...where is all the help? The situation in Gulfport as of yesterday was that they have seen absolutely no help from the Federal government. The situation in New Orleans as of this morning, Sept. 3, is that "the situation (deterioration) may be slowing"...not that it is getting better but that the rate at which the city was going to hell may be letting up. The evacuation of the Superdome has been SUSPENDED with between 2,000 and 5,000 people still waiting to get out., without any real explanation of why. People numbering in the thousands still wait in the Convention Center without any word of when they will see buses come for them. ADDITIONAL NEWS: I have just seen a report in which they have current video (live) of a conclave of school buses heading toward the Convention Center, presumably to evacuate the survivors holding there. WONDERFUL!!
Cities in Louisiana are turning away survivors of Katrina because the media has sensationalized the looting to the point that people areafraid to help...I heard this from an interview today with a City Counselman from New Orleans. Rescue operations have also stopped from time to time with the excuse of fear...news crews have walked into crowdds and walked away unscathed, so what does that say for the cowardice of some of the FEMA personnel that were too afraid to bring aid to those who need it?
To get a good idea of what it is like on the ground, it would be enlightening for you to read Notes From Inside New Orleans
Past directors of FEMA have stood to be counted in statements that the Federal government was ill prepared for a disaster. "What you're seeing is revealing weaknesses in the state, local and federal levels," said Eric Tolbert, who until February was FEMA's disaster response chief. "All three levels have been weakened. They've been weakened by diversion into terrorism." Federal government wasn't ready for Katrina, disaster experts say.
According to the Pentagon Report, completed last September but withheld until after the 2004 election, this administration's policies have created more terrorism rather than defeating it and those inflicted situations are now seeing the citizens of the United States suffering for it.
I want you to imagine what the survivors of Katrina that were holding up in the Superdome felt when they heard a remark from Dennis Hastert on a battery powered radio...Hastert made a statement that New Orleans should not be rebuilt. A prominent New Orleans lawyer heard this statement from his refuge in the Superdome and wrote Hastert a leter yesterday as he was getting ready to evacuate...he told Hastert that he once thought he had nothing but that Hastert seems to need more help than he does and he would pray for him because he had faith that Hastert obviously was lacking. It is shameful that elected officials would be so damn insensitive during such a crisis.
Bush stated today that "things are getting better by the hour". Sure...and the Feds have been doing right by the victims of Katrina since day one...
Late Addition
The appointed Chief of the running joke of Homeland Security has come out publically stating that "That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," He also stated that it was breathtaking in it's surprise. CNN Article
Guess that means that National Geographic either knows America better than Chertoff or that they only THOUGHT they wrote the story in October 2004...everyone who has a copy or read it were hallucinating en masse.
Talk about your National Disgrace...
Chertoff proves himself incompetent, Homeland Security is a joke.
Katrina's Aftermath, Crisis and the Lack of Action...
May the Powers that be show mercy to the survivors of Katrina. Day four and people are still being rescued from attics and roof tops in New Orleans. Thousands of refugees are stranded on highway overpasses and hundreds remain at the Convention Center. Desperately needed shipments of food and water finally arrived TODAY...but not everyone who needs it is getting it. Evacuations are promised but not happening and more people are dying because of bureaucratic red tape...that is unacceptable.
I have friends in Louisiana so I have been checking all the news I can and also watching live feeds from a television station in Baton Rouge, LA., in order to see what is happening...it is heartbreaking, infuriating and unforgivable to watch American citizens go through unnecessary hardship as they are after surviving the worst natural disaster of our time. Two of the hospitals just got evacuated TODAY, people are dropping dead from lack of food, water and/or medication for days, the conditions in the area are unsanitary (raw sewage and waste everywhere), no shelter...when is the Federal govt. going to take this disaster seriously?
The official version of what is happening from Michael Brown, Bush's appointment to FEMA, is almost the total opposite of the reality on the ground and unless the chief of FEMA starts to become realistic, New Orleans will have to do without a great deal more aid that they should have had already...they should not have had to wait four days for help to actually get to them in the first place. The Mayor of New Orleans has stated that the situation is a National disgrace and he is absolutely correct. Brown has defended his actions on national television but the mainstream media has busted him on it (article) and even Bush has stated that the actions of FEMA have not been enough.
I saw an interview this afternoon with the Mayor of Slidell, LA, in which he stated that FEMA had sent aid and then would not give his people access to it (generators, equipment, etc.) because of red tape (generators brought were not available because an inspector had not ok'ed the location, etc) and FEMA was actually CONFISCATING some of their supplies (gasoline, trucks, etc.) that they were using to clean up the area. Slidell is a direct neighbor of New Orleans for those of you who do not know. FEMA has actually begun confiscating loads of diesel fuel that Corporate America has bought for the normal operations of their companies...I know this for a fact.
It is embarrassing enough that America's president did not get into the situation for four days after the devastation happened, using the excuse that he did not want to get in the way. For Heaven's sake, he IS the president, his JOB is to be involved with the crisis and take care of the American people...excuses are not acceptable. Some would defend his delay in reacting but an intelligent person would know that the sooner our elected president got involved, the sooner aid would materialize for those who needed it.
Many Americans take the attitude that Nobody ever helps us so why should we care what anybody else thinks?. I can put that attitude to task in the wake of Katrina's devastation...many have stepped up to the plate to help the U.S. in this crisis, including countries we have caused a good deal of grief for like Venezuela and Cuba. I have listed some of the countries below and would like to offer my heart felt appreciation. Also the governments in Europe have agreed to open up oil reserves to help the American people with the gas crunch we are seeing. They will be sending crude oil AND gasoline to relieve our hardship.
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. Article
It appears that the ongoing crisis in New Orleans is a great distraction for our Republican controlled government...
The longer this situation continues, the more outraged I get. Today is September 2 and is the first day of real effort New Orleans has seen from the Federal government. Yesterday, September 1, the Navy hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.
KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. (We all know how competitive it is, the one person with the guts to stand and be counted for her honesty was retaliated against) article
KBR has not been asked to repair the levees destroyed in New Orleans which became the primary cause of most of the damage.
Is it not odd that Halliburton and it's subsidiary can be hired to fix up Naval Bases but our government had not, as of the time it hired Halliburton, even seen the devastation of New Orleans nor had they made sure the survivors had essentials for sustaining life (food and water)? It is shameful for Halliburton to get away with what it has in Iraq at taxpayer expense but this is not Iraq and these are American citizens we are talking about...why in the hell is Hallibuton's contracts more pressing than the people who need help?
I have to wonder, as any reasonable person should, why the Bush administration has dragged their feet to help our own...is it because Katrina could not be held accountable as a terrorist? ENOUGH ALREADY! Instead of jumping the gun to attack another country, how about focusing on the home front. Instead of focusing on repealing the Estate Tax, as Senator Frist plans as early as Tuesday, how about putting the focus on helping people who desperately need it instead of adding to our financial burden with more perks and easements for the wealthiest. Instead of allowing Bolton to try to derail the upcoming U.N. summit, how about trying to assist the U.N. in it's efforts for all nations instead of trying to exempt the U.S. and Israel from accountability...after all, even the U.N. has offered assistance for our hurricane survivors.
How about not letting America or it's people become the next failed business opportunity, George...
