55 replies to this topic

[scherzo]

Quote

In the years prior to Katrina, NO had been agitating to get the levees along Lake Pontchartrain improved (as they were Federal, not state or local) as they were considered inadequate to protect NO from floods. And Bush did nothing.

Bush is actually responsible for the levee failure now too I see.(I think the President is now required to be 1 part Nostradamus and 2 parts Moses ) Whatever....throw anything and everything against the wall and see what sticks I guess. What's annoying is how incredibly undiscerning the hate Bush crowd has become in picking and choosing their outrages lately. Specs posted a story about royalty relief for oil and gas companies, that could legitimately be laid at the President's feet not too long ago...and barely anyone noticed. Somehow this ridiculous media manufactured scandal over an unprecedented  natural disaster, manages to garner more attention.  

-scherzo

[G-man]

Really?!?  You think Bush is responsible for the levees failing?!?  How ever did you manage to arrive at that conclusion?

Myself, I only blame him for not improving the levees when called upon to do so (i.e. do preventive maintenance).

/s/

Gloriosus
the G-man Himself

[Palisades]

G-man, on Mar 3 2006, 12:40 PM, said:

Really?!?  You think Bush is responsible for the levees failing?!?  How ever did you manage to arrive at that conclusion?

Myself, I only blame him for not improving the levees when called upon to do so (i.e. do preventive maintenance).

Hey, I'll agree that the levees should have been improved. However, this is a project that needed to be started a few years before Katrina hit -- not the night before.

The sad truth is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The only way that New Orleans would have gotten significant federal money for improving the levees is a nationally televised presentation showing the best-guess prediction of the aftermath of a major hurricane breaching the levees.

[G-man]

Solar Wind, on Mar 3 2006, 05:18 PM, said:

G-man said:

This is an IF-THEN statement. If the levees are overtopped then New Orleans will be flooded.

To what extent though? Just a few neighborhoods or half the city? That's the part that the briefing left unclear.

If it was unclear, then why didn't Bush ask for clarification?  I think he thought it clear that New Orleans might get through the crisis without serious damage and therefore didn't feel it necessary to prepare for the worst.

When most of a city is beneath sea level sandwich between levees keeping back a lake and the Mississippi River, I think it safe to assume that when flooding occurs, it will be in most of the city.

/s/

Gloriosus
the G-man Himself

Edited by G-man, 03 March 2006 - 02:10 PM.

[Cheile]

correct me if i'm wrong but hasn't the Louisiana government been bugging the Feddies for about TWENTY YEARS demanding the levees get strengthened and improved before something like this happened?  therefore only part of the blame is Bush's for not listening to them.  let's add on the names of other past presidents for ignoring them, too, in that case.

[veganmom]

Two quick points (I like posts to be short!)
-- This is not a media-manufactured incident. It is a second incident where people died and our President......oops, sorry, had to run to the bathroom for a second...yuck...is caught in a bald-faced lie. Sorry. Lying is wrong. And people take greater offense when many people die and are left homeless.
-- Anyone knows that when making an executive presentation, it is a natural human tendency to try and look cool and competent. No one makes a presentation to the big boss that says, "man, we can't handle this at all." So you have to understand that the person making the presentation that said the levees could have problems didn't say, "the sky is falling," but certainly did say, "it's a grave, grave concern." Which really means, in executive-presentation-speak, it's a grave grave grave grave grave concern.

If the guy said, "I had no idea," and he did, that's a lie. To the American public.
How hard is it to tell the truth????? It always comes out anyway. The media didn't force him to lie through his teeth. So the media didn't manufacture this.

So much for short!  

Cheile, on Mar 3 2006, 06:04 PM, said:

correct me if i'm wrong but hasn't the Louisiana government been bugging the Feddies for about TWENTY YEARS demanding the levees get strengthened and improved before something like this happened?

Iheard this a lot, too.
Not sure who they were bugging, or if it ever got past a state level, but I know people were asking. Not sure if they got listened to, or if they did some strengthening/improving but not to the level that was asked for...
Another area for someone to research.....

[scherzo]

Quote

Really?!? You think Bush is responsible for the levees failing?!? How ever did you manage to arrive at that conclusion?

Myself, I only blame him for not improving the levees when called upon to do so (i.e. do preventive maintenance).

Congratulations. If they gave out awards for "Best Crock", you'd have a beautiful chrome statuette on it's way to you.

You DON'T think Bush is responsible for the levee failure, BUT,  you felt the need to criticize him for not "improving" them, in time for the big one. That's vintage dude. I thought the "charge" was idiotic, but your "dodge" is an absolute joke. I mean really...go back and edit if you must...say it came out wrong...say you meant "levis" cuz you thought this was a thread about loose fit denim...but right now you're insulting the intelligence of anyone capable of reading. If you now realize it sounds stupid to say Bush is responsible for the levee failure...just don't say it anymore.

-scherzo

[G-man]

Cheile, on Mar 3 2006, 06:04 PM, said:

correct me if i'm wrong but hasn't the Louisiana government been bugging the Feddies for about TWENTY YEARS demanding the levees get strengthened and improved before something like this happened?  therefore only part of the blame is Bush's for not listening to them.  let's add on the names of other past presidents for ignoring them, too, in that case.

I was uncertain how long they've been bugging them, but let's see now, the last 20 years ...

1986-1989 - Ronald Raegan was in Office (3 years)
1989-1993 - George Bush was in office (4 years)
1993-2001 - Clinton was in office (8 years)
2001-Present - Dubya was in office (5 years)

Well, yeah, there was a lot of deferred maintenance going on.  Unfortunately, the failure goes to the person on whose watch the disaster occurs.

/s/

Gloriosus
the G-man Himself

Edited by G-man, 03 March 2006 - 02:09 PM.

[Kosh]

Cheile, on Mar 3 2006, 01:04 PM, said:

correct me if i'm wrong but hasn't the Louisiana government been bugging the Feddies for about TWENTY YEARS demanding the levees get strengthened and improved before something like this happened?  therefore only part of the blame is Bush's for not listening to them.  let's add on the names of other past presidents for ignoring them, too, in that case.

My understanding, at the time of the storm, was that a lot of money had been allocated to improve the levees, but that it had been shifted to other projects.

This was a failure of everyone. Federal, state and local.

[Rhea]

Solar Wind, on Mar 3 2006, 09:18 AM, said:

A Category 5 hurricane hit a city that's below sea level. If the levees breached, catastrophe was certain. The only thing that could have been done was to get more people out before the storm hit. Most of the people who wanted to leave got out. The people who stayed did so largely because they couldn't afford to leave. They were barely making ends meet and felt like they had to go to work that day.

I agree that there wasn't time to do much but evacuate. But what happened afterward was a tragedy compounded by lack of coordination among the various agencies and lack of preparedness.

While still brings us back to "the buck doesn't stop here" Bush. His administration is the one which systematically stripped FEMA to feed Homeland Security, and the blame lies squarely in his lap.

[Corwin]

Just in Case anyone missed this Breaking News:

http://drudgereport.com/flash3.htm

Quote

Clarification: Katrina-Video story
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.

The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.

The day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn't until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing

[MuseZack]

Interestingly, the thing the videotapes and transcripts do show is that the person in the federal government who was doing the most trying to warn of impending disaster was...Michael Brown, the oft-scorned head of FEMA.  While "Brownie" still has a lot to answer for, he now seems a lot less culpable for the post-hurricane screw-ups than his bosses Michael Chertoff and the terminally incurious Bush.

http://www.miami.com...nt/14005213.htm

For months now, former FEMA Director Michael Brown has been the butt of late-night TV jokes and a punching bag on Capitol Hill for his handling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe.

Surprisingly, redemption seems at hand.

Bolstered by Wednesday's release of a videotape and transcripts of federal disaster response sessions in the days just before and after Katrina, Brown and his team are seen as sounding the alarm of an impending disaster. In contrast, President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff appear impassive the day before Katrina struck as officials predicted that the levees around New Orleans could fail. The president asked no questions.

And here, centrist blogger The Moderate Voice apologizes to Brown and Brown himself responds:

http://www.themodera...141367408.shtml

I have religiously avoided responding to any of the blogs, but feel compelled to respond to you. Apology accepted. And thank you, too, for the apology.

I have stated on numerous occasions the mistakes that I made and accepted responsiblity for those mistakes. And, I hope now that the public, Congress, and espcially the Administration, will heed the warnings I wrote to them in 2003, 2004 and 2005, that this kind of disaster was inevitable because of the way the Department of Homeland Security was functioning. I would be glad to provide you copies of those memos if you're interested.

In January, 2005, I came to the conclusion that FEMA was doomed to failure. But rather than quit immediately (which my wife reminds me constantly was a huge mistake for our family) I commissioned an internal study (the "Mitre Report") in order to leave a legacy of how FEMA could make things work that were broken - logistics, supply chains, communications. We were never able to finsih that study because of a lack of funding and of course, impending disasters.

The Mitre Report is now in the hands of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and I hope they make good use of its initial findings and recommendations.

Best regards,

Michael D. Brown

The email appears to be genuine.

[Corwin]

Thanks for posting that Zack!

DHS seems to be built up like the 800 pound gorilla that is so large he can't do anything right...  

Having a DHS was a good idea from an oversight standpoint, but having EVERYTHING under DHS is a disaster of almost biblical proportions.

Corwin

[jon3831]

Moderator's Helmet On!

This is an official warning for scherzo for the following post (emphasis mine):

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Congratulations. If they gave out awards for "Best Crock", you'd have a beautiful chrome statuette on it's way to you.

You DON'T think Bush is responsible for the levee failure, BUT, you felt the need to criticize him for not "improving" them, in time for the big one. That's vintage dude. I thought the "charge" was idiotic, but your "dodge" is an absolute joke. I mean really...go back and edit if you must...say it came out wrong...say you meant "levis" cuz you thought this was a thread about loose fit denim...but right now you're insulting the intelligence of anyone capable of reading. If you now realize it sounds stupid to say Bush is responsible for the levee failure...just don't say it anymore.

-scherzo

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--jon3831

Moderator's Helmet Off!

Edited by jon3831, 04 March 2006 - 01:41 AM.

[waterpanther]

Good on Mr. Brown for telling it like it was, and good on the writers and others who have apologized to him.  

GeeDubya won't be thanking him, though, since Brown declined to fall on his sword for His Imperial Ineptness.  Bad boy!  No Medal of Freedom for Brownie.

[Ogami]

In the most recent issue of ANALOG, Jeffery D. Koois explores the way Republicans and Democrats reacted to Katrina and how such nonsense affects long-term cooperative ideas such as space missions.

I am not surprised certain crass politicians sought political opportunity after Katrina. And a thread like this isn't a surprise, "Bush knew", what a super-villain of ultimate evil and destruction, and other such silliness. I am embarassed by politicians of both parties for how this was politicized. True, Republicans weren't running around shreiking that global warming caused the hurricane, but they could have met the Democrats halfway. No one tried.

Quote

The cost for returning to the Moon (and so also preparing ourselves for a trip to Mars) is put at $104 billion dollars spread over the next 12 or 13 years. That isn’t all that much—not at today’s rates. We can afford it.

But will we really do it? It is certain that we can. I would strongly argue that we should, even must, go back to the Moon, and then keep on going—ad astra and all that.

When hurricane Katrina went through, in no time Congress and the President agreed to plunk down 100 billion dollars to rebuild—and that was “all at once” money, without worrying about where it was going to come from. So if we can afford to toss a hundred billion dollars of relief at one disaster, I think we can manage to invest a hundred billion dollars spent over a dozen years in manned interplanetary flight capability, especially when we have time to plan and allocate resources appropriately. After all, we now know asteroids sometimes come a-knockin’, and there are a lot more in the neighborhood than we ever suspected. The time to start learning how to deflect them is now.

(end excerpt)
http://www.analogsf....3/altview.shtml