Thanks to the right-wingers who are here to remind us that the United States of Amnesia still exists.
Remember Bush’s response to the tsunami? He donated a paltry US15 million to the effort but was shamed into giving more after Germany, the EU, and Australia gave 20 times that amount.
Playing the race card by calling “blacks” African Americans? So what should I call you White American?
[quote]These people awere/are living in a city 6 feet BELOW sea level. Where are their personal DISASTER PACKS? Dry food, water, diapers(if required), medical supplies? Seems like something that common sense would indicate appropriate…eh?
They are living in this situation and still refusing to take personal responsibility for something like this happening? Doesn’t sound right to m[/quote]
Yeah. I guess they forgot to buy “personal DISASTER PACKS” because they spent their welfare money on gin and Mercedes Benz sedans.
Personal responsibility? You’re picking on the helpless. The people who are stuck in New Orleans are mostly: 1) tourists 2) too poor to pay for a cab or bus fare to leave the city 4) too old to go anywhere else.
Let’s talk about “Personal responsibility?”
- Critics Say Bush Undercut New Orleans Flood Control
By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 2, 2005; Page A16
President Bush repeatedly requested less money for programs to guard against catastrophic storms in New Orleans than many federal and state officials requested, decisions that are triggering a partisan debate over administration priorities at a time when the budget is strained by the Iraq war.
www.salon.com
2) A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut the Corps of Engineers’ request for holding back the waters of New Orleans’ Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans levees, but it was too late.
- "Chalk up the city of New Orleans as a cost of Bush’s Iraq war.
"There were not enough helicopters to repair the breached levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guardsmen available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting.
"The situation is the same in Mississippi.
"The National Guard and helicopters are off on a fool’s mission in Iraq.
"The National Guard is in Iraq because fanatical neoconservatives in the Bush administration were determined to invade the Middle East and because incompetent Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refused to listen to the generals, who told him there were not enough regular troops available to do the job.
"After the invasion, the arrogant Rumsfeld found out that the generals were right. The National Guard was called up to fill in the gaping gaps.
“Now the Guardsmen, trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, are watching on TV the families they left behind trapped by rising waters and wondering if the floating bodies are family members. None know where their dislocated families are, but, shades of Fallujah, they do see their destroyed homes.”
Paul Craig Roberts.
)
For christ sake, the man, is on top of the problem when it’s boiling down to the oil issues. Making sure that reserves are being opened(oh this must really make him jump for joy,as now he has a greater reason to go into Alaska.) And while he’s nicely tanned on all his press briefings, addressing the potential oil crisis. He has to call on Daddy and an a Rhodes scholar to help him figure out how to handle the ‘human’ side of the problem.