That's funny. I just took it for granted that those who called him a Democrat knew what they were talking about.
True. But General Carl Strock of the US Army Corps of engineers, said in a Lou Dobbs interview on cnn.com that a) the levees were designed to withstand a category 3 storm, but not category 4 or 5 storms; and b) the levees that broke were already at their final design configuration. No amount of money would have made them any stronger than they already were, because the money would have been spent on reinforcing other levees. My source for this is a video clip called "Draining New Orleans", which you can find with a search on
www.cnn.com/video.
You're right, I was wrong, eoe. I had remembered the history of Nagin's party affiliation the wrong way round. Sorry about that. But let's try a similar test. What are governors Haley Barbour (R-Mississippi) and Kathleen Babineau Blanco (R-Louisiana) saying about the federal response? Are they happy about it? Anybody know?
Interesting info I picked up in researching stuff over the past week: Louisiana has non-partisan primaries.
Maybe we would all do well to not have party affiliation noted on the ballot? Maybe that would force more people to actually know and choose the candidate rather than the party.
Thomas wrote:
True. But General Carl Strock of the US Army Corps of engineers, said in a Lou Dobbs interview on cnn.com that a) the levees were designed to withstand a category 3 storm, but not category 4 or 5 storms; and b) the levees that broke were already at their final design configuration. No amount of money would have made them any stronger than they already were, because the money would have been spent on reinforcing other levees. My source for this is a video clip called "Draining New Orleans", which you can find with a search on
www.cnn.com/video.
Yeah, that's all in the factcheck article I posted. That's why I say that the complaint has some basis in fact, but not that it's completely accurate. However, I've heard it mentioned (I'll look to verify) that the levy that broke was one that had been slated for upgrade but had not been upgraded yet. Whethere that's because of the lack of funds, I don't know.
Gov. Blanco is definitely a Democrat.
eoe wrote:Gov. Blanco is definitely a Democrat.
How embarrassing. I had clicked
Wikipedia's page about her, saw that the first party name which popped up was "Republican", and checked her on my list of "Republicans". What the page actually says is "[...]She was elected governor of Louisiana,
defeating Republican opponent Bobby Jindal [...]. "
FreeDuck wrote:Yeah, that's all in the factcheck article I posted.
I didn't see the part about the broken levees already being in their final configuration, and that they would have been built the same way if federal funding had not been slashed. But this may not mean much. Today is obviously not my day in terms of elementary text comprehension. I will now pull a brown paper bag over my head, have a good night's sleep, and hope that my brain will work properly again once rebooted. See ya!
Sleep tight, Thomas. You are allowed to have a bad day. I have many myself.
Just received in my email box:
"Those who manage a system that always and everywhere puts the needs of business and private property ahead of the people, that always find money to fund wars that benefit the rich of this country rather than meeting people's needs should be held responsible and accountable. The real problem however, is not with the managers of the system, but with the system itself. They call it the free market. It is the economic and social system of plutocracy, the system of modern capitalism, of, by, and for the rich that in words declares itself to be of, by and for the people. The reality, however, can now been seen in the streets of New Orleans."
From the NYT (reduced version):
September 11, 2005
Disarray Marked the Path From Hurricane to Anarchy
By ERIC LIPTON, CHRISTOPHER DREW, SCOTT SHANE and DAVID ROHDE
The governor of Louisiana was "blistering mad." It was the third night after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans, and Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco needed buses to rescue thousands of people from the fetid Superdome and convention center. But only a fraction of the 500 vehicles promised by federal authorities had arrived.
Ms. Blanco burst into the state's emergency center in Baton Rouge. "Does anybody in this building know anything about buses?" she recalled crying out.
They were an obvious linchpin for evacuating a city where nearly 100,000 people had no cars. Yet the federal, state and local officials who had failed to round up buses in advance were now in a frantic hunt. It would be two more days before they found enough to empty the shelters.
The official autopsies of the flawed response to the catastrophic storm have already begun in Washington, and may offer lessons for dealing with a terrorist attack or even another hurricane this season. But an initial examination of Katrina's aftermath demonstrates the extent to which the federal government failed to fulfill the pledge it made after the Sept. 11 attacks to face domestic threats as a unified, seamless force.
Instead, the crisis in New Orleans deepened because of a virtual standoff between hesitant federal officials and besieged authorities in Louisiana, interviews with dozens of officials show.
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials expected the state and city to direct their own efforts and ask for help as needed. Leaders in Louisiana and New Orleans, though, were so overwhelmed by the scale of the storm that they were not only unable to manage the crisis, but they were not always exactly sure what they needed. While local officials assumed that Washington would provide rapid and considerable aid, federal officials, weighing legalities and logistics, proceeded at a deliberate pace.
FEMA appears to have underestimated the storm, despite an extraordinary warning from the National Hurricane Center that it could cause "human suffering incredible by modern standards." The agency dispatched only 7 of its 28 urban search and rescue teams to the area before the storm hit and sent no workers at all into New Orleans until after Katrina passed on Monday, Aug. 29.
On Tuesday, a FEMA official who had just flown over the ravaged city by helicopter seemed to have trouble conveying to his bosses the degree of destruction, according to a New Orleans city councilwoman.
"He got on the phone to Washington, and I heard him say, 'You've got to understand how serious this is, and this is not what they're telling me, this is what I saw myself,' " the councilwoman, Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, recalled.
State and federal officials had spent two years working on a disaster plan to prepare for a massive storm, but it was incomplete and had failed to deal with two issues that proved most critical: transporting evacuees and imposing law and order.
The Louisiana National Guard, already stretched by the deployment of more than 3,000 troops to Iraq, was hampered when its New Orleans barracks flooded.
Partly because of the shortage of troops, violence raged inside the New Orleans convention center, which interviews show was even worse than previously described. Police SWAT team members found themselves plunging into the darkness, guided by the muzzle flashes of thugs' handguns, said Capt. Jeffrey Winn.
"In 20 years as a cop, doing mostly tactical work, I have never seen anything like it," said Captain Winn. Three of his officers quit, he said, and another simply disappeared.
On Saturday, officials said that ten people died at Superdome, and 24 died at the Convention Center site, although the causes were not clear.
Oliver Thomas, the New Orleans City Council president, expressed a view shared by many in city and state government: that a national disaster requires a national response. "Everybody's trying to look at it like the City of New Orleans messed up," Mr. Thomas said in an interview. "But you mean to tell me that in the richest nation in the world, people really expected a little town with less than 500,000 people to handle a disaster like this? That's ludicrous to even think that."
Andrew Kopplin, Governor Blanco's chief of staff, took a similar position. "This was a bigger natural disaster than any state could handle by itself, let alone a small state and a relatively poor one," Mr. Kopplin said.
Federal officials seem to have belatedly come to the same conclusion. Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, said future "ultra-catastrophes" like Katrina would require a more aggressive federal role. And Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whom President Bush had publicly praised a week earlier for doing "a heck of a job," was pushed aside on Friday, replaced by a take-charge admiral.
Russ Knocke, press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said that any detailed examination of the response to Katrina's assault will uncover shortcomings by many parties. "I don't believe there is one critical error," he said. "They are going to be some missteps that were made by everyone involved."
But Richard A. Falkenrath, a former homeland security adviser in the Bush White House, said the chief federal failure was not anticipating that the city and state would be so compromised. He said the response exposed "false advertising" about how the government has been transformed four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"Frankly, I wasn't surprised that it went the way it did," Mr. Falkenrath said.
Initial Solidarity
At midafternoon on that Monday, a few hours after Katrina made landfall, state and federal leaders appeared together at a press conference in Baton Rouge in a display of solidarity
And people still support this buffoon! That's what I find incredulous.
Is this really the only place you folks could hold your little anti-Bush rally? I understand you have a fresh gloat thread that isn't getting a lot of use.
It's hilarious...a gloat thread. LOL!!!
Tico, I have a sincere question.
I'm not a member of either major party. Over the years I've voted for as many Republicans as Democrats. I prefer voting Libertarian because small government is more in line with my philosophies than either of the other parties, but in elections where the outcome is uncertain I usually end up casting a vote against vs a vote for. That vote can be against either side of the aisle. I strongly supported ten-term Senator John Anderson's (R-IL) independent Presidential campaign in 1980 which was many years prior to my living in IL. I was raised in a conservative household and my parents were the only people I knew who voted for Goldwater in '64. I give you my background in hopes of letting you know that I am simply trying to understand. I am not here to bash or to pick a fight.
As a conservative Republican and loyal Bush supporter, do you separate the man from the party? Is the loyalty you have to this particular Republican President or is it more to the platform he represents?
We are a nation of diverse peoples and I admire that diversity. I don't expect everyone to see an issue through the same lens and come up with the same opinion. Even so, I have a hard time understanding the dedication to GWB I read in this forum. I'm not saying you aren't entitled to it, just that I don't understand.
I'm aware that an open answer might start a cavalcade of negative responses so feel free to pm if you'd rather. I really am curious.
Bush is an idiot. He's still using 9-11 in his response to Katrina. From BBC:
Bush pleads for 'spirit of 9/11'
President George W Bush has urged national unity following the Hurricane Katrina disaster and invoked the US response to the 9/11 attacks.
"America will overcome this ordeal, and we will be stronger for it," he said in a national radio broadcast.
He promised that the Gulf Coast would be rebuilt "more vibrant" than before.
But his comments, which came the day before the fourth anniversary of the 11 September attacks, have prompted further criticism from the Democrats.
'Another disaster'
In his weekly radio address, Mr Bush reminded the American public of the national unity after 9/11 attacks, four years ago on Sunday.
"We will honour the memory of those we have lost; we will comfort the victims of Katrina
President George W Bush
"Today, America is confronting another disaster that has caused destruction and loss of life. This time the devastation resulted not from the malice of evil men, but from the fury of water and wind," he said.
I'm not Tico--but I have one answer-- it may differ from his.
I think most of the criticism is meritless--and is owing to some crazy hatred of Bush.
If the vitriol aimed at Bush wasn't so over the top, I'd probably wouldn't feel the need to show the 'positive' side of events--or point to holes in the constant attacks against him.
If the criticism was reasonable--I may agree with it. I find on other boards--moderate boards--that I don't feel compelled to defend Bush or his administration.
Dear goddess, can you give an example of what you consider a "moderate" site?
Though I agree, the hyperbole makes for counterhyperbole.
Mind you, Lash, when I have pointed that out in the past, you have said that means I am a no good flipper flopper with no integrity nor true opinions!!!!
So I do find your comment very funny.
Nonetheless, a moderate site by your lights I am very interested in seeing.
I'm on record here - severally - as opinining Bush isn't perfect, but he certainly is preferable to any alternative offered by The Dems. I feel The Democratic Party has been highjacked by its extreme wing, and I feel the direction the shrill, negativist, obstructionist behavior of that wing is the proximate cause of the electoral woes the Democratic party has inflicted on itself since 1998; The Republican Party did not so much gather The Electorate to its bosom, the Democratic Party's leadership drove it there, and continues to do so.
And once again, The Dems are excited - they haven't been this lit up since Dan Rather broke the National Guard Documents story. They will have little cause for gloating following next year's Mid Term campaigns; their callous attempt to politicize this catastrophe and capitalize on it is a sure backfire. While FEMA deserves, and will receive, re-evaluation and re-adjustment in light of the lessons learned through Katrina, The Current Administration and in particular Bush himself will be in fine shape. Iraqi forces, under Iraq's new government, will be relieving US troops in growing numbers, bringing about the return of those troops to The US. The Katrina investigation will have reported, and the report will not be kind to those who seek to lay blame on The Current Administration. The economy will be plugging right along, fueled in no small part by the hurricane reconstruction effort, which will be reported as proceeding at an astounding pace - there will be disappointments and snafus, to be sure, but overall Katrina will have had less negative financial and sociopolitical impact than many today suppose will be the case - apart, perhaps, from restructuring the long-time Democratic hold on Southern Louisiana. Once again, in November 2006, stunned, bewildered Dems will disconsolately study the election results, and wonder "How could it all have gone so horribly wrong?"
Just a smattering of things which do not augur well for The Democrats, and in particular for those in Louisiana and New Orleans, come this next November:
Who delayed what?
Quote: State Rebuffed Security Bid to Put Louisiana Troops Under U.S. Command Amid New Orleans Chaos
September 9, 2005 | JOHN D. MCKINNON
Parts of New Orleans became so dangerous ... the Bush administration briefly sought to take control of local law enforcement...
The administration sent Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco a proposed memorandum...last Friday, raising the possibility that the federal government would take command... In a series of telephone conversations...the governor's office refused.
The memorandum amounted to a White House request for a federal takeover of local law enforcement, said Denise Bottcher, the governor's spokeswoman.
Gov. Blanco, in a letter to the White House..., said she would retain control of her state's National Guard... "Our response was 'no' to federalization..." said Ms. Bottcher.
As the White House and state officials were discussing alternatives...the violence in New Orleans began to subside...
The Bush administration ultimately dropped the idea of a federal takeover of law enforcement.
By invoking the Insurrection Act, a president can use the military -- including federalized National Guard troops -- to quell civil disturbances. Under normal circumstances, regular military forces aren't allowed to engage in such law-enforcement activities...
In a tense meeting with Mr. Bush at the New Orleans airport..., Gov. Blanco resisted the idea of federalizing the National Guard. When the president emerged from the meeting, Mr. Bush told New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin that the governor "needed 24 hours to decide," Mr. Nagin said...
Later on Friday, the White House formalized the offer in a memo to the governor's office, suggesting ... a military takeover of the security...
The tense and ultimately fruitless negotiations last week apparently contributed to chilly relations between the White House and the governor's office. When Mr. Bush returned to Louisiana for a second visit on Monday, Gov. Blanco's staff learned of the visit from a newspaper reporter; the White House said it had trouble reaching the governor on Sunday to let her know.
Quote:The Governor Procrastinates
Before hurricane Katrina made landfall, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana appears to have been more focused on securing federal funds for post-hurricane relief than ensuring that necessary troops were deployed to carry search and rescue missions, deliver food and water, and protect the citizens of Louisiana against marauding street thugs. President Bush had offered the governor federal aid, including additional troops. He declared Louisiana a disaster area before Katrina arrived. To the dismay of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the governor told the president she wanted 24 hours to decide whether to accept the offer because Mr. Bush, as commander-in-chief, wanted control of the troops. Many of the governor's constituents died because of the delay. On her Internet Web site, Mrs. Blanco displays her letter to Mr. Bush dated Aug. 28, in which she requests various forms of federal funding for dealing with the expected aftermath of the storm, and estimates that she will need about $130 million. In the letter, Mrs. Blanco does not request federal troops, nor does she highlight any immediate needs. Clearly not enough troops were deployed. On Aug. 30, the day after the storm hit, only 4,700 National Guardsmen were mobilized in the state. Mrs. Blanco could have asked for a more substantial force under established emergency-mutual-assistance compacts, which enables governors of neighboring states to share resources in times of disaster ...
Who trapped tens of thousands in New Orleans, and kept aid from reaching them?
Quote:Cops trapped survivors in New Orleans
By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
Sep. 9, 2005 at 10:48AM
Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city.
An eyewitness account from two San Francisco paramedics posted on an internet site for Emergency Medical Services specialists says, "Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot."
"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.
"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said.
The bridge in question -- the Crescent City Connection -- is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.
Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river ...
Quote:Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city ...
Who failed to prevent the flooding?
Quote:Money Flowed to Questionable Projects
State Leads in Army Corps Spending, but Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods
By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 8, 2005; Page A01
Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.
Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.
For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations ...
... But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands ... The Corps had been studying the possibility of upgrading the New Orleans levees for a higher level of protection before Katrina hit, but Woodley said that study would not have been finished for years. Still, liberal bloggers, Democratic politicians and some GOP defenders of the Corps have linked the catastrophe to the underfunding of the agency ...
... Louisiana not only leads the nation in overall Corps funding, it places second in new construction -- just behind Florida, home of an $8 billion project to restore the Everglades ...
... Overall, Army Corps funding has remained relatively constant for decades, despite the "Program Growth Initiative" launched by agency generals in 1999 without telling their civilian bosses in the Clinton administration. The Bush administration has proposed cuts in the Corps budget, and has tried to shift the agency's emphasis from new construction to overdue maintenance ...
Quote:New York Times, 13 April 2005
The Untouchable Corps (Download note: 1-page .pdf file):
Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health of America's rivers and
wetlands should pay attention to a bill now before the Senate Committee on Environment
and Public Works. The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for
flood control and other water-related projects - this at a time when President Bush is
asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs. Among these
projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked
inspection by the National Academy of Sciences.
The bill would also weaken civilian control over the corps, a fiercely independent agency
that operates in what amounts to a parallel universe in Washington, spending billions on
public works projects ordered by members of Congress. The Government Accountability
Office and other watchdogs accuse the corps of routinely inflating the economic benefits
of its projects. And environmentalists blame it for turning free-flowing rivers into lifeless
canals and destroying millions of acres of wetlands - usually in the name of flood control
and navigation but mostly to satisfy Congress's appetite for pork.
Pointed in the right direction, the corps can accomplish engineering marvels without
corollary damage - the dredging of New York Harbor is a case in point. But too often
senators like Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, and Trent Lott, Republican of
Mississippi, point it in exactly the wrong direction. The most notorious example is the
Mississippi River project, a lock-building plan. It has failed two reviews by the National
Academy of Sciences on economic and environmental grounds.
Over the years, enlightened senators like John McCain and Russell Feingold have pushed
for major reforms, including independent peer review to make sure that corps projects are
fiscally and environmentally responsible. Yet the water resources bill drawn up by Mr.
Bond and his like-minded colleagues would not only prohibit meaningful outside review
but would also undercut the authority of any civilian official - up to and including the
secretary of the Army - to countermand corps decisions.
This is a bad piece of legislation. Key Democrats on the committee - including Hillary
Clinton of New York, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Joseph Lieberman of
Connecticut - should make sure it does not emerge from the committee without
significant changes.
Quote:New Orleans: A Green Genocide
As radical environmentalists continue to blame the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina's devastation on President Bush's ecological policies, a mainstream Louisiana media outlet inadvertently disclosed a shocking fact: Environmentalist activists were responsible for spiking a plan that may have saved New Orleans. Decades ago, the Green Left - pursuing its agenda of valuing wetlands and topographical "diversity" over human life - sued to prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from building floodgates that would have prevented significant flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katrina.
In the 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Barrier Project planned to build fortifications at two strategic locations, which would keep massive storms on the Gulf of Mexico from causing Lake Pontchartrain to flood the city. An article in the May 28, 2005, New Orleans Times-Picayune stated, "Under the original plan, floodgate-type structures would have been built at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to block storm surges from moving from the Gulf into Lake Pontchartrain."
"The floodgates would have blocked the flow of water from the Gulf of Mexico, through Lake Borgne, through the Rigolets [and Chef Mentuer] into Lake Pontchartrain," declared Professor Gregory Stone, the James P. Morgan Distinguished Professor and Director of the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University. "This would likely have reduced storm surge coming from the Gulf and into the Lake Pontchartrain," Professor Stone told Michael P. Tremoglie during an interview on September 6. The professor concluded, "[T]hese floodgates would have alleviated the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina." ...
... Why was this project aborted? As the Times-Picayune wrote, "Those plans were abandoned after environmental advocates successfully sued to stop the projects as too damaging to the wetlands and the lake's eco-system." ... Specifically, in 1977, a state environmentalist group known as Save Our Wetlands (SOWL) sued to have it stopped. SOWL stated the proposed Rigolets and Chef Menteur floodgates of the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Prevention Project would have a negative effect on the area surrounding Lake Pontchartrain ...
There's more, plenty more. This whole Katrina deal just plain ain't gonna bring any help to The Dems at all. I suppose, if there can be such a thing as a bright side to the catastrophe, that's it. And once again, The Dems will have done it to themselves.
No amount of Dem excoriation is going to hide the incompetence of this administration. It is revealed with every unmet challenge. And everyone can see it, even those of us who are not Dems and not partisan.
