The Podium of Solutions for the City of New Orleans

They flat out said the levees were secure up to a level 3.

Ditto!

Thank you ladies!

I asked the same question several times yesterday and all I got out of it was getting called snide and threatened.

I suppose the only way to have some productive posts around here is to start of with a Kicky thread.

(no offense kickster - just frustrated that when I posed the question "what would you do?" all I got back was.....well, come to think of it......I got nothing of any worth back......

You want a threat? I'll show you a threat! Say that again and I'll sing! Yeah, that's right, I'll start belting out Barry Manilow songs like some kind of freak-nerd...off-key too!!! Just try and stop me, sister!!!

I'll counter:

Part of the frustration, disgust and disappointment you are hearing is in that the government is supposed to be ready and able to deal with a catastrophie. Following 9/11, FEMA was completely reworked, and the Dept. of Homeland Security was created in huge fanfare with claims that the government was doing these things to protect American citizens.

Lots of noise has been made about how we are now safe and secure due to what this administration has done following 9/11.

Now, imagine if rather than a natural disaster for which we had a couple of days notice, that this was the result of a surprise terrorist action. Imagine the government reaction being the same.

Would it still be acceptable?

I can't laugh....
I can't sing....
findin' it hard, to do anything.

I feel sad when you're sad
I feel glad when you're glad

or something like that....

It's HARD WORK.. Just ask GW... Heck, he even cut his vacation short... It's HARD WORK, you know. (The man is becoming a characture.)


A little motto that this administration can't seem to understand.

"Prepare for the worst but hope for the best."

I'm yelling pretty loudly, but there's nothing I can do. Unlike the richest country in the world, I don't have the means.

Chai Tea
Chai Tea, what have I done to help?

Well, first thing I did when I got my monthly Social Security check, I made a $100 donation to the Red Cross. And in case you snear at that, $100 is a big deal for someone on SS.

At age 76 and disabled, there is not much I can do except not to go there and get in the way.

What have you done, pray tell?

BBB

BBB I really don't know why you have a bug up your ass about me.

I never asked you what you have done.....

I have not sneared at you.......

All I said was I was tired of reading threads and coming across post after post after post of your neverending negativity......

I'm not taking the bait, making it a "well you've done more than me" stupid competition.

Frankly, I was trying to get you into the present moment, and stop complaining about things done in the past.
How much griping can one take.....put yourself in the presidents place right now and imagine having to listen to the likes of you. You would let him get anything underway, because you'd be too busy cutting off his balls.

AND - You never have answered the question what you would do NOW, if you were the president.

You're complaints to me are tiresome as well.......

I'm tired of repeating myself to you.



jesus......I'm goin' back to kicky's goin' away party.

Chai Tea
Chai Tea, just because we are not dancing to your tune doesn't mean we have not suggested things that could be done on other threads. We have, and some of them were really creative. In fact, FEMA has decided to do some of the same things.

BBB

Unfortunately, and ironically, there's a lot of truth to the following article.


The Two Americas
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Saturday 03 September 2005

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."

"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "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."

"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin."

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does."

Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.

Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."

An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of Engineers "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain," which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and sinking levees.

"This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to provide," said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans district of the corps.

Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country secure from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has failed to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental level," Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's New York Times, "our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice."

During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John Edwards spoke of "the two Americas." It seems unfathomable how people can shoot at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on televisions across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took over their neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed below the surface for so long, erupted. That's what's happening now in New Orleans. And we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of this other America.

"I think a lot of it has to do with race and class," said Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night. "You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man!"

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in the day that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job" under the circumstances.

But, said, Nagin, "They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let's do something!"

When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few "knuckleheads," it is the result of desperate people trying to find food and water to survive.

Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who have been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, "looking to take the edge off their jones."

When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting or violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat.

Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's preparations for Hurricane Ivan to the island's long-standing preparations for an invasion by the United States, said, "We've been preparing for this for 45 years."

On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire world must feel this tragedy as its own.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.
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Well, I think Gus should be called in as a consultant. After all, he's got all that swamp dwelling experience to bring to the table.

Oh, and Chai Tea -- I just want to say, I hear ya! (and I agree!)

What is now going to happen to the poor people who can't go home to New Orleans- probably for months, or longer?

How many people are being bussed out to Texas- 100,00? 200,000? More?

These people are going to need several very large temporary towns to be built.

Will that happen?

There was an interview on Dateline NBC last night that should be mentioned here.


They interview a black youngster of perhaps 10 years of age in a cut-off section of New Orleans...an articulate young man who spoke eloquently and passionately about the circumstances with which he, and the people around him, were confronted.

It was the most imperssive bit of tape I, personally, have ever seen on television. The way the youngster presented his case...the logic he used...the controlled anger he brought to his pleas for help during the interview simply took my breath away.

The short segment came and was gone without fanfare in less than a minute...but I have not been able to get it out of my mind since. I am sure anyone who saw it appreciates that I am not engaging in hyperbole here.

This was truly something very, very special.

Too bad our president, leading and supposedly comforting our nation during this crisis, has not been able to convey one tenth the feeling, conviction, and intensity of that young man.

I believe verbatim repeats of posts deposited elsewhere should at least contain an apology.

There are lots of things you "believe", Lash....and most of them make no more sense than this one.