What the hell is going on over there?

[Arta]

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/04/broussard_we_have_be.html

[Soul Taker]

Just what it sounds like from that article.  Rather than immediatly trying to save the cities in the wake of one of the largest natural disasters to hit our country, our president and our secretary of state decided to stay on vacation and do important thnigs such as buy $7000 shoes.  Meanwhile tons of people were (and still are!) trapped and dying, and two states are in a state of emergency.  Martial law was declared and now there are sporadic firefights as looters try to get national guard and random civilian helpers out of their way.  It's not pretty at all.

[Arta]

Pretty sad to see that happening in a developed nation. To be quite honest, I find it difficult to comprehend.

[Blaze]

Its like a third world country.

[CrAz3D]

Bush did act way too slow...military should've been in there alot soon

[hismajesty]

What's Bush supposed to do, go down there and do it himself? It's the local governments fault, they knew the city would flood, they knew the things would break, they knew people would be trapped. What they didn't expect is all these people to survive, and that's the truth.

Source of $7000 shoes, please.

[Hitmen]

I think trying to blame anyone specifically is stupid. I agree with this guy:

"If you want me to blame something besides the storm herself, I blame the nature of government in the first place. It's too big, it's too slow, it's too inefficient, it's too bloated, and it's too intiative-stifling to be effective in normal circumstances, much less in a disaster. It's a systemic issue, more than an issue of individual people in government."

[Hazard]

I'd like to add that any accusation of the federal government neglecting the people of New Orleans is unsubstantiated bullshit.

[Arta]

It looks to me like pretty much everyone has neglected the people of New Orleans.

Bruce Schneier has written about this now: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/09/security_lesson.html. There are a lot of comments but they're worth reading.

[Stealth]

Just what it sounds like from that article.  Rather than immediatly trying to save the cities in the wake of one of the largest natural disasters to hit our country, our president and our secretary of state decided to stay on vacation and do important thnigs such as buy $7000 shoes.  Meanwhile tons of people were (and still are!) trapped and dying, and two states are in a state of emergency.  Martial law was declared and now there are sporadic firefights as looters try to get national guard and random civilian helpers out of their way.  It's not pretty at all.

I hate this ridiculous notion that Bush is "on vacation". The President's staff have set up his ranch at Crawford to allow him to do anything he needs to do, to stay in contact completely just as if he were at the White House. There is no such thing as vacation time for the President of the United States, no matter who it is.

No, it's not pretty. Yes, FEMA did not act as quickly as it needed to. But this is not only a federal-level failure. State and local agencies also failed to act appropriately, and the situation was compounded by the number of people in poverty and dependent on the government in New Orleans.

These people come on television and get emotional knowing it will get them the attention they crave. Such a response is not appropriate. It's difficult to argue that the response at this stage is inadequate: thousands of National Guardsmen have been deployed, the Army Corps of Engineers is pumping water out of the city and working to patch the remaining levee holes and get the city dry. Everyone has been evacuated from the Superdome and surrounding areas. The Red Cross is out in force, having raised millions of dollars for relief, and Congress approved a $10.5 billion dollar initial aid package.

[Arta]

What about this stuff about FEMA's budget getting reduced and the levees not being maintained properly because of lack of federal funding?

I agree that just about every level of government broke.

[nslay]

I take a class with a dutch professor (abstract algebra and putnam prep course) and we had a discussion about the whole New Orleans ordeal.  He said that in 1953 a similar thing happened in Holland when a storm caused the levies in a town to fail and consequently killed 800+ people.  The Dutch goverment spent tens of billions of dollars building much better levies that it would not happen again.  He further said that the event is ingrained in the dutch and that they have always suspected the same would happen to New Orleans and that it comes to no surprise in exception to the fact, that even though this already happened in history, the US Goverment made no effort to strengthen the levies (jnstead they spent all the money on airplane security).  The result?  Probably near the same amount dead as the 9/11 terrorist attack.  Do you see the irony?
Speaking of which, he mentioned that a few years ago there was an article in Scientic America about the weak levies in New Orleans, so despite history, we already knew what was going to happen.

[Soul Taker]

The argument that there were many people living in poverty caused the inability to do anything is really kind of stupid.  A congressman was giving an interview on the radio this morning, and they brought up an interesting fact.  Katrina was a level 4 hurricane when it landed.  The local governments knew they couldn't handle anything above a level 3 hurricane.  In Cuba, which has a three month hurricane season, they were recently hit by a level 5 hurricane.  They suffered zero deaths.

Not only did they evacuate over 1.1 million people, they evacuated their TVs, refrigerators, and pets, to ensure that the people would actually leave.  Now if you want to argue that Cuba is full of millions of rich people and isn't a huge poverty area, that's your... opinion.  But the fact remains that if Cuba can have no deaths in a worse hurricane, why the hell can't we?

On a relevant note, Cuba has offered to send 1,100 doctors (60% or so of who specialize in infectious diseases, which is the problem right now) to help us in the wake of the disaster.  Cuba is known throughout the world for sending doctors instead of military troops to help countries in need after a major incident.  Thanks to all the political bickering, these 1,100 good doctors won't be able to help any Americans.

I don't even really understand why we still refuse to have relations with Cuba.  We have relations with China... Korea... Vietnam, where we had around 57,000 soldiers killed.  So many things seem so illogical lately.


On a seperate issue, in regards to Arta mentioning FEMA, there's an investigation going into them which found the memo they sent after the destruction took place, saying that they had about two days before they had to be in New Orleans, so not to rush.  Also, they failed to notify the Department of Homeland Security for about five hours after it happened, and furthermore in memos said they were just supposed to make themselves look good to the feds and to the general public.  Doesn't sound like a very well-motivated group to me.

[Joe[x86]]

Another saddening example of why you all should have voted for.. Kerry, right?

[Banana fanna fo fanna]

x86] link=topic=12716.msg127317#msg127317 date=1126128932]
Another saddening example of why you all should have voted for.. Kerry, right?

Yeah, because that would've made such a huge difference, right?