Text 15007, 151 rader
Skriven 2005-09-06 22:43:18 av Gary Braswell (1:123/789.0)
     Kommentar till en text av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: EPA Chief takes relief st
=================================
John Hull -> BOB SAKOWSKI wrote:
 BS>> Or perhaps what RFK, Jr. was alluding to was the great reduction in
 BS>> funding, beginning in 2003, for the Corps of Engineers rebuilding
 JH> plan for
 BS>> the levees in New Orleans, eh Vern?  Perhaps what he said was that
 JH> had this
 BS>> funding not been reduced to 1/6th of that requested by the Corps, the
 BS>> likelihood of the levees failing would have been greatly reduced,
 JH> eh Vern?

 JH> You ignorant ass.  They built those levees to withstand a Cat 3 storm
 JH> more than 40 years ago.  Don't even TRY to blame that on Bush.  In any
 JH> case, the responsibility for the levees protecting New Orleans falls on
 JH> the city government, not the Feds, and they chose to spend their udgeted
 JH> funds on welfare and entitlements for the last 40 years. If the
 JH> infrastructure didn't hold up, put the blame where it belongs, not where
 JH> you wish you could put it.

Estimates are it would cost 20 billion to bring the area up to stand a
cat5 storm. Its doubtful a locality could foot that bill alone. The
state should have helped, as well as the feds. The reduction of funding
made no difference. In fact the Levy Committee, was so corrupt, it had
bought a casino and had taken money and dumped it into business men's
construction projects, who were friends.

Is Bush to blame for it? Of course not.


 BS>> Of course when you show me the quote that says that he blamed Bush
 JH> for the
 BS>> tropical wave forming in the eastern Atlantic, perhaps then I will
 JH> believe
 BS>> you.  Of course when you show me the quote that says he blamed Bush
 JH> for
 BS>> that tropical wave growing into a tropical depression, then maybe I
 JH> will
 BS>> believe you.  Of course when you can show me the quote that says he
 JH> blamed
 BS>> Bush for the tropical depression growing into a hurricane then
 JH> paerhaps I
 BS>> will believe you.

 JH> Brit Hume quoted a number of Democrats on the news last night - RFK
 JH> among them.  For that matter, Rush Limbaugh also quoted RFK, Chuckie
 JH> Schumer, that Clinton Bitch, and a couple of others on his show
 JH> yesterday, shortly after the quotes aired on the various networks. You
 JH> can do whatever kind of dance you want to, but you can't get away from
 JH> the truth.

I don't know about specific quotes from these people, but there is a
least one news article that quotes pro-environmental organizations and
nations as saying the very environmental programs Bush does not support,
would help to reduce the storms.

I find that bogus since huge hurricanes have been ravaging the planet
since long before humans began to affect the environment in any way. We
have been lucky over the last century. Warnings from knowledgeable
meteorologists over the last 3 years of a more active phase have been
largely ignored. People who have been enjoying seafront life, or live
near coasts are going to suffer.

 BS>> Of course if what he said that was that the extent of the catastrophe
 BS>> caused by Katrina was mitigated by Bush having time for a PR trip to
 BS>> California and having time for sitting on his ass in Crawford
 JH> rather than
 BS>> doing his effin' job and getting assets together on call to respond
 JH> to what
 BS>> everyone Vern, EVERYONE said was an impending disaster of biblical
 BS>> proportions, if THAT was what RFK, Jr said then it is difficult not to
 BS>> agree with him because Bush and his band of F*ckups have screwed
 JH> the pooch
 BS>> so bad as to be totally unbelievable.

 JH> Clinton never spent any time at Camp David, or on "working vacations"

While it has nothing to do with the storm or its after effects, Bush is
the most vacationed President in history.

 JH> eh?  You goddamn hypocrite!  And don't give me any BS about feeling all
 JH> sorry for the people who are now in dire straits.  99% of those people
 JH> had 24 hours to clear out of town before the storm closed things down
 JH> and most of them chose to stay.  Hell's Bells, even if they didn't have
 JH> transportation, they could've WALKED far enough out of town in 24 hours
 JH> to be safe now!

There is a lot going on here. Warnings were dire a few days before
landfall. Then shortly before landfall, the storm shifted away from
Louisiana and lost steam and hit with maximum force elsewhere. One of
the major papers had Tuesday's headline as New Orleans dodges the bullet
again. And the storm surge hits and New Orleans goes under.

Reports were that 80% of New Orleans residents, the rich and middle
class, and upper lower class who had cars, fled. Is it any surprise that
the very poor did not or could not leave?

Even walking out would have done them no good, the devastation was
beyond walking distance John. The sick, the weak and the young would
have been left behind in any case and many would not leave those members
of their families.

Would you have?

The fact of the matter is government, local, state and federal, pretty
much abandoned the very poor. And is there is there any surprise on
that? The very poor are powerless, often does not vote and largely
illiterate.

Government abandoned them and just figured the whole thing would blow
over in a few days.

Whoops.

Then came the incompetent delay from all levels of government in
response to a catastrophe.


 BS>> "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."  --
 JH> George W.
 BS>> Bush.

 BS>> What an asshole.  What a lying asshole.  What a totally
 JH> incompetent, lying
 BS>> asshole.


 JH> I didn't hear ANYBODY saying the levees would break.  In fact, when the
 JH> storm veered a bit east, some of the officials down there, including the
 JH> media, were talking about how they'd "dodged the bullet again."  And
 JH> perhaps you'll remember that the damn levees didn't actually give way
 JH> till the day after the storm passed through.  So, tell us again how its
 JH> Bush's fault that nobody anticipated the levee failure.

There were several mentionings I saw of it, one on Fox as they talked
with the storm center. The man was reluctant to talk about it, but he
flat out said the storm surge could be up to 30' high which would not
just breach the levies, but simply flow over them, inundating the entire
city, drowning anyone not in tall buildings.

There was even talk of the tall buildings coming down to the ground,
Shep on Fox repeated that on his segment.

The fact is no one in government took the warnings seriously. They
thought things would be ok again in a few days.

Even when all the news channels were showing the magnitude of the
crisis, government from the local, state and federal levels were not
watching and ignored that means of intel, and simply dealt with it on a
bureaucratic level, depending on the assessments of people in charge.

--- Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Windows/20050716)
 * Origin:  (1:123/789.0)