Water, Water, Water, Water – Hurry Up!
Why is it taking so long? There are relief supplies there, we’re told. Why can’t they get them to the convention center? I can see why it would be slow to take them to widely scattered areas – but they can’t even take them to the convention center?
Which has quite a few dead bodies in it now. Well – it will have a lot more in the morning. After four days with no water…
A reporter on ‘The World Tonight’ told us about an elderly man with diabetes who asked if he could buy some water from the reporter – and that there were a lot of requests like that. It’s just a nightmare.
Bush explained this morning that things were moving slowly because nobody foresaw that the levees would break. Really – then why was everyone foreseeing exactly that on Sunday? Isn’t that why the Mayor issued the mandatory evacuation order? Isn’t that why the possibility of a category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans directly is one of the top items on the list of potential national disasters, along with terrorist strikes and earthquakes? Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. But Bush didn’t realize that. Now that’s what I call doing your homework, and your job.
But if we’d been prepared for the hurricane, the terrorists would have won! Besides, George was busy clearing brush. Can you imagine the consequences of too much undergrowth at Crawford Ranch? Where are your priorities, OB?
I’m utterly aghast that the richest and most powerful nation on earth could not deal with this disaster. I’m no fan of the current US administration but I could never have anticipated chaos on this scale. I really feel for those people, who have every right to expect to be looked after, madness, utter madness.
The current US administration has really plumbed the depths for sheer incompetence. No surprise there but I wish that Bush would just shut up! And his dad and Clinton with him.
Seems like third worlders like India, Thailand coped much better with their tsunami disaster. 4 days on and chaos and anarchy on the rise instead of abating. Shoot to kill orders given to ‘battle-hardened’ National Guardsmen. The situation can only get worse!
What you said, what you all said!
I just can’t comprehend it.
I knew there was a reason I didn’t vote for that @#$%^*.
I guess everybody needs to put together their own survival kit and escape plan. Today.
[scurries off to put water bottles under handbuilt quake-proof table]
Yeah…it’s just staggering. Staggering.
It looks as if the US is not so much a First World country as a part First World part Third World country. The people in the convention center are the poor people without cars who couldn’t leave on Sunday and who lived on the low ground, and who have now lost everything.
Nightmare, nightmare.
Mira – “and Clinton” ?? tell me more… what was he supposed to have done – in the nineties – or more recently ? Intrigued..
That notwithstanding, what is apparent to this particular previously jury-out-on-Iraq-Brit is that Bush has truly, unmittigatingly showed himself for the utter couldn’t-give-a-shit b@tard he is; he doesn’t even give a damn about his OWN, at least that is if they’re poor Southern, black and uninsured. A city in ruins, that could truly fly the flag high for 100 years, the world over, for what is GREAT about US culture. And he grins and shrugs his shoulders like a good-old-boy-pr@ck. That fucker gets zero goodwill or benefit of the doubt from this household, from now on, for ever, period. I really hope, more than ever, the Democrats stuff him all over the place next time. The gurning, you-all f@ckwit.
He has, hasn’t he. At least so it seems to me. I heard him say only this morning ‘I’m lookin’ forward to my trip down there’ – ! He tries to fake concern when he knows it’s expected, and this time he really didn’t get the dosage right – a mistake that makes it kind of obvious how fake it is.
It’s like his mockery of Carla Faye Tucker (‘Don’t kill me, don’t kill me!’), which he abruptly stopped when he realized the journalist he was performing for was staring at him in stunned horror. Oh, uh, oops.
He really basically doesn’t give a flying fuck and never has. It’s depressing that he was able to convince so many people otherwise for so long.
Uh, I mentioned Clinton because he joined both Bushes for the photo-op yesterday and blunted criticism of the prez.
Bush of the perpetual smirk, is a creepy one indeed. I never understood media commentators who put down Gore in 2000 as an automaton with no personality and talked up the chimp’s personable presence instead. I just didn’t get it then and still don’t.
But this pathetic response to the catastrophe goes beyond Bush – though his admin is ultimately responsible. The whole institutional response is one huge cock-up after another. What the hell was FEMA up to?
The only positive thing is that many Americans’ attention is focussed on some very unpleasant and unsettling aspects of their society and government- hopefully something will be learnt from that.
Indeed – the Bu$hHitler(TM) callously is not fast enough to rescue people after this huge disaster, the bastard. Meanwhile, the good ol’ family values of Democratic core constituencies are on display in New Orleans, shooting at (oppressor) rescuers, and all.
Of course, the authorities actually directly responsible for handling the situation are off the hook by default, as they happen to be Democrats.
Dammit, Ophelia, you PC ranting, rabidly partisan Democrat hack, you! Always falling on your sword to save those worthless Democrat pols. And please stop constantly comparing George W. Bush to Hitler, will you? It’s embarrassing!
I was fascinated, however, to see how in the tripartite photo opportunity and even when standing beside homeless, hopeless people in Biloxi, Bush spent most of his time talking about the key issue – that petrol would still be available so that middle America could continue to drive their SUVs.
If anybody doubted before who was really running the USA, that may have given them a hint…
Its taking so long because such a large amount of New Orleans citizens are black!
http://opinionated.blogsome.com/
Opinionated Voice
“Its taking so long because such a large amount of New Orleans citizens are black!”
This is of course true, but not in the way you meant it.
dobeln: I’m sure the Ku Klux Klan has its own blog by now. Why don’t you wander on over that a ways and find more congenial company there?
This thread is fascinating, I hope you don’t mind me starting in again after 4 days Ophelia!
The fact is that local and state authorities refused to act in time.
The fact is that BUSH, not those in charge in NO, pleaded to make the evacuation mandatory.
The fact is that in a disaster, shit happens big-time and everyone gets bent out of shape over it – that’s why its a disaster. Ever fought bushfires guys? Ever been in a flood?
Some basic advice. Grow up. Get over it. Look what happened in the state next door, worse hit but not in the news – because THEIR tgovernment did their job.
What I see here is the media self-righteously getting in the way of the people who have to clean up, by destroying their credibility.
And as for the Oprah-fied whiny ‘victims’ all over the news, where are the heroes who are getting on with coping, looking after their own and so on? Those role models are NEEDED. The media could be a constructive force, but instead it is an echo chamber of whining bush-hating democrat absurdity, destroying instead of building its host society.
As for the kkk comment above, it must really hurt to have to talk to people from outside your kaffeeklatch karl.
“As for the kkk comment above, it must really hurt to have to talk to people from outside your kaffeeklatch karl”
Gee, it sure does Chris. I really need to be more broadminded about racism.
‘Some basic advice. Grow up. Get over it.’
Get over what, exactly, Chris? The suffering of other people? The neglect and abandonment of other people? You think that’s something people should get over? You think Americans generally spend too much time worrying about the suffering and neglect of other people? Why do you think that’s something people should grow up and get over?
I can see saying that to people who are making a big fuss about minor sufferings of their own while other people are faced with major suffering. But I can’t quite see the point of saying it to people who are worried about suffering not of their own. It seems a bit ridiculous, frankly. ‘Grow up. Get over it. Be selfish, be indifferent, be callous. So nobody bothered taking water to the convention center, so what? Big stinking deal. Worry about your own taxes, like an adult.’
‘The fact is that in a disaster, shit happens big-time and everyone gets bent out of shape over it’
Wrong. FEMA used to do a good job. I’ve never heard of a disaster before in which it took four days to get provisions to people. Let alone one in which the head of FEMA claimed not to know where the survivors had gathered when the news media had shown them on tv 24 hours a day for two days.