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| Sep 16th, 2005 12:25 PM | |||||
| KevinTheOmnivore |
Right, and because there are a few cops who have shown poor conduct, well fuck, that seals the deal for me. Government sucks. We need to just contract the whole damn thing. Seems to me spinning a situation to fit your ideological bent is a pretty "Vince-esque" thing to do, IMO. |
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| Sep 16th, 2005 12:19 PM | |||||
| CaptainBubba | What the fuck Kevin. I never said "Aw man look at those cops being shocked and hurt by this tradgedy shit wtf they arent doing their job." To any rational person it obvious I'm talking about the ones responsible for the actions ranging from looting to threatening innocent citizens with death. You're an asshole for acting like I said something Vince-esque. | ||||
| Sep 16th, 2005 08:46 AM | |||||
| KevinTheOmnivore |
Re: BUSH TOURS GULF STATES Quote:
I'm glad you have such a hard-on for a fluffy college text-book ideology, but I'd like to see you operate under such conditions. It's not about government leading to purity, you awful jackass. It's about public policing being open to public scrutiny. How is it that you KNOW that NOPD have a history of being corrupt? What then do you know about these "retired officers and soldiers" with blackwater? Who are they accountable to? The profit margin? |
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| Sep 15th, 2005 09:07 PM | |||||
| Chojin |
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Check out 'Hurricane Aftermath'. Jon Stewart pretty much echoes your second theory on that. |
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| Sep 15th, 2005 06:42 PM | |||||
| CaptainBubba |
Re: BUSH TOURS GULF STATES Quote:
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| Sep 15th, 2005 10:07 AM | |||||
| mburbank |
Add to what Kev just said the lie on top of it. If we have plenty of troops and national guard to have a war in Iraq and do what comes up at home, and the war in Iraq has no impact on responding to disaster at home why are we hiring private security? I know, just politics, and I do get that, how do you know a politician is lieing? Their lips are moving. But see, even while I accept that, a line has to be drawn somewhere. Everything a politician does is just politics. At some point you have to say "Look, I know you think sodomizing corpses to summon demons is going to somehow help out your party down the road, but it's really wrong and you shouldn't be allowed to do it. " Actually, I'd kind of like to draw the line PRIOR to demon summoning. Politcians will often do whatever they can get away with, and we let them get away with a fuck of a lot. And by the way, I would totally count on John Kerry to save my life over W. If I was Trent Lott's front porch, W might save me. Things being the way they are, I doubt he'd even see me. And yeah. I think the elected leader of the richest nation on earth may have no speciffic obigation to ressucitate me personlly should I get a cramp and drown in the ol' watering hole, but when a whole city full of the nations poorest, weakest citizens are at risk of their lives, I'd like a president who lept into action and marshalled an effort to save as many people as possible. Not one who sorta slowly ramped up to it by way of taking a few last days of vaca, doin' a couplea fund raiser and diddlin on a bran' new gift gee-tar. I guess it comes down to what you think the nature of leadership is and what you think government is for. |
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| Sep 15th, 2005 09:19 AM | |||||
| KevinTheOmnivore |
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| Sep 15th, 2005 09:09 AM | |||||
| KevinTheOmnivore |
Re: BUSH TOURS GULF STATES Quote:
I think the levels of blame shift as you move down a timeline. I think the hours prior to the hurricane, as well as the immediate aftermath, a lot of blame can be placed on the state and locals of Louisiana. However, it doesn't cut across the board that way. You can blame Nagin for a poor strategy in NO, but what about Jefferson Parish? THey did PRECISELY what they were told to do there in such a crisis, and they were left hangin' by the Feds. Quote:
A problem comes up when you have private professionals, although owning the skill sets to do the job, are lacking the public code of conduct carried by a soldier, officer, or whatever. Also, and this is really my issue, if they are so lacking troops or cops down there, then they need to do something else. Allowing the rich to contract out and protect their homes, while the poor are forced to disarm, evacuate, and hope that their shit doesn't get stolen, is wrong. |
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| Sep 14th, 2005 11:25 PM | |||||
| Preechr |
Re: BUSH TOURS GULF STATES Quote:
NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! |
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| Sep 14th, 2005 11:23 PM | |||||
| Preechr |
Quote:
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| Sep 14th, 2005 11:22 PM | |||||
| Pub Lover |
Re: BUSH TOURS GULF STATES Quote:
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| Sep 14th, 2005 11:19 PM | |||||
| Preechr |
Quote:
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| Sep 14th, 2005 11:16 PM | |||||
| Preechr |
Re: BUSH TOURS GULF STATES I started responding after I read your first response. I hope this turns out good... Quote:
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It's been widely documented and even admitted by her herself that Dubya asked her on Sunday if she'd declare an emergency and that she'd asked for 24 hours to mull over his offer the day his plane touched down. Quote:
Private contractors are simply (generally) retired soldiers and your objection to them is more a projection of your own problem with capitalism than anything related to your actual knowledge of them. Quote:
Unfortunately, political speech is never directed at you, me or Kevin... It's generally Vince that the president, no matter which one we're talking about, is talking to. |
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| Sep 14th, 2005 04:59 PM | |||||
| kellychaos |
A different tact ... or at least a factor in this: What does this say about a "hands off" style of presidency that prefers to leave all but the most dire situations to those lower in his administration ... i.e. the bureaucracy. I mean, I can see the value of delegating authority and challenging subordinates but are their limits? Did this point out a weakness in this style of authority? |
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| Sep 14th, 2005 09:42 AM | |||||
| mburbank | I know, I totaslly screwed up. I have since editted my post. | ||||
| Sep 14th, 2005 09:30 AM | |||||
| KevinTheOmnivore |
This thread is NOT about race, it's about CLASS! 
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| Sep 14th, 2005 09:27 AM | |||||
| mburbank |
I think this is a huge clusterfuck with no leader exclussively to blame. The scope of this disaster (and I don't except anybodies excuse that 'they had no idea how big this was since it's been predicted for years and the real event, horrible as it was, wasn't as bad as some of the models. We've known for a very long time this scenario was when, not if) called for decisive leadership. No one took it. Everyone worried about turf and how they'd look later. In addition, communication problems, both technologic and polticial failed in many of the same ways they failed on 9/11 indicating a frightening lack of progress towards homeland security. W is not solely to blame for how things went, but he's the boss, the CEO. He's the leader of the country, a 2 term president in his sceond term. He had the authority to federalize the situation, and he did not. In addition, W has not balked at doing several things during his presidency for which he lacked clear legal authority and has been prepared to defend them after the fact. His leadeship was tested and it failed. His administration gave away key FEMA appointemnts to friends with no experience (and by the way, now is the time to see where all the other unqualified people are leading departments, BEFORE they are tested.) Nagin also certainly failed, I don't know enough about the governor but that will also come out, and need I say that while the focus is on New Olreans, other states with Republican governors also had people waiting up to a week for rescue. Chertoff's leadership of Homeland is by definition without credability, since the homeland turns out to be nowhere close to secured. None of these failures diminishes W's failure. That's the price of leadership. His verbal acceptance of responsability acknowledges this, but it's only a first step, and in my opinion, while more thn I expected, the least he could do. |
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| Sep 13th, 2005 04:45 PM | |||||
| KevinTheOmnivore |
Quote:
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| Sep 13th, 2005 04:29 PM | |||||
| kellychaos |
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Historically, isn't hurricane relief something that the states preferred to take care of themselves until federal relief was absolutely necessary? True that this level of destruction is beyond normal, but wasn't FEMA, although unqualified, following the normal path in federal efforts? It seems that it took the enormity of this disaster to point of the flaws in state to federal communication as well as the failure in the state's own planning. |
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| Sep 13th, 2005 12:37 PM | |||||
| mburbank |
Yeah, it amazes me he doesn't have any idea how that shit sounds, but look at his Mom. She said her thing about the underprivilidged to NPR, for God's sake. How tone deaf is that? Mostly these comments are made in front of pretty carefully screened audiences, so you don't get people yelling in the background. Did you see the tape of Chenney, where he's talking about how the response he's gotten from victimes has been %100 positive, and someone starts yelling at him "Hey, Dick Chenney! Go fuck yourself!". The reporter asks if he's been getting a lot of that, and Chenney says no, this is the first time. Now do you think that's a gutless, deiberate lie, or do you think these folks are so protected from anything but praise they simply no longer know the world they live in? I recall an interview with Reagan shortly after he left office on the subject of the Brady Bill. He said if he'd known any of the stuff he knew on the subject now that he was no longer president, he'd have supported it. Bush actualy makes it a point of pride that his knowledge of the world is utterly filtered through his staff. PS. Kev, I'm aware that you are often trying to keep the conversation honest and strain some of the polemics out of it. I appreciatte that. Personally, though, I have become very leery of the benefit of the doubt. I think the tendency of the center left to give the benefit of the doubt has been exploited by the far right and the center right has remianed silent. I think the folks currently running the country count on and abuse the benefit of the doubt given to them by the American people and the press just as Strauss advised. |
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| Sep 13th, 2005 11:12 AM | |||||
| KevinTheOmnivore |
From whitehouse.gov, visiting a school in Mississippi, the President said "First of all, I want to thank the school principal for her hospitality. It's interesting, you know, she said she lost her school and lost her house, but I told her she hadn't lost her smile or her will to succeed." Alright. Enough. Look, anybody who thinks I've turned into a conservative on this board can verify that I'm not really down with the Bush bashing. I like to play devil's advocate, and try to give the benefit of the doubt when avaialble. But these cute, contrived, "real-folkisms" simply need to stop. No more of this. This reminds me of the time at a town hall meeting he told a woman working three jobs and raising kids "boy, there's somethin' really American about that, aint there?" The president needs to get out of his insulated PR bubble and get his foot out of his ass. We need him to be louder right now, more of a leader, on the recovery issue, as well as iraq. |
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| Sep 12th, 2005 05:34 PM | |||||
| kellychaos |
Re: BUSH TOURS GULF STATES Quote:
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| Sep 12th, 2005 05:29 PM | |||||
| mburbank |
From the Wall Street Journal: No major newspaper printed a headline that literally said New Orleans "dodged a bullet," as Mr. Chertoff claimed. But some did say the city had escaped a direct hit -- which was true, but misleading -- while others focused on the levees along the Mississippi River. Meanwhile, it was the levees along canals extending south from Lake Pontchartrain that gave way. "But the city managed to avoid the worst of the worst," read a front-page Washington Post article on Tuesday. "The Mississippi River did not breach New Orleans's famed levees to any serious degree, at least in part because Katrina veered 15 miles eastward of its predicted track just before landfall." But this is from the same article A look at news reports of the events of Aug. 29 paints a picture of confusion, miscommunication and conflicting information among some government officials and news media. Several major news outlets, including Viacom Inc.'s CBS network and National Public Radio reported the breaking of the Industrial Canal and flooding on Monday, although not all of the reports acknowledged the extent of the devastation. The Wall Street Journal reported the Industrial Canal breach but no others. The New Orleans office of the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning at 8:14 a.m. Monday, saying "a levee breach occurred along the industrial canal at Tennessee Street. 3 to 8 feet of water is expected due to the breach." Leonard Downie Jr., the Washington Post's executive editor, says the paper's reporting was hampered by communications problems caused by the hurricane. "Unfortunately, where our communication was good was where it wasn't flooding," he says. "All the media were hampered by the fact that people on the ground didn't know what happened." In the 5 p.m. news report on News Corp.'s Fox News Channel, anchor Shepard Smith informed viewers of "late word" that the levees had held. But a few minutes later, in the same program, a public-health expert told the channel the exact opposite: "Well, the National Weather Service are reporting that one of the levees was breached. ... People have been forced out onto the roofs of their homes." Why the confusion? A Fox News spokeswoman says Mr. Smith was referring to levees near his "physical location," which was Bourbon Street in the French Quarter -- that is, levees on the Mississippi. While that's certainly confusing, for the President, the head of Homeland security and the head of Fema, all of whom have used that wretched made up 'dodged a bullet' phrase, to see it that way based on the information available at the time is an admission of failure. And for them to see their afilure as an excuse, 'oh, well, shucks, folks, eva one of us thought we'd dodged a bullit, so we ain't to blame. Now ain't the time for fingerpointin'. Side's, it was somebody elses job to take care of all this, and you gotta admit, the victims bear at least some of the responsability. |
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| Sep 12th, 2005 05:10 PM | |||||
| Abcdxxxx |
Monday evening reports were that New Orleans had survived, and that the reduced hurrican produced far less damage. The Mayor was being all congratulatory, and the Biloxi and part of Alamaba were more of a focus..... Then if you flipped over to CNN around 8:3-9:00 they were describing an entirely different scene, with water coming out of nowhere, and the horror story we see now. So there was a point where people were really saying "New Orleans dodged a bullet". |
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| Sep 12th, 2005 04:52 PM | |||||
| KevinTheOmnivore | I believe a lot of news outlets commented on how the severity of the actual storm was less that had initially been expected. | ||||
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