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Incompetent FEMA is sabotaging the operation?

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:09 pm
by R00k
This is part of an interview on Meet the Press with Tim Russert.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790/
MR. RUSSERT: And we are back.

Jefferson Parish President Broussard, let me start with you. You just heard the director of Homeland Security's explanation of what has happened this last week. What is your reaction?

MR. AARON BROUSSARD: We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast, but the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history. I am personally asking our bipartisan congressional delegation here in Louisiana to immediately begin congressional hearings to find out just what happened here. Why did it happen? Who needs to be fired? And believe me, they need to be fired right away, because we still have weeks to go in this tragedy. We have months to go. We have years to go. And whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chain-sawed off and we've got to start with some new leadership.

It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now. It's so obvious. FEMA needs more congressional funding. It needs more presidential support. It needs to be a Cabinet-level director. It needs to be an independent agency that will be able to fulfill its mission to work in partnership with state and local governments around America. FEMA needs to be empowered to do the things it was created to do. It needs to come somewhere, like New Orleans, with all of its force immediately, without red tape, without bureaucracy, act immediately with common sense and leadership, and save lives. Forget about the property. We can rebuild the property. It's got to be able to come in and save lives.

We need strong leadership at the top of America right now in order to accomplish this and to-- reconstructing FEMA.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Broussard, let me ask--I want to ask--should...

MR. BROUSSARD: You know, just some quick examples...

MR. RUSSERT: Hold on. Hold on, sir. Shouldn't the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility? Couldn't they have been much more forceful, much more effective and much more organized in evacuating the area?

MR. BROUSSARD: Sir, they were told like me, every single day, "The cavalry's coming," on a federal level, "The cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming." I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry's still not here yet, but I've begun to hear the hoofs, and we're almost a week out.

Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.

But I want to thank Governor Blanco for all she's done and all her leadership. She sent in the National Guard. I just repaired a breach on my side of the 17th Street canal that the secretary didn't foresee, a 300-foot breach. I just completed it yesterday with convoys of National Guard and local parish workers and levee board people. It took us two and a half days working 24/7. I just closed it.

MR. RUSSERT: All right.

MR. BROUSSARD: I'm telling you most importantly I want to thank my public employees...

MR. RUSSERT: All right.

MR. BROUSSARD: ...that have worked 24/7. They're burned out, the doctors, the nurses. And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President...

MR. BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.

Incompetence? I'm really starting to believe that they are preventing people from entering NO to cover up the massive body count.

Can anyone else offer a reasonable explanation?

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:19 pm
by Mr.Magnetichead
They want as many niggers as dead as possible.

Or they want to remove any traces of explosives first.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:21 pm
by Guest
lol hey kinda sounds like what I was just saying doesn't it?

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:23 pm
by R00k
What? I haven't heard you say anything that sounds remotely like that. Did I miss one of your posts or something?

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:25 pm
by neh
the result of relying too heavily on private competition - you guys need to take your heads out the sand and realise that public service is just that .. budgets pulled so thin they snap because of the great white hope of free market forces.. blah blah ... seriously - the only western liberal democracy happy to leave the ill untreated, the poor starving and now the black swimming in their own shit

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:27 pm
by R00k
You're preaching to the choir there, brother, but that still doesn't answer why FEMA would actively turn away so much help, unless they just don't want people to see NO for some reason.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:29 pm
by neh
well you've asked for aid from natio and the EU so we're all gonna see what going on soon - hey'll come with an army of press and they won't stand for that shit

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:30 pm
by feedback
Image

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:30 pm
by Guest
The point I stated is very valid. You're talking about how no one is doing anything and the people doing that are people that were voted in or got their jobs because of people they put there. Those people are either directly there because of them or inderectly. The funding cuts and other issues not being discussed are also responsible for this disaster, again because of the people in the south too ignorant and corrupt to even care. Even now those same people are laughing and it's because sheep like those in the south are too stupid to open their eyes. Even with this disaster I bet most of them are too stupid to even realize it's their fault to begin with for letting themselves be used by Bush but mainly greedy men in power.
that totem pole needs to be chain-sawed off and we've got to start with some new leadership.
Basicly he's saying leadership is the problem same as me.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:33 pm
by blood.angel
I liked it how they turned down Chicago's, Cuba's, and Jamica's aid two or three days ago but are only now asking the EU for aid.

Dont foeget you got another two months of hurricane season, if another one hits anywhere on the south coast, its going to be fun!

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:34 pm
by shiznit
I knew FEMA was fucked up but this is ridiculous.

feedback: This is Deus Ex? Is that edited or really in game?

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:36 pm
by blood.angel
shiznit wrote:I knew FEMA was fucked up but this is ridiculous.

feedback: This is Deus Ex? Is that edited or really in game?
Thats real. In Deus Ex theres a virus called grey death and FEMA are called in to control it.

And feedback must be gay. Why else does he give the Dentons faggot hair?

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:36 pm
by feedback
blood.angel wrote:
shiznit wrote:I knew FEMA was fucked up but this is ridiculous.

feedback: This is Deus Ex? Is that edited or really in game?
Thats real. In Deus Ex theres a virus called grey death and FEMA are called in to control it.

And feedback must be gay. Why else does he give the Dentons faggot hair?
I didn't give him faggot hair, that's the only screenshot I could find. My JC denton is always black, because I kill the hookers.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:01 pm
by Foo
[quote="feedback"][/quote]

OMFG Teh proffetic Dentons!

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:06 pm
by Mr.Magnetichead
OMGWHATISTHEMATRIXLOL

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:09 pm
by blood.angel
Just seconds later after that shot, JC gives Paul a lap dance.
Thats why Pauls hands are like that, hes itching to get some ass.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:10 pm
by Mr.Magnetichead
Incestual ass.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:18 pm
by tnf
Mr.Magnetichead wrote:They want as many ***** as dead as possible.

Or they want to remove any traces of explosives first.
no, they want as much time as possible to make it look like things were so bad that no response could have fixed this problem.

i hate this administration as much as, or more than, anyone, but to rant with the theories that they actually 'wanted' to kill black folks, directly or indirectly, just weakens the legitimate arguments against their incompetence and egotism.

I think that this whole thing was just the culmination of very, very, very bad policy - the manifestation of horribly anthropocentric and short-sighted decisions (those two often go hand in hand) brought about by an undodgeable issue in the form of Katrina. Instead of having to wait months and years or more to see the implications of Bush's reckless funding cuts, his asinine wetlands policy (no net loss of wetlands, but they can still be forked over to developers...how does that work?), the sheer incompetence of the people he put in charge (i.e. Mr.Brown the FEMA director), people are getting to see everything at once - served up on one horribly tragic platter of human suffering and government incompetence.

As was mentioned in an earlier article, FEMA, under Bush, was originally viewed as a bloated entitlement program. Bush and his good old boy friends wanted to shift the focus of disaster relief to the local and state level, which seems to contradict the charter of the FEDERAL emergency management bit...but they didn't have the wherewithall to think about what might happen if said local and state agencies where essentially wiped out by one of the natural disasters FEMA wanted them to now handle. So, FEMA shifts almost entirely to a focus on counterterrorism. Great - so I need everyone to remind me - how many terror attacks have there been in the last 100 years on American soil? How many massive hurricanes/tornadoes/etc. have there been? Under Clinton (again, this is from another article) FEMA was attempting to minimize the impacts of natural disasters by taking preventative roles. After flooding in 1993 in the midwest, it bought up 10,000 properties and businesses in the affected areas and paid to relocate them. When the flooding happened again in 1995, there were only (according to the article posted by Rook) 11 claims for flood aide, as opposed to 400+ in 93. This single example serves as a microcosm that accurately depicts the shift in mindset from the Clinton to the Bush administration in terms of nature, science, and natural disasters. Bush, and the Christian right as a whole, are all about using the land as we damn well please, as long as we damn well please. Concerns from those misguided science types about the potentially disastrous long term implications of said use are written off, or strategically accepted as being 'part of an important ongoing discussion' about the environment (of course, that discussion is not ongoing in the administration, it never really was even going once GWB stepped in.)

At the core, I don't know if it selfishness, arrogance, foolishness, stupidity, egotism, narcissism, or a mixture of all of them, but it is my hope that each and every person impacted by this tragedy sees that nearly every one of those adjectives could be used to describe this administration in fairly broad strokes.

If the Democrats cannot win the presidency in 2008 then they will be the new mark of incompetence, ironically.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:24 pm
by Mr.Magnetichead
Agreed. I mean the man doesn't even believe in evolution. Talking to him about weather cycles and global warming just gets you a glossed over look in his eyes.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:25 pm
by blood.angel
http://www.juancole.com/

And this is from a guy who normally stays neutral.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:48 pm
by tnf
Mr.Magnetichead wrote:Agreed. I mean the man doesn't even believe in evolution. Talking to him about weather cycles and global warming just gets you a glossed over look in his eyes.
I wanted the chance to ask teh president how the current situation in New Orleans kind of parallels the lessons spoke of in the book Lord of the Flies, but figured he'd start rambling about Gollum, Gandalf, and the neat looking ring.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 9:09 pm
by Freakaloin

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 9:14 pm
by Freakaloin
brutal...rofl...

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - "New Orleans began the gruesome task of collecting its thousands of dead on Sunday as the Bush administration tried to save face after its botched rescue plans left the city at the mercy of Hurricane Katrina."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050904/ts_nm/katrina_dc

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 9:24 pm
by blood.angel
"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld toured a medical facility at New Orleans' international airport on Sunday. He spoke and shook hands with military and rescue officials but walked right by a dozen refugees lying on stretchers just feet away from him, most of them extremely sick or handicapped."

HAHAHHAHAHAAHA
Yanks are dumb.

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 9:56 pm
by Foo
There's a good chance if he had they would have been really pissed, and it would have been uglier than blanking them.

That's my guess.