I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Phirst.
Hey, why not send ice on long circuitous trips around the country? It's as benign as anything the GOPers do!
present
Are you ready for some FEMA?
Fifth!
But does anyone have any ideas why FEMA can't seem to organize itself, let alone coordinate a recovery? I can't think of one.
The miracle of privatization?
Cherchez la FEMA.
Oh, I think FEMA can be that incompetent. The guy presently occupying the Oval Office is.
Pagey no loadey.
we wouldn't want it to get there too soon, it could worsen the flooding y'know
heh
That the top dozen people at FEMA haven't been tarred and feathered by the media is all I need to know.
Republicans, The New Democrats
(but at least Dem know how to help people, most of the time)
No one is this incompetent.
Stop misunderestimating our leadership.
On the highways and in service stations here in the midwest I have, over the last several days, observed a great many pick-up trucks hauling new mobile homes marked with a tag reading "Sold FEMA".
I wonder how many of these "Sold FEMA" trailers will arrive in the Katrina area?
Oh, I think FEMA can be that incompetent. The guy presently occupying the Oval Office is.
Jeff Fecke | Email | Homepage | 09.17.05 - 12:07 pm | #
trickle down
these are the policies they're using for supply in iraq as well I would guess, the same results are seen again and again and it all comes out of our empty pockets
Eighteenth!
Hey I'm still waiting to hear back from our coordinator about driving supplies down to the area. He can't get anything out of FEMA
This is why the railroads need to be privatized. Look at the public money that flows into the private sector. Let's all get aboard the high speed trans-continental Transfer Of Wealth Upward on the Halliburton, Brown and Root Central Railroad.
The Halliburton, Brown and Root is a mighty fine line
The HB&R is the road to ride
Well, well, well.
This is exactly what us libruls wanted. Everything to fail, thousands of people dead/dying, the lack of organization by the current junta, etc.
We've rode 'em out of town. We are now taking the steps to make government more responsible.
Wait...Is this thing on?
Hello? American public? Can you hear me?
Shit. I forgot to plug it in. Oh well...I trust them.
Fuckers.
It was deliberate from the start. You don't sit and do nothing when the tv is full of images of people clinging to their rooftops unless you want them to loose their grip and slip away.
Chaos makes it easier to steal. KBR and Halliburton don't like or want orderly responses because they can't rape taxpayers.
Mr. and Mrs. America were so freaked out by a couple of black guys looting a cheap tv, but they don't bat an eyelash when Dick Cheney loots their kids' future.
Mr. and Mrs. America were so freaked out by a couple of black guys looting a cheap tv, but they don't bat an eyelash when Dick Cheney loots their kids' future.
But that Mr. Cheney is such nice, well-dressed white man. I'm sure he would never do such a thing.
The response to the disaster was purposeful.
There was no good political reason to do a good job, at this time, at this place.
trickle down
?
The only trickle down you'll ever get is when Bushco pisses off the Oval Office balcony onto the country below.
And the funny thing is, they don't even try to hide that's what they're doing.
They aren't hiding what they're doing, which is the amazing part. Most Americans see it, but don't believe it, because there's no way people with "such high moral values would do that."
It's just complicated enough most folks assume they don't really understand how it works, but it can't be out and out theft. It can't be.
The public schools have been dumbed down enough for this to happen. Mission accomplished.
Deliberate? Sure. It's the fault of all those traitorous Democrats who had a hissy over working for a Republican administration, and quit their jobs at FEMA. Not that they would have been any help, of course, being a bunch of Liberal Blueneck wussies...
</Conservative Redneck prick>
I used to think that alot of this flagrant incompetence was borne out of malice and hatred of government in any form.
But I've become convinced that, no, these people really are stupid redneck yahoos just two days out of the sticks, or to steal a phrase, "the stupidest fucking people on the face of the earth."
No one can be this maliciously incompetent. Not even a fucking Republican. It has to be inborn.
ot but not: today's ny times sez they're gonna do a little 'speriment with education vouchers startin' wif displaced nola students
heh
You're talking about an organization that reportedly sat firefighters and rescue personnel in a "sexual harrassment and community relations" seminar for two days while people were dying in New Orleans. Urgency is obviously not this agency's strong suit.
Of course, the longer they drag their feet on recovery, the more time Rove has to make sure the money goes to the right people and doesn't go to the wrong people. It can take a long time to go through all the GOP and Dem donor rolls to find out who's been naughty or nice.
The school vouchers are a way to fund the TX school system which bush destroyed while gov. and current TX admistration continues to under fund.
Just my opinion, and I'm sure Atrios himself isn't included in this huge generalization, but I find that a lot of people want light rail and trains because they don't want to sit on buses with poor brown people.
Buses often make much more sense than trains, at way less the cost. But suburbanites don't like buses.
Whoops, wrong thread...
I live in California and remember the 1994 Northridge earthquake. FEMA inspected almost all the buildings in the area--my guess would be at least a few hundred thousand inspections or more total. I had damage to household stuff but no structural damage to the building, still FEMA wanted to inspect my apartment. The inspector came about 3 weeks after the quake.
Granted the Northridge earthquake pales in comparison to Katrina, yet where is FEMA? In the aftermath of the earthquake the local and the national news media showed what FEMA was doing and made me feel and many others that our government was there to help.
At the time Clinton went on television and said things the people of Southern California needed to hear and backed up his words with real and tangable actions.
Bush, on the other hand, all talk and no action.
It seems that their inaction really is deliberate. The hinted-at 'reconstruction zone' in the three states with special benefits and rules could be a Rovian run-around to create a separate election area as well, designed to be Republican 'safe' for the future.
Nothing that could be imagined is beyond the pale of what BushCo would do to our democracy to make it an autocracy.
you mean all hat and no cattle?
Morning all.
I have to expand on this later on my own time/webspace, but isn't this the kind of thing that used to happen in the Soviet Union and that we'd slag 'em for?
Morning all.
I have to expand on this later on my own time/webspace, but isn't this the kind of thing that used to happen in the Soviet Union and that we'd slag 'em for?
my question about Rove is, obviously they guy is a legend at smearing the noble with shit, but what the hell does he know about raiding the treasury?
Treason! How dare you guys criticize Dear Leader's response to this disaster. Would you rather have a flood, or SADDAM HUSSEIN still in power, hmmmm??
(Oops, silly me, wrong disaster.)
tiki, you funny
They're spinning their incompetence into the old "government won't do a damn thing for you" narrative. That NYT article is just the beginning of the blame-the-bureaucracy-non-blame-game-game...er, or something.
Found a couple interesting quots on some SF writer's blogs, though, re: the Katrina disaster.
Scott Westerfeld compares it to the Titanic:
That’s right, because it’s always about the misbehavior of those louts in the cheap sections, and never about having more friggin’ lifeboats. (emphasis in original)
and from Ken MacLeod:
Caligula made his horse a Senator, but he didn't put the stable boy in charge of the aqueducts.
There's a reason I read these guys.
I was wondering how our dear leader would implement the Halliburton-ization of this new found real estate extravaganza. Silly me thought D.L. would just jump immediately to no-bid contracts and bags of cash flowing out the door - I now realize there are small, annoying and incremental steps to be taken, of course. Silly moi not to see!
Rove is good, very good.
Oh, and from John Scalzi:
Bush wants to spend $200 billion to rebuild the South, which is good in theory, but I expect his administration to do a good job at the effort about as much as I expect my cat to whip up a light and tasty souffle.
MSNBC.com
Katrina forecasters were remarkably accurate
Levee breaks, catastrophic damage predicted, contrary to Bush claims
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 5:39 p.m. ET Sept. 16, 2005
MIAMI - For all the criticism of the Bush administration’s confused response to Hurricane Katrina, at least two federal agencies got it right: the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.
They forecast the path of the storm and the potential for devastation with remarkable accuracy.
The performance by the two agencies calls into question claims by President Bush and others in his administration that Katrina was a catastrophe that no one envisioned.
For example, Bush told ABC on Sep. 1 that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” In its storm warnings, the hurricane center never used the word “breached.” But a day before Katrina came ashore Aug. 29, the agency warned in capital letters: “SOME LEVEES IN THE GREATER NEW ORLEANS AREA COULD BE OVERTOPPED.”
National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield also gave daily pre-storm videoconference briefings to federal officials in Washington, warning them of a nightmare scenario of New Orleans’ levees not holding, winds smashing windows in high-rise buildings and flooding wiping out large swaths of the Gulf Coast.
A photo on the White House Web site shows Bush in Crawford, Texas, watching Mayfield give a briefing on Aug. 28, a day before Katrina smashed ashore with 145-mph winds.
as tin-foil hat as it sounds, i'm beginning to believe that just about everything that has occurred in the disastrous nearly 5 years of bushco is DELIBERATE... there is a larger pattern here if we only bother to look...
I saw this comment earlier, I forget where. So good, it bears repeating:
Bush governs like Billy Joel drives.
It is clear, after watching FEMA's responses and some of the coverage of other potential catastrophes--pandemic flu, major earthquake, etc.--that we all better be prepared to survive on our own for some length of time. These idiots clearly are not going to be able to help, and I don't know if that's by design, arrogance, stupidity or general incompetence. But get out your duct tape, bottled water, food and blankets because we are basically screwed. What happens if there's some sort of disaster in the next few months? The country cannot cope.
Bring the troops home now!
Max Mayfield said he HAD to brief them to be sure they understood what was coming and did it by satellite teleconference to be sure they saw and heard it all
If the fusterclucks in the Bush Admin. tried to appear incompetent they would probably fuck it up. That may be America's best chance of surviving the next three years.
Never underestimate the mendacity of the gang of thieves that operates this administration. FEMA more than likey is screwing up because that's the way it is supposed to happen.
But Clueless George is not the puppetmaster, Karl Rove is. Where is genuine news reporting on this?
Expect more "strange" things to start happening not fewer. ROVE=EVIL
Read the local Mississippi newspapers via http://newslink.org/
The only people helping is the Red Cross and many survivors complain that it has been three weeks and they still haven't seen a single FEMA official. And Barbour's state flunkies aren't helping.
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.c...EWS05/
509170303
And incredibly, areas around Laurel, Mississippi still don't have power.
Another fema horror story via nocapital
Just like in Iraq they have tried to create chaos while they steal us blind. That is also what they have been trying to do by unleashing the religious bigots on us, and ruining the schools, and depriving the people of healthcare. It is all intentional in order to make us afraid, helpless, and poor while they loot us. It isn't incompetence at all. They are very competent.
I think FEMA's main concern is making sure there cronies get the contracts not getting the goods to the people. That's why things are so tied up. Their concern isn't getting relief quickly but making sure that any relief is delivered by cronies. Thus we have delays.
There's malice, I've seen proof. A friend of mine is a firefighter. A week after Katrina he was offered a position by FEMA in New Orleans, $30/hour in a "non-operational public relations" role. His job would have been to tell people how much they were indeed being helped.
Their website cannot be used unless you have XP and Explorer 6. Not everyone has the latest shit, especially people who'd lost everything and cash strapped public agencies (such as libraries)....
I've a question. Why aren't liberal groups orchestrating an effort to bus a lot of these evacuees to Washington for the march next weekend? I'm sure many of them would go and it would be the biggest nightmare this administration has ever seen public relations-wise. If I had a dime I'd donate to that effort. Unfortunately, as a recent college grad, I can't find a job in this economy, but I am trying to get to Washington next weekend for the demonstration.
at some point the afflicted and dislocated are going to start taking out their frustration. And a preznit speaking platitudes of which he knows not the meaning is not going to suffice.
=
Hold on, hold on. Why is FEMA the "permissioning" authority (which means in practice, the preventional authority) and why are any of these Southern Johnny Rebs accepting their authority? Why aren't they arresting FEMA officials?
If Clinton were in the White House, or Kerry, or Gore, you know they wouldn't wait a second to fight FEMA tooth and nail over everything and hang some of them to get their point across too.
But these days, FEMA either isn't there, or screws up everything, and all these Southern Yayhoos just say, "Oh, OK, my mistake," and pretend nothing is wrong.
WTF?
--felix
lo it seems impossible for people to be so evil, so devious, but the revealing facts and evolving repukelican political opportunism, combined with the bushcriminal regime track record demands serious consideration be given the notions that the federal response to Katrina has been orchestrated.
Egg-zactly. Been arguing the same thing about Dumsfeld for quite some time. At some point you just have to take a step back and realize that he wants civil war in Iraq - he is, after all, a neocon. (Raimondo - apart from his anti-liberal delusions - does some recall for us.)
Similar arg can be made about Dems - at some point you have to realize that they're not being cowardly - they're collaborators.
I can't get to the site - it's behind a user login.
about light rail:
"I find that a lot of people want light rail and trains because they don't want to sit on buses with poor brown people."
Here in Minn the light rail system is integrated with the buses. The fare is the same and the transfer card can be used going from the bus to the train or the other way. The police are very visible, the fine for not paying your fare is $180.00
There is only one line, from downtown Minneapolis to the Airport to the Mall of America. The only reason we even have it is because Jessie Ventura pushed it through. Left to themselves, neither party would have done it alone.
"Similar arg can be made about Dems - at some point you have to realize that they're not being cowardly - they're collaborators."
given the supline position dems have assumed these past 5 years, it would appear that this conclusion is entirely possible and worthy of consideration.
all the clinton hanging around with bushes is further evidence of the republican-lite wing of the democratic party being full participants in the republican subversion of american ideals.
=
anybody see donna brazile's op-ed in the WaPo today?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp...5091602167.html
"Similar arg can be made about Dems - at some point you have to realize that they're not being cowardly - they're collaborators."
I'm not a fucking troll, but this statement rings so true. Money and re-election seem to be their main focus.
Don't know if anyone caught the mayor of Kenner,LA last night on NOW, singing the praises of Wal-Mart's disaster response, and suggesting that maybe government could learn something from their example. How tragic, but, unfortunately, we're all at the mercy of corporate America. Wal-Mart Nation, indeed.
Lime Ricky wins it with the "miracle of privatization" comment. These fuckers aren't dragging their feet at all. Tripping over each others feet in a mad dash for all the loot to be had is more like it.
When they rebuild the South what will they call it?
Gulag has a ring to it, but it's already been taken.
Lebensraum? Ditto.
Transplantations?!
"No one can be this maliciously incompetent. Not even a fucking Republican. It has to be inborn."
That's what we're seeing. The result of letting Republicans breed.
NO MARRIAGE FOR REPUBLICANS!
According to the news last night on msn - they sent ice trucks to Idaho... Idaho - is so far from Katrina... and then the conservative news group tells us all about Walmart and how the private sector can do it better than government.
Its beginning to look like the Bush administration is doing this misdirection, with intent to do this very thing as an indication that Goverment doesn't work.
Bush makes the responsiblity real cheap but the national press is quite willing to help Bush with this task.
Combine the impluse if not the directive to micromanage with a lack of managers who can actually make a resaoned decision and what do you have?
FEMA
If the White House doesn't make the decision the decision isn't made.
We need a Crossfire episode with one side yelling "They are incompetent!" and the other side firing back with "They did it on purpose."
In the film Chinatown, Faye Dunaway has been asked by Jack Nicholson who the mystery girl is:
"She's my daughter."
Nicholson slaps her.
"She's my sister."
Another slap.
"My daughter."
Slap.
"My sister."
Slap.
"She's my daughter AND my sister!"
Long pause. Nicholson: "He raped you?"
Dunaway nods.
In summary, the Bushites are incompent AND they did it on purpose.
These cheerful verities notwithstanding, one thing is absolutely certain: he raped you.
How's this for ongoing FEMA fuckups?
What I don't understand is why the MSm is ignoring Bush's call for an expanded military role. This is scary stuff to contemplate. If this crew of fuck-ups had more power than they already we'd all be practicing our salutes. Are the media really nothing more than cowards afraid to question chickenhawks?
insert: do
At this point, you have to assume it's incompetence. I understand that, as with many federal agencies, the career people that actually know how to do stuff have been leaving FEMA in larger than expected numbers, rather than work for the pinheads that GWB has sent over. The aphorism "Never attibute to malice that which can be laid at the door of incompettence" is a reliable guide, although the Bushies appear to posess unprecedented levels of both.
No one is this incompetent.
I am.
Fuck FEMA, they're just in the way.
A caravan of 10-15 cars, vans and trucks filled with donated relief supplies left the studios of KPFK (Pacifica Radio) in Los Angeles Friday for the arduous, ~27-hour drive to the little town of Tyler, Mississippi. What I heard this morning is that so far, no one there has seen any aid, relief or FEMA yet, at all. We are going directly to the people.
Camp Casey lll is set up already at Covington, just outside NOLA.
This effort is happening through the coordination of Pacifica Radio, Veterans For Peace Chapter 110 (Orange County) as well as the support of a number of other groups, including the Anaheim School District.
And I'm sure it's happening everywhere, as VFP is a national organization. We are as empowered as we choose to be.
I think Rove and DHS/FEMA have a plan:
1. Delay responding as much as possible (and them accuse Dem politicans of mishandling the emergency when the public complains about lack of emergency responsiveness)
2. Authorize the military and mercanaries into the area to "stop the looting" (which was overhyped in the first place and consisted largely of people trying desperately to either leave the area or find food and water to survive)
3. Use the military/police/FEMA to keep actual voluntary emergency relief workers OUT of the disaster area
4. Use the military/police/FEMA to prevent the poor from evacuating on foot.
5. Use the military/police/FEMA to force poor residents into hellhole "shelters"
6. When you can't delay getting letting the poor leave the hellhole "shelters" anymore; drag your feet and take as long as possible to bus them to another shelter that has the potential to be a hellhole (ie. another sports stadium) thereby encouraging them to find refuge elsewhere with friends and family so the gov doesn't have to pick up the tab.
7. In fact delay giving any aid to the evacuees as much as possible so that they all WILL wind up being fed and sheltered by family/friends/churches so that the gov doesn't have to pay the tab to do it.
8. Use the military/police/FEMA to prevent the residents from returning to their homes to reclaim any posessions and assess damages (it's ok for businesses to do it). And absolutely force anyone out who's managed to hang on, you need the city empty to make a big land grab later.
9. Arrange Haliburton to get big no-bid contracts for as much of the relief effort as possible. Since you've encouraged everyone to seek aid elsewhere, that means Haliburton can charge big bucks for providing nothing at all. (Don't forget to waive the minimum wage rules so Haliburton can rip off anyone who desperately needs a job in the disaster area.)
10. Purchase trailers that will be shipped to house the oil workers so that the oil companies can get back to full production quickly (but they can still charge prices in excess of $4/gallon since there's an "emergency")
11. Order the press out of the area whenever bodies are to be recovered and make sure that the mortuaries never reveal the true numbers of the dead. (That way you can claim it's only a couple of hundred instead of several thousand.)
12. Use the new eminent domain rule from the supreme court to sieze all the property "abandoned" by the residents (fleeing for their lives and prevented by force from returning). Bulldoze the buildings and redevelop the area for the rich.
13. Increase the deficit to pay for all the graft; it doesn't matter your rich friends won't have to pay for any thing due to your tax cuts and who cares about the middle class.
Yup, I think they have a PLAN all right. It's just not a plan to help the hurrican victims; it's a plan to help their rich friends and Haliburton.
Don't you DARE attribute this to a plan. They have driven off the pros and gutted FEMA for years.
Well, this is what happens. You hire untrained political hacks, defund the agency, and reward people for political loyalty.
Yes, they are just that incompetent,ask any Iraq war vet
"At some point it has to be deliberate. No one is this incompetent."
At some point? Atrios has already claimed repeatedly, in his copy-and-paste instead of posting anything substantive style.
If only the "good reporting" that made these accusations based on personal opinions were more frequent. Then Atrios would be a happy degenerate.
Thanks for 2004.
Yes, well, except there's the problem that they responded just fine in Florida last year. Where just fine means a) supporting their "base" and b) keeping the poor from developing critical mass of desperation to actually rebel, while tempering the looting enough to fix up enough infrastructure that their base can live.
The fact that they can manage just fine where their real goals are concerned, and their own interests threatened, means that the "they're just a bunch of stupids" theory however flattering it might be* does not hold water.
*On the surface: this doesn't hold water either, because it means that *all* the smart people, good and bad together, have been suckered and defeated by those mocked morons. Which should not be in the least more calming or reassuring than conspiracy.
The famines in the Ukraine were the result of planning failures and gross incompetence on the part of the Supreme Soviet and at local levels.
Does that mean there was not also deliberate intent and malice involved?
Of course not.
When those in authority, from the CIA down, put in critical places nothing but weak links and flawed hinges; take away the supports; and then wait for the storm, and when the storm hits, take *no* action to replace the inefficient and obstructive with those who could do, but rather the reverse, at every turn, it ceases to be plausible to consider it accident on the part of those who in other areas, and on other occasions, have shown no end of efficiency.
The debacle in NOLA is the result of typical Bush administration incompetence (promotion of hacks and cronies to positions of authority, which in turn alienates and drives out competent professionals who realize they have no future among the ranks of the Faithful) and deliberate neglect.
The barebones tactical plan is clear: allow the blacks and other non-GOP constituencies in NOLA to take a beating from Katrina, channel their sorrow and grief into resentment at local officials, then turn on the post-holocaust charm with a thick slathering of pork to political friends, while punishing enemies by withholding or delaying much-needed relief services and funds.
The Second Reconstruction of the South has begun, and with Karl Rove in charge, will be aimed at destroying the last vestiges of the Democratic party in the state and local governments and laundering a great deal of cash through the bank accounts of sweetheart contractors who donate heavily to the GOP.
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