Making Baby Jesus Cry

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I have yet to see any indication that the Louisiana National Guard and the other resources at Blanco's command were misused or not effectively applied, as opposed to overwhelmed. I am willing to believe it, if you guys can come up with something other than your own say-so and Penske's photoshopped masterworks. How many helicopters do you think the Louisiana National Guard has? I'm guessing not many, but who knows?

the city of NO had at least 250 buses, I showed you unphotoshopped pics of them. Why were they left to drown?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
I hate to say it, but coordinating rescue efforts among what remained of state and local resources & the federal resources on offer, or alternatively letting the feds conduct said coordination, would have been a good start.

Who said they didn't? The accusation made here is that by Friday, when it was clear that the federal response was, shall we say, lacking, Blanco screwed the pooch by failing to let the federal government "coordinate" by taking the whole damn operation over. That's not coordination. Indeed, that's a tacit suggestion that FEMA was fucking up the coordination so badly that they had to trying something completely different.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Spanky
I am only stating this because you are a moron.

2. well said.

[Nut Case, Sensitive]

Originally posted by Spanky
I am only stating this because you are a moron. I have already raised $20,000 for the relief effort. Two employees of my non-profit are in training right now, along with my sister, and are going to NO next week. What have you done?

Please send in to get Balt's match, then, you Nut.

Nice to finally get one question answered. Now what do I have to do to get you to actually answer (1) what resources did each of Nagin, Blanco and Bush have available; and (2) what was needed?

Dude, I can match and exceed these (and my sister can match and exceed your sister's as well) but that's not the point.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Facts? You need more facts? New Orleans gets flooded, which was totally forseable, and thousand of people die. Everyone agrees more could have been saved if there had been a quicker reaction with more resources.. Why is the mayor responsible - he is the Mayor. His job is to take care of the City of New Orleans. New Orleans is his sole responsibility and this disaster was completely forseable and he was caught with his pants down. The Governor - she has other cities besides New Orleans but it is the biggest city in her state, so she is pretty responsible also. Again this disaster was totally forseable. The President - he has a lot of other stuff to worry about, but that is his job - so he has to bear some of the responsiblity.

What more facts do you need?

Since no one thinks any of these people were actually responsible for the hurricane, I prefer a little more substance to my opinions, but thank you for yours.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
the city of NO had at least 250 buses, I showed you unphotoshopped pics of them. Why were they left to drown?

I don't know -- I keep hoping that you'll point me to some substantive reporting on the subject.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Nut Case, Sensitive
Please send in to get Balt's match, then, you Nut.

Nice to finally get one question answered. Now what do I have to do to get you to actually answer (1) what resources did each of Nagin, Blanco and Bush have available; and (2) what was needed?

Nagin had 250 plus buses to aid an evacuation.

Blanco had the Louisiana guard. Based on the written plan that should have been good to start. Blanco punted on doing anything and per a quote I posted over the weekend, she waited to see what would happen and would then pick up the pieces. She didn't do such a good job on picking up the pieces.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Blanco punted on doing anything and per a quote I posted over the weekend, she waited to see what would happen and would then pick up the pieces. She didn't do such a good job on picking up the pieces.

I remember you posting that quote. You're taking that quote quite literally, aren't you? I read it as an expression, something akin to "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

[Nut Case, Sensitive]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Nagin had 250 plus buses to aid an evacuation.

Blanco had the Louisiana guard. Based on the written plan that should have been good to start. Blanco punted on doing anything and per a quote I posted over the weekend, she waited to see what would happen and would then pick up the pieces. She didn't do such a good job on picking up the pieces.

See Ty above.

Loook, Nutso, if you want to hang Blanco for inaction, why aren't to ready to hang Bush beside her? Hang them all dammit.

Blanco has access to about 7,000 Louisiana National Guard troops (there are about 11,000 in the guard, but 4,000 of them are in Iraq right now). Bush has dual and broader authority over the Guard. He also has the army, FEMA, and Homeland security. And every federal employee in the region. It took him two days just to do a fly-over.

[nononono]

Originally posted by Nut Case, Sensitive
See Ty above.

Loook, Nutso, if you want to hang Blanco for inaction, why aren't to ready to hang Bush beside her? Hang them all dammit.

Blanco has access to about 7,000 Louisiana National Guard troops (there are about 11,000 in the guard, but 4,000 of them are in Iraq right now). Bush has dual and broader authority over the Guard. He also has the army, FEMA, and Homeland security. And every federal employee in the region. It took him two days just to do a fly-over.

But were all 7000 of those LNG troups in LA right away? If so, okay; if not, why not?

[Anne Elk]

Is Christopher Walken really running for President? The debates will be great.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Since no one thinks any of these people were actually responsible for the hurricane, I prefer a little more substance to my opinions, but thank you for yours.

I just stated facts. The fact that they were unpreprated for this catastrophe is a fact, not an opinion.

You don't want facts. You want evidence of federal screw ups, and will believe anything that is printed that supports the idea that this was the Feds fault and yet you distrust even the most obvious facts that would show that the state and city screwed up.

The reason why you cite Federal screw ups is because Bush is president. You defend the governor and the mayor because they are democrats.

You say that you are not defending the mayor or the governor. Yet you keep asking what they could have done. You say you are not just trying to attack Bush when you keep citing alleged FEMA screwups.

You say you have heard of no evidence showing mayoral or governor incompetance. The Buses have been all over the news. They were on the front cover of the Mercrury news day before yesterday. There were all over the TV (and we live in the same town) They have been the biggest news item. Yet you don't believe Penske's pictures? There have been constant reports of all sorts of city and state screw ups. Telling refugees to go to the wrong place, telling them to leave and then not to leave, not providing any transportation for people that want to evacuate. You would have to plug your ears not to hear of all the screw ups. Yet you have heard of nothing that shows they have screwed up.

Yet even though you don't see any of this you find plenty of articles from all over the place that critisize the feds.

The President asks to take control of the state resources and you immediately assume that Bush is playing politics. No evidence to suport it, you just make that assumption. But you say you need more facts in order to make an opinion. Please.

You are a knee jerk ideologue that does not care about the facts or the truth. If there was any doubt, you sckepticism of Penske's pictures is the irrefutable proof. If there is one thing anyone that has watched the news for two minutes can be sure of, is that those buses caught in the flood were in the city of New Orleans and were municiple buses.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Spanky
You are a knee jerk ideologue that does not care about the facts or the truth. If there was any doubt, you sckepticism of Penske's pictures is the irrefutable proof. If there is one thing anyone that has watched the news for two minutes can be sure of, is that those buses caught in the flood were in the city of New Orleans and were municiple buses.

Not for nuthin', but I believe Ty's comment about the photos was a global one directed at Penske's years of photoshopping, rather than a literal one declaring that there' can't be any submerged buses in New Orleans. Be in the presence of Penske posts over a long enough period of time, and your willingness to accept or believe any image that he posts drops at a roughly constant rate.

Carry on.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Not for nuthin', but I believe Ty's comment about the photos was a global one directed at Penske's years of photoshopping, rather than a literal one declaring that there' can't be any submerged buses in New Orleans. Be in the presence of Penske posts over a long enough period of time, and your willingness to accept or believe any image that he posts drops at a roughly constant rate.

Carry on.

Then why is he still asking about a substantive news article about the Buses? Nice try, but you have to face the fact that he is that unbelievably biased that he could doubt the truth of a real picture that has been everywhere in the news but accept obscure Blog posts as if they are the irrefutable truth.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Who said they didn't? The accusation made here is that by Friday, when it was clear that the federal response was, shall we say, lacking, Blanco screwed the pooch by failing to let the federal government "coordinate" by taking the whole damn operation over. That's not coordination. Indeed, that's a tacit suggestion that FEMA was fucking up the coordination so badly that they had to trying something completely different.

Blanco was shouting through Monday that the Bush admin was trying to wrest "control" away from her, thus asserting that she was, supposedly, in control up to that point. Certainly you aren't suggesting that last week evidenced planning & coordination of any sort? That the situation was completely out of anyone's control seemed to be exactly the problem. Perhaps it was an inevitable one given the scale of the disaster, but I don't think the level of chaos & breakdown broadcast 24/7 on TV was inevitable.

It's one of the beauties, or anachronistic inefficiencies, as you please, of our federal system. The Feds can't respond until requested to do so by the state authorities, and even then, unless and until the Feds take over, the State is in charge of coordinating and deploying the requested resources. The Nat. Guard, police, troops, trucks, etc. were supposed to be under Blanco's direction. If she couldn't hack it, or if her command infrastructure was too damaged to permit her to coordinate, she needed to turn it over to someone who (in theory) could do it. She didn't, and fought the issue when the Feds tried to put things under military command - probably, frankly, the only institution with a strong enough command & organizational system to keep it together in such a situation.

For a week people have been complaining mostly about the red tape, lack of communication, lack of direction, etc. I've been hearing a lot more about the failure to get troops, vehicles & resources anywhere near the people they are supposed to help than in there being no resources available - as others have noted, trucks of water & food, flotilas of drs, etc., were trying to get to the area but couldn't get in. The local military bases were (per CNN yesterday) put on alert the weekend before the storm hit, and were reportedly pissed as hell that no one deployed them while chaos errupted on TV (because that would be the equivalent of martial law, per Blanco, who's alternative to martial law was to issue "any means necessary" shoot-to-kill orders to the police to establish order).

I am certainly not saying that, had FEMA/the Feds been properly in charge things would have gone much better, but at least it would have been centralized, which might have helped even in the face of rampant incompetence.