President at 5pm

[Art_Monk]

The President will be addressing the nation at 5 pm in regards to the aftermath of Katrina.

[crazyhorse1]

The President will be addressing the nation at 5 pm in regards to the aftermath of Katrina.

Fairy tale time.

[Chris Luva Luva]

I have a lot of questions about this whole ordeal...

Is it true that Bush didn't address this issue personally until 2 days afterwards?

[Art_Monk]

I am not sure he addressed the issue publicly until two days after, but he did cut his vacation short. What you have to remember is that the the situation in New Orleans did not get nasty until 36hrs after the storm had passed. After the storm everyone thought they got lucky. It was when the levee broke that N.O. was done in.

[cvillehog]

but he did cut his vacation short.

To attend a political fundraising event.

[skins81]

I have a lot of questions about this whole ordeal...

Is it true that Bush didn't address this issue personally until 2 days afterwards?

There's going to be a lot of spin, but here is my main point.

The President is supposed to know things before I do. I knew landfall was going to between New Orleans and Gulfport, and that these areas were going to be hit. They knew New Orleans had about 100,000 people unaccounted for in terms of evacuation plans if it became really bad.
So he goes to the ranch on vacation.
And days go by and he decides then he will cut his vacation short.
Now he is going to lead the investigation as to why there was a slow response time?
All the Bush supporters can bash me, but I think the guys just a bad leader. He should have been addressing the country from day one.

[skinsfano28]

he visited new orleans one day, and was in arizona the next playing golf.

[patjam77]

I have a lot of questions about this whole ordeal...

Is it true that Bush didn't address this issue personally until 2 days afterwards?

There's going to be a lot of spin, but here is my main point.

The President is supposed to know things before I do. I knew landfall was going to between New Orleans and Gulfport, and that these areas were going to be hit. They knew New Orleans had about 100,000 people unaccounted for in terms of evacuation plans if it became really bad.
So he goes to the ranch on vacation.
And days go by and he decides then he will cut his vacation short.
Now he is going to lead the investigation as to why there was a slow response time?
All the Bush supporters can bash me, but I think the guys just a bad leader. He should have been addressing the country from day one.

Let's face it... he's a joke.

[BernieSki]

A friend of mine sent me this, it is a little long but worth the read.

Last week in this space, I wrote how I was disappointed in George W. Bush to some degree, for being a bit behind the curve in providing federal assistance to New Orleans. While some of this sentiment remains, I am blown away at how over the top certain elements of the Democratic left and the MSM are taking this. Furthermore, as a rational human being, I am able to amend opinions based upon facts – many of these facts only became known to me by watching the news and reading articles over the long weekend. Here’s what I found.
Here’s Ten Things you perhaps did not know, that might make you think differently about exactly who is “at fault” for “all of this.” (Two overly-general, and constantly thrown around terms I’ve heard all week.)
1. In the case of Katrina, there was huge fleet of school buses the mayor could have dispatched to aid in evacuating people unable to leave on their own. Instead, the buses sat in parking lots that later flooded, making them unusable when tens of thousands were stranded in the flooded city.
2. One of the primary reasons why the National Guard did not arrive sooner, was the fact that the Governor (Katherine “Cry, Cry, For Us..” Blanco) HAD TO ASK for the troops from the federal government, and that she refused at first, fearing that it would “complicate” the security situation on the ground. Contrary to popular belief, the President does NOT command the National Guard in any state. State governors do. Until she authorizes the Guard to be “federalized” they can’t do anything at the behest of the president. Such niggling details.
3. Though the city's crime rate is ten times the national average, U.S. news outlets downplayed the connection between New Orleans' outsized criminal element and delays in rescue efforts. Even as murder rates continued to decline in other cities in recent years, the murder rate in New Orleans crept up. The police were plagued by allegations of corruption and brutality, and, according to The Associated Press, only had ''3.14 officers per 1,000 residents - less than half the rate in Washington, D.C.''
4. Though the U.N.'s own top official for disaster relief has called Katrina one of "the largest, most destructive natural disasters ever," shamefully only a handful of nations – at last count just 25 nations of the 191 countries in the United Nations – have come forward to offer assistance.
5. Guess who IMPLORED Governor Kleenex to issue a rare MANDATORY evacuation of the city BEFORE the Hurricane struck, saving tens of thousands of lives? That’s right, the Dunce In Chief, George W. Bush.
6. The same guy who Kanye West claims “doesn’t care about black people” has more black people in higher positions of authority in his cabinet than Bill Clinton had in two terms. Pesky facts.
7. Despite a modest cut in funding to the Army Corp. of Engineers and the levee projects in New Orleans, the Corps admitted last week that the two levees which failed were both complete and in “good condition” and not part of the levees that were targeted for improvement.
8. I love how people say that Bush should have “known this was coming” and done more to avert it. Well sure, I suppose, but how about the f’ing Mayor and Governor taking a beating first? Go to www.nola.com and read about the 5-Part series written by the Times Picayune in 2002 (FIVE PARTS!) that basically laid out this disaster in shockingly accurate detail well in advance. How about the fact that the city and its leaders learned almost NOTHING from what was a dress-rehearsal last summer on Hurricane Ivan. Even lesser hurricane Georges in 1998 did a lot of flooding damage in parts of the city. But yeah, it’s Bush’s fault.
9. No matter how long it took for rescue buses to arrive, how can you combat the off-the-charts ignorance of the following snippet from a news article. When asked if he was glad to see rescue workers finally arrive, a man said: "Hell no, I'm not glad to see them. They should have been here days ago. I ain't glad to see 'em. I'll be glad when 100 buses show up," said 46-year-old Michael Levy, whose words were echoed by those around him yelling, "Hell, yeah! Hell yeah!" "We've been sleeping on the ... ground like rats," Levy said. "I say burn this whole ... city down." REACT: Why yes indeed, burn that sucker down! And then we’ll blame George W. Bush!
10. In the end, some 100,000 estimated people were evacuated from a major metropolitan city that was 80% flooded with toxic waters. All told, there will be far less than the ESTIMATED 10,000 to 25,000 deaths predicted by government agencies in their simulated “models” of a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans on the nose. This was done under the strain of a hostile criminal element in the city that went unchecked by local police. This was done under the strain of a mayor and governor that made both critical mistakes in the early hours of the crisis.
Do I think we could have done better? Sure. But what exactly would have been “par” for such an unprecedented, dangerous, and complicated evacuation? Three days? Two? BOTTOM LINE IS THAT AS AMERICANS, OUR TWO BIGGEST FAULTS ARE IMPATIENCE AND ARROGANCE. We somehow expected our president to unleash a fleet of magic red carpets to somehow whisk away an entire inner-city in time for our re-runs of “Friends” at 7 p.m. We have the arrogance to believe that nothing bad should ever happen to America, and that such calamity only happens to “other countries.”
Here’s my challenge to any critic, or any other nation talking *sh$t* about “how can America not take care of its own refugees better than this. I’ll challenge any other country, or any other administration with the following.
Pick a large, mostly poor, urban city and flood it with water to 80%. Knockout all power, all telephone communication (land line and cell), and water. Make sure that hundreds of city owned emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire engines are stranded in waist deep water. Take out several key bridges leading into the city. Make sure that you have no good place to put the 100,000 people you are taking out of the city, except for one place that holds about 20,000. Make sure that place is 350 miles away. Make sure your hardened criminal/drug element of the city has free reign to loot and terrorize in the first 48 hours. Be sure to remember that this same element will murder cops, shoot at firemen, and even try to shoot down relief helicopters. Set some buildings on fire and a chemical plant, just to make it interesting. Then set daytime temperature to 93 degrees with humidity.
Okay, you’ve got everything in place, ready to go? You’ve got a thousand or more buses, all staffed with qualified drivers, all of them with a full tank of gas, and all of them with the necessary police escort to keep from getting hijacked once in the city? Good. Now, you’ve got the National Guard all ready, prepared to swoop into the flooded city and restore “order” – even though the minute one of them shoots a gun-toting looter beating up an old woman in a wheelchair, there will be a national outcry the likes that has never been heard? Make sure that a considerable amount of the people left in the city, are refusing to leave, saying they have nowhere else to go.
Good. Get started. I’ll sit here with my stopwatch, and see how quick and smoothly it will go with perfect “preparation” for such an enormous task.
The biggest disgrace in all of this, is that there are THOUSANDS of true heroes doing unbelievable work, and they are being completely ignored by the “instant media blame game” and the utterly inflammatory “professional race-baiters.” There are helicopter pilots flying nonstop in dangerous conditions. Doctors keeping people alive by hand-ventilating them for a week. Police trying to keep a city in chaos from completely imploding. Average citizens, wading through a hellish soup of toxins and dangers to pull fellow citizens to safety. If you read enough on the web, and see enough photos like I have, you’ll see lots of whites helping blacks and blacks helping whites.
While I believe that last week was not our country’s finest hour, it was certainly not our worst. We did the best we could, given human imperfections and less than flawless local leadership. Thousands sacrificed their time, money, and sometimes lives to help others. And while the first response will be debated for a long time, I am confident that the follow through efforts this week, the next, and many weeks after that will showcase America’s better qualities.
Money will be offered generously. Homes will be opened to those who are displaced. Care will be given by those who know how. Let the critics and cynics say what they want. Those who matter in this relief effort, are probably too busy helping out to even care.

[DEHog]

A friend of mine sent me this, it is a little long but worth the read.

Last week in this space, I wrote how I was disappointed in George W. Bush to some degree, for being a bit behind the curve in providing federal assistance to New Orleans. While some of this sentiment remains, I am blown away at how over the top certain elements of the Democratic left and the MSM are taking this. Furthermore, as a rational human being, I am able to amend opinions based upon facts – many of these facts only became known to me by watching the news and reading articles over the long weekend. Here’s what I found.
Here’s Ten Things you perhaps did not know, that might make you think differently about exactly who is “at fault” for “all of this.” (Two overly-general, and constantly thrown around terms I’ve heard all week.)
1. In the case of Katrina, there was huge fleet of school buses the mayor could have dispatched to aid in evacuating people unable to leave on their own. Instead, the buses sat in parking lots that later flooded, making them unusable when tens of thousands were stranded in the flooded city.
2. One of the primary reasons why the National Guard did not arrive sooner, was the fact that the Governor (Katherine “Cry, Cry, For Us..” Blanco) HAD TO ASK for the troops from the federal government, and that she refused at first, fearing that it would “complicate” the security situation on the ground. Contrary to popular belief, the President does NOT command the National Guard in any state. State governors do. Until she authorizes the Guard to be “federalized” they can’t do anything at the behest of the president. Such niggling details.
3. Though the city's crime rate is ten times the national average, U.S. news outlets downplayed the connection between New Orleans' outsized criminal element and delays in rescue efforts. Even as murder rates continued to decline in other cities in recent years, the murder rate in New Orleans crept up. The police were plagued by allegations of corruption and brutality, and, according to The Associated Press, only had ''3.14 officers per 1,000 residents - less than half the rate in Washington, D.C.''
4. Though the U.N.'s own top official for disaster relief has called Katrina one of "the largest, most destructive natural disasters ever," shamefully only a handful of nations – at last count just 25 nations of the 191 countries in the United Nations – have come forward to offer assistance.
5. Guess who IMPLORED Governor Kleenex to issue a rare MANDATORY evacuation of the city BEFORE the Hurricane struck, saving tens of thousands of lives? That’s right, the Dunce In Chief, George W. Bush.
6. The same guy who Kanye West claims “doesn’t care about black people” has more black people in higher positions of authority in his cabinet than Bill Clinton had in two terms. Pesky facts.
7. Despite a modest cut in funding to the Army Corp. of Engineers and the levee projects in New Orleans, the Corps admitted last week that the two levees which failed were both complete and in “good condition” and not part of the levees that were targeted for improvement.
8. I love how people say that Bush should have “known this was coming” and done more to avert it. Well sure, I suppose, but how about the f’ing Mayor and Governor taking a beating first? Go to www.nola.com and read about the 5-Part series written by the Times Picayune in 2002 (FIVE PARTS!) that basically laid out this disaster in shockingly accurate detail well in advance. How about the fact that the city and its leaders learned almost NOTHING from what was a dress-rehearsal last summer on Hurricane Ivan. Even lesser hurricane Georges in 1998 did a lot of flooding damage in parts of the city. But yeah, it’s Bush’s fault.
9. No matter how long it took for rescue buses to arrive, how can you combat the off-the-charts ignorance of the following snippet from a news article. When asked if he was glad to see rescue workers finally arrive, a man said: "Hell no, I'm not glad to see them. They should have been here days ago. I ain't glad to see 'em. I'll be glad when 100 buses show up," said 46-year-old Michael Levy, whose words were echoed by those around him yelling, "Hell, yeah! Hell yeah!" "We've been sleeping on the ... ground like rats," Levy said. "I say burn this whole ... city down." REACT: Why yes indeed, burn that sucker down! And then we’ll blame George W. Bush!
10. In the end, some 100,000 estimated people were evacuated from a major metropolitan city that was 80% flooded with toxic waters. All told, there will be far less than the ESTIMATED 10,000 to 25,000 deaths predicted by government agencies in their simulated “models” of a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans on the nose. This was done under the strain of a hostile criminal element in the city that went unchecked by local police. This was done under the strain of a mayor and governor that made both critical mistakes in the early hours of the crisis.
Do I think we could have done better? Sure. But what exactly would have been “par” for such an unprecedented, dangerous, and complicated evacuation? Three days? Two? BOTTOM LINE IS THAT AS AMERICANS, OUR TWO BIGGEST FAULTS ARE IMPATIENCE AND ARROGANCE. We somehow expected our president to unleash a fleet of magic red carpets to somehow whisk away an entire inner-city in time for our re-runs of “Friends” at 7 p.m. We have the arrogance to believe that nothing bad should ever happen to America, and that such calamity only happens to “other countries.”
Here’s my challenge to any critic, or any other nation talking *sh$t* about “how can America not take care of its own refugees better than this. I’ll challenge any other country, or any other administration with the following.
Pick a large, mostly poor, urban city and flood it with water to 80%. Knockout all power, all telephone communication (land line and cell), and water. Make sure that hundreds of city owned emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire engines are stranded in waist deep water. Take out several key bridges leading into the city. Make sure that you have no good place to put the 100,000 people you are taking out of the city, except for one place that holds about 20,000. Make sure that place is 350 miles away. Make sure your hardened criminal/drug element of the city has free reign to loot and terrorize in the first 48 hours. Be sure to remember that this same element will murder cops, shoot at firemen, and even try to shoot down relief helicopters. Set some buildings on fire and a chemical plant, just to make it interesting. Then set daytime temperature to 93 degrees with humidity.
Okay, you’ve got everything in place, ready to go? You’ve got a thousand or more buses, all staffed with qualified drivers, all of them with a full tank of gas, and all of them with the necessary police escort to keep from getting hijacked once in the city? Good. Now, you’ve got the National Guard all ready, prepared to swoop into the flooded city and restore “order” – even though the minute one of them shoots a gun-toting looter beating up an old woman in a wheelchair, there will be a national outcry the likes that has never been heard? Make sure that a considerable amount of the people left in the city, are refusing to leave, saying they have nowhere else to go.
Good. Get started. I’ll sit here with my stopwatch, and see how quick and smoothly it will go with perfect “preparation” for such an enormous task.
The biggest disgrace in all of this, is that there are THOUSANDS of true heroes doing unbelievable work, and they are being completely ignored by the “instant media blame game” and the utterly inflammatory “professional race-baiters.” There are helicopter pilots flying nonstop in dangerous conditions. Doctors keeping people alive by hand-ventilating them for a week. Police trying to keep a city in chaos from completely imploding. Average citizens, wading through a hellish soup of toxins and dangers to pull fellow citizens to safety. If you read enough on the web, and see enough photos like I have, you’ll see lots of whites helping blacks and blacks helping whites.
While I believe that last week was not our country’s finest hour, it was certainly not our worst. We did the best we could, given human imperfections and less than flawless local leadership. Thousands sacrificed their time, money, and sometimes lives to help others. And while the first response will be debated for a long time, I am confident that the follow through efforts this week, the next, and many weeks after that will showcase America’s better qualities.
Money will be offered generously. Homes will be opened to those who are displaced. Care will be given by those who know how. Let the critics and cynics say what they want. Those who matter in this relief effort, are probably too busy helping out to even care.

[JansenFan]

Very nice Bernie. Where, may I ask, did your friend get that from? (feel free to PM the answer if you don't want to post it).

[Irn-Bru]

5. Guess who IMPLORED Governor Kleenex to issue a rare MANDATORY evacuation of the city BEFORE the Hurricane struck, saving tens of thousands of lives? That’s right, the Dunce In Chief, George W. Bush.

I am not familiar with this. (If it is true, crazyhorse must have simply missed it. . .) Is there a good link / source to show that this is true?

[BernieSki]

Where it came from will supprise you, Steve P. Czaban at czabe.com. Yes this is the same Steve Czaban that is on Sports Talk 980 with the Sports Reporters.

http://czabe.com/daily/archives/2005/09 ... _wind.html

[Hoss]

FEMA cheif relieved of Katrina duties..
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/

[King Cali Skin 2]

This is what Bush gets for being so pro corporate welfare.

Enron, 9/11, Iraq, Tsumani, N.O. more to come

[JPFair]

There's only one thing missing from this report. One third of the entire New Orelans Police Department did not report for duty the day after the evacuation order was issued. In fact, two of them have committed suicide rather than face the cowardice labels that have been attached to them.

[Art_Monk]

FEMA cheif relieved of Katrina duties..
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/

The guy finally stepped down. He was a day late and a dollar short.