← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 19924 | Posts: 51 | Started: 2005-09-01
2005-09-01 05:31 | User Profile
September 1, 2005 How New Orleans Was Lost by Paul Craig Roberts
Chalk up the city of New Orleans as a cost of Bush's Iraq war.
There were not enough helicopters to repair the breached levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guardsmen available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting.
The situation is the same in Mississippi.
The National Guard and helicopters are off on a fool's mission in Iraq.
The National Guard is in Iraq because fanatical neoconservatives in the Bush administration were determined to invade the Middle East and because incompetent Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refused to listen to the generals, who told him there were not enough regular troops available to do the job.
After the invasion, the arrogant Rumsfeld found out that the generals were right. The National Guard was called up to fill in the gaping gaps.
Now the Guardsmen, trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, are watching on TV the families they left behind trapped by rising waters and wondering if the floating bodies are family members. None know where their dislocated families are, but, shades of Fallujah, they do see their destroyed homes.
The mayor of New Orleans was counting on helicopters to put in place massive sandbags to repair the levee. However, someone called the few helicopters away to rescue people from rooftops. The rising water overwhelmed the massive pumping stations, and New Orleans disappeared under deep water.
What a terrible casualty of the Iraqi war ââ¬â one of our oldest and most beautiful cities, a famous city, a historic city.
Distracted by its phony war on terrorism, the U.S. government had made no preparations in the event Hurricane Katrina brought catastrophe to New Orleans. No contingency plan existed. Only now after the disaster are FEMA and the Corps of Engineers trying to assemble the material and equipment to save New Orleans from the fate of Atlantis.
Even worse, articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and public statements by emergency management chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the Bush administration slashed the funding for the Corps of Engineers' projects to strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted the money to the Iraq war.
Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 8, 2004): "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Why can't the U.S. government focus on America's needs and leave other countries alone? Why are American troops in Iraq instead of protecting our own borders from a mass invasion by illegal immigrants? Why are American helicopters blowing up Iraqi homes instead of saving American homes in New Orleans?
How can the Bush administration be so incompetent as to expose Americans at home to dire risks by exhausting American resources in foolish foreign adventures? What kind of "homeland security" is this?
All Bush has achieved by invading Iraq is to kill and wound thousands of people while destroying America's reputation. The only beneficiaries are oil companies capitalizing on a good excuse to jack up the price of gasoline and Osama bin Laden's recruitment.
What we have is a Republican war for oil company profits while New Orleans sinks beneath the waters.
On the day Katrina devastated New Orleans, America lost its most optimistic pundit, Jude Wanniski, who died of a heart attack at age 69. Jude often misplaced his optimism, but he was never without it. Jude never gave up on anyone and would invest his persuasive talents on everyone who would listen and even on those who wouldn't. Jude was not an economist, but he understood long before most economists that fiscal policy changed incentives and affected aggregate supply in contrast to the Keynesian emphasis on aggregate demand. Jude rose to fame as the publicist for supply-side economics. As a journalist, he was a natural. Robert Bartley, the Wall Street Journal editorial page editor, once told me that Jude had the best nose for news of any journalist he had ever known. Those he favored with his missives will miss his insights. [url]http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=7131[/url] ======================== I heard earlier the claim about the levees and held off on judgement until I had a source I could trust. I believe Roberts. This is just one more reason why the two sons of bitches at the top of the executive branch need to be impeached and convicted.
2005-09-01 08:03 | User Profile
Very good article Sert. Too bad paleo's don't have a way of publicizing stuff like this.
2005-09-01 11:38 | User Profile
It should further be noted that the degradation of the wetlands to the south of New Orleans, to the extent they barely were in existence when Katrina hit, meant that those miles of densely populated (with flora & fauna, that is), ultra-biodiverse, brackish marshes (often used as spawning grounds for both ocean & fresh water marine life) were not only lost to the benefit of the natural world (you know, our only significant possession), but could also no longer serve as a buffer zone between New Orleans and the Gulf, as it had in the past (hurricanes rapidly lose strength when passing over non-oceanic terrain, so to speak; the marshes to the south of New Orleans had shielded the "Big Easy" by reducing the intensity of incoming hurricanes and tropical storms many times in the past, but absent marshes are no more effective than absent National Guard units).
I'm not certain what happened to the marshes to the south of New Orleans (I only know the Governor of Louisiana was lamenting the fact they were no longer there to act as a natural defense against marine storms), but how much do you want to bet that the very same multinational corporate gangster class, the one which delights in cheap, Mestizo labor from Latin America, Chinese slave labor-produced imports, outsourcing formerly American jobs to India, and which owns & controls the petroleum industry (which along with Al-Qaeda, the Zionists, Khurdish nationalists, Shi'ite Fundamentalists, the government of Iran, and the defense industry - also the property of this pernicious class - are one of the seven entities, all of which are hostile to authentic American national interests to one extent or another, which actually benefit from this otherwise suicidally insane, Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz imperialist misadventure in Mesopotamia), that somehow was able to turn a profit at the expense of those southern Louisiana marshes, and the myriad forms of life dependent on them for their survival (including, it seems, several thousand residents of the city of New Orleans)? I wonder what capitalist puppet bribe recipient(s), no doubt masquerading as "conservatives," saw fit to de-conserve those evidently vital wetlands?
Oh, but caring about the environment makes me a commie. Sean Hannity says so every day, after all. What was I thinking?
2005-09-01 11:53 | User Profile
The MSM is definitely playing down Negro misbehaviour.
Another issue that doesn't seem to be getting much press is the actual bodycount.
It looks like hundreds of people were killed. This may have been the worst single disaster in our history.
And as PCR points out, it all could have been avoided by a government more concerned about Americans and their interests than illegal and immoral foreign adventures.
Is that whole angle being downplayed?
Are they preparing us psychologically for a horrific bodycount?
2005-09-01 11:59 | User Profile
It'll be interesting to see if the US receives any foriegn aid to "[I]help us in our time of need[/I]."
Remember the tsunami incident of not too long ago?
2005-09-01 12:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kevin_O'Keeffe] Oh, but caring about the environment makes me a commie. Sean Hannity says so every day, after all. What was I thinking?[/QUOTE] I heard a few minutes of Limbaugh yesterday, and he was ridiculing a scientist who said that global warming could have contributed to the increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes in recent years, and that we should, therefore, reduce our use of fossil fuels. Limbaugh was saying that we should (brace yourself for the non sequitur of the year) increase our use of fossil fuels. He seemed to think that if we conserved energy, then the hurricanes would have won.
2005-09-01 12:30 | User Profile
Should the US expect foreign aid from a world body that was arrogantly ridiculed, openly mocked, and perniciously lied to on our way to an illegal, immoral, destructive war in Iraq?
PCR is pretty much stating the obvious, which of course, needs to be said anyway. Anyone with eyes to see can see that America's infrastructure is woefully inadequate in ratio to it's population needs and also inadequate to nature's wrath.
The country is crumbling folks and I expect that within a year or two the Collapse that we've been talking about here for years is about to happen.
It's been way too long that this country has lived a huge lie without a reckoning to occur. Our leaders are non-persons, empty suits who sell out America's future year after year after year. It can't go on any longer.
Peace be with you all.
2005-09-01 12:52 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]Limbaugh was saying that we should (brace yourself for the non sequitur of the year) increase our use of fossil fuels. He seemed to think that if we conserved energy, then the hurricanes would have won.[/QUOTE]
Well, that's what happens when you try and stuff 500 lbs. of shit into a 250 lb. sack....
2005-09-01 14:19 | User Profile
It looks like the bodycount will go into the[URL=http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050901/ts_nm/weather_katrina_dead_dc_1;_ylt=Aque8nMsydkSZk617BgdsGgbLisB;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl] thousands[/URL].
God help those poor people.
2005-09-01 14:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]He seemed to think that if we conserved energy, then the hurricanes would have won.[/QUOTE]
So, you're either "with us or with the hurricanes?"
[quote=Kevin O'Keefe]Well, that's what happens when you try and stuff 500 lbs. of shit into a 250 lb. sack....
At least feces can be used as fertilizer. Not sure what Limpbaugh could be used for, other than perhaps plugging leaks in the levees surrounding NOLA, though the pollution oozing from him might cause more problems than it would solve.
2005-09-01 15:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE][B]Not sure what Limpbaugh could be used for,[/B] other than perhaps plugging leaks in the levees surrounding NOLA, though the pollution oozing from him might cause more problems than it would solve.[/QUOTE] A target.
If this story grows legs, I wonder how Limbaugh and stupid Sean will spin it?
2005-09-01 15:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE=MadScienceType]So, you're either "with us or with the hurricanes?"[/QUOTE] Exactly. Get ready for Bush to declare a War on Nature, which, along with the War on Drugs and War on Terror, will comprise the overall War on Reality.
2005-09-01 16:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]Exactly. Get ready for Bush to declare a War on Nature, which, along with the War on Drugs and War on Terror, will comprise the overall War on Reality.[/QUOTE]
George W. Bush is the worst disgrace to the oval office in the last century, if not in all of US history. Bottom line.
And a thanks to PCR and others like him for exposing this incompetent fraud, so that perhaps with hindsight more people will spit on the memory of his so-called Presidency. This will be his legacy :
There were not enough helicopters to repair the breached levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guardsmen available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting.
The situation is the same in Mississippi.
The National Guard and helicopters are off on a fool's mission in Iraq.
Even worse, articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and public statements by emergency management chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the Bush administration slashed the funding for the Corps of Engineers' projects to strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted the money to the Iraq war.
2005-09-01 16:54 | User Profile
Sert
I lke the article, however, it is not air tight.
The unknown budgetary and authorization question, now forever unknowable in any certainty, is:
IF the decision had [u]not[/u] been made (Not P) THEN would the budgetary authority to upgrade the levee's needs been made and executed in a timely fashion (Then Q)
or
THEN would the money and effort on time still not have arrived in time for Katrina? (Then not Q)
One has to account for the process of politics as usual to influence the outcome of that logic puzzle or decision tree.
To presume that money spent on a war (which gets these multi billion supplementals from Congress on borrowed money) would have been made available and agreed and authorized in a Congress where any other state's needs are considered "pork" is an assumption I cannot in good faith make, nor should anyone with a critical eye. This is not intended as any defense of a decision not to fund the Army Corps of Engineers and their effrots, which year after year consist of lists of projects, not all of which are funded.
As I said in the other thread, one of the few real, necessary functions of government is infrastructure. In my dream of a perfect world, public works like the Dikes in Holland or the Levee on Lake P or major highways and bridges are required collective effort for a government with any shred of intent to serve, rather than sheep shear, its people.
AE
[QUOTE=Sertorius]September 1, 2005 How New Orleans Was Lost by Paul Craig Roberts
Chalk up the city of New Orleans as a cost of Bush's Iraq war.
There were not enough helicopters to repair the breached levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guardsmen available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting. [/QUOTE] As to the helicoptre problem, the Sky Cranes went away a long time ago, and most of those units were reserve units as well.
2005-09-01 17:01 | User Profile
AY,
After some soul searching I have to re-think my views of the Carter Administration. I used to think they were the most inept in American history. Compared to the Bush Administration they look like greatest geniuses of all times.
2005-09-01 17:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]AY,
After some soul searching I have to re-think my views of the Carter Administration. I used to think they were the most inept in American history. Compared to the Bush Administration they look like greatest geniuses of all times.[/QUOTE]
Sert, me too. Jimmy Carter might've been inept, but he wasn't arrogant and condescending, IMO.
I'm with AY. George W Bush is the wort president in US history. Arrogant, ignorant, loathsome, unqualified, all wrapped up in one.
2005-09-01 17:20 | User Profile
| Originally Posted by **MadScienceType** *So, you're either "with us or with the hurricanes?"* |
[QUOTE]Quantrill: Exactly. Get ready for Bush to declare a War on Nature, which, along with the War on Drugs and War on Terror, will comprise the overall [u]War on Reality[/u].[/QUOTE] Good one. :cool:
Anti Yuppie:
It could be as you say, however, the irony of the National Guard and for that matter any Military assistance capability is that a portion of it and the PEOPLE WHO ARE IN THE UNITS live in or near New Orleans. I think the Marines just lost a Reserve Helicopter Wing's (Group's?) infrastructure and capability. The unit is/was based out of New Orleans. Not sure if they are deployed to Iraq or not as of now.
I would hope that Guard commanders could force compliance of the evacuate order for all reservists, or most of them, so that they'd be ready to do their thing to help(were they not in Iraq) but I wonder at the reality. Might depend from unit to unit.
There used to be a round out armored or mech brigade at Fort Polk, not sure if they were outsized, down sized, or in Iraq. That could be the 5000 men mentioned in some of the articles on this matter.
[url="http://www.jrtc-polk.army.mil/"]http://www.jrtc-polk.army.mil/[/url]
I'd guess that a bunch of folks at that training base have been scrambled to help, but someone in Washington/Pentagon has got to be pulling their hair out to balance the need to send troops and material to help in New Orleans, and to keep the training going to prep folks to go . . . to . . . Iraq. :dry:
I suspect that even without a war in Iraq, given the size of the disaster, people would still be carping about the timeliness of the reaction. When something this bad hits and happens, it overwhelms even advanced capability of Man to handle Nature in the short run. Infrastructure comments elsewhere.
For those who claim there was no plan?
Wrong.
The Governor's evacuation order was part of his FEMA or State emergency action plan. Thank goodness he gave that order, and that so many heeded it.
Back in the 90's, I did some work on a contingency plan, that may be on the shelf still for all I know, based on the New Madrid Fault giving a big shake. We were looking at drawing support from military units as far away from the Mississippi as Fort Carson, Colorado and Fort Drum, New York.
A plan is just that, a plan. When it makes contact with reality, it always has to be changed to fit conditions with resources available. Uh oh, here we return to the 'resources available' being in a war that would be "done in two years?" (Depends on which public utterance one heard in 2002/2003 time frame.)
Your frustration is certainly justifiable.
AE [url="http://www.jrtc-polk.army.mil/"]http://www.jrtc-polk.army.mil/[/url] [QUOTE=AntiYuppie]George W. Bush is the worst disgrace to the oval office in the last century, if not in all of US history. Bottom line.[/QUOTE]That may be true, or not, I don't much care. The scope and scale of this Natural Disaster is a product of twenty to thirty years of deliberately ignoring infrastructure as too expensive or "pork." That policy was set and executed in Washington by both parties, by multiple presidents, and the Governors fumed while less and less federal aid money drizzled down as taxes were cut.
The states were left to fend for themselves, with critical exceptions, like Boston MA needing better roads and trains (at 17 billion and growing) around Boston. :wallbash: The Big Dig.
AE
2005-09-01 17:27 | User Profile
AE,
The unit you have been reading about is the 256 Inf. Bde. (Mech) LANG. There are 5000 of them in Iraq. The unit from MS in Iraq is the 155 Armd Bde, MSNG.
2005-09-01 20:03 | User Profile
Editor and Publisher
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
By Will Bunch
Published: August 31, 2005 9:00 PM ET
PHILADELPHIAEven though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.
New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside. HURRICANE COVERAGE
* Editor of Biloxi Paper Surfaces With a Column
* 'Times-Picayune' Finds New Home, Reports Looting
* For 'St. Pete Times,' Katrina Coverage is a Test of Preparedness
* Baton Rouge Paper Rides Out the Storm
* Biloxi Paper Perseveres
* Hurricane Blog, Day 3
* Hurricane Blog, Day 2
* Hurricane Blog, Day 1
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.
On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:
"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."
The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.
The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.
There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:
"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."
The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.
One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.
The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."
Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be." Will Bunch (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 when he reported for Newsday. Much of this article also appears on his blog, Attytood, at the Daily News.
Links referenced within this article
Editor of Biloxi Paper Surfaces With a Column [url]http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051377[/url] 'Times-Picayune' Finds New Home, Reports Looting [url]http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051261[/url] For 'St. Pete Times,' Katrina Coverage is a Test of Preparedness [url]http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051260[/url] Baton Rouge Paper Rides Out the Storm [url]http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050992[/url] Biloxi Paper Perseveres [url]http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050989[/url] Hurricane Blog, Day 3 [url]http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051366[/url] Hurricane Blog, Day 2 [url]http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050692[/url] Hurricane Blog, Day 1 [url]http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050184[/url] [email]letters@editorandpublisher.com[/email] mailto:letters@editorandpublisher.com
Find this article at: [url]http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313[/url]
é 2005 VNU eMedia Inc. All rights reserved. [url]http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313[/url] ======================== Remember this when Congress rolls over and gives Israel $2.2 billion for resettling the squatlers.
2005-09-01 23:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]AY,
After some soul searching I have to re-think my views of the Carter Administration. I used to think they were the most inept in American history. Compared to the Bush Administration they look like greatest geniuses of all times.[/QUOTE]
Well, Sert & AY,
Baby Bush has managed to make Jimmy look like an economic genius; Harding a paragon of probity; Ford an intellectual giant; McKinley a selfless populist and Grant a beacon of unqualified virtue.
Once this vicious chimp gets nabbed porking some Tel Aviv tidbit he'll renew Bill Clinton's moral standing as well... :lol:
2005-09-02 00:07 | User Profile
Howard,
Bush has the Midas touch in reverse. Everything he touches turns to :dung: Seriously, I think that there is damn little that our President Clouseau has done without leaving a big damn mess for someone else to clean up. And to think, we still have over three years left with this dumbass.
2005-09-02 00:15 | User Profile
Well, at least we can name former New Orleans after W. "The Bush Bayou".
2005-09-02 00:19 | User Profile
[QUOTE]"The Bush Bayou".[/QUOTE] That's good.
2005-09-02 00:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Macrobius]Well, at least we can name former New Orleans after W. "The Bush Bayou".[/QUOTE]
I like "New Mogadishu".
2005-09-02 05:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]President Clouseau [/QUOTE]:D
2005-09-02 13:04 | User Profile
[QUOTE=MadScienceType]At least feces can be used as fertilizer. Not sure what Limpbaugh could be used for, other than perhaps plugging leaks in the levees surrounding NOLA, though the pollution oozing from him might cause more problems than it would solve.[/QUOTE]
Yes, I apologize for unfairly deriding fecal matter; comparing actual, stench-prone shit to Rush Limbaugh was really a low blow on my part. I mean, after all, what great injustice has crapola ever perpetrated against me?
I'm forced to hang my head in shame.
In so far as Limbaugh is concerned, once he has assumed room temperarture (please let that be soon, both for esthetic, as well as national political considerations), we could always grind him up and feed him to the chickens. That should help our nation produce another couple of dozen pounds of poultry, i.e. something worth about 50,000,000 times as much as Limbaugh can ever aspire to amount to.
Besides, I like a good chicken cordon bleu....
2005-09-02 13:11 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]After some soul searching I have to re-think my views of the Carter Administration. I used to think they were the most inept in American history. Compared to the Bush Administration they look like greatest geniuses of all times.[/QUOTE]
Carter was certainly inept, yet noy nearly as destructive as an LBJ, FDR, Woodrow Wilson, or Harry Truman. Bush is at least as inept as Carter, yet overall a MUCH WORSE President. Ay least Carter read, travelled, and had some degree of intellectual curiousity....
2005-09-02 13:30 | User Profile
Kevin,
Please note my use of the word "inept". When it comes to the most destructive to Constitutional priciples and non-intervention I'd have to give that award to the Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR administrations.
2005-09-02 16:59 | User Profile
Exactly. Lyndon Johnson did far worse damage to the country in my lifetime. But in terms of stature, Carter is a giant next to W. Even Clinton comes off as a loveable rogue next to him.
2005-09-02 18:21 | User Profile
Mr Bunch has just presented a smoking gun, of a sort.
The decision to go to war and at the same time to lay down the tax cuts as a political poultice on image was irresponsible. "Guns and butter" screwed Russia in the Cold War. THe moral gutlessness it took to go to war, then choose not to own up to the cost of a war and cut federal revenue has been my second biggest source if ire at the government, after failure to defend our borders.
The opportunity cost for that political risk? The levee breaks, and folks have no place to stay.
Governor Davis was recalled for less.
AE [QUOTE=Sertorius]Editor and Publisher
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
By Will Bunch
Published: August 31, 2005 9:00 PM ET
[/QUOTE]
2005-09-02 18:29 | User Profile
Angeleyes,
You are quite right about the bipartisan (though GOP spearheaded) political crusade against "pork" backfiring in this case. A lot of the time what is dismissed by Washington politicos as "pork" is simply a Congressman giving something back to his constituency in the form of Federal money for maintaining roads and other infrastructure in his district. Such "pork" is often money much better spent than most of the Federal projects that the "anti-pork" crusaders think worthy in comparison.
The other piece of hypocrisy involved, of course, is that most members of Congress who crusade against "pork" spending often make an exception for their own district as a special case. That way they can sanctimoniously preach "fiscal responsibility" while keeping their own constituents happy.
2005-09-02 18:35 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]Well, Sert & AY,
Baby Bush has managed to make Jimmy look like an economic genius; Harding a paragon of probity; Ford an intellectual giant; McKinley a selfless populist and Grant a beacon of unqualified virtue.
Once this vicious chimp gets nabbed porking some Tel Aviv tidbit he'll renew Bill Clinton's moral standing as well... :lol:[/QUOTE]
There have been Presidents who have equalled Arbusto's ineptitude and incompetence on the domestic front (Carter), his destructive foreign policy (Wilson), his betrayal of white Americans in favor of foreigners and minorities (Johnson, Clinton), his corrupt cronyism (Grant, Harding, Nixon, Clinton again), his "let them eat cake" attitude (Cleveland, Hoover) his disregard for Fourth Amendment Rights (Lincoln), and his below-average intelligence (Ford), but there hasn't been a single President to combine so many vices in a single bobbing simian head.
2005-09-02 18:38 | User Profile
AY,
You summed that up rather nicely in a nutshell. That does encompass everything screwed up about Geo. W. Bush. :pimp:
2005-09-02 18:39 | User Profile
AntiYuppie-nice to see you're back.
2005-09-02 19:04 | User Profile
La Rouche's take:
[size=4]Our 'Tsunami' Was Called Katrina[/size]
By Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
9-1-5
This statement was released on August 31, 2005 by the LaRouche PAC political action committee.
The sheer horror of that human catastrophe which was set in the process of creation by the continuing ugly negligence of the Bush-Cheney cabal during the weeks before, during, and since the passing of the natural catastrophe of Katrina's "American Tsunami," has already unleashed a political-after-shock, far greater in human and material consequences than the events of September 11, 2001. The aftershocks of what are already the inevitable horrors to be met in the days just ahead, will be measured chiefly in humanitarian, physical and political-psychological consequences, which, combined, will have the greatest significance for the future of the current government of the U.S.A., and have ominous implications for governments also world-wide.
On August 2nd, the general warning had been issued, that we must expect major storms to hit the Southern coasts of the U.S. during the immediate period ahead. That warning should have activated an order from the President of the U.S.A. to the relevant National Guard, FEMA, and other institutions: Develop an immediately operational plan of precautionary, preventive, and emergency action, to deal with all of the obvious contingencies represented by a probable "Camille-like" event. We now see, clearly, that those urgently needed emergency preparations did not occur.
This great human catastrophe has occurred, chiefly, because the Bush-Cheney adminstration chose, willfully, to allow a clear warning of a mere natural catastrophe, to be transformed into the present, vast human catastrophe. The President unfortunately, was on what appears to have been a permanent vacation; the Vice-President, unfortunately, was not.
The typical procedure would have been for the President of the U.S.A., on Aug. 2, 2005, or during the morning briefing on the morning after that, to put a relevant four-star or three-star general in charge, under a Presidential order, of an emergency task force of augmented Corps of Engineers and National Guard forces, in cooperation with FEMA, to craft an immediate war-plan for the worst-case expectation of one or more "Camille"-like events from Florida west along the Caribbean coast for the months of August and September.
Notably, the use of National Guard blackhawk helicopters - then absent in Iraq - would have been a routinely included point of included emphasis for such contingency. The fact that the Cheney-Rumsfeld operations had stripped the relevant states along the Caribbean coast of much of this needed capability, would have been among immediate points for emergency corrective action at that time: as of August 2-3.
There is nothing new in the strategic thinking of European civilization for challenges of that type. Plato, in his Timaeus, made precisely the distinction and relationships between great natural and man-made catastrophes. The negligence of the Bush-Cheney Executive from Aug. 2, 2005 on, is the point of immediate guilt of that administration in our obligation now, to distinguish between the murderous effects of a natural catastrophe, and the mass-murderous consequences of a man-made catastrophe created by the negligence of the incumbent Presidency.
As a result of that negligence, unless what are presently unlikely, miraculous rescue measures intervene, far more than 100,000 American lives are presently in immediate jeopardy, from combined direct and indirect effects in progress during the days immediately ahead. So far, the current theatrical posturing by the Bush-Cheney Administration, while sharks swim among the floating corpses in the streets of New Orleans, will do very little to deal with the immediate human catastrophe now in progress in the immediately stricken areas. The rescue teams which should have been deployed in readiness on the days before Katrina struck, were concentrated chiefly in National Guard units deployed, together with their helicopter-rescue capabilities, in Iraq.
However, the culpability of the vacationing mind of President Bush and the overactive propensities of the Vice-President Cheney who has taken over the job of replacement for the perpetually vacationing mind of the President, is only the relatively more recent contribution to the vast human economic and other catastrophes now suppurating northward from the coasts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Right now, a section of the United States, with direct effects on millions of our people, is being destroyed.
Beyond the sheer horror of what could have been prevented, even during the time available to President George W. Bush, Jr., since Katrina left the tip of Florida, there have been decades of negligence by the U.S. government and many others, negligence driven largely by a cultural paradigm-shift of the U.S.A., a turning away from the world's leading physical economy, to our present condition as a nation of virtual slave-labor shacks and vast gambling enterprises, where an essential part of the world's once-greatest agro-industrial power once dwelt. Over several decades of shift, since approximately 1967-68, from a production-oriented to a so-called "services" economy, we have allowed the destruction of the quality of productive employment and community life which had been our national standard of reference for the application of our constitutional principle of promotion of the general welfare of the people of the U.S.A. and their posterity.
In our zeal for ever cheaper labor, and lower taxation, we have been destroying the industries, farms, and basic economic infrastructure of the U.S.A., continuously, over a period of about thirty years. In that process, as we see in the Third World-like conditions developed proximate to the gambling paradises of Louisiana and other once-proud states, we have accumulated the pattern of negligence which permitted a "Camille"-like natural event to reduce an entire region of the the U.S. along the Caribbean coast, into a spectacle like that produced by the way in which a deadly Tsunami hit the coastal regions of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India. These changes of the past three-odd decades, combined with a degree of negligence of the Bush-Cheney regime tantamount to gross, impeachable negligence; this negligence has produced a margin of effects which promise, at least, to be worse than those of September 11, 2001.
The natural catastrophe, as Plato said, was beyond man's present power to prevent; the greater catastrophe was created by the unnatural conduct of the leadership represented by the President and his ostensible manager, the Vice-President.
Meanwhile, In Europe
When we compare these recent days events here in the U.S.A. with the usual situation of kindred forms of catastrophes in Asia, we are confronted with our recollection of the advantage which modern European civilization came to enjoy, relative to Asia, for example, as a result of the basing of the modern form of sovereign nation-state republic on the principle of the supreme law of the common good. This is the principle of promotion of the general welfare for ourselves and our posterity, in the supreme law of our republic, the Preamble of our Federal Constitution. This same principle is pervasive, usually with less authority, but present nonetheless, especially since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, throughout the good nations of modern Europe.
This principle of natural law is otherwise known as the Christian principle of the common good, as the supreme principle of natural law to which all governments and peoples should be obedient. This principle has been the secret of all those economic and related achievements in promotion of the improvement of the conditions of life and freedom of peoples of European civilization, and elsewhere where admiration for the same principle is shared, as among Jews and Moslems as for Christians.
At the present time, what claims to be the higher law of individual greed, sometimes called "shareholder value," has systemically subverted our Federal Constitution, replacing U.S. law with the Lockean doctrine of law set forth in the Preamble of the constitution of that slaveholders' conspiracy known as Confederate States of America.
At the present moment, as in political campaigns in Germany and other parts of Europe, as here in the U.S.A. itself, that great moral principle, on which all of the great achievements of modern European civilization in human rights and prosperity have depended, is in grave danger. The law of the jungle, as we witness in the worst cases of states in Asia and Africa, and as the same law of the jungle is amok in Central and South America, is afoot. It was that same predatory instinct, the law of the social-economic jungle, which had been the heart and soul of the Bush-Cheney Administration, even before Bush's 2005 effort to rape the Social Security system premised on the Christian principle of the general welfare--the Bush policy which has been the true spiritual inspiration of the catastrophic negligence which the Bush-Cheney team has inflicted, the human catastrophe heaped upon the routine natural catastrophe of Katrina.
On this moral issue, as reflected in the horrible negligence of the Bush-Cheney team, the entirety of humanity is placed in jeopardy, as the greatest financial crisis in modern history is now about to descend upon, not only the U.S.A., but the world as a whole.
2005-09-02 19:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]At the present time, what claims to be the higher law of individual greed, sometimes called "shareholder value," has systemically subverted our Federal Constitution, replacing U.S. law with the Lockean doctrine of law set forth in the Preamble of the constitution of that slaveholders' conspiracy known as Confederate States of America.[/QUOTE] I take exception to this. Here is the preamble of the Confederate constitution, in its entirety:
We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity -- invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God -- do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America. How exactly does this text set forth 'the Lockean doctrine of law' of 'individual greed'? This is pretty rich, since the US had the backing of the industrial capitalists during the War Between the States, while the South was mostly agrarian.
2005-09-02 19:16 | User Profile
Q,
Some of the claims I think are true, though not the example you pointed out. When it comes to LaRouche, he has too much excess baggage for me.
2005-09-02 19:20 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Q,
Some of the claims I think are true, though not the example you pointed out. When it comes to LaRouche, he has too much excess baggage for me.[/QUOTE] I actually agree with the overall thrust of the article -- I just wanted to point out what I consider to be a lie.
2005-09-02 19:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Q,
Some of the claims I think are true, though not the example you pointed out. When it comes to LaRouche, he has too much excess baggage for me.[/QUOTE] LaRouche started out as a Trotskyist, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that he argues like one at times.
2005-09-02 20:25 | User Profile
AntiYuppie is most Right!
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]There have been Presidents who have equalled Arbusto's ineptitude and incompetence on the domestic front (Carter), his destructive foreign policy (Wilson), his betrayal of white Americans in favor of foreigners and minorities (Johnson, Clinton), his corrupt cronyism (Grant, Harding, Nixon, Clinton again), his "let them eat cake" attitude (Cleveland, Hoover) his disregard for Fourth Amendment Rights (Lincoln), and his below-average intelligence (Ford), but there hasn't been a single President to combine so many vices in a single bobbing simian head.[/QUOTE]
2005-09-03 00:11 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]There have been Presidents who have equalled Arbusto's ineptitude and incompetence on the domestic front (Carter), his destructive foreign policy (Wilson), his betrayal of white Americans in favor of foreigners and minorities (Johnson, Clinton), his corrupt cronyism (Grant, Harding, Nixon, Clinton again), his "let them eat cake" attitude (Cleveland, Hoover) his disregard for Fourth Amendment Rights (Lincoln), and his below-average intelligence (Ford), but there hasn't been a single President to combine so many vices in a single bobbing simian head.[/QUOTE] AY
Were you channeling Molly Ivins at the moment you wrot e that? :notworth: Heck, I just think you outdid her in the game of "Shrub dissection."
AE
2005-09-03 10:09 | User Profile
AE,
Molly Ivins isn't that knowlegable nor that intelligent.
2005-09-04 19:04 | User Profile
Sertorius
[QUOTE]Molly Ivins isn't that knowlegable nor that intelligent.[/QUOTE]
I agree with you about Molly Ivins, but she has been right about Jorge.
2005-09-06 17:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]AE,
Molly Ivins isn't that knowlegable nor that intelligent.[/QUOTE] True enough, she is as useful as a horsefly, but for those who like to give Pres Bush the needle, she certainly has been at it for a long time.
AE
2005-09-06 22:10 | User Profile
[QUOTE=xmetalhead]Sert, me too. Jimmy Carter might've been inept, but he wasn't arrogant and condescending, IMO.
I'm with AY. George W Bush is the wort president in US history. Arrogant, ignorant, loathsome, unqualified, all wrapped up in one.[/QUOTE]
We may have to wait until more of his deeds come to light, more blowback hits, see what he does over the next 3.5 years, etc. Right now, I would only say he's the worst President since Lyndon Johnson, though I think, statistically, his invasion of Iraq, and his allowing our forces to be needlessly defeated at Torra Borra, thus permitting Osama bin-Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Omar, quite possibly that Al-Zarqawi fellow, and really most of the Al-Qaeda (and Taliban) leadership to escape into the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, will probably lead to nuclear detonations in civilian population centers here in the USA, and probably Britain too, and possilbly other U.S.-allied nations as well, thus bringing about a catastrophe in which Western Civilization and the White Race (let alone the increasingly pathetic United States of America) will no longer be able to rely on the prospect of short-term survival. If I'm right, he'll make FDR, Wilson, LBJ, and Bill Clinton look almost Christ-like (albeit only by comparison). I think he's surpassed Bill Clinton for the spot as the second most personally vile human being to hold the office (FDR still has the top spot, but he may well fall from it yet).
Does Christianity permit us to pray for God to hurl lightning bolts at Bush and Cheney? Maybe I'll just take up with Zeus (oh, by the way, none of that is a threat, or anything even remotely like a threat, as any high school English teacher can explain to you, so please don't waste our taxpayer dollars hassling me over a First Amendment-protected expression of disgust directed towards that evil of piece of shit that calls itself "President," despite actual President-elect John Kerry of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts still out there waiting for a justice that may arrive yet, albeit not via the court system....
'What kind of car you drivin' there, General?'
'Why, President Kerry sir, its a Coup Deville. Nifty, ain't it?'
2005-09-06 23:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Molly Ivins isn't that knowlegable nor that intelligent.[/QUOTE]
Plus she looks like some sort of ugly blonde frog. Don't forget that!
2005-09-06 23:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kevin_O'Keeffe][B]We may have to wait until more of his deeds come to light, more blowback hits, see what he does over the next 3.5 years, etc. Right now, I would only say he's the worst President since Lyndon Johnson, though I think, statistically, his invasion of Iraq, and his allowing our forces to be needlessly defeated at Torra Borra, thus permitting Osama bin-Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Omar, quite possibly that Al-Zarqawi fellow, and really most of the Al-Qaeda (and Taliban) leadership to escape into the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, [COLOR=Red][I]will probably lead to nuclear detonations in civilian population centers here in the USA, and probably Britain too, and possilbly other U.S.-allied nations as well, thus bringing about a catastrophe in which Western Civilization and the White Race [/I] [/COLOR] (let alone the increasingly pathetic United States of America) will no longer be able to rely on the prospect of short-term survival.[/B] [/QUOTE]I think you may only be too right. Under Bush and Cheney the United States has put itself in harm's way for the next 50 years.
2005-09-06 23:46 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]A lot of the time what is dismissed by Washington politicos as "pork" is simply a Congressman giving something back to his constituency in the form of Federal money for maintaining roads and other infrastructure in his district. Such "pork" is often money much better spent than most of the Federal projects that the "anti-pork" crusaders think worthy in comparison.[/QUOTE]
I suspect such an observation is accurate at least 50% of the time. After all, what's money bettter spent? Repaving I-80 between Sacramento and Elko, Nevada, or say, funding the Moving Forward Together in American Glory Program For the Betterment of our Young People NOW! program, which no one can friggin' tell you what the Hell it is, despite its costing billions (and everything you have been able to glean about it has made you worried).
Sign me up for the re-paved highway, please! Barney Fag and John McCrap will just have to wait to collaborate on their next post-Constitutional series of Federal mandates & prohibitions. And its bothering me so much, I may just have to get out my handkerchief....
2005-09-07 00:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Stanley]Exactly. Lyndon Johnson did far worse damage to the country in my lifetime. But in terms of stature, Carter is a giant next to W. Even Clinton comes off as a loveable rogue next to him.[/QUOTE]
No one is more amazed than me to hear me saying this, but I wish we had that priaptic, alcoholic, degenerate buffoon back in the White House! Say what you will about the Junk from Hope, we'd be better off with him in the White House, I'm betting, than President Hypocritical Sanctimony, who's lifestyle is quite likely a more discrete version of Clinton's anyway.
2005-09-07 12:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]AY,
After some soul searching I have to re-think my views of the Carter Administration. I used to think they were the most inept in American history. Compared to the Bush Administration they look like greatest geniuses of all times.[/QUOTE]
Really! Sertorius, you are living in a dream world just like the rest of the 'blame Bush for everything nuts'.
2005-09-07 12:04 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angeleyes]Sert
I lke the article, however, it is not air tight.
The unknown budgetary and authorization question, now forever unknowable in any certainty, is:
IF the decision had [u]not[/u] been made (Not P) THEN would the budgetary authority to upgrade the levee's needs been made and executed in a timely fashion (Then Q)
or
THEN would the money and effort on time still not have arrived in time for Katrina? (Then not Q)
One has to account for the process of politics as usual to influence the outcome of that logic puzzle or decision tree.
To presume that money spent on a war (which gets these multi billion supplementals from Congress on borrowed money) would have been made available and agreed and authorized in a Congress where any other state's needs are considered "pork" is an assumption I cannot in good faith make, nor should anyone with a critical eye. This is not intended as any defense of a decision not to fund the Army Corps of Engineers and their effrots, which year after year consist of lists of projects, not all of which are funded.
As I said in the other thread, one of the few real, necessary functions of government is infrastructure. In my dream of a perfect world, public works like the Dikes in Holland or the Levee on Lake P or major highways and bridges are required collective effort for a government with any shred of intent to serve, rather than sheep shear, its people.
AE
As to the helicoptre problem, the Sky Cranes went away a long time ago, and most of those units were reserve units as well.[/QUOTE]
A man who thinks for himself! How refreshing!