New Orleans?

[Big Booger]

A hell hole or what?

[phishhead]

WTF is with the looters and punks shooting at hospitals, helicopters, and law enforcement. Its one thing if youre looting for survival needs but fighting over a plasma tv...I mean jesus christ they dont even have power yet. Its the LA riots all over again.

[rik]

st00pid people need love too

;)

[Big Booger]

st00pid people need love too

;)

The love a .357 :D

http://www.movieactors.com/photos-clint/clint163.jpeg

[efc]

The love a .357 :D



Wow! Is that the Booger speaking? :D

[Big Booger]

Wow! Is that the Booger speaking? :D
hehehe, a duality of conserv. and lib... :D LOL

[efc]

I am going to make a prediction. Four months from now, environmental groups will file suit against New Orleans, Louisana, and the federal government to prevent rebuilding New Orleans. The stated reason will be that new construction will destroy habitat for the snakes and alligators that have taken up residence within the city. They will attempt to have the city proclaimed a wetland area.

[Big Booger]

I am going to make a prediction. Four months from now, environmental groups will file suit against New Orleans, Louisana, and the federal government to prevent rebuilding New Orleans. The stated reason will be that new construction will destroy habitat for the snakes and alligators that have taken up residence within the city. They will attempt to have the city proclaimed a wetland area.

You know, that is not a bad idea... j/k
:D

[efc]

BB, with your new outlook concerning proper use of firearms, would you like me to send you an NRA application?:p

[Big Booger]

BB, with your new outlook concerning proper use of firearms, would you like me to send you an NRA application?:p

Can I meet Charlton Heston too? :D

[FastGame]

Last nites news had video of uniformed police looting.....guess that place is out of control :(

[phishhead]

well just an update. I found my buddy that is in biloxi. he stayed at the house and has pretty bad water damage to his house but its still standing and he has his wife and dog are doing well.

[rik]

Good to hear.

[phishhead]

a co-worker found his name on one of those safe list blogs.

[Big Booger]

I see things are a changin' in the land of the Cajuns. More troops are passing out supplies, food and medicine. The water in the city is finally receeding. Many people are linking up with family and friends.

It would have looked better had they started the help in serious full force the day after... I think they under-estimated the power and destructive force that Hurricane Katrina wielded.

Who knows how long it will take to get New Orleans back in full order...

[PIPER]

that is a 44 magnum....the most powerful hand gun in the world...:D

[Big Booger]

that is a 44 magnum....the most powerful hand gun in the world...:D
He had the 357 and 44 in the movies, but I am not a gun man, so I just picked the first mean looking dirty harry gun I found. :D

[webdivauk]

I've been avidly reading Michelle Malkin (http://www.michellemalkin.com/) as a one stop source of updates on Hurricane Katrina.

I still can't get over that in a country of America's size and wealth that the rescue of the hurricane survivors failed in so many ways. I can't think of a more humbling experience.

[Nikto]

I've been avidly reading Michelle Malkin (http://www.michellemalkin.com/) as a one stop source of updates on Hurricane Katrina.

I still can't get over that in a country of America's size and wealth that the rescue of the hurricane survivors failed in so many ways. I can't think of a more humbling experience.
Yeah, you can't beat unbiased, well-founded assertions:
Sen. Clinton's "Katrina Commission" would be modeled after the "independent" 9/11 Commission. I can see it now: Democrat Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, whose main imperative is covering up her own culpability, will be the next Jamie Gorelick; Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, the local corrupt-o-crat who got his 15 minutes of fame on "Meet the Press" last week, will be the next Richard Ben-Veniste.
(Emphasis added. Libel in the original)
Aaron Broussard: corrupt-o-crat. Evidence: None. Malkin: Idiotic.

[Richard]

Whats does concern me is that, with such advanced notice, why did more people not leave. After my visit to the US last month during Hurricane Dennis, there was a barrage of media analysis with pretty accurate prediction models tracking in over a week in advance

May be harsh of me, but if you've got the ability to leave, then you should have gone days before.

[Reverend]

We're getting reports over here of a lot of rape and racism taking place.How can the effects of a hurricane cause such inhumanity :confused:

[Big Booger]

We're getting reports over here of a lot of rape and racism taking place.How can the effects of a hurricane cause such inhumanity :confused:
To be honest, I'd say that rape and racism were always present there... It's just now the media is giving it the full attention due to the catastrophe.

The statistics show over 200 rapes in NO in 2003:

http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=New+Orleans&state=LA


Richard, many of those people live day to day struggling to pay for their daily necessities. Some stayed because they were idiots, but many of those people had no other choice.. It's hard to walk from New Orleans to Houston, Texas. The level of poverty that many in the US have to suffer through it dispicable...

But I put complete blame on the government. They should have built a stronger levee, with adequate pumping stations, and had a more proactive stance on the emergency of the situation in NO...

[rik]

Sorry BB but I believe that is complete crap.

[edit] ok I have to steal an article I read...*elsewhere* and agree with wholeheartedly,

An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the
Welfare State

An Objectivist Review

by Robert Tracinski | The Intellectual Activist
September 2, 2005
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out
how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because
it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there.
The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are
confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is
obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to
evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the
flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural
disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people
pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors,
nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do
is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are
suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not
expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but
about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by
federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane
Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel
has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen
over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane
Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be
confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in
an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other
emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying
that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what
we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They
work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize
to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We
are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather
than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this
a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light
had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve
as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and
large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a
description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives
and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police
and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in
to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas
National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
"'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she
said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know
how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary
and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article
shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an
armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid,
listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks
exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an
orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm
the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to
drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the
doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further
destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a
sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News
Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied
architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the
South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of
the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects,"
as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable
squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff
of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational
phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave
some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New
Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or
so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing
projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early
reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating
all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them
loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two
populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in
the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the
deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from
two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected,
over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness.
The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent
administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the
city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city,
despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted
by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of
handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not
to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some
are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example,
for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted
an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from
the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos
on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the
chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the
welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is
behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the
responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a
disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the
difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the
government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a
disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving
their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do
they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they
are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before.
Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a
way of life for them.
The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and
encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that
has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

[Big Booger]

which part of what I wrote is complete crap? The entirety? The article you posted seems to fit quite relevantly with what I wrote.

Could you explain in a little more detail, where the crap separates us?

[rik]

What I thought you meant was that it is the fault of the Federal Government, and that is what I'm sooo tired of hearing. If I misunderstood your meaning I apologize. The local governments, Parish and State is responsible for the condition of the Levees, the lack of an Evac plan, and the slow response afterwards. But again I am sorry and really don't want to argue about it all. It's done. The Country needs to help, heal, and move on.

[Big Booger]

I think it was and is a shared responsibility between the state and federal government. The State government, mayor, governor, etc.. of New Orleans failed the people by not evacuating them fast enough, formulating a plan of action afterward, and getting help in as quickly as they could... also they failed to formulate plans for housing evacuees and so on.

The federal government failed in not approving funds for a levee that would have prevented much of the flooding that happened and for sending in troops and aid in such a slow manner.

I agree that too much blame is being dumped on the Federal government while totally ignoring the local responsibility.

I will say this, the news media has covered this with increased vigor, though you see lots of bias in the reporting. If you can view them all, the overall picture is quite clear.

We were not prepared for this level of distruction, those levees were inadequate, and the response to help those in need was late in coming and short in scale.

Hopefully we've learned a lesson from this, and by the time it gets sorted we'll be better prepared for future disasters. You would have thought that 9/11 tragedy would have made us more equipped and capable to handle disasters.... I guess we failed to learn from that disaster.

And concerning the levees:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0902_050902_katrina_levees_2.html

There's a good article covering some of the history of natural disasters in the NO area. It goes on to blame congress for the lack of a more fortified levee. But it also said, and I think this is key, is that even if they had approved the funds, it would take 20-25 years to upgrade all of NO levees to cat 4 or 5 level.

Until the day before Katrina's arrival, New Orleans's 350 miles (560 kilometers) of levees were undergoing a feasibility study to examine the possibility of upgrading them to withstand a Category Four or Five storm.

Corps officials say the study, which began in 2000, will take several years to complete.

Upgrading the system would take as long as 20 to 25 years, according to Al Naomi, the Corps' senior project manager for the New Orleans District.


Quite interesting to read if you have time.

[webdivauk]

We're getting reports over here of a lot of rape and racism taking place.How can the effects of a hurricane cause such inhumanity :confused:


I posted on my blog (http://www.webdiva.co.uk/?p=506)about this. The Guardian did some investigate work and were unable to confirm any of the stories (http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1563532,00.html).

[webdivauk]

Yeah, you can't beat unbiased, well-founded assertions:

(Emphasis added. Libel in the original)
Aaron Broussard: corrupt-o-crat. Evidence: None. Malkin: Idiotic.


Maybe so but I'm mature enough to make my own mind up. I read Michelle's blog as she pulled alot of articles together and updated at a furious pace.

[Nikto]

Maybe so but I'm mature enough to make my own mind up. I read Michelle's blog as she pulled alot of articles together and updated at a furious pace.
Malkin may well have pulled a lot of articles together, and updated at a furious pace, but the simple fact is that she said this of Aaron Broussard:
"Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, the local corrupt-o-crat who got his 15 minutes of fame on "Meet the Press" last week"
Pulling a lot of articles together and working at a furious pace is absolutely no excuse for making groundless assertions of corruption.

FWIW, Malkin is best-known (and rightly reviled) for writing the book "In Defense of Internment", which attempts to defend the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII on the grounds that they presented a potential military threat to the US: this despite the fact that the US government has apologised on behalf of the people of the United States for the evacuation, relocation, and internment of such citizens and permanent resident aliens. See:
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/intern01.htm
Then read the recently discovered letter here:
http://www.isthatlegal.org/archives/2005/09/important_inter.html
Which states that:
"the main reason for removing all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast was an inability "to control our own white citizens in California."
So, according to an assistant secretary of war, the reason for interning the American Japanese was not that they presented a threat to US citizens, but that US citizens presented a threat to them. And:
"Col. Scobey: And there's a lot back of that and part of it is economic. The West Coast saw a way to get rid of the Japs, they got rid of them, now they don't want them out there, they want to take the property over. It isn't all patriotic, by any means."
Ibid
Malkin attempts to defend this. Go figure. There are a lot of right-wing, ill-informed, racist and just plain stupid commentators around. Malkin is one of the most right-wing, ill-informed, racist and just plain stupid of them all.

[Nikto]

A Greenville Technical College official who school leaders say twice referred to New Orleans evacuees in Greenville as “yard apes” has resigned, according to the school.
...
Reached at her home Wednesday, Holcombe declined to comment except to say that she was "numb and shocked."
...
The derogatory term is based on long-held stereotypes comparing blacks to monkeys and is considered “highly offensive” to blacks, said Dr. John Simpkins, associate director of the Riley Institute at Furman University.
http://www.greenvillenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050915/NEWS04/509150321
Numb and shocked. Poor dear. This totally, utterly clueless racist moron just doesn't get it. Meanwhile:
AMY GOODMAN:This is Malik Rahim.

MALIK RAHIM: You could basically smell it from right here. You know, and the police, they pass by. They look at it and they ain't going to do nothing, you know, to pick it up.

AMY GOODMAN:Malik then walked us down the driveway next to the health center and lifted up a sheet of corrugated metal with an X revealing the dead body underneath.

MALIK RAHIM: Now, his body been here for almost two weeks. Two weeks tomorrow. All right. That this man's body been laying here. And there's no reason for it. Look where we at? I mean, it's not flooded. There's no reason for them to be, left that body right here like this. You mean, just totally disrespect. You know? I mean two weeks. Every day, we ask them about coming and picking it up. They refuse to come and pick it up. You can see, it's literally decomposing right here. Right out in the sun. Every day we sit up and we ask them about it. Because I mean, this is -- close as you can get to tropical climate in America. And they won't do anything about it.

AMY GOODMAN:Malik, do you know who this person is?

MALIK RAHIM: No. But regardless of who it is, I wouldn't care if it's Saddam Hussein or Bin Laden. Nobody deserves to be left here, and the kids pass by here and they are seeing it. The elderly, this is what is frightening a lot of people into leaving. We don't know if he's a victim of vigilantes or what. That's all we know is that his body had been allowed to remain out here for over two weeks.

[snip]

SOLDIER: We're with 5015.

AMY GOODMAN: Which is?

SOLDIER: The cav.

AMY GOODMAN: Army?

SOLDIER: Regular army.

AMY GOODMAN: There's a dead body right here. Can you guys pick it up?

SOLDIER: You don't think we can pick it up, but we can call the local authorities to come pick it up.

AMY GOODMAN: This gentleman who lives in the neighborhood said that they have been trying to get -- here, let me ask these guys, too. Excuse me. Excuse me. Hi. There's a dead body right here. Can Louisiana State Troopers, can you pick it up?

LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER: You need to talk to the public information officer, Ma'am.

AMY GOODMAN: It's been here two weeks. We have filmed it last week, and gentleman over here said he has been trying to get it picked up for two weeks. Louisiana State Troopers, the Police, the Army, no one has responded. We're looking right over at it right there.

LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER: You need to talk to the public information officer and contact him at the troop.

AMY GOODMAN: Your name is?

LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER: You need to talk to the public information officer.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you know about the body?

LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER: You need to talk to our public information officer.

AMY GOODMAN: Sir, do you know about the body over there.

LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER: Ma'am, you talk with the public information officer.

[snip]

NEW ORLEANS POLICE OFFICER: Our sector is this area here.

AMY GOODMAN:This is right in your sector?

NEW ORLEANS POLICE OFFICER: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN:So that body is right in your sector?

NEW ORLEANS POLICE OFFICER: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what should happen then?

NEW ORLEANS POLICE OFFICER: Well, what I can do in my position is let -- notify my chain of command and leave it up to them to make those bigger decisions. It would be out of my hands. I'm just a lower level position.

AMY GOODMAN:Have you all contacted your higher-ups since this is your sector and this has been pointed out the last few weeks.

NEW ORLEANS POLICE OFFICER: We will notify our chain of command now. That's my lieutenant right there.

AMY GOODMAN:Lieutenant there's this dead body over there. Would the army take it out?

NEW ORLEANS LIEUTENANT POLICE OFFICER: No. That's not really in our jurisdiction. We can't do any police work. So, that's not for us to handle we can only report it and hope that the cops take care of it, but we can't do anything.

AMY GOODMAN:Have you reported it?

NEW ORLEANS LIEUTENANT POLICE OFFICER: Yep.

AMY GOODMAN:Why do you think the cops are not moving it?

NEW ORLEANS LIEUTENANT POLICE OFFICER: I have no idea, ma'am. No idea.

[snip]

AMY GOODMAN: Hi, Sir. You New Orleans Police?

NEW ORLEANS POLICE OFFICER: Yes, ma'am. I can't talk, though.

AMY GOODMAN: We're just -- there's a dead body over here and we're wonder if the police would pick it up.

NEW ORLEANS POLICE OFFICER: I have no comment on that, Ma'am. You have to call one of the press guys. Sorry. Thank you.
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4174
These bodies just happen to be black. The fact they've been laying dead in the streets for over two weeks has absolutely nothing to do with racism. The fact that a school official referred to evacuees as "yard apes" has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with racism. I do hope that's clear.

[webdivauk]

We had some oil protests this week (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4236676.stm) and I had to hot foot it to get some gas as garages in my area were running out rapidly. With an elderly and incapacitated Aunt relying on me had to make sure that I had enough Petrol so that I could get to her in an emergency and keep her going with basic necessities.

Very odd thing to watch everyone panic buying and having to participate yourself, especially since prices have fallen once again.

[Big Booger]

We had some oil protests this week (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4236676.stm) and I had to hot foot it to get some gas as garages in my area were running out rapidly. With an elderly and incapacitated Aunt relying on me had to make sure that I had enough Petrol so that I could get to her in an emergency and keep her going with basic necessities.

Very odd thing to watch everyone panic buying and having to participate yourself, especially since prices have fallen once again.

Biodiesel. :D I hope to have an alternative energy vehicle in 10 years time.

[webdivauk]

I've been reading up on Ford's alternative fuel car will have to track down a link.

[efc]

Biodiesel. :D I hope to have an alternative energy vehicle in 10 years time.

Shouldn't be any problems with a Japanese radar trap with that type vehicle. :D