Bush has failed

[Sava]

Originally posted by Wycoff
I posted this elsewhere, but I think that this may be a better thread for it... it's probably old news by now anyway...

Did anyone just see Kanye West on the NBC telethon? He was with Mike Meyers. He was shaking, giving rambling, racially charged speech, then blurted out "George Bush doesn't care about black people!" NBC hurriedly cut off to some other guy. Mike Meyers looked incredibly uncomfortable. One of the most hillarious things I have ever seen on live t.v.

I'm sorry I missed it.

[Ted Striker]

On top of Bush totally sucking in a crisis (AGAIN), we had a ****ing DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY created to deal with **** like this. They failed. The entire Federal disaster team is completely out of touch with reality and has totally dropped the ball on this.

THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS AND AND OBSCENE.

I am ashamed of my country.

[Ted Striker]

Even CNN shows how completely cluess and utterly incompetent the response has been. This is outright negligent.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina.response/index.html

Conditions in the Convention Center

# FEMA chief Brown: We learned about that (Thursday), so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need. (See video of Brown explaining how news reports alerted FEMA to convention center chaos. -- 2:11)

# Mayor Nagin: The convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for the 15,000 to 20,000 people. (Hear Nagin's angry demand for soldiers. 1:04)

# CNN Producer Kim Segal: It was chaos. There was nobody there, nobody in charge. And there was nobody giving even water. The children, you should see them, they're all just in tears. There are sick people. We saw... people who are dying in front of you.

# Evacuee Raymond Cooper: Sir, you've got about 3,000 people here in this -- in the Convention Center right now. They're hungry. Don't have any food. We were told two-and-a-half days ago to make our way to the Superdome or the Convention Center by our mayor. And which when we got here, was no one to tell us what to do, no one to direct us, no authority figure.

Uncollected corpses

# Brown: That's not been reported to me, so I'm not going to comment. Until I actually get a report from my teams that say, "We have bodies located here or there," I'm just not going to speculate.

# Segal: We saw one body. A person is in a wheelchair and someone had pushed (her) off to the side and draped just like a blanket over this person in the wheelchair. And then there is another body next to that. There were others they were willing to show us. ( See CNN report, 'People are dying in front of us' -- 4:36 )

# Evacuee Cooper: They had a couple of policemen out here, sir, about six or seven policemen told me directly, when I went to tell them, hey, man, you got bodies in there. You got two old ladies that just passed, just had died, people dragging the bodies into little corners. One guy -- that's how I found out. The guy had actually, hey, man, anybody sleeping over here? I'm like, no. He dragged two bodies in there. Now you just -- I just found out there was a lady and an old man, the lady went to nudge him. He's dead.

Hospital evacuations

# Brown: I've just learned today that we ... are in the process of completing the evacuations of the hospitals, that those are going very well.

# CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta: It's gruesome. I guess that is the best word for it. If you think about a hospital, for example, the morgue is in the basement, and the basement is completely flooded. So you can just imagine the scene down there. But when patients die in the hospital, there is no place to put them, so they're in the stairwells. It is one of the most unbelievable situations I've seen as a doctor, certainly as a journalist as well. There is no electricity. There is no water. There's over 200 patients still here remaining. ...We found our way in through a chopper and had to land at a landing strip and then take a boat. And it is exactly ... where the boat was traveling where the snipers opened fire yesterday, halting all the evacuations. ( Watch the video report of corpses stacked in stairwells -- 4:45 )

# Dr. Matthew Bellew, Charity Hospital: We still have 200 patients in this hospital, many of them needing care that they just can't get. The conditions are such that it's very dangerous for the patients. Just about all the patients in our services had fevers. Our toilets are overflowing. They are filled with stool and urine. And the smell, if you can imagine, is so bad, you know, many of us had gagging and some people even threw up. It's pretty rough.(Mayor's video: Armed addicts fighting for a fix -- 1:03)

Violence and civil unrest

# Brown: I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that.

# CNN's Chris Lawrence: From here and from talking to the police officers, they're losing control of the city. We're now standing on the roof of one of the police stations. The police officers came by and told us in very, very strong terms it wasn't safe to be out on the street. (Watch the video report on explosions and gunfire -- 2:12)

The federal response:

# Brown: Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.

# Homeland Security Director Chertoff: Now, of course, a critical element of what we're doing is the process of evacuation and securing New Orleans and other areas that are afflicted. And here the Department of Defense has performed magnificently, as has the National Guard, in bringing enormous resources and capabilities to bear in the areas that are suffering.

# Crowd chanting outside the Convention Center: We want help.

# Nagin: They don't have a clue what's going on down there.

# Phyllis Petrich, a tourist stranded at the Ritz-Carlton: They are invisible. We have no idea where they are. We hear bits and pieces that the National Guard is around, but where? We have not seen them. We have not seen FEMA officials. We have seen no one.

Security

# Brown: I actually think the security is pretty darn good. There's some really bad people out there that are causing some problems, and it seems to me that every time a bad person wants to scream of cause a problem, there's somebody there with a camera to stick it in their face. ( See Jack Cafferty's rant on the government's 'bungled' response -- 0:57)

# Chertoff: In addition to local law enforcement, we have 2,800 National Guard in New Orleans as we speak today. One thousand four hundred additional National Guard military police trained soldiers will be arriving every day: 1,400 today, 1,400 tomorrow and 1,400 the next day.

# Nagin: I continue to hear that troops are on the way, but we are still protecting the city with only 1,500 New Orleans police officers, an additional 300 law enforcement personnel, 250 National Guard troops, and other military personnel who are primarily focused on evacuation.

# Lawrence: The police are very, very tense right now. They're literally riding around, full assault weapons, full tactical gear, in pickup trucks. Five, six, seven, eight officers. It is a very tense situation here.

[Sava]

Here's the Kanye West video if anyone wants to see it...

http://buttlands.net/kanye.avi

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Sava
Here's the Kanye West video if anyone wants to see it...

http://buttlands.net/kanye.avi

KAYNE WAS LAYING IT DOWN!!!!!!!!




It was funny to see Mike Meyers reading of the cue cards and doing the robot reading thing and Kayne was being real and speaking his heart.



Though really, you could tell that Kayne was extremley angry, and was trying to contain himself, he was clearly upset.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Tingkai


I misstated his response. What Bush said is: "I’m not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn’t asked for it."

Which is still a slap in the face of American allies. His attitude is that other countries won't help unless they are asked, when in fact, many countries immediately offered help. I know Canada is willing to help. We don't care who is in the White House, we just want to offer whatever support our neighbours need.

Canadian news reported yesterday that Canadian offers of help had gone unanswered. Today the PM phoned Bush to repeat the offer. Apparently it was accepted, as it was announced that 3 RCN warships and a coast guard ship loaded with supplies will depart Halifax in a few days. The force also includes 3 Sea King helicopters, which, if we're lucky, will not fall out of the sky and kill more trapped people. http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/natio...a20050902.html

[Ted Striker]

Canada

[DinoDoc]

Canada

Bastards have some nerve sending Sea Kings to a search and rescue operation.

[chequita guevara]

Why does Laura always get on top?

Cuz George can only screw up.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Guynemer
"The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." --George W. Bush



How in the name of High Holy **** did we elect this mother****er twice?!

Because our only other viable party tends to repond to this kind of bullsh*t with: "We, too, imagine a fantastic Gulf Coast! With porches for decent middle class folks, not just Trent Lott. In fact, not just porches; verandas! America cannot afford a president that lacks the vision to think in terms of porches that wrap around the house. Oh, and balconies, because some people, apparently, rent. We're the Democratic Party, and we endorse this message."

[chequita guevara]

Rufie, if that didn't make me cry, it would make me laugh.

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by Sava
Here's the Kanye West video if anyone wants to see it...

http://buttlands.net/kanye.avi

That reminds me of that one SNL sketch where Mike Myers played an infomercial host and Heather Locklear played his guest who was trying to sell her pasta maker whilst making offensive comments about Indians, Puerto Ricans and the big lie that is the Holocaust. Mike had the same look on his face in both instances.

to Kanye West, btw. He makes great music, but he's also an idiot. Anyone who didn't figure that out from the anti-learning thrust of The College Dropout just had it verified by this outburst.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Rufie, if that didn't make me cry, it would make me laugh.

Me too, che; me too.

[Winston]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Why does Laura always get on top?

Cuz George can only screw up.

Laura

[Sava]

I don't blame Kanye for his outburst. While I don't think Dubya is David Duke... I certainly don't think he's going to lose any sleep over any of the people dying in New Orleans.