None of what is going on in New Orleans surprises me.

Maybe a looter will shoot down a relief helicopter that will crash into a hospital that will fall over on Bush.

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What others say about boorite!

I don't want to start some kind of massive political debate or hate campaign, but in my opinion, if it were thousands of Los Angeles residents or New Yorkers that were in danger, the problem would have been sorted out days ago.

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Dad was flammable

It's true.

Hell, after 9/11 by this point they had already taken over half of Afghanastan had they not?

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Poop.

Thing is, it's not like this fucking thing came out of nowhere. Even here in Oz we had several days of newspapers telling us about the humongous hurricane, possibly the biggest in recorded history, ploughing right over the top of New Orleans. Why the fuck were national guard, marines, emergency personnel, medical personnel, and everyone else not mobilised before it hit, stationed fifty-odd kilometres away, well out of the storm's path, and then moved into action a matter of minutes after the all-clear signal?

This is what I would have done. Did nobody in government think of this?

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This signature has performed an illegal operation and has been shut down.

i'd like to take the fuckers shooting at the aid helicopters, cut their balls off, shove them in their mouth, sew their mouths shut, then ask them double jeopardy questions about zoology

fuckin bitches

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what if nigger meant kite

...but it's their constitutional right to get drunk and sit on their roofs in their boxer shorts shooting and low-flying aircraft, isn't it?

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This signature has performed an illegal operation and has been shut down.

Is there actually anyone shooting at aid helicopters? I can't seem to find any evidence of this.

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Dad was flammable

Well, I'm glad to hear that Detective Kajun is on the case. It's bad enough the drug zombies are burning down what's left of the city. Seems I saw choppers dropping water on fires when they could have been running supply drops or evacuating some of the teeming thousands still trapped in the city.

BTW, I hate to defend Bush on anything, but I really think it's the governor who dropped the ball here. She had the authority to mobilize Guardsmen at any time, no?

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I was gonna send a robot back in time, but I got high.

I spent a good few hours watching CNN and Fox News this evening before turning over to BBC News 24 and seeing a completely different story.

I had heard from various friends who moved over to America years ago that your media was biased, but I never believed it until now.

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Dad was flammable

For Kajun, one of the dozens of articles I've seen mentioning people firing at aid helecopters.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050902/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_katrina_82

"Hospitals struggled to evacuate critically ill patients who were dying for lack of oxygen, insulin or intravenous fluids. But when some hospitals try to airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan said, "there are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better come get my family.'"

Yes, because it's obvious that shooting at people who have no obligation to make you their first priority is the quickest and most effective way to make them want to help you.

That article is brilliant and I suggest that any American who is subscribing to the school of thought that your government is doing everything they can to help reads it. Okay, so there's a small note at the end that might suggest that maybe someone shot at a helicopter, but apart from that it shows just how much of a disgrace this entire debacle is to the "richest nation in the world".

I'm appalled, literally digusted at how this story has developed. Like DexX said, the rest of the world knew this hurricane was coming days before it happened. Hell, I couldn't log on to Wikipedia.org without it trying to make me read an article about the impending disaster. So how in the name of fuckery did no-one organise some kind of action plan?

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Dad was flammable

quote:

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I spent a good few hours watching CNN and Fox News this evening before turning over to BBC News 24 and seeing a completely different story.

I had heard from various friends who moved over to America years ago that your media was biased, but I never believed it until now.

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Most of the Fox News broadcast I watched was some moron phoning in the thank Fox News for giving him the opportunity to appeal to his probably dead family. He was quickly replaced with another similar sounding idiot reading the same autocue, I got bored pretty quickly.

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Dad was flammable

Again I question the leadership of Louisiana's governor in all of this, and have a great deal of trouble imagining how people expected the federal response to be more rapid than the state response. The real question, though, is how our Congress can find money for pork-laden atrocities like the recent omnibus transportation bill, but couldn't find the money to prevent a forseeable disaster in New Orleans. It probably has alot to do with the fact that Louisiana's congressmen don't sit on big-deal commitees and exercise all kinds of old-boy pull.

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I was gonna send a robot back in time, but I got high.

I never said the government was doing all they could. I said that I wasn't sure what Bush personally could do at this point aside from reach into his own bank account. Has he? I seriously doubt it.

He's absolutely accountable for the governance that weakened FEMA's ability to be both reactive and proactive in the face of this and most likely other emergency situations, and it's quite true also that federal funds to better defend the city from this sort of thing has also been denied repeatedly. And hell, add the cost in manpower from the national guard, and it's even worse. Unfortunately, none of that can be helped now.

Now, here's something that I haven't seen anyone mention yet, and I think it's pretty important... Hurricane season isn't over yet. You can easily expect there to be more and more for the next three months at least, and it's totally possible for this same region to be soaked further and further. Just how much more of this can we take?

quote:

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BTW, I hate to defend Bush on anything, but I really think it's the governor who dropped the ball here. She had the authority to mobilize Guardsmen at any time, no?

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Here's another $20,000 that won't be helping the victims anytime soon: !!!

Red Cross denied access into New Orleans
--"The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city."

Help from Chicago refused by Feds
--"A visibly angry Mayor Daley said the city had offered emergency, medical and technical help to the federal government as early as Sunday to assist people in the areas stricken by Hurricane Katrina, but as of Friday, the only things the feds said they wanted was a single tank truck."

Help from the National Guard was held up pending approval from Feds
--"New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday."

What a complete and total clusterfuck. The incompetence of this government is just beyond belief.

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Think classy, you'll be classy.

Another religious nutjob opens his big fat fucking mouth
--"Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, also sees God's mercy in the aftermath of Katrina -- but in a different way. Shanks says the hurricane has wiped out much of the rampant sin common to the city.

The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as 'Southern Decadence' -- an annual six-day 'gay pride' event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week -- God's judgment would be felt.

'New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now,' Shanks says. 'God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again.'"

What a fucking tool.

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Think classy, you'll be classy.

Thanks for the clarification, HCRoyal. Still, there seems to have been a big deficit in the readiness and response of the National Guard in Louisiana. Governor Blanco did not even mobilize the guard until Wednesday. That might only be a delay of two days, but it's two days that would have made alot of difference in this case.

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I was gonna send a robot back in time, but I got high.

Having lived through hurricanes in New Orleans, I can tell you one big problem: The people there won't leave. You can show them pictures of flood victims clinging to trees in raw sewage full of dead animals with a big THIS IS YOU IN 72 HOURS written on it, and they will just laugh and pour another drink.

Right here, in the parking lot of the Comfort Inn of Laramie, Wyoming, there is a U-Haul towing a car with Louisiana plates. Not to belabor the obvious, but whoever's driving that isn't sitting on a roof waiting for the Guard to show up.

Yeah, the rescue effort hasn't worked the way it should. NOTHING ever works the way it should in New Orleans, and even rats have enough sense to jump off a sinking ship.

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What others say about boorite!

This is pretty funny. I'm always "finding" things too.

If the place wasn't under water, I'd book a ticket right now.

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What others say about boorite!

quote:

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Having lived through hurricanes in New Orleans, I can tell you one big problem: The people there won't leave. You can show them pictures of flood victims clinging to trees in raw sewage full of dead animals with a big THIS IS YOU IN 72 HOURS written on it, and they will just laugh and pour another drink.

Right here, in the parking lot of the Comfort Inn of Laramie, Wyoming, there is a U-Haul towing a car with Louisiana plates. Not to belabor the obvious, but whoever's driving that isn't sitting on a roof waiting for the Guard to show up.

Yeah, the rescue effort hasn't worked the way it should. NOTHING ever works the way it should in New Orleans, and even rats have enough sense to jump off a sinking ship.

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quote:

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Another religious nutjob opens his big fat fucking mouth
--"Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, also sees God's mercy in the aftermath of Katrina -- but in a different way. Shanks says the hurricane has wiped out much of the rampant sin common to the city.

The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as 'Southern Decadence' -- an annual six-day 'gay pride' event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week -- God's judgment would be felt.

'New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now,' Shanks says. 'God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again.'"

What a fucking tool.

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