Ain't nothing new it's getting old.
Now you're standing in the cold.
Play that same old song and dance.
I say "Bye-bye baby you had your chance."
You done had it baby.
Serving stuph that catches my eye since December 09, 2004.
Click on the Eye for the latest in sight.
ATTENTION: As Hurricane Irene batters the East Coast, federal disaster officials warned that Internet outages could force people to interact with other people for the first time in years. Residents braced themselves for the horror of awkward silences and unwanted eye contact. FEMA advised: “Be prepared. Write down possible topics to talk about in advance. Sports...the weather. Remember, a conversation is basically a series of Facebook updates strung together.”
WASHINGTON - As Hurricane Irene barrels her way toward the mid-Atlantic and up the East Coast, members of The Old Guard continue their vigilance at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
While on duty the Tomb Sentinel crosses a 63-foot rubber surfaced walkway in exactly 21 steps. He then faces the Tomb for 21 seconds, turns again, and pauses an additional 21 seconds before retracing his steps.
The 21 is symbolic of the highest salute according to dignitaries in military and state ceremonies.
Members of The Old Guard have guarded the Tomb every second, of every day regardless of weather or holidays since April 6, 1948.
They are charged with the guard of the Tomb of the Unknowns. In a hurricane, in a downpour. In whatever comes their way. They don't care.
Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who has vowed to resurrect his crippled city, conceded Tuesday that New Orleans will shrink to nearly half its pre-hurricane population and will have to make do with one-third of its previous budget.
He expressed continued frustration with a federal bureaucracy that has given him "very little" control over the hundreds of millions of dollars appropriated for Katrina relief. So many businesses have fled that Nagin has been forced to travel outside the state to try to woo them back. And, he said, it will be up to Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) to decide whether the city's February primary elections will be held as scheduled.
If Nagin had called the RTA, he might have found 150 city busses that could have been to the Superdome in 10 minutes. They were in perfect condition and the route between them and the elevated interstate was dry the whole time.
A tangle of fishing boats block the lanes of Highway 23 in Empire, La., Monday, Oct. 10, 2005. Empire and surrounding areas were hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina.
Wilma Skinner would like to scream at the officials of this city. If only they would pick up their phones.I guess they done left. Like you should have by Tuesday at the latest.
"I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain't none. No one answers," she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity. "Everyone just says, 'Get out, get out.' I've got no way of getting out. And now I've got no money."
"All the banks are closed and I just got off work," said Thomas Visor, holding his sweaty paycheck as he, too, tried to get inside the store, where more than 100 people, all of them black or Hispanic, fretted in line. "This is crazy. How are you supposed to evacuate a hurricane if you don't have money? Answer me that?"
What the hell were you doing at work the day before the hurricane strikes ?
Did you not hear the orders to get out ? Did you not hear about the nearly empty busses ?
Is it everyone else's fault that you didn't think ahead ?
"This is the worst planning I've ever seen," she said. "They say, 'We've learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina.' Well, you couldn't prove it by me."
On Bellaire Boulevard in southwest Houston, a weeping woman and her young daughter stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by plastic bags full of clothes and blankets. "I'd like to go, but nobody come get me," the woman said in broken English. When asked her name, she looked frightened. "No se, no se," she said: Spanish for "I don't know."
Her daughter, who appeared to be about 9, whispered in English, "We're from Mexico."
For the poor and the disenfranchised, the mighty evacuation orders that preceded Rita were something they could only ignore.
"We got no other choice but to stay here. We're homeless and we're broke," he said. "I thought about going to Dallas, but now it's too late. I got no way to get there."
"A nice white man gave me a motel room for three days. Just walked up and said, 'Here.' So my buddy and me will stick it out," he said, pointing to another homeless man. "We got a half-gallon of whiskey and a room."
An emergency official eventually sent a van to take the couple to a shelter at a recreation center.So... despite the hysteria this "reporter" (DEBORAH HASTINGS) wanted to invoke... They were not abandoned. Huh. Makes you wonder what DEBORAH HASTINGS agenda was.
Mandatory evacuation orders were issued Wednesday for the area.
It's now Friday.
If I didn't have a car, I would have started walking Wednesday. No, make that Monday.
I wonder. Did DEBORAH HASTINGS inform these idiots that the Mayor had nearly empty busses waiting for them or did she just let them sit there whining and waiting to die ?
This can't be the fault of people that didn't prepare.
This has got to be Bush's fault.
Sept. 21, 2005, 5:50PM
Parts of Houston join evacuation
In addition to the evacuation orders, Houston's mayor asked companies to let non-essential employees skip work Thursday and Friday and suggested schools cancel classes so that families have time to leave.
Although Galveston police don't plan to drag reluctant residents off the island, city officials reassured residents no one who wants to leave would be left behind. Sharon Strain, head of the Galveston Housing Authority, said anyone who can't make it to the buses would be picked up.
"We've got more bus space than people and I'm not going to send them off empty,'' said City Manager Steve LeBlanc. "We are going to hold empty buses until the bitter end."
So Again I wonder... what was DEBORAH HASTINGS agenda ? To save lives ? To report the truth ? I think she's hoping poor people will get killed to further her career.
If it seems like I'm insensitive to these people, you're right. They had ample warning just like the people in New Orleans and they chose to do nothing. I don't know about you but I'm sick of people blaming others for their own lack of responsibility. How is it Bush's fault, FEMA's fault, My fault or Your fault when people that were given warning days in advance do nothing ?
Oh right.
Global Warming causes hurricanes.
Bush didn't sign Kyoto (even though Clinton didn't and because the President can't sign any treaty without Congressional approval).
And Haliburton ! Why they must be in on this too !
Bahhhhhhhh !
The British Press can be counted on for a good laugh from time to time. Global warming, which like homelessness, started in 2001 when the Bush Administration took office, has given junk science the perfect forum to join the political debate. Mix in a couple of hurricanes and you get some great tabloid fodder.
A Department of Homeland Security truck turns around as flood waters swamp a residential area from a second levee overflow on the west side of the industrial canal in New Orleans September 23, 2005. (J.P. Moczulski/Reuters)
"Our worst fears came true," said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard.
"We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly," he said. "At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they've grown larger."
Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee. On the street that runs parallel to the canal, the water ran waist-deep and was rising fast. Guidry said water was rising about three inches a minute.As for those who refuse to leave, Gov. Kathleen Blanco advised: "Perhaps they should write their Social Security numbers on their arms with indelible ink."
Water rushes over the top of a levee along the Industrial Canal, flooding the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana September 23, 2005. (Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin continued to urge residents to get out of the city. A mandatory evacuation order is in effect for the entire east bank of the Mississippi, and some 500 buses were standing by at the convention center, but few seemed to be taking advantage. Only 27 people had been evacuated by the end of Wednesday.
Under pressure from President Bush and other top federal officials, the mayor Monday suspended the reopening of large portions of the city over the next few days because of the threat of a new round of flooding from a tropical storm.
"I am concerned about this hurricane getting in the gulf. ... If we are off, I'd rather err on the side of conservatism to make sure we have everyone out," Mayor Ray Nagin said.
The announcement came after repeated warnings from top federal officials and the President himself that the city was unsafe.
The mayor said his original plan was never intended to put people at risk.
"Now we have conditions that have changed. We have another hurricane that is approaching us," he said. He warned that the city's pumping system was not running at full capacity and that its levee system is still in a "very weak position."
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, Louisiana's lachrymose governor, wants hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money so that she can "recreate our communities." You know, the community that appalled the rest of America when wall-to-wall television coverage of Katrina showed us just what it looked like: poor, black, with astonishingly high unemployment and welfare dependency rates. Her desire to recreate that community is understandable; it is the community that put her and the gum-chewing, profanity-spouting New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin, in power.
President Bush has a grander yet far more sensible vision. Not exactly the construction of a Ronald Reagan-style shining city on a hill, an impossibility since most of New Orleans sits several feet below sea level. But a city that will be built "higher and better."
Following the advice of his other hero, Winston Churchill, Bush sought to recover some of his lost popularity last week by reacquainting Americans with his, and their, natural optimism. "A pessimist," the great Briton said, "sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." And the president has always been at his best when relying on his can-do, Texas-size optimism.
A great article by Irwin M. Stelzer in The Weekly Standard.
Senator Hillary Clinton is continuing the noble endeavor of revising the record of her loving husband's eight years in the Oval Office, even if it means exploiting Hurricane Katrina's devastation to do it. Senator Clinton creates a mythical picture of FEMA under her husband's leadership and her comrades in the mainstream news media run with it.
Editor's note: Sylvia Weathers teaches English at Central High School. Her AP English class worked last week on writing letters to the editor about Hurricane Katrina catastrophe and its aftermath. These are the letters written by Weathers and some of her students.
In what appears to be yet another nutty Nagin decision (the city’s residents are still reeling from his refusal to transport them out of the city on New Orleans’ buses), the still-current Mayor has decided to allow 180,000 residents back into the city next week—with no potable water—and a levee system that is barely functional.
Great decision, Mr. Mayor! It’s almost as brilliant as yours and Governor Blanco’s pronouncement to the Red Cross to “stay out of the Superdome” with its food, water and hygiene kits. Didn’t want your “guests” overstaying their welcome by actually feeding them—did you?
Despite the fact that Coast Guard Vice-Admiral Thad Allen has called Nagin’s plan both “extremely ambitious” (this politely means Nagin has no idea of what he’s doing) and “extremely problematic” (this still means the Mayor is clueless), Nagin is forging ahead with his apparent foolhardy plan. Ever since the rest of us in the nation and the world heard his name and discovered who he was and is, Nagin has made one bone-headed decision after another; from not following his city’s disaster emergency plan through refusing through not transporting the city’s residents to a safe area to not allowing them to be fed and watered.
A great post on The American Daily. forgive his grammer and spelling, he was on a roll.
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