Unbelievable new spin on Katrina

[TheFarseer]

Tom Sullivan(I think) setting in for Rush is saying - and has callers lined up around the block saying, "So the levies broke in New Orleans. Why is this a surprise? Everyone knew it was going to flood That's what happens when a natural disaster hits. Why are these people so shocked that the levies broke when a hurricane hit the city? They're having committee meetings and investigations and running around in disbelief but this shouldn't have been a surprise. They even had the documents that said this could happen." and so on and so forth. I bet it would have been a bigger deal if they lost everything they had in a flood that could have been prevented! And if they admit this was foreseeable, why no outrage that they didn't do more to prevent it? I'm not one of those people that puts all the blame on bush, but to be so callous about this whole thing is just despicable.

As I'm writing this someone called in to chastise him. This should be fun.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Whoa!

I thought the quote at the time was "Nobody could have anticipated that the levees would break".

How stupid do they think we are?

[Missy M]

4. I thought being prepared for disasters would be ANTICIPATING..

the levees would break. I guess the Bush government only prepares for disasters AFTER they happen.

[Mikimouse]

12. A well developed Mitigation plan would probably have ...

been in order, but the funding for Project Impact was cut during the early days of the administration. Preparedness is fine and dandy, but Mitigation is the key to success.

[MadMaddie]

21. I agree...I don't think being prepared is in their vocabulary...

They didn't prepare for what would happen after winning in Iraq
They didn't prepare for the insurgency....
They didn't prepare for Katrina...
They aren't prepared for a pandemic...oh wait they are building detention centers...

And the list goes on and on...

[FreedomAngel82]

6. Excuse me while I bang my head

:banghead:

[SammyWinstonJack]

17. That smilie gets a lot of use these days, doesn't it?

:banghead: and this one also :argh:

[Greyhound]

13. It's not how stupid we are, it's how stupid his audience is.

They couldn't care less about us.

[liberal N proud]

2. Yes Everyone knew, that is why it is such an outrage that it took

the bu$h regime run organization so damn long to get help.
They should have assisted in the evacuation.
When that didn't happen, they should have had rescue teams lined up and waiting to go as soon as weather cleared.

THERE IS NO EXCUSE LIMPBALLS

[TheFarseer]

11. Why is that the government's responsibility?

I think private companies should have helped with the rescue and charged the people $50 a head to get them out, plus concessions and a small shipping and handling fee to get them to safety. And if they can't afford that, then their church should help them. And if they aren't in a church then their communist souls can rot in hell :sarcasm:

[Roland99]

3. Revisionist Historian - lots of job growth for that position in the future

[savemefromdumbya]

5. why didn't someone fix the levees all those years ago?

from what it seems no one put this as a priority they could have been upgraded to withstand the hurricane. Some more barriers to the sea could have been useful?

[FreedomAngel82]

7. Didn't they ask

Bush for money in his first term and he denied them? I thought I read that here on another Katrina thread.

[savemefromdumbya]

9. if this is the case then that should be made very clear!

did anyone say this?

[Igel]

22. Depends what you mean by 'fix'.

They thought they had. At least they thought they were sufficient to withstand a Category 3 storm, and that's what caused a couple to fail.

The current explanation is that somehow soil samples were adequately factored into the evaluation of competing levee designs.

Faulty workmanship, corruption, and malfeasance were pretty much been ruled out by reports in early December that the levees that failed were built to specification. Moreover, there was a multiyear levee repair program. It got about 80% of its total budget, between Clinton's full-funding and the half-funding under the budgets that * signed into law (usually you see the proposed budget numbers cited, which is fine, but disregards the somewhat higher funding levels in the actual budgets as passed by Congress). The levees that failed are reported to have been upgraded under the multi-year levee restoration program: whatever portions of the more than 900 miles of levees weren't fixed up, they apparently didn't fail, or at least nobody's reported that with any sort of reason not based entirely on "might've/could've".

Possibly as serious as overlooking the soil samples in NOLA was the slighting of very, very recent (as of summer '05) research that subsidence east of NOLA was significantly greater than predicted and assumed. This means that the levees east of NOLA weren't actually as high above the water level as they were thought to be. Beyond evaluation the level of protection required of the levees, it also has implications, completely undiscussed here and in the MSM, for the future of that area.

[RaleighNCDUer]

29. "The levees that failed are reported to have been upgraded under the

multi-year levee restoration program"

So maybe the Bushies DID anticipate the collapse? Even did their best to see to it?

That would explain a lot.

[wishlist]

8. Big deal is that WH excuse for slow response was not knowing earlier

Big headline of NY Times front page article today is about WH being notified about the levees breaking a day before they admitted knowing. This was their excuse for slow reaction. Another very big CYA lie by this Administration.

[mrcheerful]

10. Not only that but shrub also cut the fed money that Clinton had approved.

[TheFarseer]

14. update on that caller

the host just defused him by asking if he felt better that they were having committee meetings and saying that it won't help the people, it's just for show. Pretty disappointing.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[hatrack]

18. Goodbye!

nt

[TheFarseer]

19. What the f*ck good would that do?!?!?

Dropping sand bags into the breach when it's already broken and the water is already in the city? You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. Much easier to build a decent levy to keep the water out in the first place than to build a makeshift levy WHILE the water is rushing into the city!

[MrBenchley]

16. How do right wing loonies avoid whiplash?

Then: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4204754.stm

Now: "Why is this a surprise? Everyone knew it was going to flood That's what happens when a natural disaster hits. Why are these people so shocked that the levies broke"

[tenshi816]

24. It's because they have short attention spans

and don't think for themselves. Once the talking points change, they forget about the old talking points (unlike here - DUers have long memories and someone can always come up with a link, no matter how obscure the subject matter).

To the wingers, Hurricane Katrina was just so last year, so why bother remembering that far back! They don't want to trouble their "beautiful minds" with something that happened a whole six months ago.

[MrBenchley]

26. As somebody pointed out the other day

Right wingers don't mind that pinheads like Limbaugh lie to them because they WANT to be lied to. They hate and fear the world they're in.

Many of them were glad that Hurricane Katrina killed so many black people...and Chimpy has gone out of his way with a thousand little winks and signs to assure those people he's one of them. So Chimpy's lies don't bother them....they know he and they can't admit the truth to others and they don't expect him to.

[tenshi816]

27. Yes, I read something along those lines

a couple of years ago in an article about why FOX News has been so successful, but unfortunately I didn't bookmark the link. Basically, what it said was that the phenomenal success of FOX has been due to the fact that its devotees watch it not because it tells the truth to them (because they don't really care about that), but because it reinforces the worldview they already held before they started watching FOX.

I definitely agree with your second paragraph too - there's no doubt in my mind that "George Bush doesn't like black people".

You know what I don't get? I don't understand why so many wingers are so angry. They've got their little tin god in the White House and their party controls everything, and they've got their very own news channel telling them how wonderful everything is (even if deep down inside they know it isn't), and yet they're still pissed off at the world.

[MrBenchley]

28. Sore winners....

Actually I understand why their success makes them even more enraged....they've spent years telling themselves that all that was wrong with the world was that they weren't in charge...and now it turns out their philosophy is an utter failure and that the politicans who were pandering to them all this time are incomeptents and crooks.

I always liked what Jim Carville said about Fox News being to right wing loonies what a lamppost is to a drunk, a source of support, not illumination.

And don't forget that evil Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, once boasted to the New York Times that he could put a dead raccoon on the air and his audience of addlepated inbreds would watch it.

[tenshi816]

31. Your explanation makes sense.

My entire family, except for a couple of people, are FOX watchers and avid Bush supporters despite the fact that his administration has devastated their lives - but they're whiny and angry when they should be delighted that their party is in charge. They're ngry at us damned "libruls" for, well, everything (literally, you can just fill in the blank and whatever you can think of, they blame liberals for it). Angry because their boy king made all these promises and their minister backed him up on it, yet as each year passes they have less and less money and health coverage, and more and more expenses for things like food and gas. Angry because it's dawning on them that their idol couldn't care less what happens to little people like them.

But gays can't get married, so they should be happy as pigs in shit. That one issue trumped everything else as far as they were concerned.

That Ailes boast is great. Do you know roughly when he said it? I'd like to try and find a copy of it to send to my stepmother (because I'm evil that way...).

[MrBenchley]

32. Here's the quote....

""I could have put a dead raccoon on the air this year and got a better rating than last year," Ailes told The New York Times. "That's all just the growth of our network. All our shows are up." "

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/entertainment/s_95451.html

[tenshi816]

33. Thank you! n/t

[MadMaddie]

20. Hey There Farseer....

I want to know what their response will be when a nuclear bomb or man made catastrophic disaster hit's the next US city on a larger scale.

These people are pathetic...The whole point is the levies were ineffective and they were 20 or so years old. The fact is local government and federal government failed to build effective levies and people died because of it. They had warning that the storm was coming and chose to act. In my mind this is deriliction of duty...what they did and did not do is a crime.

[TheFarseer]

23. I have a pretty good idea what the response would be

About the same as Katrina as far as actually helping people. Blame the victims somehow and get indignant when their families want answers. Blame the democrats that wouldn't let us wiretap, drug their feet on the patriot act and emboldened the enemy in Iraq. More fascist legislation like patriot act III and invade some country. These people are getting very predictable.

Like I said, It's hard for me to blame bush, but this guy acts like they stuck their finger in a light socket and were surprised by the shock.

[MadMaddie]

25. They are always surprised...aren't they...

Condi-who would have thought the terrorist would fly planes into buildings-every military fiction novelist thats who

They didn't know that Katrina would be so bad-its a Cat 5 storm..:wtf:

They never thought they would have to evacuate a city population...how could they have prepared?

What the hell have they been doing with the billions of dollars they have spent...Isn't it for preparedness..

I am an IT Project Manager and one of the basic skills we utilize is mitigation of issues and rate them of how damaging the issue could be to our projects. It's really not rocket science and I guess this why all of the execuses and bullshit tick me off so much...

The Buck stops with * and if he isn't willing to take the ultimate responsibility and if he continues to point the finger at everyone else he has to go. Nothing is ever his fault...Daddy has always bailed him out...

[alcibiades_mystery]

30. If everyone knew the levies would break, why was Bush galavanting around

Arizona and California raising money?

The incoherence of these dimbulbs is truly astounding.