Bush Strafes New Orleans - Where is our Huey Long?The National Public Radio news anchor was so excited I thought she'd piss on herself: the President of the United had flown his plane down to 1700 feet to get a better look at the flood damage! And there was a photo of our Commander-in-Chief taken looking out the window. He looked very serious and concerned.
That was yesterday. Today he played golf. No kidding.
I'm sure the people of New Orleans would have liked to show their appreciation for the official President... (more)
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Troops begin combat operations in New OrleansCombat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out... (more)
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New Orleans police begin to show signs of stressAfter days of attempting to return order to an unruly, hurricane-ravaged city, New Orleans police on Friday began to openly lose their tempers, complaining that they've become easy targets for looters with guns and that outside help was slow in coming.
One officer has already been shot in the face, others have ducked bullets while conducting rescue missions and the entire 1,700-officer department has been forced to work in the dark, without emergency radio communications, since H... (more)
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New Orleans on a hair-triggerNEW ORLEANS - I wheeled the car around and headed back to the scene of the shooting, looking for Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk, when the officer turned, spotted me and pointed the shotgun right at the windshield.
"Stop the car right now. Back up, or I'll shoot," he screamed.
A couple of others cocked their weapons and trained their guns on the car, purpose in their eyes.
Instinctively, I raised my hands above the wheel and gunned the Pont... (more)
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“Hurricane Pam” Reveals Administration’s IncompetenceWhile President Bush has maintained that nobody could have “anticipated the breach of the levees,” more and more information is being revealed to demonstrate that the adminstration was fully aware of the catastrophic damage that could result if a h... (more)
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Katrina and the Authorities"This is a national disgrace," said New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
We are getting used to national disgraces and the official whitewashing that follows. Katrina is truly a natural calamity, but human failure is also present. We can only hope that investigative reporters will do their jobs in the months to come, because we cannot expect much from official i... (more)
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'I Hate the Federal Government'"I hate the federal government," were the first words my father uttered. After two days, he finally got through to us on his cell phone. He, like the rest of my family, lives in Petal, a small city outside of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Official reports of Hurricane Katrina’s path on August 29th are still sketchy, but it appears the eye of the storm either went just to the west of Petal, or right through it. Regardless, the Petal police chief was quoted the following day as saying, "Petal is... (more)
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It Never Was 'Can-Do' GovernmentEach Monday and Friday, I make sure that I read the latest rants from Paul Krugman in his New York Times column. While I generally agree with him when he speaks of the war in Iraq, when it comes to everything else, he is little more than an ignorant statist – granted, an ignorant statist with a doctorate in economics from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I expected him to write about what is becoming our own Gulf War, and he did not disappoint.
Krugman ... (more)
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New Orleans Isn’t AnarchyThere are reports of rapes, beatings, looting, and widespread shooting at police and rescue officers in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Wire articles refer to the situation as "anarchy." These reports are probably exaggerated as to number, but there is no doubt that statists will use this situation as an example of what happens when there isn’t enough nanny government.
The truth is just the opposite: This is what happens when nanny government promises to protec... (more)
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Big Government + Hurricane Katrina = DisasterHurricane Katrina hammered and shattered the Gulf coast. Big Government made it worse. A disaster.
If the New Orleans levees and pumps were privately owned, they may have been upgraded and fortified to deal with the city’s worsening flood risk.
Instead they are owned, maintained, and funded by the city and other government agencies. In typical Big Government fashion, politicians stumbled and delayed. They left New Orleans residents in harm’s way despite ... (more)
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Impeach Bush NowThe raison d’être of the Bush administration is war in the Middle East in order to protect America from terrorism and to insure America’s oil supply. On both counts the Bush administration has failed catastrophically.
Bush’s single-minded focus on the "war against terrorism" has compounded a natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American history. The US has lost its largest and most strategic port, thousands of lives, and 80% of one o... (more)
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Putin meets angry Beslan mothersRussia's president has faced a delegation of mothers whose children died a year ago during the Beslan school siege.
Vladimir Putin told the group that no country could completely shield its citizens from terror.
But he said this did not justify the negligence of any officials and pledged a full investigation into the siege.
A year ago pro-Chechen gunmen seized a North Ossetian school. The three-day siege left more than 330 people dead.
... (more)
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FEMA Director Offers New Spin On Broken LeveesYesterday, Bush said “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” Today, FEMA director Mike Brown was asked about that comment on ABC’s Good Morning America:
GIBSON: Mike, with all due respect to you and with all due respect to the president, I was amazed to hear him say to Diane yesterday, We didn’t know the levees were going to break. We didn’t know the dams wouldn’t hold.
We all were talking about ... (more)
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Off the charts: Across U.S., shrinking paychecksThe American middle class is making less than it used to. But then again, so is almost everyone else. Even the highest-income U.S. households made less money in 2004 than they did five years earlier.
That is one conclusion available from data released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau in its annual report on income and poverty in the United States.
The charts to the right look at the real income, adjusted for inflation, of three groups of American households. Th... (more)
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New Orleans mayor lashes out at fedsAs his city skidded deeper into chaos, New Orleans' embattled mayor accused federal officials of dragging their feet while people are dying in deplorable conditions.
Mayor Ray Nagin's voice cracked with anger and anguish Thursday night in an interview with New Orleans radio station WWL-AM. (... (more)
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FEMA Dir. Mike Brown fired from prior job at Horse Assoc."An unmitigated, total fucking disaster." That's not a quote from Mike Brown, but rather, a quote describing him. And most disturbingly, it's not even a reference to his dismal performance as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This blunt critique was emailed to me from a regular reader who was apparently attracted to HorsesAss.org by her passion for politics and her love of Arabian horses.
I think I've told you that I'm into Arab horses. Well, for ... (more)
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Halliburton hired for storm cleanupThe Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.
KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. The company is not involved ... (more)
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Nagin: 'No more goddam press conferences'5:30am CDT -- CNN is rebroadcasting a radio interview with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. He is demanding help, urging the nation to flood Washington with phone calls telling the CUT THE BULL and "get of your asses." Where are the promised 40,000 Guard troops? Where are the 500 buses?
Audio here
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Radio host: No doubt 'End Times' hereA national talk-radio host believes the severity of Hurricane Katrina is clear evidence that civilization is now in the "End Times" described in the Bible.
"I don't think there's any doubt," George Noory said this morning on his "Coast to Coast AM" program. "I think we're in it. I really do."
While Noory explained he did not mean an imminent end to all life on Earth, he referred to the book of Revelation in the New Testament, saying current events are "the beginning... (more)
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Trapped in an Arena of SufferingA 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers.
The Louisiana Superdome, once a mighty testament to architecture and ingenuity, became the biggest storm shelter in New Orleans the day before Katrina's arrival Monday. About 16,000 people eventually settled in.
By Wednesday, it had degenerated into horror. A few hundred people were evacuated from the arena Wednesday, an... (more)
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U.S. Border Patrol Moved to Katrina Area, Border VulnerableU.S. Border Patrol officers are being shifted away from their posts guarding the U.S.-Mexico border to aid in the Katrina Hurricane disaster, leaving the country vulnerable to illegals and terrorists attempting to enter the U.S., NewsMax has learned.
The Bush administration ordered the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal agency charged with securing the border, to provide manpower, assets, and humanitarian support to Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, which has ... (more)
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Guantanamo hunger strike stagedScores of detainees at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have begun a hunger strike, human rights lawyers have said.
The prisoners, many of whom have been held for more than three years without charge, are believed to be demanding an immediate trial or release.
Lawyers for the detainees say about 200 are refusing all food. Military officials put the number at 76.
A hunger strike in July ended when the Pentagon agreed to talk to inmates.
... (more)
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Federal government wasn't ready for Katrina, disaster experts sayThe federal government so far has bungled the job of quickly helping the multitudes of hungry, thirsty and desperate victims of Hurricane Katrina, former top federal, state and local disaster chiefs said Wednesday.
The experts, including a former Bush administration disaster response manager, told Knight Ridder that the government wasn't prepared, scrimped on storm spending and shifted its attention from dealing with natural disasters to fighting the global war on terrorism.
... (more)
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Relief workers confront 'urban warfare'Violence disrupted relief efforts Thursday in New Orleans as authorities rescued desperate residents still trapped in the flooded city and tried to evacuate thousands of others living among corpses and human waste.
Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown said his agency was attempting to work "under conditions of urban warfare."
Police snipers were stationed on the roof of their precinct, trying to protect it from armed miscreants roaming seemingl... (more)
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