Poll: Government Not Helping Hurricane VictimsA new Survey USA tracking poll finds that 59% of Americans say the federal government "is not doing enough to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina," up from 50% just 24 hours ago.
Other findings:
75% of Americans today say that local officials are unprepared to meet the challenge that is before them. This is up 14 points, from 61%, in the past 24 hours.
34% of Americans today say the government’s response to the hurricane has been surprisingly disorgan... (more)
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Feds bar US' local govts from aiding New Orleans?!Total411.info monitors LibertyForum fairly regulary and finds this has the ring of truth. Everyone around the country should confirm with any local officials you know personally and then call the White House and tell them to STOP BLOCKING AID TO KATRINA VICTIMS. 202-456-1414.
via LibertyForum :
"I just got this e-mail from a friend. I've cut the last names out, but I know this guy well enough to know this isn't bull".
Hi Everyone,
I wanted to s... (more)
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Omigod: DICK CHENEY Has Been On Vacation! Dan Froomkin of The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Dick Cheney has spent part of August at his home outside Jackson Wyoming. A Cheney spokesperson insisted it wasn't a vacation because he'd had some briefings.
As of Wednesday -- two days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf States -- Cheney was STILL VACATIONING IN JACKSON WYOMING. And when was Cheney headed back to Washington?
"He will certainly be coming back. I'm not able to tell you th... (more)
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Plan for security cameras on holdBig Brother won't be watching students when they set foot on high school campuses Tuesday, their first day of school.
Corona-Norco school district officials had hoped to install security cameras for the start of school. But proper setup of the equipment takes some planning, said Ted Rozzi, assistant superintendent of facilities.
"It's a big job," Rozzi said.
Centennial High School will be the first campus to be fitted with the cameras by the end of 20... (more)
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Spying on the ProtestersIn the 1970s Senate and House investigations established what many antiwar protesters and campus activists had believed for several years: that they were being watched and sometimes targeted by the government, including the National Guard and the FBI. Scattered evidence accumulating around the country suggests that the domestic surveillance that occurred during the Vietnam War may be returning, involving a more coordinated federal effort through the National Guard as well as the Joint Terrorism ... (more)
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Net rumour sparks petrol crisisIF IT were not enough that Hurricane Katrina should cause problems for US Southern States, online sickos have managed to create a petrol scare for authorities to worry about.
Spam emails have been warning South Florida residents that because of the hurricane gas stations would close at midnight and remained closed two to three days.
Anyone who has stayed in Florida for more than ten minutes will know that there is no way to get about other than the car and so the em... (more)
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Mysterious Temple Mount artifact evokes 'Da Vinci Code'When Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkai and his assistant Tzachi Zweig began the painstaking task of sifting through mounds of Temple Mount rubble, they hoped to find artifacts dating from the period of the First or Second Temple.
They never dreamed of finding a mysterious artifact that looks like something straight out of the world of controversial theories propounded by "The Da Vinci Code."
Dan Brown's blockbuster novel from 2003, which has sold more than 36 mil... (more)
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Gallup Refuses To Run Poll Asking Americans If Bush Should Be ImpeachedBehind the scenes, independent Democrats who are not “bought and paid off ” by the neo-cons have been pushing the Gallup Poll organization to conduct a nationwide inquiry, asking Americans if they support the impeachment of President George Bush.
But Gallup officials this week categorically refused to poll Americans, telling Bob Fertik, Democrats for Unity president until impeachment was discussed by congressional leaders or news commentators in the media, it was their... (more)
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Sonic 'Lasers' Head to Flood Zone Air-raid sirens, Frank Sinatra songs and Muhammad Ali trash talk blared over the Southern California desert in a demonstration of new acoustic technology for crowd control and disaster communications.
In mid-90's morning heat at Edwards Air Force Base, HPV Technologies and American Technology demonstrated prototypes of non-lethal sonic devices for a group of military and law enforcement guests, including representatives of the U.K. Home Office.
Representatives of bo... (more)
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Former CIA Director Tenet Threatens Disclosures?Former CIA director George Tenet, said to be the target of what the Washington Times called "a scathing report by Inspector General John Helgerson” - may go public with embarrassing disclosures about the Bush administration and its actions leading up to Sept. 11, 2001.
The CIA report, prepared as the result of a 17-month investigation by a team of 11 CIA officials, blames Tenet and several top CIA officials for its failure pre-9/11 to deal with al-Qaida.
But f... (more)
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BREAKING: McClellan Refuses To Answer Questions About Levee FundingFrom today’s White House briefing:
REPORTER: There’s a lot of discussion going on about the funding of projects prior to this, whether projects in New Orleans in particular were underfunded because of the Iraq war or for other reasons. Do you find any of this criticism legitimate? Do you think there is any second guessing to be done now about priorities given that [a disaster in] New Orleans was sort of obvious to a lot of the experts?
MCCLELLAN:... (more)
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Bush, lawmakers accused of shortchanging projects: Funding for hurricane, flood protection downLawmakers and President Bush are being confronted by accusations that they shortchanged flood-control and hurricane-protection efforts in the New Orleans area.
A key flood-control project in southeastern Louisiana has seen its federal funding steadily dwindle, from $69 million in 2001 to $32.2 million in 2005, according to congressional offices and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Bush requested $10.5 million for the project for 2006, while the Corps said $62.5 million was requir... (more)
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Local leaders call relief efforts too little, lateNew Orleans on Thursday pulled back from an almost complete collapse of public order, a near anarchy that had supplanted receding floodwaters as the gravest threat to the city's still tenuous recovery.
Evidence that authorities were beginning to get a grip on gargantuan problems varied from the successful and orderly evacuation of Baptist Mercy Hospital to a sharp reduction in the menacing bands of idle refugees, many of them intent on looting that had haunted Uptown neighborhoods... (more)
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The Horror Worsens: Friday Pleas for Help from 'Times-Pic' Blog If anything, the situation grows more desperate in New Orleans, as these very up-close and personal, and terrifying, pleas for help at a Times-Picayune readers' forum reveal today -- including many patients and staff trapped in hospitals. We will update during the day.
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Sidney Smith, Matthew Von Stetina, his wife Bridget and 2 small children along with Adele Bertucci and her mother are trapped on the roof at 97 Fontainebleau Dr. water and food supplies have run o... (more)
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Katrina May Cut Payrolls by 500,000 This MonthHurricane Katrina may cost 500,000 Americans their jobs this month, the biggest decline in payrolls in more than 30 years and a loss that will show up as early as next week in jobless claims figures, economists said.
``There are currently more than a million displaced people, and I don't expect many of them to be back at work by the time of the September payroll survey,'' said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York. Shepherdson esti... (more)
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Convoys Roll Into New Orleans With Relief SuppliesA caravan of National Guard trucks, escorted by military helicopters, drove into this embattled city early Friday afternoon carrying water, food and other relief supplies for thousands of residents who have been waiting since Hurricane Katrina pummeled the area on Monday.
They arrived just shortly before lawmakers in Washington approved $10.5 billion in emergency funding for the relief effort. The House passed the bill on a voice vote. The Senate had done so Thursday night. Presid... (more)
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‘Major oil spill’ seen on Mississippi RiverA “major oil spill” has been spotted near two storage tanks southeast of New Orleans, the state Department of Environmental Quality said Friday.
The spill was first spotted Thursday during a flyover, department spokeswoman Jean Kelly told MSNBC.com, “but we still don’t have access to the area.”
The spill was just north of Venice, a town in the Mississippi River Delta, and 65 miles southeast of New Orleans.
Each tank is 20... (more)
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Airboaters stalled by FEMA: The pilots stand ready to go help hurricane victims but have not been allowed to do so. As a flooded New Orleans sinks further into despair, up to 500 Florida airboat pilots have volunteered to rescue Hurricane Katrina victims, transport relief workers and ferry supplies.
But they aren't being allowed in. And they're growing frustrated.
"We cannot get deployed to save our behinds," said Robert Dummett, state coordinator of the Florida Airboat Association. He said the pilots, who range from commercial airboat operators to weekend pleasure boaters, "ar... (more)
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FEMA chief: Victims bear some responsibilityThe director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.
Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.
"Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Brown told CNN.
"I don't ... (more)
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Impeach BushPat Buchanan, former communications director to President Ronald Reagan, former presidential candidate and WND commentator, has come to the conclusion that a courageous Republican legislator should move a bill for impeachment of President Bush.
I reluctantly agree – and for the same reasons.
President Bush has had nearly five years in office to honor his oath of office and enforce immigration laws in this country.
He has not only failed, he has ... (more)
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Bush criticized over storm responseA political storm gathered force on Thursday over President George W. Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina, as Democrats accused him of a sluggish response to the catastrophic flood that submerged New Orleans, and Bush, in a rare morning television interview, fought back.
"I hope people don't play politics during this period of time," Bush told Diane Sawyer of ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. "This is a natural disaster, the l... (more)
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'Casual to the point of careless' - Bush under fire for slow reactionPresident Bush faced not only the fallout of Hurricane Katrina but also an intense political storm yesterday as relief experts, government officials and newspaper editorials criticised everything from his administration's disaster preparedness policies to the manner in which he made his public entry into the growing crisis on the Gulf coast.
The New York Times said of a speech he made on Tuesday: "Nothing about the President's demeanour yesterday - which seemed casual to the point... (more)
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The State and the Flood"No one can escape the influence of a prevailing ideology," wrote Ludwig von Mises, and Gulf Coast residents know precisely what it means to be trapped—ostensibly by a flood but actually by statist policies and ideological commitments that put the government in charge of crisis management and public infrastructure. For what we are seeing in New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast region is the most egregious example of government failure in the United States since September 11, 2001.
... (more)
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