Katrina's POLITICAL aftermath (keep the political discussions HERE)

knowing our fate is to be with them?

key sentences here: "As for the tragic piggism that is taking place on the streets of New Orleans, it is not unbelievable but it is unforgivable, and I hope the looters are shot. "

disgusting.

xpost: peggy noonan is so batshit, it makes sense that she's on the wsj's op-ed roster. they only let you in if you've passed the crazy conservative test.

No duh. It's almost heaven, jackasses.

re: Fox News only focusing on the looting; It's real easy to try to lessen the criticism on those who you're covering for if you continue to show the people in trouble as inhuman vandals. Why, they're animals! it's not so bad that our elected officials can't do shit to help! those people don't deserve it! we'd just be coddling them, and they'd never learn!

Anderson Cooper was so great just now on CNN. He laced into Sen. Mary Landrieu saying people who have witnessed the devastation don't want to hear politicans congratulating other politicians for how they've responded.

He was yelling, basically, "Don't you get it yet?" He mentioned seeing a woman's body on the ground being eaten by rats. Landrieu told Anderson she understood what he was saying and then thanked the President again.

and the comment:

I saw him too. He was so calling bullshit on the claim that officials "were doing all they can." He was fantastic. He interrupted Sen. Landrieu right in the middle of her atta-boys to virtually tell her "excuse me but you're all so full of shit. People are dying here and you're congratulating each other!?" It was fantastic!

vid is here, but as expected the servers there are overloaded.

yeah I posted on the other thread that apparently they've calculated for awhile that it was around 112,000 HOUSEHOLDS, which is at least double that number of people...224,000 PEOPLE left behind after evacuation. and yet they weren't prepared with provisions...crazy

what the fuck are you talking about? i'm saying that if the entire point of your news station existing is to blast RNC talking points 24/7, funny how convenient it is to tailor your coverage to how "disgraceful" those people in need are in an effort to deny any sympathy and thus lower the intensity of criticism.

will that actually happen? fuck, i dunno. will that stop them from trying? take a fucking guess.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5249797,00.html

Now, how legit is Operation Blessing? CharityNavigator.com, which rates charities, gives them four stars (their highest rating) across the board. They report giving fully 99.4% of their income to program expenses and trivial amounts to administration and fundraising.

On the other hand, Robertson has repeatedly been criticized for commingling his overseas charitable operations -- specifically, Operation Blessing -- with his personal for-profit ventures into precious metals and diamond extraction, particularly with some of your better-known human rights pariahs and genocidal dictators. Zaire's Mobutu with blood diamonds, Liberia's Charles Taylor with gold mines. He's well diversified.

So, on balance, you might say the picture is mixed.

I can't say I feel completely angry at Landrieu either - she's just handling it the way any politician would and the best she knows how, and she's probably pissed at the response too and can't say it. Nonetheless, AC said what everyone is thinking and it was about fucking time.

ILX in thinking that everyone else are hopless media dupes shockah!!!

chill the strawman shit. that's the reason i typed

"will that actually happen? fuck, i dunno.

I'm sure your research has been as extensive as your knowledge of the shady deals of Pat "Charity" Robertson. Most of the problems are actually caused by the unnatural changes in the geography in New Orleans.

And the theory is that global warming causes more frequent, and powerful, hurricanes, which has been the case for the last year.

But hey, fuck the scientists and the data, we need something...credible?

I'm just trying to keep things factual here, and yes, I need something more credible to explain how exactly global warming caused this particular storm which was a normal hurricane in a normal hurricane season.

I don't think that she needs to be thanking the goddam president on national television, but if anyone was expecting her to get all apeshit on federal and state agencies, you may need to have more patience than Anderson Cooper did.

But I think Anderson Cooper was really railing against all politicians here, not just Landrieu.

Hell, I'd be surprised if someone in the House didn't lobby for this at some point over the last 2 years. Any idea as to whether or not that can be found?

His phrase about the "can't-do government" gets at something important, I think. It's the same thing that struck me when I heard Bush was asking his dad and Bill C. to reprise their tsunami fundraising role -- the idea that government can't and won't do much of anything about anything. You don't have health insurance? Hey, set aside some of your earnings in a "medical savings account." You've been hit by a hurricane? Hey, we'd love to help but we're stretched kinda thin here...tell you what, my dad'll hold a bake sale, call up some of his rich friends.

It's all part of the conservative anti-gubmint boilerplate, of course. But this is the kind of thing that makes you think that maybe possibly you want people running the government who believe in the ability of government to act and react usefully, not just give vague, empty grinning assurances from a thousand miles away.

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

Too late you fucking flip-flopper!

The White House scrambled Thursday to defend itself against criticism that it has consistently proposed cutting the budget for Army Corps of Engineers water and flood control projects - including several that could have mitigated the disaster in New Orleans.

Just in February, President Bush proposed cutting the Corps' budget by 7 percent. The year before, Bush proposed a 13 percent cut....

Hurricane Katrina is expected to cause a spurt of bankruptcy filings by storm victims -- and sweeping changes in U.S. bankruptcy laws may leave them even more strapped than they otherwise might be.

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which takes effect October 17, includes a slew of rules and restrictions intended to curb abuse. These are expected to make it harder for individuals to file to keep creditors away, and more difficult for businesses to reorganize...

..."People who are seriously affected by this hurricane are not going to be able to file bankruptcy by October 17," said Henry Sommer, co-editor of "Collier on Bankruptcy," a leading reference work. "They have more pressing things in their lives, like survival."