<p>Yeah, I can, and I am volunteering tomorrow to help the 300 hundred people coming to my city…I back up what I say</p>
<p>And yeah, I feel for those animals, something wrong with that, I can care for people and animals at the same time, amazing, huh</p>
<p>Took you awhile to find that, and try to make me look bad</p>
<p>Nice try</p>
<p>And thank you for those that did some research on the comment, I appreciate that</p>
<p>It wasn’t an attempt to make you look bad, it was an example of how those with a political (or religious) agenda can always find an out of context comment to hang their agenda on.</p>
<p>And yes, I listened to it also. It was completely cutup and out of context.</p>
<p>Okay, so that’s the 4th time you have posted that you are volunteering tomorrow with typing resumes for the evacuees. Great that you are out there with everyone else that is helping.
Sigh…</p>
<p>Speaking of volunteering–if I might interject. If there are any NYC or suburban NYC parents here who have any sort of influence (administrator, educator, PTA) in their local elementary / middle/ high schools -public, private, religious, could you please send me a private message. A grassroots effort is underway to support schools taking in Katrina evacuees. Thanks.</p>
<p>bklynmom
That post is worth a new thread…</p>
<p>Good idea. I’ll get to it. Thanks.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/opinion/06tierney.html?pagewanted=print[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/opinion/06tierney.html?pagewanted=print</a>
And another: <a href=“http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05249/566101.stm[/url]”>http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05249/566101.stm</a></p>
<p>S. O’BRIEN: What has Secretary Chertoff promised you? What has Donald Rumsfeld given you and promised you?</p>
<p>NAGIN: Look, I’ve gotten promises to – I can’t stand anymore promises. I don’t want to hear anymore promises. I want to see stuff done. And that’s why I’m so happy that the president came down here, because I think they were feeding him a line of bull also. And they were telling him things weren’t as bad as it was.</p>
<p>He came down and saw it, and he put a general on the field. His name is General Honore. And when he hit the field, we started to see action.</p>
<p>And what the state was doing, I don’t frigging know. But I tell you, I am ****ed. It wasn’t adequate.</p>
<p>And then, the president and the governor sat down. We were in Air Force One. I said, ‘Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two have to get in sync. If you don’t get in sync, more people are going to die.’</p>
<p>S. O’BRIEN: What date was this? When did you say that? When did you say…</p>
<p>NAGIN: Whenever air Force One was here.</p>
<p>S. O’BRIEN: OK.</p>
<p>NAGIN: And this was after I called him on the telephone two days earlier. And I said, ‘Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two need to get together on the same page, because of the lack of coordination, people are dying in my city.’</p>
<p>S. O’BRIEN: That’s two days ago.</p>
<p>NAGIN: They both shook – I don’t know the exact date. They both shook their head and said yes. I said, ‘Great.’ I said, ‘Everybody in this room is getting ready to leave.’ There was senators and his cabinet people, you name it, they were there. Generals. I said, ‘Everybody right now, we’re leaving. These two people need to sit in a room together and make a doggone decision right now.’</p>
<p>S. O’BRIEN: And was that done?</p>
<p>NAGIN: The president looked at me. I think he was a little surprised. He said, “No, you guys stay here. We’re going to another section of the plane, and we’re going to make a decision.”</p>
<p>He called me in that office after that. And he said, “Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor.” I said – and I don’t remember exactly what. There were two options. I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision.</p>
<p>S. O’BRIEN: You’re telling me the president told you the governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision?</p>
<p>NAGIN: Yes.</p>
<p>S. O’BRIEN: Regarding what? Bringing troops in?</p>
<p>NAGIN: Whatever they had discussed. As far as what the – I was abdicating a clear chain of command, so that we could get resources flowing in the right places.</p>
<p>S. O’BRIEN: And the governor said no.</p>
<p>NAGIN: She said that she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn’t happen, and more people died.</p>
<p>(END VIDEOTAPE)</p>
<p>S. O’BRIEN: The mayor making it clear that much politicking was going on, even as people here were continuing to suffer. The mayor clearly thinking that the governor did way too little, way too late for her part.</p>
<p>We put a call into Governor Blanco’s office. They declined to come on our show this morning and talk to us. Her spokesperson did say, though, that it was a – this was a tragedy now that was being reduced to politics.
<a href=“CNN.com - Transcripts”>CNN.com - Transcripts;
<p>It was reported yesterday that Nagin was called by the National weather service on Saturday advising him to evacuate the city. He did nothing. On Sunday president Bush called and pleaded with him to evacuate the city.</p>
<p>So, let’s recap: Bush takes the unprecedented move of declaring a state of disaster two days before the storm hits and then has to urge local officials to evacuate the city - yet this is somehow Bush’s fault??? I wonder if, in our history, a president has ever had to call local officials to urge them to take proactive measures?</p>
<p>I also found the article that Driver previously posted regarding the difference between disaster planning in the Newport News area of Virginia and the City of New Orleans. In Virginia they have pre-positioned food and water at the shelters to last for 3 days. In contrast, the official notice given to the people of NO heading to one of the shelters of last resort was to “BYO”. And yet Nagin has the audacity for blaming FEMA for not responding in time.</p>
<p>Yes, FEMA probably has some serious explaining to do. But let’s start at the local level and work our way up.</p>
<p>This appeared in the Times-Picayune, on Saturday, August 27.
</p>
<p>I make no comment on whether or not that was sufficient warning or on what else Nagin may have been doing in terms of organizing the evacuation that was not reported. The same issue reports various measures taken by other local officals such as Broussard.</p>
<p>There is no doubt now that FEMA is a disaster. It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Even today, they have search and rescue teams sitting in Dallas hotels because they can’t figure out what to do with them. </p>
<p>But, FEAM is all after the fact. The state and local authorities completely botched the planning and execution stage before the hurricane hit. There is no doubt of that. </p>
<p>I think we have seen that the US military is the only truly effective relief force we have. It takes hard decision making to be effective. The military has that down, they don’t play politics. Why not structure FEMA the same way?</p>
<p>We want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving right now, as a matter of fact, Nagin said. </p>
<p>Says a lot. Many that ended up trapped were determined to stay and protect their property from the wonderful outstanding upright neighbors. We will learn that lack of ability to travel was not the only factor in the lack of evacuation.</p>
<p>I was horrified at how many people that stayed in NO did it for their animals. I have an adorable cat, but no amount of kitty-love could convince me to put my family at risk. It’s sad to leave a pet behind, but sometimes we do have to make smart choices.</p>
<p>For some people, their pets are their family.</p>
<p>BBC article corrects some of the false infromation. Note that the failed levees were recently upgraded but may have had a design flaw. That’s what I heard the local Core director say yesterday. The overall upgrades many think were a few million away are noted to many yeasr and billions to complete. That makes that cut in this year’s budget totally meaningless.</p>
<p><a href=“http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4216508.stm[/url]”>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4216508.stm</a></p>
<p>Which is what was said all last week, the levees were going fail, and yet Bush and Brown said we had know idea…</p>
<p>Did they tell us the truth when they said that?</p>
<p>I don’t believe Mrs. Bush meant to appear callous when she said what she did. The comments were politically unfortunate because there are people who will eagerly grab every opportunity to impugn racism, callousness, and evil intent upon anyone even tangentially connected with the current Presidential administration.</p>
<p>People who live and travel in the orbit of the highly priveleged, not to mention, the very powerful, very seldom have any real frame of reference as to what it means to be poor. This is not only true of Barbara Bush, but probably the vast majority of the very wealthy (Teresa Hines Kerry, for example). It does not necessarily make them evil, or hardhearted, just very naive. I suspect Mrs. Bush was trying to be optimistic about the future of the evacuees. Pointing out that many she had spoken with desired to stay in Texas, is not indicative of a callous woman. I’m sure she thinks that life in Texas will prove to be altogether better than what it had been in New Orleans for many of them. And for some of them, this may well turn out to be true. Life has a way of handing us ironic twists —good things arising out of (or rather, in spite of) adversity. </p>
<p>If you choose to assign Mrs. Bush’s words the very worst possible intentions, it’s probably because she’s the mother of the current President, and the wife of “that other dreadful Bush”. But you don’t know that she’s personally done to aid the victims of this calamity—whether or not she’s opened her checkbook and written a large donation, hugged and encouraged victims, whatever. I don’t know either, of course, but I think that this rush to condemnation is in itself, callous and self serving, and does nothing to help. Last I looked, Barbara Bush wasn’t incharge of any of the offices or agencies responsible for fixing this mess. She was well within her right to have stayed at home in Crawford and met with the ladies of the club.</p>
<p>I agree with you poetsheart. Recall as well the big deal that was made about the first President Bush discovering scanners in supermarket checkouts (they were far from universal back in 1992), or the fact that he didn’t know the cost of a loaf of bread (or was it a gallon of milk?) Of course the POTUS doesn’t do his own shopping, he lives in a very physically insulated world. He has to. But it made for some good cheap-shot material.</p>
<p>She thought she was clever and that people were going to be grateful, and better off cause the were poor anyway</p>
<p>That had her voice and quote on CNN just a few minutes ago. No spin will make what she said kind. Its the attitude that is so important. As a public figure, she has a responsiblity to understand. Her husband was President for golly sakes…</p>
<p>SHe is not just any woman, she is the mother of the President and Former First Lady. Her words reflect on her husband and the President.</p>
<p>What she says in public, her beliefs, her thoughts, if she is going to go on the Radio, get in front of the camera, she better show some more compassion. Nice hugged those underprivileged people. Hugs are meaningless if the heart is cold.</p>
<p>I agree that, while Mrs. Bush’s remarks were not politically deft, she is far from callous and was trying to look on the bright side of things. And she is rightly proud of Texas which has come through so wonderfully for the victims of Katrina. As Poetsheart said, she is a private citizen and an elderly one; she did not have to put herself out. Kudoes to her for doing so. So she did have her Marie Antoinette moment, but it should be a non-issue.</p>