Q: What’s George Bush’s position on Roe v. Wade?

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It’s funny how the pro-abortion folks can switch their positions so easily and smoothly that it’s almost imperceptible.

Found on Boing Boing, the group, the Center for Bio-ethical Reform, is driving around trucks like the one above with graphic images from abortions that occured. Of course, people are all beside themselves and now the pro-”show-it-all” leftists, who think the christian right is a bunch of prudes, are now sounding like prudes themselves. Boing Boing quotes one of its readers:

This anti-choice/abortion group produces semi trucks with VERY graphic, ten-foot-high images of dead fetuses on the sides. I live in Tallahassee, Florida, which is not a large city, and saw one of these trucks driving down the road this morning. I was appalled. Children see these images and I believe they are way too graphic for children to understand.

Children? We care about children?

Maybe we should consider not murdering them?

Here’s the thing. For years, kids have had every alternative lifestyle shoved down their throat. In some cities, sex education begins for children between the ages of eight and ten. The whole time they’re being told homosexuality is just another choice in a person’s life and that it’s perfectly normal to have two daddies or two mommies. Drug abuse and alcoholism are diseases, therapy is normal, and if you dare play too much you need a drug to calm you down.

It’s also been preached that kids don’t learn any questionable behavior from video games, can filter out television, and violent music lyrics, and so on.

But this is too much for the kids.

Then there’s the hypocrisy of a society that’s saturated with abortion to the point where it’s just a medical procedure removing a growth. Look at the pictures. Does that look like some random growth of cells? Of course it doesn’t, and that’s the true issue… It’s not about the images being too graphic; it’s about the images humanizing a fetus, and that’s what puts the pro-abortion folks through the ceiling.

Pro-abortion folks go nuts at the very thought of someone considering a fetus a human being. Remember when I posted this story and the ensuing firestorm that erupted on two liberal blogs over my daring to try to impede the choice to murder your child? It wasn’t over me, it was over me showing a fetus with a face. A body. Arms, legs, fingers and toes. That’s always been at the core of the pro abortion army. They want you to see a fetus as a lump of cells that you have the right to squish. Unfortunately, the pictures don’t back up that assertion, so we must therefore hide the pictures and protect the right to “choice,” as well as the right to feel comfortable while murdering your child.

Leave the trucks. Let them roll through every major city in america. If they change one mind, that’s a good thing.

Unless of course you’re pro abortion, in which case humanizing the barbaric murder of children is never a good thing.

Sources:
Center for Bio-Ethical Reform
Boing Boing

Before the show…

Originally uploaded by VincenzoF

.

People milling about waiting for The Corpse Bride (which was AWESOME!) to begin.

It starts next week nationwide, but since I’m lucky enough to live in New York, I got to see it a week early

Jingoism, Yay!

Originally uploaded by Dan Dickinson.

Flickr user Dan Dickinson is under the impression that wanting to kill terrorists is jingoism. I think that opinion sums up most of the left’s attitude toward fighting back against terrorism.

Truth be told, it’s not all of them, but enough loud vocal ones that the ones who don’t agree can’t seem to get on their own soapboxes.

I don’t know… The title he chose for the picture just really disgusted me, so I shared it.

You know, I think I finally have it. I have finally discovered what is wrong with the CUNY (City University of New York) system, and it’s been right under our noses the entire time. For years, educators, politicians, and students have been agonizing over what’s going wrong with the public university system in New York City, and here I am, discovering it.

City College, one of the bigger CUNY schools, has been running ads in the subway for about a year now. They all have some immigrant on them who overcame tremendous adversity and language barriers to become an unbelievable student; the assumption being that the subway is only populated with immigrants anyway I guess.

In one of the ads, we see a picture of a young blonde woman. We learn that her name is Anastassiya Andrianova, and that she’s a brilliant student, speaks four languages, and is from the Ukraine. This is the whole first four lines. A history of her, and what classes she’s taking and how brilliant she is. Yawn. Triumph over adversity. I SO get it and it’s so been done already.

But the very next line reads as follows. Now, bear in mind, this is the first introduction to the school that appears in the entire ad:

For more than 150 years, City College has been a landmark of diversity, opportunity, and academic fire.

Huh!?

Think about that!

The school is there selling itself as a serious academic institution, and the first qualities it mentions are diversity, opportunity, and then, thirdly, academic fire? I think this represents a larger trend in academia, colleges to elementary schools, of being more proud of the makeup of your student body than their performance or the academic qualifications and accomplishments of the school.

Problem solved.

I’ve been thinking. A lot of people seem to like to compare 9/11 and Katrina. I’ve never thought it’s a truly valid comparison. Truthfully, the only thing they have in common is that they happened in the US, but let’s examine some of the differences.

Considering that on 9/11 we had no warning whatsoever, I’d say the comparative reaction for Katrina is a disgrace. As I’ve said on numerous occasions, the government failed those people from the bottom up. The mayor and governor first, then the folks in DC.

The difference in the reactions of the people is enormous. Taking food and water is one thing, but looting stores? New York City is a jackpot of high-ticket stores and such. Number of looters during the 2003 blackout? 4, and all of them arrested. Number of people looting who were not taking food in New Orleans? Too damned many.

Also, the actions of the people are so different. New York City in 2001 reached out and risked its lives to help others. In New Orleans, there are plenty of stories of heroism, and the pictures in the news do show them. However, the people down there also rape others, steal televisions and sneakers, and so on. Those actions simply cannot be blamed on a hurricane. If you’re raping people and robbing sneakers and televisions, the hurricane isn’t the reason.

The Federal Government deserves to be raked over the coals for this one. When it was determined that the inept Blanco and inept Nagin weren’t doing enough in preparation, the Federal Government should’ve gone down there, put them both in handcuffs, taken control of the situation, and worried about the repurcussions later. A mandatory evacuation, by force, could’ve saved hundreds of lives. I don’t believe that if people were stupid enough to stay they deserve what they got. Judging from the behavior of people afterward, I’m not fully convinced that the folks down there understood the consequences of this hurricane making landfall anyway.

The media also has a problem. The whole criticism has been of FEMA, and Michael Brown. I agree with much of it, and laugh when I hear the President commending “Brownie” on the “hell of a job” he’s doing. However, I’ve seen little to no blame laid on the locals. In fact, in interview after interview with Ray Nagin, all I’ve heard reporters ask Nagin is what he thought about the Federal response. What about the local response? What about the local ineptitude?

Same goes for Governor Blanco. Everyone wants to know her opinion on the Federal response. Why isn’t someone raking her over the coals for being an inept tool this whole time? In fact, the mentality that Nagin and Blanco are as much victims as the people who lost everything permeates even the news coverage. A recent ABC poll found that 45 percent of the people of New Orleans believe that the federal government, Bush specifically, should shoulder a “great deal” or “good amount” of blame for what happened, but ABC failed to mention that in that very same poll 57 percent said the same about the local governments!

Instead, ABC focused on how many people down there thought the response would be quicker if the victims were wealthy and white. Well, here’s a newsflash for you. It’s not politically correct to say so, but if the victims were wealthy and white, do you think there’d be looting (not of food stores, but of sneaker and electronic stores), raping, murdering, and so on going on?

Finally, the demographic issue.

The media loves to portray that black people are suffering the most in New Orleans, and that you don’t see white people running from their homes. Wolf Blitzer, on CNN, in a moment of amazing lucidity decided to tell the world exactly what was going on with the victims; and how they were so poor… And so black…

OF COURSE THEY’RE BLACK!

The people fleeing their homes in New Orleans aren’t mostly black due to some slight of the government! The people fleeing their homes are mostly black because the people of New Orleans are (gasp!) MOSTLY BLACK!

Here are some demos for New Orleans:

I guess when you see the numbers, you start to realize that the reason most of the people you see evacuating are “so black” is because most of New Orleans is, by a large number, a black city. You aren’t seeing most of the people running from their homes as black because the white people got out. You’re seeing most of the people running from their homes as black because 72% of the population of New Orleans is not white!

There’s plenty of things to be angry about in this story, honestly, but the disconnect between the media and the facts is one thing that needs to be addressed. Trying to manufacture anger and resentment with every story is doing no service to the people they claim to care about.

In all honesty… It’s not a bad typo… But since I am the spelling nazi, I figured I’d have to point it out.

“I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach. It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry,” Farrakhan said.

Oh yeah. Moonbats on parade.

The shade from the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market sign is minimal around noon; still, six picketers squeeze their thermoses and Dasani bottles onto the dirt below, trying to keep their water cool. They’re walking five-hour shifts on this corner at Stephanie Street and American Pacific Drive in Henderson—anti-Wal-Mart signs propped lazily on their shoulders, deep suntans on their faces and arms—with two 15-minute breaks to run across the street and use the washroom at a gas station.

Periodically one of them will sit down in a slightly larger slice of shade under a giant electricity pole in the intersection. Four lanes of traffic rush by, some drivers honk in support, more than once someone has yelled, “assholes!” but mostly, they’re ignored.

They’re not union members; they’re temp workers employed through Allied Forces/Labor Express by the union—United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). They’re making $6 an hour, with no benefits; it’s 104 F, and they’re protesting the working conditions inside the new Wal-Mart grocery store.

“It don’t make no sense, does it?” says James Greer, the line foreman and the only one who pulls down $8 an hour, as he ambles down the sidewalk, picket sign on shoulder, sweaty hat over sweaty gray hair, spitting sunflower seeds. “We’re sacrificing for the people who work in there, and they don’t even know it.”

No you aren’t, dude. You’re sacrificing for the union.

This is the problem with unions. Unions are absolutely in the business of perpetuating themselves and lobbying politicians. That’s it. Consider the irony here. People are walking around outside a Wal-Mart, who have never even worked there, protesting for people who aren’t protesting, representing a union that’s paying them chump change to stand out in oppressive heat in the Nevada desert.

I guess it’s okay when the union underpays and overworks its people. Think about that the next time some assbag from a union tells you about the horrible conditions at Wal-Mart and how much people suffer under their employ.

I’ll leave you with this stroke of genius from the UFCW website:

The UFCW’s website concludes, “Every person working hard for a living earns the right to a decent wage, affordable health care and a voice on the job. But Wal-Mart’s greed provides other companies a license to chip away at the rights of working America, influencing everything from wages to working conditions.”

Wages?

Working conditions?

Glass house meet stone…

Source: Las Vegas Weekly

Michael Brown head of FEMA and paragon of ineptitude, resigned today.

Developing…

UPDATE: Here’s the story about Brownie. And just for the record, I had a 5 second scoop on Drudge.
Update 2: My apologies to Tammy for being a non-citing ass and not mentioning that it was her tip that let me know. Sorry Tammy!

Schumer and his cronies should rot for this one…

In one of the more cynical tricks we’ve seen lately, Schumer’s DSCC urged visitors to its Web site to sign a petition urging the firing of Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, the focus of much of the criticism of the federal response to Katrina.

[...]

A click on the petition opened a page requesting a donation to the DSCC, the party organization focused on recruiting and supporting Senate Democrats.

Only after the press blew the whistle did the tasteless scheme end. The committee yanked the link and agreed to donate any funds raised to charity.

I guess Schumer’s record in the Senate isn’t enough to garner donations.

What was that record again? He accomplished…

Well…

Okay, I give up…

Anyway, the Post makes sure to caveat their story a bit:

Efforts to politicize Katrina continue apace; certainly Schumer isn’t the only pol seeking to take crass advantage of an indescribable human tragedy.

But he is from New York, which is approaching the fourth anniversary of a tragedy of its own — and certainly he should know better.

Chuck Schumer should be ashamed of himself

Well, yeah. He should know better. And in fact, he does. It’s just that he’s not used to being called on the carpet for doing something wrong. One of the benefits to being a Senator in one of the bluest states in the country, I guess.

Source: NY Post

CNN PRODUCERS TOLD ON-AIR GUESTS: GET ANGRY

Mon Sep 12 2005 12:42:11 ET

After weeks of intense Katrina coverage from the main press, LA TIMES guru and former CNN host Michael Kinsley divulges that CNN was coaching guests to artificially enhance emotions!

Kinsley writes:

“The TV news networks, which only a few months ago were piously suppressing emotional fireworks by their pundits, are now piously encouraging their news anchors to break out of the emotional straitjackets and express outrage. A Los Angeles Times colleague of mine, appearing on CNN last week to talk about Katrina, was told by a producer to ‘get angry.’”

Developing…

You know, there should be enough anger about the aftermath of Katrina that CNN wouldn’t have to manufacture it… But then again, who does it help if people are artificially angry? Or more specifically, who does it hurt? And who are most of them amping up their anger at?

Something to ponder as you watch the animated talking heads on the unbiased and fair mainstream media. If anything could summarize why I’m not watching the coverage at all, and am instead reading it, this is it.

And then they fell

Originally uploaded by VincenzoF.

I’m never going to forget that day as long as I live. I can relive every minute of it as if it happened twenty minutes ago.

It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever witnessed up close and personal and the thing that’s made me angrier than anything I’ve ever seen up close and personal all at the same time.

I wish I could turn back time.

(the picture to the right is from my office roof)

National Geographic Magazine…

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV “storm teams” warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen?

Jeez, it sounds really bad. I can’t imagine what it must be like living down…

Wait…

Wait a minute…

There’s more to this article…

It hasn’t—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

“The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction,” says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city’s hurricane armor. “I don’t think people realize how precarious we are,”
Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. “Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it’s going to make things much worse.”

The chances of such a storm hitting New Orleans in any given year are slight, but the danger is growing. Climatologists predict that powerful storms may occur more frequently this century, while rising sea level from global warming is putting low-lying coasts at greater risk. “It’s not if it will happen,” says University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland. “It’s when.”

Holy sweet Jesus son of God.

October 2004.

Almost a year ago.

Ponder that the next time some assclown gets in front of a camera, praises FEMA, and tells you they never could’ve predicted what happened. Read the whole damn thing, and educate yourself. Then laugh. Laugh really f’ing hard at the next person who says they never saw this coming.

Is the rolling up of the sleeves supposed to make people feel better?

Reuters Photo

While all hell was breaking loose down South, in Katrina’s aftermath, hundreds of firefighters who were flown in to aid in the rescue effort were held in classrooms for sensitivity training by FEMA, have been put on mop duty, and are performing secretarial tasks.

You only wish I was kidding.

ATLANTA - Hundreds of firefighters who volunteered to help rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina have instead been playing cards, taking classes on FEMA’s history and lounging at an Atlanta airport hotel for days while they await orders.

“On the news every night you hear (hurricane victims say), `How come everybody forgot us?’” said Joseph Manning, a firefighter from Washington, Pa. “We didn’t forget. We’re stuck in Atlanta drinking beer.”

As of Tuesday, some of the firefighters, like Thomas Blomgren of Battle Creek, Mich., had waited at the hotel for four days. Now he and a colleague have been told they may be sent to a hurricane relief camp in South Carolina to do paperwork rather than help the devastated Gulf Coast.

“FEMA hired the best of the best firefighters, got them together and gave them secretary jobs,” Blomgren said.

He and colleague Steven Richardson said they followed FEMA’s advice and brought huge packs filled with special firefighting suits, sleeping bags and lifesaving equipment to survive in harsh conditions for as long as a month. “But we’d be better off bringing pencils and cell phones,” Blomgren grumbled.

They need firefighters to do paperwork? What a colossal waste of manpower.

When FEMA called for 2,000 firefighters from across the country, it made it clear the mission was one of community service and outreach - not firefighting, Russell said. The firefighters are paid by FEMA for their time.

“People are in need,” Russell said. “Sometimes you just need to mop the floor if that’s what’s best for the victims.”

Desk work may be the first priority for some firefighters for now, but the mission’s needs could rapidly change, Russell said. Those who are upset, he said, are free to go. “This is not a draft,” he said.

Where to begin? There’s so much stupidity in that small section!

First: If it was all about service and outreach, why were they told to bring so much equipment?

Second: If you need people to mop the floor, why don’t you take some locals out of the federal courthouses or something and let them do it? Why take firefighting manpower from around the country to mop floors? Answer phones? Process victims? I mean, does this sound like the work of firefighters? Especially ones bussed in from around the country!

In the meantime, the firefighters - some from as far away as Washington state - have received vaccines and specialized training, including classes on sexual harassment, the history of FEMA and how to deal with ethnic groups.

Does my sensitivity matter if I’m saving your life? Honestly, it just doesn’t seem to me to be something they should be doing while people die. Maybe it’s just me but I don’t see the need to school a firefighter on the various aspects of effectively dealing with “different ethnic groups,” when in reality, all they’re there to do is help.

Or at least, that’s what they’re supposed to be there for.

If this is how FEMA handles an emergency, then someone there needs to be fired and now. I’ve seen nothing from FEMA in this emergency that proves that they’re able to respond quickly, efficiently, and effectively. That’s not a good sign from an agency who should be doing exactly that.

Source: AP

If you listen to the talking heads around the blogosphere (and how the hell can you not; Most of them never shup up), Yahoo is the evil Satan of evil Satans. When they took over Flickr, you should’ve heard the proclamations from the Flickrati that it was going to be the end of Flickr, and Yahoo was going to destroy the world.

Of course, most of the hysteria against Yahoo is anti-corporation, rather than anti-Yahoo. You know the shpiel… Yahoo is evil because Yahoo is a corporation; it’s a standard battle cry of the left these days, and most of the people on Flickr, as with any other community of artsy types, leans left.

Both the blogosphere and Flickrati have picked up on this latest story as if it’s proof positive that corporations are evil, and Reporters Without Borders (all these organizations with the “Without Borders” moniker amuse the hell out of me; can’t we be a little bit more original?) is beside itself.

Cue the dark and ominous organ music before you read this:

“We already knew that Yahoo ! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well,” the press freedom organisation said.

“Yahoo ! obviously complied with requests from the Chinese authorities to furnish information regarding an IP address that linked Shi Tao to materials posted online, and the company will yet again simply state that they just conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate,” the organisation said. “But does the fact that this corporation operates under Chinese law free it from all ethical considerations ? How far will it go to please Beijing ?”

Ethics do not take precedence over law in any country I know of. Why would they in an oppressive black hole like China? It’s not about pleasing Beijing; it’s about not violating the law. Just because something may be ethical (ie: getting the word out on some horror committed by the Chinese government) doesn’t mean it’s legal (ie: getting the word out about some horror or oppression about to be committed by the government and communicated in a governmental e-mail).

Yahoo ! Holdings (Hong Kong) is subject to Hong Kong legislation, which does not spell out the responsibilities in this kind of situation of companies that provide e-mail services. Nonetheless, it is reportedly customary for e-mail service and Internet access providers to transmit information to the police about their clients when shown a court order.

Tests carried out by Reporters Without Borders seem to indicate that the servers used for the Yahoo.com.cn e-mail service, from which the information about Shi was extracted, are located on the Chinese mainland.

Shi Tao Aged 37, Shi worked for the daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News). He was convicted on 30 April of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal message which the authorities had sent to his newspaper warning journalists of the dangers of social destabilisation and risks resulting from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Chinese state security insisted during the trial that the message was “Jue Mi” (top secret). Shi admitted sending it out by e-mail but disputed that it was a secret document. He is still being held in a prison in Changsha to which he was sent after his arrest in the northeastern city of Taiyuan on 24 November 2004.

So the reporter gets an e-mail from an admittedly oppressive government. He takes said e-mail and sends it outside of China, gets busted because his illegal activity was caught on to by the Chinese authorities, and then everyone gets up in arms because Yahoo turned over the proof of the illegal act. Of course, Reporters Without Brains Borders is livid over this turn of events and is, like most other outlets piling on, accusing Yahoo of doing this heinous thing, cooperating with authorities in the investigation of a crime, in the interests of expanding its Chinese operations.

Think about that, for a minute. Let it soak in and rattle around inside your brain.

Yahoo, in effect, helped the government of China investigate a crime on a court order.

Is that so out of the ordinary? And so out of the ordinary that it requires accusatory tripe from every leftist outlet and RWB?

You won’t see me defending China on here. I think they’re an oppressive and horrific communist government, like all other communist governments as far as I’m concerned, that no one should have to live under. However, there is nothing in this case that warrants further scrutiny of any kind. Yahoo’s motivation in turning over the emails is irrelevant because, in the end, the man did in fact break the law.

In fact, his only defense wasn’t that he didn’t do it, but that the e-mail wasn’t that big of a secret. The headlines are just as sensational as the story. “Yahoo collaborates with Chinese Gov’t to Jail Reporter” and that type of hysteria are all over the internet now and people are trying desperately to villainize Yahoo.

They did what they had to do in respecting the laws of the country they operate in. This isn’t an ethical battle, it’s a legal one, and when the person accused of a crime admits to doing it but does nothing more than hand out mitigating circumstances (ie: it wasn’t that secret), you can’t really expect to win.

Case closed.

Though much of the complaints against the Bush administration and its utterly inept handling of Hurricane Katrina are valid, there is one criticism that is just not valid no matter how many times it’s repeated…

If the Army Corps of Engineers had completed its upgrades of the levee system, according to most sources willing to place all the blame on the Bush Administration, the city would not have been flooded. I’ve yet to find one independent corroboration on that fact, just speculation.

Factcheck.org, as usual, shatters myths with relative ease…

We asked the Corps about that “design issue.” David Hewitt, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said McClellan was referring to the fact that “the levees were designed for a category 3 hurricane.” He told us that, consequently, “when it became apparent that this was a category 5 hurricane, an evacuation of the city was ordered.” (A category 3 storm has sustained winds of no more than 130 miles per hour, while a category 5 storm has winds exceeding 155 miles per hour. Katrina had winds of 160 mph as it approached shore, but later weakened to winds of 140 mph as it made landfall, making it a strong category 4 storm, according to the National Hurricane Center.)

The levee upgrade project around Lake Pontchartrain was only 60 to 90 percent complete across most areas of New Orleans as of the end of May, according to the Corps’ May 23 fact sheet. Still, even if it had been completed, the project’s goal was protecting New Orleans from storm surges up to “a fast-moving Category 3 hurricane,” according to the fact sheet.

We don’t know whether the levees would have done better had the work been completed. But the Corps says that even a completed levee project wasn’t designed for the storm that actually occurred.

The story does take on a different tone when you realize that even had the project been 100% complete, it would’ve been destroyed anyway because Katrina was a storm that was not planned for and was stronger than the levee system anyway.

Why is this important?

Because there is this constant little buzzing gnat in the media that keeps buzzing about the levee project and how funding was cut for it to give tax breaks to the wealthy and to fight a war in Iraq. However, whether or not the project was completed, New Orleans would still be underwater.

Factcheck.org bases its source on a fact sheet from the Army Corps of Engineers, the organization in charge of the project. All the folks talking about lives being saved are basing their assumptions on? Anyone? I’ll throw this administration under the bus for every single aspect of this that they’re responsbile for. However, I don’t see a need to pin added responsibility on them that isn’t theirs. We don’t need to outwardly lie and bring in tax cuts and wars and other political footballs, when discussing this story. In this case, they just aren’t relevant.

Upgraded levees would’ve broken and flooded New Orleans. The lesson here is that we need to plan for more than a Category 3 hurricane if New Orleans is rebuilt.

Source: Factcheck.org

DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED

HURRICANE KATRINA A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH…RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL…LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE…INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY…A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD…AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS…PETS…AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS…AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING…BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED.

AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR HURRICANE FORCE…OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE…ARE CERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS.

ONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ONSET…DO NOT VENTURE OUTSIDE!

No one could’ve known? The NOA knew and had no problem telling anyone willing to listen.

September 5, 2005 | 8:58 p.m. ET

The “city” of Louisiana (Keith Olbermann)

SECAUCUS — Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: “Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater…”

Well there’s your problem right there.

If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government’s response to a crisis, this was it.

The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.

But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”

Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the “I-Me” switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.

And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet’s meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural… and government-made.

But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.

No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.

But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the “chatter” from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn’t quite discern… a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, “we are not satisfied,” with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which “we” he thinks he’s speaking for on this point. Perhaps it’s the administration, although we still don’t know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, ‘I’ll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die’?

I don’t know which ‘we’ Mr. Bush meant.

For many of this country’s citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to ‘08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — “New Orleans.”

For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick “I’m not satisfied with my government’s response.” Instead of hiding behind phrases like “no one could have foreseen,” had he only remembered Winston Churchill’s quote from the 1930’s. “The responsibility,” of government, Churchill told the British Parliament “for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence.”

In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.

As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government’s credibility.

Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.

Government ineptitude and inaction leads to thousands of people dying. No acceptable answers put forward as of yet.

Over one week later.