| August 31st, 2005 02:09 PM |
|
|
| padre |
I hope Katrina and the Waves haven't been planning a comeback and an U.S tour. Walking On Sunshine may not be the tune for NOLA people right now... |
| August 31st, 2005 03:15 PM |
|
|
| texile |
we're feeling it in texas - the astrodome is going to start taking in 25,000 evacuees....with shelters and churches all over houston and the surrounding areas already maxed; mother nature is a bitch. |
| August 31st, 2005 03:18 PM |
|
|
| Joey |
quote:
texile wrote:
mother nature is a bitch.
so are some of the barracudas that I have dated over the past twenty years .
..........................................................
[ Little Frisky ]
[Edited by Joey] |
| August 31st, 2005 03:21 PM |
|
|
| glencar |
quote:
texile wrote:
we're feeling it in texas - the astrodome is going to start taking in 25,000 evacuees....with shelters and churches all over houston and the surrounding areas already maxed; mother nature is a bitch.
Tell me about it, big boy! Here on Long Island my satellite keeps going out! |
| August 31st, 2005 03:25 PM |
|
|
| Joey |
quote:
glencar wrote:
Tell me about it, big boy! Here on Long Island my satellite keeps going out!
It's 92 and sunny here .......................
Then again --- in Joey's world --- it is ALWAYS 92 and Sunny !
Friskee ! |
| August 31st, 2005 03:25 PM |
|
|
| glencar |
And gay! |
| August 31st, 2005 03:26 PM |
|
|
| Joey |
" And gay! "
|
| August 31st, 2005 03:27 PM |
|
|
| glencar |
According to that "Kept" show he has a girlfriend. |
| August 31st, 2005 03:28 PM |
|
|
| Joey |
quote:
glencar wrote:
According to that "Kept" show he has a girlfriend.
|
| August 31st, 2005 03:58 PM |
|
|
| glencar |
The mayor said Wednesday that Hurricane Katrina probably killed thousands of people in New Orleans.
"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and other people dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."
The frightening estimate came as Army engineers struggled to plug New Orleans' breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers, while authorities drew up plans to clear out the tens of thousands of people left in New Orleans and all but abandon the flooded-out city.
There will be a "total evacuation of the city. We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months," Nagin said.
Most of those refugees _ 15,000 to 20,000 people _ were in the Superdome, which had become hot and stuffy, with broken toilets and nowhere for anyone to bathe. "It can no longer operate as a shelter of last resort," the mayor said.
Nagin estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained in New Orleans. He said 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, began mounting one of the largest search-and- rescue operations in U.S. history, sending four Navy ships to the Gulf Coast with drinking water and other emergency supplies, along with the hospital ship USNS Comfort, search helicopters and elite SEAL water- rescue teams. American Red Cross workers from across the country converged on the devastated region in the agency's biggest-ever relief operation.
The death toll from Hurricane Katrina has reached at least 110 in Mississippi alone. But Louisiana has put aside the counting of the dead to concentrate on rescuing the living, many of whom were still trapped on rooftops and in attics.
A full day after the Big Easy thought it had escaped Katrina's full fury, two levees broke and spilled water into the streets Tuesday, swamping an estimated 80 percent of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city, inundating miles and miles of homes and rendering much of New Orleans uninhabitable for weeks or months.
"We are looking at 12 to 16 weeks before people can come in," Nagin said on ABC's "Good Morning America, "and the other issue that's concerning me is we have dead bodies in the water. At some point in time the dead bodies are going to start to create a serious disease issue."
With the streets awash and looters brazenly cleaning out stores, authorities planned to move at least 25,000 of the New Orlean's storm refugees to the Houston Astrodome, 350 miles away, over two days in a vast convoy of some 475 buses.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the situation was desperate and there was no choice but to clear out.
"The logistical problems are impossible and we have to evacuate people in shelters," the governor said. "It's becoming untenable. There's no power. It's getting more difficult to get food and water supplies in, just basic essentials."
Around midday, officials with the state and the Army Corps of Engineers said the water levels between the city and Lake Pontchartrain had equalized, and water had stopped rising in New Orleans, and even appeared to be falling, at least in some places. But the danger was far from over.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 20,000-pound sandbags Wednesday into the 500-foot gap in the failed floodwall. But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.
Officials said they were also looking at a more audacious plan: finding a barge to plug the 500-foot hole.
"The challenge is an engineering nightmare," the governor said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
As New Orleans descended deeper into chaos, hundreds of people wandered aimlessly up and down Interstate 10, pushing shopping carts, laundry racks, anything they could find to carry their belongings. Dozens of fishermen from up to 200 miles away floated in on caravans of boats to pull residents out of flooded neighborhoods.
On some of the few roads that were still passable, people waved at passing cars with empty water jugs, begging for relief. Hundreds of people appeared to have spent the night on a crippled highway.
In one east New orleans neighborhood, refugees were being loaded onto the backs of moving vans like cattle, and in one case emergency workers with a sledgehammer and an ax broke open the back of a mail truck and used it to ferry sick and elderly residents.
Police officers were asking residents to give up any guns they had before they boarded buses and trucks because police desperately needed the firepower: Some officers who had been stranded on the roof of a motel said they were being shot at overnight. |
| August 31st, 2005 05:23 PM |
|
|
| gypsy |
quote:
glencar wrote:
Tell me about it, big boy! Here on Long Island my satellite keeps going out!
Ya oughta see my Crepe Myrtle. We need some rain...just a little. |
| August 31st, 2005 05:26 PM |
|
|
| Joey |
" Ya oughta see my Crepe Myrtle. "
Sounds Exciting !!!
|
| August 31st, 2005 05:29 PM |
|
|
| time is on my side |
Venezuela offers fuel, food to hurricane-hit US
Original Article
CARACAS (AFP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered to send food and fuel to the United States after the powerful Hurricane Katrina pummeled the US south, ravaging US crude production.
The leftist leader, a frequent critic of the United States and a target himself of US disapproval, said Venezuela could send aid workers with drinking water, food and fuel to US communities hit by the hurricane.
"We place at the disposition of the people of the United States in the event of shortages -- we have drinking water, food, we can provide fuel," Chavez told reporters.
Chavez said fuel could be sent to the United States via a Citgo refinery that has not been affected by the hurricane. Citgo is owned by Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
In the Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for a quarter of total US oil output, 92 percent of crude and 83 percent of natural gas production were shut down due to Hurricane Katrina, which slammed Louisiana and Mississippi, according to US government data.
Venezuela is the fourth-largest provider of oil to the United States, supplying some 1.5 million barrels a day.
Last week, Chavez offered discount gasoline to poor Americans suffering from high oil prices and on Sunday offered free eye surgery for Americans without access to health care.
© AFP 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.”
-Woodrow Wilson-
A leader is a person you will follow to a place you wouldn't go by yourself.
-Joel A. Barker-
|
| August 31st, 2005 05:33 PM |
|
|
| gypsy |
quote:
Joey wrote:
" Ya oughta see my Crepe Myrtle. "
Sounds Exciting !!!
She's really pretty and pink.
YES! |
| August 31st, 2005 05:38 PM |
|
|
| Some Guy |
Every gas station in the metro Atlanta area has a long line! This is surreal! It is all over the news. You will wait in line for gas NOW! It went up to 3 per gallon and more! |
| August 31st, 2005 05:41 PM |
|
|
| Joey |
quote:
Some Guy wrote:
Every gas station in the metro Atlanta area has a long line! This is surreal! It is all over the news. You will wait in line for gas NOW! It went up to 3 per gallon and more!
Some Guy ....................................
It is 1973 - '74 all over again !!!!!!
Goodbye Bushie43 ......................
Joey Ford ! |
| August 31st, 2005 05:50 PM |
|
|
| Some Guy |
quote:
Joey wrote:
Some Guy ....................................
It is 1973 - '74 all over again !!!!!!
Goodbye Bushie43 ......................
Joey Ford !
Dude, it is a friggin scene man! People be trippin! I remember being a young boy and seeing pictures in the 70's like this! Lines wrapped around the block down the skreets! |
| August 31st, 2005 05:53 PM |
|
|
| Joey |
quote:
Some Guy wrote:
Dude, it is a friggin scene man! People be trippin! I remember being a young boy and seeing pictures in the 70's like this! Lines wrapped around the block down the skreets!
Some Guy ..........................
Everything old is new again --- Unfortunately , this most likely will send the U.S. economy into a recession and thereby affect ticket sales for the rest of the unannounced 2006 tour dates . Word .
|
| August 31st, 2005 05:54 PM |
|
|
| Some Guy |
quote:
Joey wrote:
Some Guy ..........................
Everything old is new again --- Unfortunately , this most likely will send the U.S. economy into a recession and thereby affect ticket sales for the rest of the unannounced 2006 tour dates . Word .
Bro, I fear for our future! |
| August 31st, 2005 05:56 PM |
|
|
| Joey |
quote:
Some Guy wrote:
Bro, I fear for our future!
I hear you screaming my Brother .
Thank GOD I got the $ 162.00 " Main Floor " seats and not the $ 350.00 ones .
Shiver .......................................... |
| August 31st, 2005 05:58 PM |
|
|
| Some Guy |
I will see you in a few days, maybe. I am off to attempt to get gas for my 5 gallon container for my lawn mower. Wish me luck! |
| August 31st, 2005 05:59 PM |
|
|
| Joey |
quote:
Some Guy wrote:
I will see you in a few days, maybe. I am off to attempt to get gas for my 5 gallon container for my lawn mower. Wish me luck!
You are much loved . |
| August 31st, 2005 06:08 PM |
|
|
| Some Guy |
The news has said that stations are running out of gas and the supply lines feeding the state our down. Total chaos and anarchy. |
| August 31st, 2005 06:21 PM |
|
|
| Jumping Jack |
$5.57/gallon at one Atlanta gas station.
EPA has temporarily waived the requirements forcing refining of special blends.
Maybe the fucking environmentalists will let us build some new refineries and power plants now!!!
Maybe we will revoke the tax breaks on Hummers now! |
| August 31st, 2005 06:24 PM |
|
|
| glencar |
Geez, it's not like that up here. Gas is $2.75 a gallon or so. At least it was this morn... |
| August 31st, 2005 07:46 PM |
|
|
| gypsy |
quote:
Some Guy wrote:
Bro, I fear for our future!
Somehow, Bono will come to our rescue. |
| August 31st, 2005 08:04 PM |
|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"
By Sidney Blumenthal
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.
In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."
"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.
In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.
In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.
On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.
|
| August 31st, 2005 08:06 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
I've seen horrible images on TV of the disaster, all my prayers are with the victims. |
| August 31st, 2005 08:16 PM |
|
|
| Some Guy |
Thought I'd run down real quick and get some gas for my wife. The 2 stations near my house were closed. No gas!
|
| August 31st, 2005 08:33 PM |
|
|
| Riffhard |
Jesus Christ I can not believe that fucking Sidney Blummenthal is trying to lay this shit at Bush's feet! Will these fucking New York Times liberal fucks ever,and I mean EVER,give this shit a rest?!?!? They use this disaster to bash the Bush admin while completely ignoring the fact that the Clinton admin slashed all,but one spending proposal for New Orleans flood control efforts!! Why not slam Bubba while your at it Sidney?!?!?!?!?!?! You worthless shit munch hypocrit!
It's a goddamned disaster of biblical proportions and all this stupid fucking New York elite lib can do is use it to bash Bush! This is one of the main reasons that I switched sides some years ago. I am sick to death of fucking liberals like this fucknut trying to use every thing as a political weapon. Fuck Sidney Blummenthal. It's an amazing thing to watch really. Blummenfuck managed to bash Bush and the war in Iraq while couching the them in terms of the disaster along the Gulf Coast!!!
Help the poor people down there for God's sake. They need it bad,but to try and politicize this disaster is beyond disgusting! I am stunned that this asshole would do it,but nothing those fuckers does shocks me anymore!
Hey Sidney,thanks you have just made me a lifetime member of the Republican party! Fucking asshole!
FUCK THE NEW YORK TIMES AND SIDNEY FUCKING BLUMMENTHAL,and fuck anyone that would use this horrible tragedy to advance their own political agenda,or slam the opposition. Classless,tastless,but sadly,all too predictable from the NYT,Salon,and the like.
Riffhard
[Edited by Riffhard] |
|
