Finger pointing,, name calling,, assumptions of blame... Sensationalism and searching for a basket of dirty laundry in anothers back yard... What have we begun to reduce ourselves to? It sounds like a school yard of children that have been asked about who did it... He did, she did, they did!!! It wasn't my fault!!!

Well, we know who wasn't prepared for this act of Mother Nature, Katrina came into the Gulf Coast, and not just New Orleans.. Remember that the Eye came in to the East of that Corrupted City?

Now the Mayor wants to allow 180,000 to return to the city to work on repairs in the middle of the season!!! The clean up has just begun you idiot... If anyone has realized what has just taken place,, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to read the writing on the contaminated walls of a city that stands for a degree of Hedonism that represents a part of our Country that should be irradicated from the vermin that has been overlooked for far too long.

I kick myself for thinking it, much more for putting this in script,,,but I hope this next Storm,, Rita, takes a right hand turn and takes that city out!!!

I lived and went to College in Central Louisiana and I know about the corruption that has existed for much too long... Time to pay the Piper, Ya'll!!

Just a question for you, can the Governor of LA be impeached for failing in getting residents to safety? I have read on some boards that some people are very angry with the Governor, and the Mayor too......................

One example was all the school buses that was flooded. Now, they could have been used to get some people out of town...........especially since a lot of them didn't cars or money for that matter.................................


Their emergency plan turned out to not be much of a plan at all. I can't imagine this happening here in Florida....................................


Thanks for the explanation regarding Invest. We appreciate that.

I don't think that impeached is the right word. It ocurred in Caleeforneea when the Govenor was recused,, I think that is right,,, and The Terminator walked into the State Mansion.

I learned a moment ago that the term Recuse is primarily one that is used in the Judiciary, when a judge will excuse themself from the bench for varied reasons. Govenor Grey Davis was removed in a way, but whether that was by choice or by vote, I am not sure.

Certainly we have seen valid evidence for removing Govenor Blanco and Mayor Ray Naegle in light of their inability to perform the Job Responsibilities.

As of late, the Mayor seems to have his head inverted into a crevace where the Sun don't shine by inviting residents back before the infrastucture has been re-established. Come on, really, no Police, No freash water, No functional Hospitals, Decaying Homes that have been infused with a cesspool of contamination past their ceilings in many cases, little if any food in the immidiate area, and this Mayor has the insight to invite the residents Back??? I haven't heard a Squeek from Govenor Blanco in more than a week on the National Media.. Look at what our Govenor Jeb has done ahead of Rita just in the last few days.. C130 aircraft were sent down to Key West, for one, to evacuate Special needs people from the island, mandatory evacuations of locals with check points along the way of US1 and preparations in several areas to receive these folks with beddings and facilities to accomodate them..

Now that is a person who has taken control, and deserves the Office..

Indeed there appears to have been no plan at all in Louisiana..

As I spoke on your Mini,, I can't take the credit for the information I gave you, I just shared what was taught me in a brief conversation with Matthew, about your questions.. Thanks... ;)

I think Davis was voted out of office. :D



Perhaps Jeb Bush need to go and take charge of things...............he did such a good job, remember last year? He was visible out there with the people.....................



President Bush offered to "take charge" of things a while back, but Blanco refused..........................................


Didn't the Mayor just days after Katrina's landfall crying out for help? SOS...............

Don't know what Jeb Bush's plans are after his job as Governor is done, but he is more than qualified for FEMA.......................

"The paragraph from the Times Picayune: "'Within 45 minutes, we arranged a motorcade,' Tucker says.'We found Mary and Marc [former Mayor Marc Morial], got school buses for workers and sound trucks with music and put on a parade to flush out our voters. Mary and Marc were in Norma Jane Sabiston's little red convertible. (Sabiston was Landrieu's campaign manager.) It was a tight fit for Marc, big as he is, but they were both up there waving. We moved them into the major housing project areas blowing horns and playing New Orleans music. We were doing what we do best in New Orleans, having a parade.' The phone bank was operating at another location. Workers were calling voters asking them to get to the polls and asking them if they needed a bus. Surge time was 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. when large numbers of voters get off work and go to the places. There were more parades in key areas."

So, you know, no big deal. It's common. I'm just saying that when they want to use those buses to get people where they want them to be, they can do it. "

from the times-picayune, nov 09 1996.

as we can see, democrats had absolutely no trouble finding people to drive those buses when votes were at stake. but, when lives were at stake, the buses sat idle and flooded. they got those buses running in 45 minutes. apparently they failed to use their phone bank as well.

(and other things as well).....................


Anyone else that get irritated with some of the things the media say and do during a storm? For every storm they behave like they never seen one before...............

"it is windy here"...............

"threats of major flooding"...............


Well, geesh.............a hurricane is on the way and they come up with the most silly statements........................

And why do the reporters take some huge risks? I think they look silly standing there in hurricane force winds trying to report "how it feels like"..................


Just had to vent a little bit this afternoon....................

Hope you all have a nice day.............


:)

:silly: :silly: ;)
I know exactly what you are saying there PM,, That is one of the reasons I haven't turned on my TV since the Columbia disaster....

My Company though, has a cut box on the screen that plays the Weather Channel 24/7 during Hurricane season and I find myself speaking to the screen when I see some of these FOOLS reporting from areas that have been evacuated just before the heaviest parts of the storm arrives........

Some folks just don't have the sence that G-d gave a Dog........ I think the Networks do it for the shock value..... Sure,,, I'm shocked,,,, at how stupid some people are... :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :blink:

Well, one day they will get a shock if one of their reporters are taken away by either windgusts or a huge wave................

:o

or a wind propelled piece of debrie,, they really do pass some limits of safety... :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Just as we talked about the media, here is an article about the coverage of Katrina.



http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy
# Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong.

By Susannah Rosenblatt and James Rainey, Times Staff Writers

BATON ROUGE, La. — Maj. Ed Bush recalled how he stood in the bed of a pickup truck in the days after Hurricane Katrina, struggling to help the crowd outside the Louisiana Superdome separate fact from fiction. Armed only with a megaphone and scant information, he might have been shouting into, well, a hurricane.

The National Guard spokesman's accounts about rescue efforts, water supplies and first aid all but disappeared amid the roar of a 24-hour rumor mill at New Orleans' main evacuation shelter. Then a frenzied media recycled and amplified many of the unverified reports.

"It just morphed into this mythical place where the most unthinkable deeds were being done," Bush said Monday of the Superdome.

His assessment is one of several in recent days to conclude that newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor.

The wild rumors filled the vacuum and seemed to gain credence with each retelling — that an infant's body had been found in a trash can, that sharks from Lake Pontchartrain were swimming through the business district, that hundreds of bodies had been stacked in the Superdome basement.

"It doesn't take anything to start a rumor around here," Louisiana National Guard 2nd Lt. Lance Cagnolatti said at the height of the Superdome relief effort. "There's 20,000 people in here. Think when you were in high school. You whisper something in someone's ear. By the end of the day, everyone in school knows the rumor — and the rumor isn't the same thing it was when you started it."

Follow-up reporting has discredited reports of a 7-year-old being raped and murdered at the Superdome, roving bands of armed gang members attacking the helpless, and dozens of bodies being shoved into a freezer at the Convention Center.

Hyperbolic reporting spread through much of the media.

Fox News, a day before the major evacuation of the Superdome began, issued an "alert" as talk show host Alan Colmes reiterated reports of "robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murder. Violent gangs are roaming the streets at night, hidden by the cover of darkness."

The Los Angeles Times adopted a breathless tone the next day in its lead news story, reporting that National Guard troops "took positions on rooftops, scanning for snipers and armed mobs as seething crowds of refugees milled below, desperate to flee. Gunfire crackled in the distance."

The New York Times repeated some of the reports of violence and unrest, but the newspaper usually was more careful to note that the information could not be verified.

The tabloid Ottawa Sun reported unverified accounts of "a man seeking help gunned down by a National Guard soldier" and "a young man run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer."

London's Evening Standard invoked the future-world fantasy film "Mad Max" to describe the scene and threw in a "Lord of the Flies" allusion for good measure.

Televised images and photographs affirmed the widespread devastation in one of America's most celebrated cities.

"I don't think you can overstate how big of a disaster New Orleans is," said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a Florida school for professional journalists. "But you can imprecisely state the nature of the disaster. … Then you draw attention away from the real story, the magnitude of the destruction, and you kind of undermine the media's credibility."

Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part.

"If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people," Amoss said, "it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering."

Some of the hesitation that journalists might have had about using the more sordid reports from the evacuation centers probably fell away when New Orleans' top officials seemed to confirm the accounts.

Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass appeared on "Oprah" a few days after trouble at the Superdome had peaked.

Compass told of "the little babies getting raped" at the Superdome. And Nagin made his claim about hooligans raping and killing.

State officials this week said their counts of the dead at the city's two largest evacuation points fell far short of early rumors and news reports. Ten bodies were recovered from the Superdome and four from the Convention Center, said Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

(National Guard officials put the body count at the Superdome at six, saying the other four bodies came from the area around the stadium.)

Of the 841 recorded hurricane-related deaths in Louisiana, four are identified as gunshot victims, Johannessen said. One victim was found in the Superdome but was believed to have been brought there, and one was found at the Convention Center, he added.

Relief workers said that while the media hyped criminal activity, plenty of real suffering did occur at the Katrina relief centers.

"The hurricane had just passed, you had massive trauma to the city," said Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard.

"No air conditioning, no sewage … it was not a nice place to be. All those people just in there, they were frustrated, they were hot. Out of all that chaos, all of these rumors start flying."

Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron, who headed security at the Superdome, said that for every complaint, "49 other people said, 'Thank you, God bless you.' "

The media inaccuracies had consequences in the disaster zone.

Bush, of the National Guard, said that reports of corpses at the Superdome filtered back to the facility via AM radio, undermining his struggle to keep morale up and maintain order.

"We had to convince people this was still the best place to be," Bush said. "What I saw in the Superdome was just tremendous amounts of people helping people."

But, Bush said, those stories received scant attention in newspapers or on television.

I don't think this would have happend here in Florida, not with Jeb Bush in charge. He has really been great through the storms we have had. I am sad that some politicians turn every moment into a political thing. Why do certain politicans get into attack mode in a time like this? Do they really think it will help the victims? And sadly, there are plenty of people that bait..............they buy into everything some of the politicians are saying........................


Just my opinion of course..........






;)

I couldn't agree more. CNN during hurricane Dennis had the gall to say it would be a cat3 in the ohio valley!!!!!!!!!! :huh: Cable News don't know what they are talking about with the weather. Stay on soaps CNN!

A cat 3 in the Ohio Valley?

LOL


:D

Too funny...........................

that is exactely what I thought! :D

Somebody needs to tell certain media people that hurricanes don't do too well over land........................LOL

:D

I completely agree petmom!

Todays mass meida is corupt! I love the internet becuase you can share YOUR beliefs instead of Paula's at CNN. the internet is great.

You know it is all about the ratings..........

Last night I tuned in to Fox news and Greta van Susteren a few minutes before 11, she had the little "teaser" before commerical break about a storm.............she made it is sound like a major storm.............so I waited to hear what the "drama queen" had to say, and it turned out to be nothing....................................................


;)

That's right. I am no liberal but I like CNN a lot better than fox news. It is an Atlanta thing!

I have been to the CNN building in Atlanta...........they have studio tours..................


;)


I am critical to all of them.............sometimes I think Fox is doing a horrible job, and some times I think CNN is bad....................often i just stick with local news...........

I have been to those stuido tours three times! I personally like MSNBC the best! They are moderates!

Did you watch MSNBC during the "Return to Flight" coverage in July and August?

What bothered me about their coverage then, was that they were so negative to the shuttle Discovery's return to space......................especially after debris fell off during lift off.................


Just my opinion of course.........................


CNN was better with the shuttle coverage...........a more positive attitude......

No I didn't. NASA isn't really as interesting to me as weather. I think fox is a little more condensinding but if we were on the news we would have crizim also! I applad all of them for their work.

World Helpless Against Assaults of Nature

By CALVIN WOODWARD
The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 11, 2005; 4:15 AM

WASHINGTON -- In a more hopeful time, buoyed by the promise of science, it was thought hurricanes could be tricked into dispersing, earthquakes could be disarmed by nuclear explosions and floodwaters held at bay by great mounds of dirt.

Such conceits are another victim of a year of destruction.

The planet's controlling forces romp over dreams like those. Usually the best that can be done is to see the danger coming long enough to run.

Rich and poor nations have taken the hit over a period so twisted in nature's assaults that one month, rich is helping poor and the next, poor is helping rich as best it can, and then the poor gets slammed once again.

The United States, giver of tsunami aid in December, accepted hurricane aid from some of those same countries in September. Now it is giving to South Asia a second time, in response to the weekend earthquakes. India is sending tents, food, blankets and medicine to its foe, Pakistan, geology briefly shoving aside geopolitics.

More than 176,000 people died in the earthquake and tsunami of December; an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 in the quake Saturday; perhaps 1,000 or more in Guatemalan landslides last week; more than 1,200 in Katrina. Asian beaches, mountainous Kashmir villages and American urban streets and casinos all were overwhelmed.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

After World War II, nothing seemed too far-fetched for science, not once the atom was split and, again, not once men stepped on the moon.

In one of the most enduring efforts, still alive but hardly about to happen, man thought he could seed clouds, make it rain reliably and put a stop to devastating drought.

The effort continues, especially in China; there, rockets, anti-aircraft guns and aircraft regularly pelt the sky with chemicals. The results so far: China has lots of experience, but limited success, in making the rains come.

If humans are inexorably warming the globe, they've proved unable to fine-tune the megaforces to their benefit.

They can cause earthquakes, little ones, by injecting fluids into deep wells, filling huge reservoirs with water or setting off nuclear explosions, but they can't prevent any, says the U.S. Geological Survey. Any notion of "lubricating" tectonic plates to relieve destructive tension would only make things worse, if it made any difference.

Earthquakes can't be forecast, either. Danger zones and long-term probabilities can be surmised, but "there currently is no accepted method to accomplish the goal of predicting the time, place and magnitude of an impending quake," the survey says.

The idea of hauling icebergs to hurricane-prone waters to cool things off did not fly. Research continues on trying to fool hurricanes into thinking they're over land.

One trick being tested: coating the ocean with a thin, biodegradable, oily film to deny a hurricane the evaporation that feeds its fury, in essence mimicking conditions after landfall.

One of the responses to Hurricane Katrina was decidedly lower tech: Civil engineers proposed putting up old-fashioned air raid sirens so people would know to get away.

The belief persists that humans will someday be able to dial up a thunderstorm at will, tweak the jet stream to avoid floods and starve a tornado of its energy once it starts spinning.

Such faith is reflected in a decade-old report done for the U.S. Air Force, on the possibilities of modifying the weather for military advantage.

The study suggested extreme examples of made-to-order weather, such as steering severe storms to particular areas or achieving large-scale climate change, were beyond reach over the next 30 years. But kicking up fog, rain and clouds was considered doable in that time.

The Air Force said later it did not plan to meddle with Mother Nature. The study, subtitled "Owning the Weather in 2025," came to little.

A decade later, the weather still owns us.