Angelos needs to try some decaf and quit watching just CNN. If fact, he sounds freakishly like the N.O. mayor, with less obscenities!

Under Secretary Brown has led Homeland Security’s response to more than 164 presidentially declared disasters and emergencies, including the 2003 Columbia Shuttle disaster and the California wildfires in 2003. In 2004, Mr. Brown led FEMA’s thousands of dedicated disaster workers during the most active hurricane season in over 100 years, as FEMA delivered aid more quickly and more efficiently than ever before.

Previously, Mr. Brown served as FEMA’s Deputy Director and the agency’s General Counsel. Shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Mr. Brown served on the President’s Consequence Management Principal’s Committee, which acted as the White House’s policy coordination group for the federal domestic response to the attacks. Later, the President asked him to head the Consequence Management Working Group to identify and resolve key issues regarding the federal response plan. In August 2002, President Bush appointed him to the Transition Planning Office for the new Department of Homeland Security, serving as the transition leader for the EP&R Division.

Sounds like he has some experience, doesn’t it.

Angelos, can you for once try to not be political. Do you have the mental capacity to set that aside for a week maybe? Your posts are so vitriolic, calm down man, there will be plenty of time to spew your hatred later.

91% of the production is shut down. For how long?

This should start another good 30 years of talk about lessening our reliance on foreign oil!

The head of FEMA, do you want to know his qualifications?

“He was an estate planning lawyer in Colorado and of counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association Legal Department.”

Excellent.

Which could be why, even though FEMA was wrapped into Homeland Security, there were no plans for refugee shelters. No food. No airlifts. No hospitals. No nothing.

Another fucking lawyer in another fucking patronage job IS IN CHARGE OF THE SAFETY OF 290 million AMERICANS!!! In a government that puts ideology and money ahead of human lives, this is what we have come to.

You had better be ready for the shitstorm the next time there is a terrorist attack on our land, because we’re soooooo not ready.

Remember, there is no SuperDoppler for planes flying into buildings. There will be no 5 days notice.

Safer….

Lefties should be apologizing.

And I have a job, so no thank you, I’ll be staying right here.

Let’s not forget the hours and checks I give to local charities.

This isn’t politics, Jenny, this is the here and now. Here and now, we have a Republican administration that has proven itself incompetent at every level, at everything it does. And by not doing things it should.

Imagine, the consensus is that FEMA was at its all time best under James Witt, who rebuilt it after its gutting by Bush the elder. So for 8 years, we had an agency that knew what it was doing, and was run by competent people. As soon as Bush junior took over, it was gutted again. Its “management” jobs were given out as patronage. Don’t you feel better now? Billy Joe Jim Bob is in charge of emergency response on Alabama, because he knows someone who knows someone who knows the assistant to the assistant to the undersecretary of Yes Men. Quite an upgrade from his job pumping gas at the local Shell.

I feel safer every day, don’t you?

If Bush understood how serious this was, a brigade of the 101st would be have moved to Ft. Polk over the weekend and their helicopters would have been rescuing people as soon as the weathered cleared. Their heavy lift battalion would have been ferrying in supplies to isolated communities and the AF would have been dropping humanitarian aid packages like they did in Afghanistan over isolated rural areas. But that would be a serious understanding of the situation. Like taking over a couple of military bases recently closed and starting to build housing there and establishing order. The Astrodome will turn into the Superdome within days. The response here has not met the need in any way, shape or form. Just three C-130’s could have tossed out enough food and water to keep people alive until the trucks arrived in the rural areas. Instead, this is disaster business as usual and that is condemning people to die.

Late Wednesday, Tenet Healthcare Corp. asked Louisiana State Police and the U.S. Coast Guard to help evacuate one of its hospitals in Gretna after a supply truck carrying food, water, medical supplies and pharmaceuticals was held up by gunmen. We have to close it down because we can no longer ensure the safety of our patients or our staff in that hospital,” Tenet spokesman Steven Campanini said of the 203-bed Meadowcrest Hospital.”

“This is mass chaos,” said Sgt. Jason Defess, 27, a National Guard military policeman who had been stationed on a ramp outside the Superdome since Monday. “To tell you the truth, I’d rather be in Iraq,” where he was deployed for 14 months until January. “You got your constant danger, but I had something to protect myself,” he said. “Three meals a day. Communications. A plan. Here, they had no plan.”

Airlines and oil companies are working on plans to supply jet fuel to at least ten U.S. airports that could be shut down due to a lack of jet fuel caused by refinery and pipeline shutdowns from hurricane Katrina. The airports in most jeopardy for closure include Atlanta, Charlotte, Ft. Lauderdale, Ft. Myers, Orlando, Tampa, Washington Dulles and West Palm Beach.

CNN’s Chris Lawrence reporting on Aaron Brown, reports of people streaming out of the Superdome, entire families just trying to walk out of the city in fear. Reports of a dead body in the Superdome, several women raped. There is no visible police presence on the ground. He reported a police officer saying “we don’t need police here, this needs to be a military action right now”, the officer said that the situation was more than the police could take on. We’re in day 3 Mr. President, and it’s getting worse. And you go on television today and say you’re about to BEGIN WORK?

Peace. Please.

Whip out your credit card and give money to the Red Cross.

Drive down to Houston/Baton Rouge/Jackson/Montgomery and feed some homeless people. Bring canned goods.

If you took all the energy you spent bitching about politics and tried to help living, needy people…hell, you’d be Mother Theresa.

Because its cheaper. Makes sense right?! That’s the way most right wingers think. Sad…

FEMA has been gutted to the point that it’s a joke.

Our National Guard is in Iraq.

The people they do have helping are relying on CIVILIAN communications. Which don’t work.

It took our “leader” 2.5 days to respond to this catastrophe.

But I’m the fucktard here.

You can play the “respect for the dead” card to change the subject today, but the questions won’t go away.

Maybe some of can compartmentalize, and actually hold more than one thought in our head at the same time. So while I was worried about my Aunt and Uncle in Baton Rouge, I could also wonder to myself, gee, we haven’t heard from our President yet. Look I could give a shit what he says. All he had to to was get up there and look sincere, and state his plan of action, and offer the nation reassurance. You know, like Reagan and Clinton would have done marvelously.

But Preznit Shitforbrains had to give an Iraq rally. And he had to give another “reform” Medicare speech. Oh, and he had to do a smiling photo-op strumming the official presidential guitar. (WTF?!?! by the way…)

South Carolina, North Carolina, and West Virginia are running out of gas. Even the police are predicting they’ll have no fuel for their troopers come Friday. Where fuel does exist, there is gouging.

New Orleans cops have been instructed to focus on looters instead of search-n-rescue.

We knew about this storm for days, and your president did NOTHING!!! No Navy ships at the ready with food and emergency supplies and generators. These people were abandoned.

But sorry Mike, I guess we should all keep our mouths shut, and respect the troops. I mean the dead.

Or, we can read this post and wonder how the hell we let it get this far. Across the board failure, and you think you can shut me up with that tired old “respect the (insert cause of the day here)” bullshit? Maybe you should do some actual thinking, and direct some energy to the real assholes, the ones in DC.

thanks for the really excellent analysis. I was noticing myself that ‘petroleum products’ probably are a larger part of our lives than straight-out fuel. don’t forget your formerly comfortable wool sweater is now a plastic wrap of sorts.

And not far from Dallas I paid $3.++ for regular gas tonight.

Right now, hybrids don’t make economic sense to buyers. (Don’t believe me – see how many miles you have to go burning $5/g gas before you recover the Prius premium over a 30MPG econobox.) That’s not fatal – lots of people will spend money on things that don’t make economc sense. However, lots more won’t.

“Four dollar Bush” and “Four Dollar Republicans”

Bacteria are smarter. Stress ‘em and they react! But we humans seem to just keep adapting to increasingly unsafe levels of dependency on oil.

Give me a break Jeff! Were you calling for politicians to come out against terrorism and come up with a plan the day after 9/11?

This is not the time nor the place to ask these questions from your high and safe perch.

And will you stop with the 250 MPG Prius. It’s an electric car, it’s not a hybrid.

And Angelos, I have read your posts here for quite some time and today you really just went over the top and showed yourself to be the *sshole you really are. Can’t you at least wait until the dead are accounted for before you start lambasting Bush. You’re such a f*cktard!