Living as I do in a county hit by 3 hurricanes last year, (Charlie, Frances
and Jean all plowed through Piolk county Florida) I have some experience
with FEMA. Almost every single house on our block had to be completely
re-shingled. My son's house lost half of the FRAMING for the roof. My sister
lost her porch and her pool enclosure. The damage at the place I work was
around 50 Million dollars. FEMA was there IMMEDIATELY. Water, food, shelter,
clothes - whatever you needed - was available almost before you could ask.
Roads being under water does, however put a different twist on things, and I
don't see how it could be possible to respond as fast in such a large area
that was under water.
What gets me upset is : Where was the U.N.s disaster relief team? Where were
all the countries that have rushed aid to scenes of disaster the world over?


"Cereus-validus......." wrote in message
.. .
You've been Bushwacked!!!

He may have experience in your point of view but he has proven to be inept
as chief of FEMA when Jeb Bush isn't doing his job for him.


"Rod & Betty Jo" wrote in message
...


"Tom Jaszewski" wrote in message
...


"To All My Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:

On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it
feel?

How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we
were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main
qualification was that he ran horse shows?

Actually he didn't really run horse shows but rather was commissioner of
judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association at
apparently a $125,000 a year salary.....Since he was deputy chief of FEMA
in 2001 and became chief in 2003 and has overseen 164 declared national
emergencies including 4 hurricanes last year, claiming he had no
experience is downright silly.

snip
C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty.
Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the
fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred
of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton.
Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing
after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us
in case of an emergency or catastrophe.

I wonder if there is any relationship between them being "one of the
poorest cities" and the utter ineptitude they showed both before and
following the hurricane? With a police force when facing their greatest
challenge largely AWOL, hospitals, nursing homes etc. not evacuated,
emergency communication largely non existent......looting and attacks
against rescuers instead of locals rushing out to help.....even worse
after just a week the mayor feels his AWOL people need a Vegas
vacation........if that is symptomatic of a ill system I don't know what
is....we do know that if the WTC was in New Orleans there would not have
been 400 police and firemen dead from rushing into the towering
infernal......But why blame those directly involved with a failed
disaster response when we can blame those whom are over a thousand miles
away?......Rod

On Tue, 13 Sep 2005 19:10:45 GMT, "MICHAEL LYONS"
wrote:

FEMA was there IMMEDIATELY
point set match......there were roads open reporters from both
sides got in , even the FOX reporter kept saying, "I'm not pointing
any finger, but where's the help?" Couldn't have anything to do with
keeping the Jebbites happy?



Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.
-- Aldo Leopold

"MICHAEL LYONS" What gets me upset is :
Where was the U.N.s disaster relief team? Where were
all the countries that have rushed aid to scenes of disaster the world
over?

Initially many countries were turned down - by Condaleeza Rice among others.
A Canadian (BC)search and rescue team was turned back at the border. At this
point, something like 36 countries have pledged aid to Hurricane Katrina, as
well as the UN itself.

"Rod & Betty Jo" wrote in Actually he didn't really
run horse shows but rather was commissioner of
judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association at
apparently a $125,000 a year salary.....Since he was deputy chief of FEMA
in 2001 and became chief in 2003 and has overseen 164 declared national
emergencies including 4 hurricanes last year, claiming he had no
experience is downright silly.
I wonder if there is any relationship between them being "one of the
poorest cities" and the utter ineptitude they showed both before and
following the hurricane?
Well, let's see: 80% of a metropolitan area of close to 1,000,000 people was
evacuated. (The National Geographic article of one year ago about New
Orleans in a major hurricane predicted that no more than 60% could possibly
successfully evacuate).
With a police force when facing their greatest challenge largely
AWOL, hospitals, nursing homes etc. not evacuated, emergency communication
largely non existent......looting and attacks against rescuers instead of
locals rushing out to help.
If you search through any news archives of any hurricane, you will see that
looting is rampant, and the National Guard is always called in immediately
to deal with it. (Including all the hurricanes in Florida). It only became a
news item here because troop help was so slow to arrive.
.....even worse after just a week the mayor feels
his AWOL people need a Vegas vacation........if that is symptomatic of a
ill system I don't know what is....we do know that if the WTC was in New
Orleans there would not have been 400 police and firemen dead from rushing
into the towering infernal......But why blame those directly involved with
a failed disaster response when we can blame those whom are over a
thousand miles away?......Rod

The people in Louisiana and New Orleans successfully managed the intial
disaster response -which was the part that was their responsibility. In a
disaster of national magnitude (meaning one that covers more than one state,
which this one did) it is immediately the federal governments responsibility
to attend to every need as quickly as possible after the disaster. That is
in the FEMA handbook and the Department of Homeland Security handbook. When
you have the heads of those two agencies not even knowing that the levees in
New Orleans had failed more than 24 hours after that happened, you know
you're in deep shit.

presley wrote

Actually, one study of exit polling done by Gallup found the following:
"In the Gallup Poll, the Democrats carry 62 percent of those with a
post-graduate education"

So richer you may be, but better educated, only in your dreams.


====================

Richer we are. Better educated we are. Please note that all
educations are not equal. Ten PhD's in georgraphy are less than
one Master's degree in aeronautical engineering. Fifty master's
degrees in elementary education are far less than one Master's
degree in chemistry.

I'd ramble on more, but I've got to prepare some notes for our
next GOP meeting, at which we'll be planning our victory parties
for the 2008 elections.

Damn, I love this country. God, I look forward to the liberal whining
in 2008.

Gideon

Tom Jaszewski wrote

ah but his wife and daughter met Laura and blew W!

================

One more illustration of the maturity and intellect of the
far left.

Tom,

You seem to be an expert on the failures of FEMA under G.W. Bush.
Could you give us some quotes from the FEMA charter, stating that
FEMA guarantees to be one the spot within 10 minutes after a
disaster?

My FEMA publication ("A Citizen Guide to Disaster Preparedness"
2003 edition) states in the first sentence on page 1, "Immediately
after an emergency, essential services may be cut-off and local
disaster relief and government responders may not be able to reach
you right away."

On the second page, the FEMA guide states, "You may need to survive
on your own for three days or more. This means having your own water,
food and emergency supplies." What part of "three days or MORE"
can't you understand?

Gideon

=============

Tom Jaszewski wrote in message ...


"To All My Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:

On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it
feel?

How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we
were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main
qualification was that he ran horse shows?

That's right. Horse shows.

I really want to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with
all due respect -- how do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush
has shown for your safety? C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty.
Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the
fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred
of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton.
Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing
after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us
in case of an emergency or catastrophe.

I want you to put aside your self-affixed label of
Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger
and just talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call
America.

Are we safer now than before 9/11? When you learn that behind the
horse show runner, the #2 and #3 men in charge of emergency
preparedness have zero experience in emergency preparedness, do you
think we are safer?

When you look at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a
man with little experience in national security, do you feel secure?

When men who never served in the military and have never seen young
men die in battle send our young people off to war, do you think they
know how to conduct a war? Do they know what it means to have your
legs blown off for a threat that was never there?

Do you really believe that turning over important government services
to private corporations has resulted in better services for the
people?

Why do you hate our federal government so much? You have voted for
politicians for the past 25 years whose main goal has been to de-fund
the federal government. Do you think that cutting federal programs
like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been good or bad for
America? GOOD OR BAD?

With the nation's debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for
the rich are still a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds
of thousands of homeless in New Orleans can have a home?

Do you believe in Jesus? Really? Didn't he say that we would be judged
by how we treat the least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew
off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all.
The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the
poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of
the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake.

That's not a joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr.
Bush, John McCain and their rich pals were stuffing themselves with
cake. A full day after the levees broke (the same levees whose repair
funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a guitar some country singer
gave him. All this while New Orleans sank under water.

It would take ANOTHER day before the President would do a flyover in
his jumbo jet, peeking out the widow at the misery 2500 feet below him
as he flew back to his second home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE
DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and troops would arrive. This was
no seven minutes in a sitting trance while children read "My Pet Goat"
to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other than saying "Brownie
(FEMA director Michael Brown), you're doing a heck of a job!"

My Republican friends, does it bother you that we are the laughing
stock of the world?

And on this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame
those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves
today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright
sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain?

Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural
disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight
Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system
where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do
can't string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can't pay
the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health
coverage whatsoever.

Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and
build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you've sown
will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution. Do you
really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if
they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot
themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the
problem will somehow go away?

I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who
wasn't up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren't up for
the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New
Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and
safety and security, this has to be fixed. What do you propose?

I have an idea, and it isn't a horse show."



Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine,
one need only own a shovel.
-- Aldo Leopold

Tom,

I've found the following quote on the Internet via Google:
"In July 1995, a Heat wave in Chicago led to approximately
739 heat-related deaths." Of course, this tragedy occurred
under a Clinton-led FEMA organization which failed to act
quickly and decisively to prevent those many deaths. Of
course, I have NOT been able to use Google and locate any
newsgroup quotes of yours criticizing Clinton and "his" FEMA
for this major **** up.

Gideon


==========

Tom Jaszewski wrote in message ...


"To All My Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:

On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it
feel?

How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we
were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main
qualification was that he ran horse shows?

That's right. Horse shows.

I really want to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with
all due respect -- how do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush
has shown for your safety? C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty.
Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the
fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred
of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton.
Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing
after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us
in case of an emergency or catastrophe.

I want you to put aside your self-affixed label of
Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger
and just talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call
America.

Are we safer now than before 9/11? When you learn that behind the
horse show runner, the #2 and #3 men in charge of emergency
preparedness have zero experience in emergency preparedness, do you
think we are safer?

When you look at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a
man with little experience in national security, do you feel secure?

When men who never served in the military and have never seen young
men die in battle send our young people off to war, do you think they
know how to conduct a war? Do they know what it means to have your
legs blown off for a threat that was never there?

Do you really believe that turning over important government services
to private corporations has resulted in better services for the
people?

Why do you hate our federal government so much? You have voted for
politicians for the past 25 years whose main goal has been to de-fund
the federal government. Do you think that cutting federal programs
like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been good or bad for
America? GOOD OR BAD?

With the nation's debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for
the rich are still a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds
of thousands of homeless in New Orleans can have a home?

Do you believe in Jesus? Really? Didn't he say that we would be judged
by how we treat the least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew
off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all.
The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the
poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of
the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake.

That's not a joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr.
Bush, John McCain and their rich pals were stuffing themselves with
cake. A full day after the levees broke (the same levees whose repair
funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a guitar some country singer
gave him. All this while New Orleans sank under water.

It would take ANOTHER day before the President would do a flyover in
his jumbo jet, peeking out the widow at the misery 2500 feet below him
as he flew back to his second home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE
DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and troops would arrive. This was
no seven minutes in a sitting trance while children read "My Pet Goat"
to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other than saying "Brownie
(FEMA director Michael Brown), you're doing a heck of a job!"

My Republican friends, does it bother you that we are the laughing
stock of the world?

And on this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame
those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves
today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright
sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain?

Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural
disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight
Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system
where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do
can't string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can't pay
the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health
coverage whatsoever.

Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and
build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you've sown
will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution. Do you
really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if
they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot
themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the
problem will somehow go away?

I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who
wasn't up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren't up for
the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New
Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and
safety and security, this has to be fixed. What do you propose?

I have an idea, and it isn't a horse show."



Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine,
one need only own a shovel.
-- Aldo Leopold

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 07:58:35 GMT, "Gideon" wrote:

I have NOT been able to use Google and locate any
newsgroup quotes of yours criticizing Clinton and "his" FEMA
for this major **** up.

Gideon

What was that about maturity and language.....

"During the 1990s, FEMA was routinely praised as one of the
best-functioning federal agencies. Its response to the Midwestern
floods of 1993, the Northridge earthquake of 1994, and 1995's Oklahoma
City terrorist attack are considered models of emergency response. By
contrast, its performance during Katrina is almost universally
acknowledged to have been abysmally poor. At first, FEMA's
post-Katrina failure appears baffling: What happened to the once-great
FEMA? But George Haddow, who served as the deputy chief of staff at
FEMA under James Lee Witt, Bill Clinton's FEMA director, thinks that
FEMA's current flaws are all too understandable - and are a direct
consequence of the Bush administration's decision to pull the federal
government out of the natural disaster-relief business and turn over
more power to state and local officials."


"And balance, Haddow agrees, is what's needed. "You gotta do both,"
he says. "You've got to fight terrorism." But you've got to respond to
hurricanes and earthquakes, too. And when Bush declared a state of
emergency in Louisiana on the Saturday before Katrina struck the Gulf,
he made a promise to residents that he would respond, Haddow says.
"People died because they couldn't get it right," he says. "People
died because they didn't deliver on their promise."



Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.
-- Aldo Leopold

Anon,

Consider doing a bit more reading than the propaganda spewed by the
Rove disinformation machine. Perhaps you could then comprehend that
the events in Chicago are quite different.

Even a cursory search will find a book written by Eric Klinenberg.
It's pretty clear that the events are VERY different from those in New
Orleans.

Heat Wave : A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago



"On Thursday, July 13, 1995, Chicagoans awoke to a blistering day in
which the temperature would reach 106 degrees. The heat index, which
measures how the temperature actually feels on the body, would hit 126
degrees by the time the day was over. Meteorologists had been warning
residents about a two-day heat wave, but these temperatures did not
end that soon. When the heat wave broke a week later, city streets had
buckled; the records for electrical use were shattered; and power
grids had failed, leaving residents without electricity for up to two
days. And by July 20, over seven hundred people had perished-more than
twice the number that died in the Chicago Fire of 1871, twenty times
the number of those struck by Hurricane Andrew in 1992--in the great
Chicago heat wave, one of the deadliest in American history.

Heat waves in the United States kill more people during a typical year
than all other natural disasters combined. Until now, no one could
explain either the overwhelming number or the heartbreaking manner of
the deaths resulting from the 1995 Chicago heat wave. Meteorologists
and medical scientists have been unable to account for the scale of
the trauma, and political officials have puzzled over the sources of
the city's vulnerability. In Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg takes us
inside the anatomy of the metropolis to conduct what he calls a
"social autopsy," examining the social, political, and institutional
organs of the city that made this urban disaster so much worse than it
ought to have been.

Starting with the question of why so many people died at home alone,
Klinenberg investigates why some neighborhoods experienced greater
mortality than others, how the city government responded to the
crisis, and how journalists, scientists, and public officials reported
on and explained these events. Through a combination of years of
fieldwork, extensive interviews, and archival research, Klinenberg
uncovers how a number of surprising and unsettling forms of social
breakdown--including the literal and social isolation of seniors, the
institutional abandonment of poor neighborhoods, and the retrenchment
of public assistance programs--contributed to the high fatality rates.
The human catastrophe, he argues, cannot simply be blamed on the
failures of any particular individuals or organizations. For when
hundreds of people die behind locked doors and sealed windows, out of
contact with friends, family, community groups, and public agencies,
everyone is implicated in their demise.

As Klinenberg demonstrates in this incisive and gripping account of
the contemporary urban condition, the widening cracks in the social
foundations of American cities that the 1995 Chicago heat wave made
visible have by no means subsided as the temperatures returned to
normal. The forces that affected Chicago so disastrously remain in
play in America's cities, and we ignore them at our peril."






On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 07:58:35 GMT, "Gideon" wrote:

Tom,

I've found the following quote on the Internet via Google:
"In July 1995, a Heat wave in Chicago led to approximately
739 heat-related deaths." Of course, this tragedy occurred
under a Clinton-led FEMA organization which failed to act
quickly and decisively to prevent those many deaths. Of
course, I have NOT been able to use Google and locate any
newsgroup quotes of yours criticizing Clinton and "his" FEMA
for this major **** up.

Gideon



Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.
-- Aldo Leopold

Gideon wrote:
presley wrote

Actually, one study of exit polling done by Gallup found the
following: "In the Gallup Poll, the Democrats carry 62 percent of
those with a post-graduate education"

So richer you may be, but better educated, only in your dreams.


====================

Richer we are. Better educated we are. Please note that all
educations are not equal. Ten PhD's in georgraphy are less than
one Master's degree in aeronautical engineering. Fifty master's
degrees in elementary education are far less than one Master's
degree in chemistry.

I'd ramble on more, but I've got to prepare some notes for our
next GOP meeting, at which we'll be planning our victory parties
for the 2008 elections.

Damn, I love this country. God, I look forward to the liberal
whining in 2008.

Gideon

What is "georgraphy"?

--


Travis in Shoreline Washington

Travis, how dare you disparage the superior education of a Republican such
as Gideon by questioning his ability to spell third grade words. Superior
intellects such as his should not be tied down to such insignificant markers
of educational attainment.
Certainly we have to dismiss the opinions of such dolts as Nobel-Prize
winning scientists, who rank right up there with PhDs in education, who
have made their opinions about Bush and the Republicans abundantly clear in
public pronouncements:
"Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists,
including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on
February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting
scientific fact "for partisan political ends." "
"Travis"
What is "georgraphy"?

--


Travis in Shoreline Washington

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 22:39:41 -0700, "presley"
wrote:

who rank right up there with PhDs in education

Perhaps someone can explain why the PhD's are constantly calling me
for help with the simplest little computer problems ? I know that some
were born and educated prior to computers becoming a common commodity
however one would think they could at least configure an email client.

JD

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 07:32:13 GMT, "Gideon" wrote:

presley wrote

Actually, one study of exit polling done by Gallup found the following:
"In the Gallup Poll, the Democrats carry 62 percent of those with a
post-graduate education"

So richer you may be, but better educated, only in your dreams.


====================

Richer we are. Better educated we are. Please note that all
educations are not equal. Ten PhD's in georgraphy are less than
one Master's degree in aeronautical engineering. Fifty master's
degrees in elementary education are far less than one Master's
degree in chemistry.

Jeez Loise ! I'm willing to bet that for every Republican holding an
associates degree there are 5 that barely gradiated the 12th grade
much less finished college.

JD

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 07:55:14 GMT, "Gideon" wrote:

What part of "three days or MORE" can't you understand?

The part that says they had plenty of notice of the pending disaster
days in advance. As soon as Katrina hit cat. 4 they should have been
prepared and mobilized. FEMA had plenty of notice however they did
nothing to prepare.


JD
Photography - www.puresilver.org - www.darkroompro.com
Motorcycles - www.xs750.net Music - www.picknparlor.net