Tuesday, September 06, 2005
ex-Liberal in Hollywood: New Orleans: Where Laid Back is Laid Bare
http://exlibhollywood.blogspot.com/2005/09/new-orleans-where-laid-back-is-laid.html
Blog here
Blog here
Monday, September 05, 2005
HOG ON ICE says
Look at the failures on the local level.
1. Locals chose not to pay for an adequate flood control system. It was well within their means, and they had THREE HUNDRED YEARS to get it done. When complaining about the President's evil refusal to foot the whole bill, and they tell us how much more money was needed, they themselves quote a figure of about sixty million dollars. Don't you dare tell me an entire state couldn't come up with sixty million dollars. They were too cheap. They preferred to risk death. Now the bill will be in the tens of billions of dollars, and thousands of people are dead. By the way, who believes that flood control improvements funded during the Bush administration would have been finished by the time Katrina arrived? Nobody except those whose careers depend on believing it.
2. After inviting disaster by refusing to pay for flood control projects, local officials failed to respond quickly enough to the threat of storm damage. Here in Florida (and everywhere else), we respond to the approach of hurricanes by notifying FEMA, setting up shelters, and issuing evacuation orders WELL in advance of landfall. The mayor of New Orleans and other local officials dragged their feet. They didn’t even open the Superdome to evacuees until noon on the day before the hurricane, and at first, they limited access to people with special needs. And the governor, who must request federal aid before Washington can come in and provide it, sat on her hands while the waters rose. Florida’s Democrat governor did the same thing after Andrew, and then he whined about FEMA’s slow response. A bureaucrat’s prime directive is “Cover your ass at all costs, and if you can blame your enemies in the process, so much the better.”
3. Local citizens refused to evacuate, ensuring that they and their children and pets would die. We’re not supposed to talk about this, because it’s “blaming the victims.” Here’s a newsflash. When a person is a victim because of his own irresponsibility, you’re SUPPOSED to blame him. Watch cable news for an hour, and you’ll see the same story over and over. A New Orleans resident refuses to leave a flooded house, days after the storm. In the driveway are one or two cars this person could have used to flee the storm. Rescuers have to argue and cajole to get the “victim” into the boat. And sometimes they still refuse to leave. This is AFTER the storm, mind you. There is no food, no clean water, no electricity, and no police protection, and these people still won’t leave. Don’t even think of telling me they behaved better when the storm was still in the Gulf.
4. The New Orleans police have disappeared. Their chief had the gall to blame the National Guard for taking two whole days to show up, and then for amusing themselves during down time by playing cards. Meanwhile, his own officers are too busy shoplifting to do their jobs. According to the National Guard, the New Orleans police department has disintegrated. I guess their French heritage is taking over. But somehow, the disorder is the Guard’s fault. Can’t you see what’s happening here? The chief’s underlings proved to be cowardly and selfish, and they abandoned their posts, and in order to avoid responsibility, he’s launching a preemptive PR strike on the very people who are now doing his job for him. It’s CYA, pure and simple.
5. Evacuation holdouts are shooting at the police and the Guard and contractors and everyone else they can draw a bead on. Call me crazy, but I think this discourages and slows down rescue efforts. Here in Miami, after Andrew, people shot looters, not the police (who stayed on the job, unlike the New Orleans cops).
Sure, the federal response could have been better. Wake up; that’s what happens when you shift your own responsibilities to the federal government. Has anyone in New Orleans or the MSM been awake during the last two hundred years? Has the federal government EVER responded to a national disaster in less than two days? The federal government is like an ocean liner. It doesn’t start and stop quickly. Local government, when it works properly, is much more responsive. You don’t call the FBI when you see a burglar in your yard. You call the local police. Similarly, you don’t sit on your ass and wait for Washington to build your floodwalls and evacuate your citizens. New Orleans had buses. It had trains and planes. There were places it could have set up temporary shelters. And the disaster should never have occurred in the first place; locals should have looked after their own flood control needs. But like I said, Uncle Sam is society’s diaper, so none of that matters.
The whole Ting'
1. Locals chose not to pay for an adequate flood control system. It was well within their means, and they had THREE HUNDRED YEARS to get it done. When complaining about the President's evil refusal to foot the whole bill, and they tell us how much more money was needed, they themselves quote a figure of about sixty million dollars. Don't you dare tell me an entire state couldn't come up with sixty million dollars. They were too cheap. They preferred to risk death. Now the bill will be in the tens of billions of dollars, and thousands of people are dead. By the way, who believes that flood control improvements funded during the Bush administration would have been finished by the time Katrina arrived? Nobody except those whose careers depend on believing it.
2. After inviting disaster by refusing to pay for flood control projects, local officials failed to respond quickly enough to the threat of storm damage. Here in Florida (and everywhere else), we respond to the approach of hurricanes by notifying FEMA, setting up shelters, and issuing evacuation orders WELL in advance of landfall. The mayor of New Orleans and other local officials dragged their feet. They didn’t even open the Superdome to evacuees until noon on the day before the hurricane, and at first, they limited access to people with special needs. And the governor, who must request federal aid before Washington can come in and provide it, sat on her hands while the waters rose. Florida’s Democrat governor did the same thing after Andrew, and then he whined about FEMA’s slow response. A bureaucrat’s prime directive is “Cover your ass at all costs, and if you can blame your enemies in the process, so much the better.”
3. Local citizens refused to evacuate, ensuring that they and their children and pets would die. We’re not supposed to talk about this, because it’s “blaming the victims.” Here’s a newsflash. When a person is a victim because of his own irresponsibility, you’re SUPPOSED to blame him. Watch cable news for an hour, and you’ll see the same story over and over. A New Orleans resident refuses to leave a flooded house, days after the storm. In the driveway are one or two cars this person could have used to flee the storm. Rescuers have to argue and cajole to get the “victim” into the boat. And sometimes they still refuse to leave. This is AFTER the storm, mind you. There is no food, no clean water, no electricity, and no police protection, and these people still won’t leave. Don’t even think of telling me they behaved better when the storm was still in the Gulf.
4. The New Orleans police have disappeared. Their chief had the gall to blame the National Guard for taking two whole days to show up, and then for amusing themselves during down time by playing cards. Meanwhile, his own officers are too busy shoplifting to do their jobs. According to the National Guard, the New Orleans police department has disintegrated. I guess their French heritage is taking over. But somehow, the disorder is the Guard’s fault. Can’t you see what’s happening here? The chief’s underlings proved to be cowardly and selfish, and they abandoned their posts, and in order to avoid responsibility, he’s launching a preemptive PR strike on the very people who are now doing his job for him. It’s CYA, pure and simple.
5. Evacuation holdouts are shooting at the police and the Guard and contractors and everyone else they can draw a bead on. Call me crazy, but I think this discourages and slows down rescue efforts. Here in Miami, after Andrew, people shot looters, not the police (who stayed on the job, unlike the New Orleans cops).
Sure, the federal response could have been better. Wake up; that’s what happens when you shift your own responsibilities to the federal government. Has anyone in New Orleans or the MSM been awake during the last two hundred years? Has the federal government EVER responded to a national disaster in less than two days? The federal government is like an ocean liner. It doesn’t start and stop quickly. Local government, when it works properly, is much more responsive. You don’t call the FBI when you see a burglar in your yard. You call the local police. Similarly, you don’t sit on your ass and wait for Washington to build your floodwalls and evacuate your citizens. New Orleans had buses. It had trains and planes. There were places it could have set up temporary shelters. And the disaster should never have occurred in the first place; locals should have looked after their own flood control needs. But like I said, Uncle Sam is society’s diaper, so none of that matters.
The whole Ting'
ESR | September 5, 2005 | America as a Third World nation
America as a Third World nation
By Alan Caruba
web posted September 5, 2005
The haunting images of New Orleans were those of a Third
World nation unable to cope with a natural disaster. The over-
riding question in the first days following the hurricane was "What
is the government doing?"
Americans have been conditioned to look to the federal
government as the answer to all their needs. The federal
government has steadily taken over our education and health
care systems through vast programs that, in the former case, has
ruined what was once one of the best in the world and, in the
latter case, through Medicare and Medicaid, exercises control
over the way the system works and who it benefits. Social
Security has, for too many, replaced planning and saving for
one's old age.
When a portion of everything you earn is removed from your
paycheck in order to pay for someone else's senior years, how
can you be expected to put aside money you don't have to save,
invest or spend as you wish? We have been required to turn
personal responsibility for our lives over to "the government." It
sounds good on paper, but the reality is that Social Security is
going broke and the interest level in the current administration's
effort to "fix" the system is so low the President's efforts have
been met with a significant measure of indifference.
The "government's" response to the disaster that befell huge
swaths of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama suggests that
there are, indeed, limits to what it can do. It is, after all,
composed of bureaucrats who must obey the thousands of
regulations and laws affecting their agencies and that have been
imposed on our national economy, affecting all the rest of us.
One of the first actions "the government" took was the
Environmental Protection Agency announcement that it was
suspending the idiotic mandates requiring countless different
formulations of gasoline to insure that a sufficient supply was
available nationwide. In one state after another, these mandates
insure that different formulations are required in different areas of
the same state.
Mandating the use of ethanol in order to insure a bounty of riches
for corn producers while ignoring the need to drill for oil in
Alaska or ignoring enormous off-short reserves and shale oil
exposes the politics that over-rode the need for greater energy
self-sufficiency and independence from a Middle East that largely
hates America.
The looting and criminality that occurred in New Orleans also
revealed the failure of not just local people, but much of the
black community in America to take advantage of the
protections and opportunities afforded by the Civil Rights and
Voting Rights legislation enacted since the 1960s. As
Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, pointed out on
September 2nd, "New Orleans is two cities, not one, according
to census data---a relatively affluent, small, achingly lovely city
that's mostly white, and a poor, big, unlovely city that's almost all
black. Overall, the city is two-thirds African American; it ranks
as the ninth-poorest big city in the nation. It is also one of the
most violent cities in the country, now making a bid to reclaim
the ‘murder capitol' designation it held for many years."
This is repeated over and over again in many of the nation's
cities, many of whom are also falling prey to the influx of millions
of illegal aliens flooding across our southern border, bringing with
them crime and disease, replacing native-born American
workers for those jobs they might have had were it not for the
low wages the illegals will accept.
The laws fashioned to protect and help blacks have brought
about some improvements. A black middle class has emerged,
but the evidence demonstrates that too many black Americans
opted to remain mired in their own failure to take advantage of
educational opportunities, continued to produce the one-parent
families in which men were largely absent, and remained
responsible for much of the crime in the cities. In return, they
offered America a "gangsta rap" and "hip-hop" culture that
reflects attitudes immune to the values shared by the majority of
Americans. They were not marginalized. They marginalized
themselves.
The physical losses in the affected areas will be rebuilt.
Americans always rebuild after natural disasters, but the social
problems are likely to remain unless and until we begin to shut
our borders against what can only be called an invasion and until
black Americans fully integrate themselves by taking more
responsibility for their lives.
We all need to rely less on the "government", but it seems
unlikely at this point the government will allow that to occur.
Congress is too in love with the billions it can seize for countless
pork barrel projects "for the folks back home" and to insure
reelection. There are too many people dependent on the socialist
programs enacted after WWII. The mindless federal spending
has been reflected at the state level while, at the same time,
federal mandates have eroded state and local power.
We need to vastly reduce the vast matrix of economic
regulations that suck billions out of the economy while creating
obstacles to free market answers to our most pressing needs
and, as in the recent Supreme Court ruling, destroy private
property values with a ferocity matched only by natural disasters.
Life in America is going to get more expensive because "the
government" claimed it could take care of us from birth to death.
It can't. It never could.
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, "Warning Signs", posted
on the Internet website of The National Anxiety Center,
www.anxietycenter.com. © Alan Caruba, September 2005
Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com
By Alan Caruba
web posted September 5, 2005
The haunting images of New Orleans were those of a Third
World nation unable to cope with a natural disaster. The over-
riding question in the first days following the hurricane was "What
is the government doing?"
Americans have been conditioned to look to the federal
government as the answer to all their needs. The federal
government has steadily taken over our education and health
care systems through vast programs that, in the former case, has
ruined what was once one of the best in the world and, in the
latter case, through Medicare and Medicaid, exercises control
over the way the system works and who it benefits. Social
Security has, for too many, replaced planning and saving for
one's old age.
When a portion of everything you earn is removed from your
paycheck in order to pay for someone else's senior years, how
can you be expected to put aside money you don't have to save,
invest or spend as you wish? We have been required to turn
personal responsibility for our lives over to "the government." It
sounds good on paper, but the reality is that Social Security is
going broke and the interest level in the current administration's
effort to "fix" the system is so low the President's efforts have
been met with a significant measure of indifference.
The "government's" response to the disaster that befell huge
swaths of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama suggests that
there are, indeed, limits to what it can do. It is, after all,
composed of bureaucrats who must obey the thousands of
regulations and laws affecting their agencies and that have been
imposed on our national economy, affecting all the rest of us.
One of the first actions "the government" took was the
Environmental Protection Agency announcement that it was
suspending the idiotic mandates requiring countless different
formulations of gasoline to insure that a sufficient supply was
available nationwide. In one state after another, these mandates
insure that different formulations are required in different areas of
the same state.
Mandating the use of ethanol in order to insure a bounty of riches
for corn producers while ignoring the need to drill for oil in
Alaska or ignoring enormous off-short reserves and shale oil
exposes the politics that over-rode the need for greater energy
self-sufficiency and independence from a Middle East that largely
hates America.
The looting and criminality that occurred in New Orleans also
revealed the failure of not just local people, but much of the
black community in America to take advantage of the
protections and opportunities afforded by the Civil Rights and
Voting Rights legislation enacted since the 1960s. As
Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, pointed out on
September 2nd, "New Orleans is two cities, not one, according
to census data---a relatively affluent, small, achingly lovely city
that's mostly white, and a poor, big, unlovely city that's almost all
black. Overall, the city is two-thirds African American; it ranks
as the ninth-poorest big city in the nation. It is also one of the
most violent cities in the country, now making a bid to reclaim
the ‘murder capitol' designation it held for many years."
This is repeated over and over again in many of the nation's
cities, many of whom are also falling prey to the influx of millions
of illegal aliens flooding across our southern border, bringing with
them crime and disease, replacing native-born American
workers for those jobs they might have had were it not for the
low wages the illegals will accept.
The laws fashioned to protect and help blacks have brought
about some improvements. A black middle class has emerged,
but the evidence demonstrates that too many black Americans
opted to remain mired in their own failure to take advantage of
educational opportunities, continued to produce the one-parent
families in which men were largely absent, and remained
responsible for much of the crime in the cities. In return, they
offered America a "gangsta rap" and "hip-hop" culture that
reflects attitudes immune to the values shared by the majority of
Americans. They were not marginalized. They marginalized
themselves.
The physical losses in the affected areas will be rebuilt.
Americans always rebuild after natural disasters, but the social
problems are likely to remain unless and until we begin to shut
our borders against what can only be called an invasion and until
black Americans fully integrate themselves by taking more
responsibility for their lives.
We all need to rely less on the "government", but it seems
unlikely at this point the government will allow that to occur.
Congress is too in love with the billions it can seize for countless
pork barrel projects "for the folks back home" and to insure
reelection. There are too many people dependent on the socialist
programs enacted after WWII. The mindless federal spending
has been reflected at the state level while, at the same time,
federal mandates have eroded state and local power.
We need to vastly reduce the vast matrix of economic
regulations that suck billions out of the economy while creating
obstacles to free market answers to our most pressing needs
and, as in the recent Supreme Court ruling, destroy private
property values with a ferocity matched only by natural disasters.
Life in America is going to get more expensive because "the
government" claimed it could take care of us from birth to death.
It can't. It never could.
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, "Warning Signs", posted
on the Internet website of The National Anxiety Center,
www.anxietycenter.com. © Alan Caruba, September 2005
Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com
Mister Snitch!: The Politics of evacuation (part one)
Mister Snitch!: The Politics of evacuation (part one): "So you think you know who screwed up, bigtime, in New Orleans?
Odds are, you don't. But you will, as these stories work their way up (down?) from the blogospehere to mainstream media."
Read about it:
Odds are, you don't. But you will, as these stories work their way up (down?) from the blogospehere to mainstream media."
Read about it:
Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog
Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog: "Monday, September 05, 2005"
Monday, September 05, 2005
Katrina Rescues: A Military Perspective
I'm posting a letter from Joe Roche, whose wife is doing helicopter rescue missions in hurricane-affected areas, "24/7, very tired, sometimes being shot at, facing intense heat and humidity, having spartan-to-bare sleeping conditions, with sickness and disease spreading."
Amy,
I want you to know that over the past days, our soldiers of the National Guard have quickly and readily made big sacrifices so they can get down to the Hurricane Katrina rescue mission. My wife, as you know, is with National Guard. I watched last week as they worked feverishly, being called in from their other jobs and away from their families, to get everything ready to go.
Tens of thousands of National Guard soldiers have mobilized all over the country like this. I know you have felt grief over the disaster and the issue some people have made of it. I want you to take heart and lift your spirits at what has happened with our military.
There is now a MASSIVE military response under way. It is moving very fast, in fact. So fast that it quickly and frequently overwhelmed the capacity to put it all in place and get it launched.
I understand the frustration, fear and sadness being felt, but it takes time to get such a thing going. Remember that it took many months for our military operations to get under way overseas when the decisions were made to do so. In fact, I think there was some controversy about that in both of the wars over Iraq, when it took from August to January to launch Operation Desert Storm, and even longer to get Operation Iraqi Freedom going. I well remember even having to assure people that we were going to respond after September 11th when some started worrying that weeks had passed and nothing had happened.
I believe that such comparisons actually will show that the military response to Hurricane Katrina's destruction is going at breath-taking fast speed.
Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, the commanding General of the Army National Guard, said that the thing to realize is that the rescuers who were there on the first day were also victims of the storm.
It takes time to organize the massive operation now under way. I watched my wife and her unit prepare to go, and I felt worried that they would become victims too if they didn't properly prepare. The vital thing the soldiers have to make sure of is that they are the solution to the problem, and not part of the problem. Therefore, what has happened is that a vast, truly amazing and powerfully inspiration-driven massive team of professionals has quickly and effectively set up a huge series of staging areas from which rescue operations can begin.
It is a fact that with the destruction of the storm, there were very few open and secure areas in which to set up huge military operations. Well, defying all the challenges, your National Guard soldiers have done that brilliantly!
Now we are seeing this massive military response making it's impact. Tens of thousands have been rescued, moving entire refugee populations hundreds of miles. I don't believe others ever have been able to do this, such as the Europeans in the Balkans. No, such massive population moves are normally the work of war and crime that last years. This time, bigger and faster than most in history, your National Guard has moved in, set up, and begun one of the largest rescue operations in history.
The thing that has affected me most, however, are the soldiers doing this. I have seen police officers, Vietnam Veterans, and other professionals from all sorts of jobs, dropping everything last week and getting airborne to get down there. And Amy, it is scary too.
My wife is my best friend and the best person I have ever met. Now she is doing helicopter rescue missions, 24/7, very tired, sometimes being shot at, facing intense heat and humidity, having spartan-to-bare sleeping conditions, with sickness and disease spreading. There are thousands of rescue operations to do, and there are dozens of air units and even more ground units working hard and sometimes bumping into each other. It is more dangerous than I think people realize.
Yet, amazingly and very inspiringly, I watched as these National Guard soldiers cancelled plans for college, jobs, their kids' plans for next week, basically everything that you can imagine, and instead jumped eagerly and with great determination to get ready and deploy to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Some of them are veterans, soldiers who have served for years in many of our wars and missions, civilian professionals who have jobs and lives and families, and all of them have set everything aside to go. Many are taking big financial hits, and their families have to make big adjustments. But you know what? They are all highly motivated and eager to get down there and do their jobs.
I know that for the victims of this storm, their suffering and tragedy is terrible and cannot be erased. I do hope we all realize, though, that the military is making a massively huge effort to rescue and help them that also involves National Guard soldiers making countless personal sacrifices.
We should have found inspiration from the determination of the people of New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to survive the long series of nightmares they have endured as a result of the hurricane. I also believe that we should now find inspiration in our great military, primarily the Army National Guard, for how they have jumped full steam ahead into this.
Be proud of your soldiers, keep your spirits and hopes high. There are some very sad and gruesome days and weeks ahead for our nation as we learn of the full scope of the disaster. Face it with the resolve, focus and determination that our military is showing us now, and we'll get through this to make a more safe future for such events and rebuild what has been lost.
Joe
Monday, September 05, 2005
Katrina Rescues: A Military Perspective
I'm posting a letter from Joe Roche, whose wife is doing helicopter rescue missions in hurricane-affected areas, "24/7, very tired, sometimes being shot at, facing intense heat and humidity, having spartan-to-bare sleeping conditions, with sickness and disease spreading."
Amy,
I want you to know that over the past days, our soldiers of the National Guard have quickly and readily made big sacrifices so they can get down to the Hurricane Katrina rescue mission. My wife, as you know, is with National Guard. I watched last week as they worked feverishly, being called in from their other jobs and away from their families, to get everything ready to go.
Tens of thousands of National Guard soldiers have mobilized all over the country like this. I know you have felt grief over the disaster and the issue some people have made of it. I want you to take heart and lift your spirits at what has happened with our military.
There is now a MASSIVE military response under way. It is moving very fast, in fact. So fast that it quickly and frequently overwhelmed the capacity to put it all in place and get it launched.
I understand the frustration, fear and sadness being felt, but it takes time to get such a thing going. Remember that it took many months for our military operations to get under way overseas when the decisions were made to do so. In fact, I think there was some controversy about that in both of the wars over Iraq, when it took from August to January to launch Operation Desert Storm, and even longer to get Operation Iraqi Freedom going. I well remember even having to assure people that we were going to respond after September 11th when some started worrying that weeks had passed and nothing had happened.
I believe that such comparisons actually will show that the military response to Hurricane Katrina's destruction is going at breath-taking fast speed.
Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, the commanding General of the Army National Guard, said that the thing to realize is that the rescuers who were there on the first day were also victims of the storm.
It takes time to organize the massive operation now under way. I watched my wife and her unit prepare to go, and I felt worried that they would become victims too if they didn't properly prepare. The vital thing the soldiers have to make sure of is that they are the solution to the problem, and not part of the problem. Therefore, what has happened is that a vast, truly amazing and powerfully inspiration-driven massive team of professionals has quickly and effectively set up a huge series of staging areas from which rescue operations can begin.
It is a fact that with the destruction of the storm, there were very few open and secure areas in which to set up huge military operations. Well, defying all the challenges, your National Guard soldiers have done that brilliantly!
Now we are seeing this massive military response making it's impact. Tens of thousands have been rescued, moving entire refugee populations hundreds of miles. I don't believe others ever have been able to do this, such as the Europeans in the Balkans. No, such massive population moves are normally the work of war and crime that last years. This time, bigger and faster than most in history, your National Guard has moved in, set up, and begun one of the largest rescue operations in history.
The thing that has affected me most, however, are the soldiers doing this. I have seen police officers, Vietnam Veterans, and other professionals from all sorts of jobs, dropping everything last week and getting airborne to get down there. And Amy, it is scary too.
My wife is my best friend and the best person I have ever met. Now she is doing helicopter rescue missions, 24/7, very tired, sometimes being shot at, facing intense heat and humidity, having spartan-to-bare sleeping conditions, with sickness and disease spreading. There are thousands of rescue operations to do, and there are dozens of air units and even more ground units working hard and sometimes bumping into each other. It is more dangerous than I think people realize.
Yet, amazingly and very inspiringly, I watched as these National Guard soldiers cancelled plans for college, jobs, their kids' plans for next week, basically everything that you can imagine, and instead jumped eagerly and with great determination to get ready and deploy to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Some of them are veterans, soldiers who have served for years in many of our wars and missions, civilian professionals who have jobs and lives and families, and all of them have set everything aside to go. Many are taking big financial hits, and their families have to make big adjustments. But you know what? They are all highly motivated and eager to get down there and do their jobs.
I know that for the victims of this storm, their suffering and tragedy is terrible and cannot be erased. I do hope we all realize, though, that the military is making a massively huge effort to rescue and help them that also involves National Guard soldiers making countless personal sacrifices.
We should have found inspiration from the determination of the people of New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to survive the long series of nightmares they have endured as a result of the hurricane. I also believe that we should now find inspiration in our great military, primarily the Army National Guard, for how they have jumped full steam ahead into this.
Be proud of your soldiers, keep your spirits and hopes high. There are some very sad and gruesome days and weeks ahead for our nation as we learn of the full scope of the disaster. Face it with the resolve, focus and determination that our military is showing us now, and we'll get through this to make a more safe future for such events and rebuild what has been lost.
Joe
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Cafe Hayek
Don Boudreaux
The American Red Cross -- an exemplary voluntary disaster-relief organization with almost 125 years of experience -- was told by the National Guard and local authorities not to go to Katrina-devastated New Orleans.">Cafe Hayek: "Government Tells the Red Cross to Stay Out of New Orleans
Don Boudreaux
The American Red Cross -- an exemplary voluntary disaster-relief organization with almost 125 years of experience -- was told by the National Guard and local authorities not to go to Katrina-devastated New Orleans."
The American Red Cross -- an exemplary voluntary disaster-relief organization with almost 125 years of experience -- was told by the National Guard and local authorities not to go to Katrina-devastated New Orleans.">Cafe Hayek: "Government Tells the Red Cross to Stay Out of New Orleans
Don Boudreaux
The American Red Cross -- an exemplary voluntary disaster-relief organization with almost 125 years of experience -- was told by the National Guard and local authorities not to go to Katrina-devastated New Orleans."
Cafe Hayek
Cafe Hayek: "The American Red Cross -- an exemplary voluntary disaster-relief organization with almost 125 years of experience -- was told by the National Guard and local authorities not to go to Katrina-devastated New Orleans."
Friday, September 02, 2005
HOG ON ICE: The New Orleans Puzzle
HOG ON ICE: The New Orleans Puzzle: "A commenter complains that the New Orleans disaster shows that the Homeland Security people haven't done enough to prepare for terrorist attacks, which would have results similar to those caused by Hurricane Katrina.
I don't know enough about Katrina yet to form a firm opinion, but what I know so far leads me to disagree."
I don't know enough about Katrina yet to form a firm opinion, but what I know so far leads me to disagree."
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Tangled Up In Blue
Tangled Up In Blue: "'I awoke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain'�t it funny how the night moves
When you just don'�t seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in'"
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain'�t it funny how the night moves
When you just don'�t seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in'"
Nashville Truth: Liberals Also Called For Assassination
Nashville Truth: Liberals Also Called For Assassination: "George Stephanopolous, former Clintonite and current ABC News analyst, on ABC'S 'This Week,' Nov. 9: 'This is probably one of those rare cases where assassination is the more moral course...we should kill him.'
Sam Donaldson, co-host of 'This Week,' Nov. 9: We should kill Saddam 'under cover of law.... We can do business with his successor.'"
Sam Donaldson, co-host of 'This Week,' Nov. 9: We should kill Saddam 'under cover of law.... We can do business with his successor.'"
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
News about Infantry at StrategyPage.com's How to Make War.
News about Infantry at StrategyPage.com's How to Make War.: "INFANTRY: Iraqis Copy Americans
August 31, 2005: The new Iraqi army is going through a generational shift, with a new package of tactics and techniques being taught to a new generation of recruits"
August 31, 2005: The new Iraqi army is going through a generational shift, with a new package of tactics and techniques being taught to a new generation of recruits"
The Daily Brief: A Military Blog Written With Intelligence And Purpose
The Daily Brief: A Military Blog Written With Intelligence And Purpose: "A List of Things Every Man Should Do Before He Dies
1. Shoot a gun larger than a .22. (Yep)
2. Teach a kid to shoot. (Define “kid.” Boyo hasn’t been shooting yet and guns aren’t allowed where we’re going so I’m gonna have to hold out.)
3. Cook a meal out in the open. (Done many times and not just “grilling” either.)
4. Kill an animal which can kill you. (No, and hopefully never will.)
5. Taste a good brandy (no French cognacs need apply) and a fine single malt Scotch. (I’ve overachieved this one.)
6. Visit at least eight countries outside your own continent, none of which speak your home language. (Only four so far.)"
etc==============
1. Shoot a gun larger than a .22. (Yep)
2. Teach a kid to shoot. (Define “kid.” Boyo hasn’t been shooting yet and guns aren’t allowed where we’re going so I’m gonna have to hold out.)
3. Cook a meal out in the open. (Done many times and not just “grilling” either.)
4. Kill an animal which can kill you. (No, and hopefully never will.)
5. Taste a good brandy (no French cognacs need apply) and a fine single malt Scotch. (I’ve overachieved this one.)
6. Visit at least eight countries outside your own continent, none of which speak your home language. (Only four so far.)"
etc==============
A soldier's thank-you - PittsburghLIVE.com
A soldier's thank-you - PittsburghLIVE.com: "More than once, bulletproof glass saved the lives of Spc. Nathaniel Cornman, his Humvee crewmates and others in his unit, the 1st 503rd Infantry, based at Fort Carson, Colo."
Chrenkoff--- Good News
Chrenkoff: "Maj. Joe Leahy, is a civil engineer with the 20th Engineer Brigade of the Army National Guard. He has been stationed at Camp Victory, outside of Baghdad, since November 2004 - enough time to get frustrated:
'We all know it's a dangerous place. But the thing that I want people to understand is that they only see those one or two instances in the country that are negative. You don't really hear about the 100 things that have gone good,'
says Maj Leahy. 'One thing we've got to understand is that it's not going to happen tomorrow, but we are doing something that's getting better everyday.'
"
'We all know it's a dangerous place. But the thing that I want people to understand is that they only see those one or two instances in the country that are negative. You don't really hear about the 100 things that have gone good,'
says Maj Leahy. 'One thing we've got to understand is that it's not going to happen tomorrow, but we are doing something that's getting better everyday.'
"
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