 Video of Bush on GMA with Diane Sawyer. The ignoramus says, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” — Via Crooks & Liars |
Wolfie (CNN) just interviewed a man who found a phone at the Convention Center (the Superdome is a different location):
They have no food or water. There are dead bodies all over. Girls are getting raped. They have to walk to stores, still open and unlooted, to buy food — mostly cookies — and water. He said the mayor told them to go there days ago, but has provided nothing except six cops with big weapons outside. (SEE MORE BELOW from this man.)
Laura Rozen at War & Piece adds:
No one in charge. DHS Secretary Chertoff is making a whole bunch of excuses for the most staggering federal failure I have ever heard of. Here’s Chertoff’s interview with NPR’s Robert Siegel. The unflappable NPR Texas correspondent John Burnett now on the scene in New Orleans is almost shouting at the conditions at the NO convention center. The fact that no one is on top of this is very upsetting. Why isn’t Chertoff in New Orleans? Or at least Baton Rouge?
Here’s my rough transcript of Burnett’s interview with the NPR host Robert Siegel on All Things Considered tonight. It followed Chertoff’s chilling interview with Siegel.
John Burnett: There are 2,000 people living outside the convention center. There is no food. There is absolutely no water. There is no medical treatment. There are no police. There are two dead bodies on the ground and in a wheel chair around the convention center, both elderly people. We understand two more died earlier.
We understand that a 10 year old girl was raped in the convention center in the last two nights. Pople are absolutely desperate there.
I have never seen anything like this.
They have seen buses go past, they have seen police go past, but no one has brought them food. They are living like animals.
Now the Superdome is being evacuated, and that’s a very good thing. I think these people want to know when on earth are you going to look after us? they feel abandoned…
A lot of the looters distributed the food and water they got to the rest of the group … READ ALL
Now FEMA Director Mike Brown is despairing about the people who didn’t heed warnings to leave the city. Fuck you.
Wolf then asked the man calling from inside the Convention Center what he thought of FEMA DIrector Brown’s statements.
Let me give you — him — a piece of advice.
Do not send the Nat’l Guard to this place without sending someone in authority to talk to the people about what is going on and what is going to happen.
if they send Nat’l Guard into this place — there are guys running around here with guns. What do you THINK is going to happen, Wolf, if the Nat’l Guard shows up?
Quite a few people running around here with guns. Thirty different lines waiting for buses … in an hour and half it’ll be dark … the bus won’t come … they’ll be like crazy people tonight.
Send someone with a bullhorn to TALK TO THESE PEOPLE FIRST. Don’t just send in the Nat’l Guard.
Rozen also relays this: “Oh No. The evacuation of New Orleans’ Charity Hospital, long awaited by its desperate staff and patients, has been halted because of sniper fire.”
Chertoff is a lying sack of dog dung, who is only working to protect GW Bush’s reputation and could care less if 200,000 people died from dehydration.
The reporters are reporting what is actually happening in NO and the Gulf Coast and the talking heads for the Administration are denying that what the reporters are reporting is fair or accurate.
I loved that man who Wolf talked to … he deserves to be widely feted once he gets out of that hell. He was very articulate, passionate but also very rational.
I heard Brown answer no less than three questions with the standard “I’m not going to speculate on reports from the media. My teams haven’t reported that to me, so, I’m just not going to speculate” -WTF?!?! You AREN”T THERE and you aren’t going to listen to anyone but “your teams”?!? Well, where the fuck are they?? In a Hyatt in Baton Rouge?
The people at My Vote is My Voice (mostly DFAers and the sponsors of Democracy Fest) have come up with a plan to help displaced Hurricane victims in a concrete way. I think it would be great if we all participated. For those you who have not LinkUpped yet, perhaps you would be willing to bring it to your groups.
Contribute Something Tangible To The Hurricane Victims
Do you want to contribute something you can see and feel to those who are displaced by Hurricane Katrina?
We do too, so My Vote is My Voice will be collecting phone cards to be distributed directly to refugees after they are moved to Texas. These phone cards will allow people to make the important calls that will help them rebuild their lives.
My Vote is My Voice will start the phone card drive by contributing $100 worth of phone cards. Every single phone card that is sent to us will be added to those we purchase, and will be hand delivered to the hurricane victims.
Phone cards may be sent to:
My Vote is My Voice
23C Mansfield Pl.
Rutland, VT 05701
Thank you for showing the kindness we know is inside each of you.
The MViMV Board
Al, Charlene, Jessica, Liane, and Ralph
Sorry I messed up the HTML. MVIV website is http://blog.myvoteismyvoice.com
THANK YOU, Kali! Great ideas!
P.S. Can you embed your links? Our margins are weird here and they get all messed up when people post raw links. TY!
Okay. I’ll try again to embed. My Vote Is My Voice.
I think it works now.
Nice follow-up by Wolf about why people didn’t heed the warning to leave New Orleans… He must have forgot to ask whether there was any plan to move people out who could not afford on their own.
Nice “Christian” administration.
I saw an interview with one of the MSNBC cameraman – it was heartbreaking. One of the things he said to me was that the ONLY person who had showed up and tried to communicate with people and exercised some authority was…
Harry Connick Jr.
Now what the fuck does that tell you? That they’ve gotten more leadership from an actor/singer than from the entire Federal government?
The other person I want to nominate for true hero is the 20 year old who commandered a school bus, picked up anybody he saw on the street and drove them to the Astrodome. That kid deserves a medal. If anybody ever hears who he is, I’d love to know.
The school bus driver was only 20? I’m nominating him for hero too, along with the cop who told him to just go and take everyone he could with him (from the report I read).
Cabin Girl, do you recall where you read about this?
I want to find that kid and send him a check. Or say, you can crash on my couch. Or something.
Here’s the link, complete with his name (from a comment by brinnainne). If you find out how to send him a check or something, let me know. He really is a hero.
What an amazing story.
People with almost nothing left in this world, combining their resources and working together so that they can survive.
These are people who did everything the way they were supposed to, and still had to fight for it all along the way. It’s both inspiring and tragic.
That camrerman will be on Countdown with keith tonight at 8edt. His name is Tony Zumbado and Keith said on his blog http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
“What Tony captured constitute transcendence images and comments from Americans who followed the rules and saw the system breakdown around them”.
Bush needs to resign.
Not only that, he needs to retreat to his presidential bunker in his undisclosed location and finish it off like Hitler did.
But I’ll settle for him resigning.
And he needs to take the next 13 shitbags in line for the presidency after him along…so we wind up with someone acceptable at the helm.
Amen to that my friend.
He should go hide in Air Force One like he did after 9/11. Gutless deserter piece of shit.
According to WWL-TV, seven siblings, age four months to seven years, were brought in today from a roof by helicopter. No one knows where their mother might be.
Their mother’s name is Katrina.
If these people would have any kind of support from the feds there would be no sniper fire. How can anyone look on in disgust when the innocent people of New Orleans are the ones that are living through this anarchy. The looting is feeding them and the dangerous lunatics with guns are far more a threat to them than the talking fucking heads.
How can we lose 1900 people for the Iraqis but stop rescues because of gunshots?
This is nuts the bullshit is so deep.
Anderson Cooper seems to have had an epiphany. He was begging Senator Landrieu to bash the administration but shes too shaken to do it.
but could not. He droned on telling us facts that we have been aware of for 5 days. Facts that were just today fed to him. Let him get on with his life, his pathetic life.
We have an growing insurgency. They hate the freedom of those who live outside New Orleans. We must defeat the terrorists at the convention center who are stealing, looting and fighting our brave men and women in uniform. Support the troops!
Why is there sniper fire? Is there sniper fire?
How much? One shot..two shots?
Could it be it’s all being exaggerated by paranoid white people who are afraid of the Africans?
Some people have guns. Some shots have been fired and now nobody wants to come and help these people. Bullshit! This just more racism. If they have guns so goddamn what. Thats what the national guard and the army are supposed to do. Send them in and help these people. If they get fired on TUFF! They are getting fired on in Iraq aren’t they.
I don[‘t care about gun shots. I hear goddamn gun shots in my neighborhood often.
Let’s cut the bullshit about guns and lotting and go in there and help these people.
There is going to be violence all over this country though, and it will be all the more worse if they don’t get their candy white and black asses in their and help these goddamn people who are dying.
This is a crime!
Bush has to be removed. He has to go.