Crap Throwing Monkey

But my compartmentalization idea wasn't meant to provide safe haven. It was meant to slow city-wide flooding (or even stop it), trading portions of the city for time to organize a proper response. This walled-up "safe haven" idea sounds like just the opposite, trading most of the city to keep a portion of it dry. There's no particular reason to think it would solve the problem they had: that things went so bad so fast that in the absence of a coherent plan (or even an incoherent half-assed one) no one had any opportunity to react. You've still got all the problems you had at the Superdome - isolation, infrastructure damage (unless you're postulating encompassing all municipal services inside "The Citadel"), supply stockpiling or lack thereof - but on an even greater scale, enough so that it's not completely unrealistic to postulate that such a solution could cause even greater problems than the existing situation did. The simple fact is that modern cities, unlike medieval cities centered on walled castles, aren't designed to withstand a siege for any length of time. Back then people actually stockpiled...nowadays, it's an "on demand" just-in-time-delivery world. In short, I still don't see how there's any way that would work.

Classic sales tactic. Once you find out someone's involved, you're about ten times more likely to convince him to give you money.

Apparently it was an odd case in that the blood work didn't show any related enzymes. Odd, but medicine isn't an exact science, contrary to popular belief.

And FEMA's response was about twice as fast now as compared to Andrew...and they're taking even more crap. FEMA's public image would probably be better off if they moved far more slowly in the future. Seriously, though...Clinton was probably right to have FEMA reporting directly to the president. There's been some supposition - with which I agree - that the response would have been faster in NO if the president had been able to directly kick some people's ass immediately. Supporting that is the fact that when the situation was taken over by a group that does report pretty much directly to the President (NORTHCOM), things started moving...but then, they may have started moving because resources had already been staging forward for three days and were set to arrive in-theater en masse anyway. There's two or three top-shelf textbook-quality books that can be written about this whole situation. And a thousand other "It's <fill in the blank>'s fault!" media-frenzied books that will be written and read by a public who ignores all else...

A planned request for help, maybe? I have no problem with the idea that the federal government in extreme situations should be called upon to help municipalities...but the key phrase there is "be called upon". What was New Orleans' plan? "Uhhh...we'll come up with one later, but right now we expect to be on our own for a week until the feds pull our nuts out of the fire." Basically, it's the difference between screaming for help and planning for help. Apparently most people don't recognize that the feds aren't supposed to just go in and start cleaning sh-- up when it hits the fan...they're supposed to look to local authorities with a greater knowledge of local conditions for the framework to guide them. How the hell are they supposed to do that when the municipal emergency plan is "When confused or when in doubt: run in circles, scream and shout!"?

Coroner's report is out. Apparently Herrion died of a heart attack. A "blockage in the right coronary artery causing the death of the heart muscle".

And Southwest is particularly fun, with boarding procedures borrowed from the Chicago stockyards...

And on-end they towered over you... (Any time, any subject... )

Silent thread for William Gilligan...a first mate who changed the world...

Pardon me for getting involved in this stupid-ass conversation...but wasn't DHS created by Congressional fiat?

Yeah. He took his own photographer with him. And it's about others.

Field rations for the military. "Meal, Ready to Eat". Basically three lies for the price of one.

The airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? African, not European.

Someone explain to me...how does "The Wall" differ from the Superdome evacuation in anything but scale? Ultimately, you still have a group of people behind concrete that are functionally isolated from the outside world by the surrounding water.

Whatever.

Why would you know? You don't know sh-- about cooking. You don't even know that it's impossible to cook pasta in less than 20 minutes...

Do you have anything (a link would be great) that explains this? Not that I don't believe you. I do, and I've been trying to convince a few people of this all day. A source to quote would help, but I don't think citing "slothrop on the internet" is going to help my case.

Their disaster response plan says "Future plans include a post-emergency response plan..." Yes, they actually say that. Is it any surprise they're blaming everyone short of Elvis? Wouldn't you?

Most things do.

Actually, I've heard reports from NO of white supremacists offering bounties for black looters, black radicals offering bounties for white cops, and anarchists offering bounties for damned near everyone, all in the interest of "supporting the insurgency" in the upcoming "revolution".

I think that's where we differ. I wouldn't be calling for Clinton's head anymore than I'm calling for Bush's. The problem's far bigger than one person, even the president. The only person's head I'm calling for is Nagin's. I mean, for Christ's sake, the New Orleans emergency mitigation plan dated April of this year actually says "Future plans include the creation of a post-disaster plan..." Literally, a no-sh-- direct quote.

Yes, it's the federal government's fault the levees broke. Okay, I can accept that...but just because the federal government = Bush now doesn't mean it's entirely Bush's fault. The budget for that work, as I recall, has been cut by [i[not only[/i] Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II, but by a great many hundreds (maybe even a couple thousand) Congresscritters. So don't hand me that "Bush bad" crap. Bush is an idiot, buy laying this at his feet is pure cop-out for ignoring the systemic problems of the decision-making at all levels over the past four decades that caused this mess to occur. Ultimately this stupid partisanship simply guarantees the problem will never get fixed. At this point, I'm willing to see a major city get flooded out every month until this country learns a very simple and basic lesson: political theory takes a back seat to physical reality, because Mother Nature in all her forms - be it a hurricane, 110-story building collapses, O-rings on SRBs - is fundamentally non-partisan and will kick your ass if you play this partisan BS for too long.

Damn near violated the first rule of an emergency: "Don't become someone who needs rescuing." There is a reason emergency workers ask the average Joe (or, in Penn's case, the below-average Cletus) not to come down and volunteer help...

Don't forget: "My post had nothing to do with partisanship but the fact that the wingnuts..."