Crap Throwing Monkey

Saw basically the same thing somewhere else, too (I think it was USA Today). I'll have to see if I can dig it up...

The "D" in "LSD" and "LHD", by the way, stands for "dock". Those ships have floodable well decks for amphibious operations...which means they can and probably will stage small boats and landing craft from offshore. Which is probably desperately needed as soon as possible, I'd think.

...because Geraldo is the first one you turn to for hope... "I've just lost everything...but I'm not that bad off. I'm not Geraldo."

I wouldn't argue with Pete on the topic, though. He knows far more than us; after all, he rides his bike 30+ miles a day.

Do the opposite of what Ray does? Well, that would be...blame Ray...

The levee broke? I didn't know that. I thought this was all because of Bush.

Because YOU ARE. Did it ever occur to you that just maybe you're arguing with people who do this for a living?

He can't. He actually has to clean up the mess.

Told by his boss in VA. Who told him, I have no idea. So far it sounds like one of those "We need this...no, we don't...yes, we do...no, we don't" communications on-site cluster!@#$s, rather than something rooted in VA itself...but maybe not. The trucks should have kept going anyway, I think. "We'll sort it out when you get there" should have been the order of the day. But even so, if they left on Tuesday, they probably wouldn't have started distributing them until about...well, now.

It doesn't. So what. So therefore, a plan is unnecessary because it's not a guarantee of success? It in no way follows from that, that having a plan is therefore unnecessary. In this case, even a bad plan would have been better than the one they had, which seemed to consist of a series of pages labelled "This page intentionally left blank."

The Dutch would be a great place to start. There's obvious diplomatic issues, in that New Orleans can't go to a foreign country directly...but if I want advice on how to live safely ten feet below sea level next to a body of water and a flood-prone river, that's probably who I talk to first. The second person I'd turn to is anybody but Ray Nagin.

No it wasn't. Nothing federal was deployed until today. Haven't you heard the dozens of people here who've been saying that? The government should have known Saturday that things would go to sh-- Tuesday - after everyone said New Orleans was out of the woods. Clearly, in the face of all this expertise on this board, you are a consummate liar. There's no WAY your team could have been deployed Monday...

Stupidity usually does with me.

And we're talking about former residents of a city where that was high fashion...

If the NFL alone did that, they'd get about $1.3 million. Personally, I'd rather see them all pick a weekend and donate a game check. Or have the league pick a weekend and donate the gate.

Shameful, I know. I'll try to mindlessly spout the partisan mantra next national disaster, I promise.

Yeah. I get a 404 File Not Found error. Sounds about right...

Before they arrived. People don't even know the difference between mobilization and arrival...no wonder New Orleans is !@#$ed.

I've spent the past hour perusing the results of googling "New Orleans emergency plan". Found lots of interesting stuff that basically said "What plan?" And one article from last year about how New Orleans never coordinated with FEMA, despite FEMA's unprecedented ("first time ever", was the literal phrase in the article) attempts at aiding them in municipal disaster preparedness. The one thing I couldn't find was an emergency plan for New Orleans. Found plenty of others for other cities.

Mechanics' union is clearly run by geniuses. "We'd rather see the company go under and be unemployed than have jobs." Too bad. I always liked flying Northwest.

Pretty much. The National Guard of each state can be called up by the feds for duty with the army, but in the absence of that they're at the disposal of the governor of a state. I don't believe it's in the President's purview at ALL to call up one state's Guard for service in another state, but I'm not sure. I never recall it happening, at least...and don't see it happening now. All the military force the White House is alerting or deploying (ready brigade of the 82nd, for example) is indisputably federal.

The city doesn't have the financial resources to plan? To move the busses somewhere where they won't be flooded to their roofs, so the ten thousand people they've stashed in the Superdome without food or water or electricity can get out? Go to your municipal government and ask to see their emergency preparedness plan. I'd think (hope) it's open to the public. I'll bet it's miles beyond anything those idiots in New Orleans ever managed.

Just wanted to clarify...I'm not criticizing Nadin for what he did after the levees broke. I'm criticizing him for what he apparently didn't do before it happened. And for trying to spread the blame for his own failings as a mayor to everyone BUT himself.

Sure, why the hell not. You're giving the mayor of New Orleans a five-day pass on it when it was sure as sh-- his job...

It was a poor choice of words, though I understand the sentiment. The real shame of it is, his electorate proabaly doesn't understand how much of the planning should have been his responsibility, and his popularity will have skyrocketed for blaming everyone else for his failings.