tucker carlson is an idiot...news to absolutely no one

[retro_eidas]

I caught a bit of Tucker Carlson interviewing Al Sharpton on MSNBC. Tucker was taking great pains pointing the finger directly at the NOLA city gov't in failing it's citizens for not fighting harder to improve the levees. Ignoring Al's tirades about the delay in aide being a racial issue ...maybe that's true, I don't know... but if Tucker wants to expend the energy pointing blame on anyone, I'd say he actually belly up with Al and start pointing the finger at the heinous, inexcusable incompetence and negligence of the federal government and FEMA that should have had copters full of aide, food and water ready and raring to get out to those people within hours of the hurricane striking. Not the inconceivable days it has taken them. The gov't that knew full well what was going to hit these cities and should have put in all it's considerable resources to the local governments to either ready those provisions or get those people the hell out of there (mandatory evac of such a huge area is going to take more than what any one city, even those as big as NOLA and Biloxi, has at their disposal. They needed the fed's help. Before the hurricane ever hit). Of course, Tucker won't, since he's a big raging Dubya stooge. I hope the next time he and Jon Stewart cross paths, JS stuffs that stupid bow-tie down his throat and makes him choke on it. What a fucking idiot. Yes. NOLA needed better levees. Badly. But what's done is done and the cold hard fact right in the now is American people are suffering and dying on American streets in some of the biggest cities in the South and it's taken days for any real action on any helpful scale to happen. It's horrifying and it's inexcusable.

Comments

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

I believe it was also Tucker's boy Dubya who cut the funding for the past two years to get federal aide to improve those levees in the first place.

You're right. I've read recently that Bush cut 80% of the the funding requests for levee improvement for New Orleans over the past 5 budgets. What chaps me the most is the way Dubya sat back on his "ranch" this weekend and watched as Katrina roared toward New Orleans and apparently lifted not a finger - instead of getting his sorry ass back to Washington and getting the ball rolling for the emergency response BEFORE the hurricane hit. ARRGH.

[hikarisenshi.livejournal.com]

Man, and I was gonna try to be the first one to write a rant on this before anyone on my friends list... ; _____ ;

[a-caged-heart.livejournal.com]

What gets me going above all is the fact that the federal government has been running disaster drills for Terror Attacks since the fall of 2001. The have been putting plans in place to handle such things. They have think tanks and experts and "smart" people putting together first responder strategies all this time. They were supposed to be ready for something on this scale. The office of Homeland Security and FEMA were supposed to be ready for this type of situation.

Certainly this was a natural disaster and not terror related, but the response should not be any different. On top of that, they had an extra 2 days or so to further plan how to deal with this. They knew this was coming. They had time to get first responders staged and ready to go.

They failed, big time. One reason given for the slow response...we have no place to put the people who were going to go in and help. Another reason given...the water made it difficult to get people in there. One outrageous claim I heard about why help had not gone to the NO convention center..."we didn't know anyone was there..." When I heard that line of BS, I actually threw a large object at my television. And of course the "no communications" point. My God, we sent reporters to the front lines during the Gulf War, and the news crews reporting on this disaster have more coordination and resourses to handle this. They are getting gas and generators and food into the devastated region, why can't anyone else?

It almost seemed as if the folks who were supposed to be in charge of this all got together on a conference call after the rain and the wind was gone, watched television reports, and discussed and plotted and strategized for four days before they finally decided where to go and what to do.

The bottom line...if this had been a dirty bomb or a chemical attack...I am sick to think that we were supposed to be ready for something like this.

Sorry about the rant...