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   09.03.05 || Katrina ....

Kanye West just said “Bush does not care about black people” on Larry King Live on CNN. I learned later that it’s from NBC, and they already have a disclaimer out about this statement, basically saying West was not supposed to say that, and he does not reflect the views of NBC.

Wow…. I was rather surprised that was said on national TV. Anyway, I am sure many people have views on how things are being handled after Katrina, I do as well. I am probably only one of the many people doing this, but I am going to set this place for comments on what I and other people think about Katrina stuff.

So about, Kayne, I'd say I have to agree with him, it took him how many days to go down there, and why was it that Bush was so slow on getting them help?? He sure was quick to give money to Asia for the Tsunami, but had a hard time opening oil reserves and sending help?

So, New Orleans is a place that is what, at least 8 feet below sea level, when it is a few feet from the sea? How stupid of a place is that to build. They’ve just been lucky for the last 200 years that this didn’t happen earlier. Like another person I’ve talked to said, “I hope New Orleans never rebuilds,” I rather agree with them. It’s a rather stupid place for a city, and the original settlement is actually on higher ground, and is fine right now, not under water.

CNN just said, “President did acknowledge that the support was slow coming”. Well duh.

So a hurricane. A hurricane came to a place right by a big body of water, a very large body of water. Hurricanes are known, rather well known too, and guess what people, YOU KNOW THEY ARE COMING! We’re not talking about a tornado here, not an earthquake, no, we’re talking about something that can be predicted what, like up to a week in advance? So guess what, you live by a big body of water, and well you know a hurricane is coming, GET OUT, duh! I realize that area is something like 65% black, and mostly poor, but you don’t need a car to get out of the area, and if you couldn’t get on the bus that was evacuating the area, you have two feet. They had at least 3 days to know they were going to be close to being hit by the storm, you can walk pretty far in 3 days. Maybe you have to get out of your home, your only place, but living on the street is better than dying in your house to me. Maybe this isn’t practical, but I still feel they could have done something, but they refused to.

Also I have heard the people going down there to rescue people had to evacuate themselves because they were being shot at. Also a military helicopter was being shot at. I'm sorry but if you are going to do that, you don’t deserve to be rescued. Now, it’s probably one person who wants to steal stuff and shoots at rescuers because they would stop them from getting their goods. So maybe those people should be shot themselves. I did see some lady from the military say that they would have to use force to regain control of the city, and well, I totally agree with her. If you must shoot someone because you are trying to help them and they are shooting at you, they should be dead.

Alright there’s a few, I have many other views about this, look in my comments for my other views I think of.


Comments

Ok, first of all some of those people were disabled and afraid to leave their homes because even though they were poor a home and a few belongings besides family members could be the only thing that they have in the world. You need to think about how would you feel being ordered to leave your home where you have everything. These people and not just the poor hae the clothes on there back and many I'm sure don't have id's any more let own money at alll with them. New Orleans and the surrounding has a lot of areas where people are too proud to leave what little they have. You try not having a lot of money and caring about living in a house that will be gone. You are out of work or out of work already, just trying on a daily basis to make life work even before these storms. As far as a weeks warning there was some warning, but when the storm was first out there it just popped into Florida and then left power lines and phone lines down for days. I have family out there and though they are all ok, you try waiting to here from your family or knowing that you can't contact your family to tell your ok and then you will see how you feel. It's just a terrible thing that has happened in those states and we do what ever we can, even if we are on our own budgets to do anything and anything at all. Find some money donate it they need our help.

Posted by: slim at September 3, 2005 04:00 AM

Ok, updates already... the army corps of engineers just said it could take 80 days to pump out new orleans. so how many thousands of gallons of fossil fuels could be saved to just not pump out the city, and rebuild on higher ground? to me, thatd be the smart thing to do.

slim, yes agreed. granted i say they can get out of there, i do agree. one other point is that people didnt want to leave their stuff cuz of looters. if they leave their home someone there is just going to go and steal everything that the storm didnt take. glad your family is ok, and i think thats the most important.

i think this a show of what our country will do to help itself. we wait to help ourselves, but be the first out there to help others. personally i think walmart and other big companies that have more money than they would ever need should be the highest donaters. they could make a big difference, give the food and water for them. i'm not saying the $5 that me and my neighbor can donate does not help, but get the money from the places that can more afford it. do we expect the poor people of chicago to donate money to the poor of new orleans? no, you have to go to the people with the money, the big business, the monopolys.

Posted by: PhotoFill at September 3, 2005 04:15 AM

heres an interesting one, i just found that google maps has an update on the satellite images of new orleans you can see a before and after...

http://maps.google.com

Posted by: PhotoFill at September 3, 2005 05:44 AM

I find the statement made by Kanye West to be ridiculous, completely un-helpful, inflamattory and offensive. I think we can all acknowledge that the response to the flooding of New Orleans was shameful, but to single out Bush and then call him a racist is just wrong, especially considering that Kanye was supposed to be urging people to give money. How is he urging republicans to give money when he's calling president Bush a racist? He failed to do the job NBC hired him for, possibly breaching contract, and hopefully NBC will refuse to do future business with him as a result.

For the record, I think the response of the various level of governments is not the big issue here. The tragedy that insued in New Orleans after the levees were breached, in my opinion, was due to a failure in planning for the worst-case scenario. Considering that this worst-case scenario has been known for years, and was in the media spot-light as recently as last year, it is inexcusable that the governments involved (city, state, and federal) were not properly prepared. I think it's clear that the reasons we went for days without seeing progress in New Orleans was because the plans weren't ready, the deplotment of the national guard was not prepared, the command and control was not organized ahead of time, and the proper communication channels were not made available.

Pointing the finger at Bush and blindly claiming that this tragedy was the result of racism shows a complete rejection of logic and the facts. Sure, president Bush is responsible for failing to plan his part, but what about the mayor of New Orleans? He's black! Obviously his city was completely unprepared for what would happen at the superdome. Was Kanye calling him a racist on TV? Didn't sound like it to me. Kanye West should be ashamed that he only made the problem worse when he had the oppurtunity to help out in a significant way.

Posted by: John at September 4, 2005 05:50 PM

A few points I want to make or add to:

If I'm not mistaken, Katrina hit so. Fla either Thursday or Friday night, and was only a cat-1 or Tropical Storm. I think people were lulled into thinking it wouldn't be too bad because Fla wasn't too affected. It wasn't until Sat night or Sun morning when people started to realize it was heading directly to NO and just how bad it was, therefore there wasn't enough time for everyone to leave. And, it's unrealistic to think everyone had the same means to leave. If anyone wants to know why I think this, I'll add to it later.

The poor planning can be put in large part on the Fed govt. Local workers were asking for very large amounts of money for 10 years to fix the levees, but the Fed govt kept cutting spending, in large part to fund the war in Iraq (for the past couple of years). NO and LA should have just spent the money themselves, then, right? Well, seeing how poor that state and city are, something tells me they couldn't really afford to raise taxes much more, and with the now obvious importance of NO to the national economy, it does become something the Fed govt should put as a priority.

NO needs to be rebuilt. Maybe not the at exact spot it's in now, but there MUST be a major city in the region, whether it's 50 miles further north or south, for the obvious reason that it's at the meeting place of the largest river in the country and the Gulf. It would, in the long run, cost more to change all the economic patterns of not using this port than it would to rebuild.

Kanye was wrong. George Bush doesn't care about poor people, but that's been evident since 2000.

Posted by: Dann at September 4, 2005 07:20 PM

yea you both are right. krissy made a point that in her classes theyve been talking about this, and they have documented worse case scenerios there, from a couple years ago. basically just a map of what would be affected if a cat 1 hurricane came through, and what more a cat 2 would do, and so on. So saying that, the map they have of the prediction from a few years ago of a cat 5 hurricane pretty well matches whats there now. amazing we know what can/will happen, yet we dont/cant do anything about it. yep, poor planning, now we really have to pay for it, its not a choice anymore.

another update: so i was talking to my mom about this and she said that at her work (WSPY 107.1 in Plano, IL) she heard they had an interview with Dennis Hastert (and audio recorded him), and he said something like "its not worth it to rebuild there." well, we know he means that its a bad area to build, it can and probably will flood again, so its not worth the money. but some other people got the idea that its not worth it to rebuild there because of the people. they arent worth spending money on, etc. i'm not sure too much detail about this, but other radio stations have called asking for the audio, and obviously WSPY said no, but Washington DC also called, and WSPY gave them a copy of the audio. So all that happened and now theres something on their website about it. i dont see in there what mom heard, but we're not sure if its all included there.

http://speaker.house.gov/library/misc/050901katrina2.shtml

Posted by: Photo Phil at September 5, 2005 03:06 AM

Hey Dyslexia Boy, it's Kanye, not Kayne.

Posted by: Pete at September 5, 2005 10:28 AM

heres a very cool letter to Bush: SELL THE RANCH http://www.selltheranch.com

also more pictures, this page gives a nice comparison of before and after. id suggest having high speed internet, or dont bother, these files are like 3-4 MB a piece.
http://www.digitalglobe.com/katrina_gallery.html

Posted by: Photo Phil at September 9, 2005 03:44 AM

Typical liberals desperatly trying as hard as they can to place the blame for this on Bush, when they should instead be doing something more constructuve to help out.

Sell the ranch? Really, what is that gonna accomplish? How about Blanco and Naggin, should they sell their homes as well? How about Clinton, Bush Sr., and Carter? They're just as responsible for the under-funded levees. Should they sell their homes too?

This NY Times article has a pretty decent theory about what went wrong: local politics conflicting with federal polictics. Gee, big surprise!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/national/nationalspecial/09military.html?ei=5090&en=aa642b8c89c27c01&ex=1283918400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1126238795-dGCl9WlaN8lbkCHBy9hw2w&pagewanted=print%22%3Ehttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/national/nationalspecial/09military.html?ei=5090&en=aa642b8c89c27c01&ex=1283918400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1126238795-dGCl9WlaN8lbkCHBy9hw2w&pagewanted=print

Seriously, I'm getting sick of these far-left loons who want to do nothing more than 'blame Bush' for the weather. Look, things went wrong, people messed up. An entire system broke down. These people need to stop trying to win the blame game and start trying to change the things that went wrong before there's another disaster.

Posted by: John at September 9, 2005 10:24 AM

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