Some more thoughts on the hurricane...

This is LONDON06/09/05 - News section

Penn accuses Bush amid rescue chaos

The US government was accused of "criminal negligence" as hopes of finding survivors faded and the death toll from Hurricane Katrina continued to rise.Holidaymakers returning to the UK spoke of the scale of the misery while one said leering police officers demanded young women flash their breasts in return for help.Oscar-winning Hollywood actor Sean Penn, who has been assisting rescue efforts in New Orleans, said the US government did not "seem to be inclined to help"."We were pulling drowning people out of the water, it's the ultimate distress and human suffering ... dead bodies," he told GMTV.Penn said he had spent nine hours on Monday searching the water for people and during all that time he saw just three boats carrying US officials."There are people that are dying right now and I mean babies and old people and everybody in between - they're dying. There are people dying and (the US government are) not putting the boats in the water, I think that's criminal negligence. I don't think anybody ever anticipated the criminal negligence of the Bush administration in this situation."The US authorities were also castigated by British bus driver Ged Scott, from Wallasey, Merseyside, who was on holiday in the New Orleans area.He stayed in the Ramada Hotel during and after the devastation with his wife, Sandra, and seven-year-old son Ronan. At one stage, Mr Scott, 36, had to wade through filthy water to barricade the hotel doors against looters.He told the Liverpool Daily Post: "I couldn't describe how bad the authorities were. Just little things like taking photographs of us, as we are standing on the roof waving for help, for their own little snapshot albums."At one point, there were a load of girls on the roof of the hotel saying 'Can you help us?' and the policemen said 'Show us what you've got' and made signs for them to lift their T-shirts. When the girls refused, they said 'Fine' and motored off down the road in their boat."

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--Right, and Jeff Spicoli is the acting voice of what is criminal... that is laughable. also, i guess these days the only way to boost your movie career or your celebrity is to attack someone else or something else and "get noticed" for your "humble" acts of goodness. mr. penn needs to stop pretending he's an educated man because he makes those of us who have worked hard on our education and who have spent our limited dollars on our education look stupid and arrogant. does he know what the word "criminal" means? in fact, i would venture to say that mr. penn has probably done several things in his life deserving of jail time, with regard to the ACTUAL law! this bush hating is so annoying. i don't like everything he does, but then he's human, so of course he is not perfect. but i get so sick of people hijacking an issue (like the hurricane) and then prostituting themselves all over the media with a huge hate hate hate agenda. well, abc news this last weekend proved that we as america don't care what celbrities hate or who. in fact, even the news media has not been able to place the blame of bad weather on gw, which they should have easily been able to do since we know that gw hates black people and asked God to send down his fire on the black part of new orleans. i guess that means we better fear gw rather than hate him, since he is, you know, the right hand of God? laughable at most. all laughable.

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Times Blasts New Orleans flood control
$$$The Corner-Media Blog ^ 9/2/05 Stephen Spruiell
Posted on 09/02/2005 6:53:59 PM PDT by chiller

Yesterday the New York Times editorial board wrote a fire-breathing editorial that for almost 24 hours ranked as the "most-discussed story" on Technorati and the "most e-mailed article" on nytimes.com. The board wrote that "George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday." Instead of "consolation and wisdom," the President offered "a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast." The board went on to offer a long laundry list of angry accusations. The editorial board doubted that Bush "understood the depth of the current crisis" — unlike the wizened board, which had been following the crisis on CNN. The editorial built up to this penultimate paragraph: While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection? Good question. Maybe because Congress listened to the NY Times editorial board in April of 2005: Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health of America's rivers and wetlands should pay attention to a bill now before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects — this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs. Among these projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences... [snip]

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--must i add to this or does it speak for the hypocrisy itself. the schizophrenic NY Times defeats itself in yet another foot and mouth story. Lesson: Elitests will not get the better of America.