BERIGAN

Geez, I don't need that kind of downer for this wonderful set. ← Did your Great-Grandfather bitch about all the B.S. Jelly Roll said?

Have this on LP (Circle) I presume it'll be the same session, very good playing although heavy on alterante takes ← What? Are you saying a cd with 16 tracks, and 10 different songs is heavy on alterante takes?

Perhaps I missed a thread like this in the past, but thought it would be interesting to see if anyone has some of my more unpop...err I mean obscure cds.. and what obscure jazz others have. Since Brownie and Lon own every jazz cd and lp, they cannot participate.....kidding!!! Ok, the cds.... Fred Elizalde and his Anglo American Band(1928-29) Retrieval label. Chelsea Quealey, Bobby Davis, all the big names.... Riverboat Shuffle (Memphis Archives) famous folk such as Paul Tremaine and Whitey Kaufman are on hand. Stuff Smith Trio -1943 on the Progressive label(Great transcription recordings) Duke Ellington the British Connexion 1933-1940 Tiny Parham 1928 1930 2 cd set from Timeless with Milt Hinton! So, anyone have any of these? What does everyone else have?

Oh man, I see that tape everywhere! You must have been looking with your eyes closed!I have 50 myself! I use them as coasters for drinks! Seriously, congrats!

Clitoria, clitorium Nina Someone Slim Sade Randy Travesty Puke Ellington(boo!) Jesus & Mary J Blige Salt'n Pepa's Lonly Hearts Club Band The Mamas & The Pap Smears Rem Speedwagon Beatch Boyz (I am surprised one I made up years ago, Collective Soul Asylum, wasn't used! )

personally I think Organissimo is too long a name....and this generator seems to agree. Orjazzm

I found a few of them on amazon for $6.49....(not all of them) 1. Feat. Eddie Condon/Pee Wee Russell & Jack Teagarde by Bobby Hackett 2. Bolero at the Savoy by Anita O'day 3. Wrappin' It Up by Fletcher Henderson 4. You Rascal You by Clarence Williams 5. Blue Prelude by Charlie Ventura 6. Well Git It by Tommy Dorsey 7. Bud's Bubble by Bud Powell oh, I didn't know Bessie Smith was white! http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/jazz/detail/-/hnum...ome/rsk/hitlist

After 55 years, vet to get Medal of Honor PAUL CHAVEZ Associated Press LOS ANGELES - Tibor Rubin kept his promise to join the U.S. Army after American troops freed him from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria during World War II. A Hungarian Jew, Rubin immigrated to New York after the war, joined the Army and fought as an infantryman in the Korean War. In 1951, Chinese troops captured Cpl. Rubin and other U.S. soldiers and he became a prisoner of war for 2 1/2 years. More than five decades later, after a relentless campaign by grateful comrades and Jewish war veterans, President Bush on Sept. 23 will give Rubin the Medal of Honor. "I was only staying alive to get that medal and now I'm going to enjoy it," said the 76-year-old Rubin, who now lives in Garden Grove. He was nominated four times for the medal, the nation's highest recognition for bravery in battle. But some believe the paperwork was never submitted because a member of his chain of command discriminated against him for being Jewish and born in Hungary. When he was at the Chinese prisoners' camp known as "Death Valley," Rubin said he would pray in Hebrew for the U.S. soldiers - about 40 each day - who died in the freezing weather. He also took care of soldiers suffering from dysentery or pneumonia. Rubin, who goes by the name Ted, called concentration camp good "basic training" for being a POW and applied lifesaving lessons he learned there. For example, Rubin said he would retrieve maggots from the prisoners' latrine and apply them to the infected wounds of his comrades to remove gangrene. Fellow POW Sgt. Leo Cormier said Rubin gave a lot of GIs the courage to live. "I once saw him spend the whole night picking lice off a guy who didn't have the strength to lift his head," Cormier told the Army. "What man would do that? ... But Ted did things for his fellow men that made him a hero in my book." As a POW, Rubin turned down repeated offers from the Chinese to be returned to his native Hungary. "I told them I couldn't go back because I was in the U.S. Army and I wouldn't leave my American brothers because they needed me here," Rubin said. Rubin wouldn't say anything negative about the Army and his long wait for the Medal of Honor. But in affidavits filed in support of Rubin's nomination, fellow soldiers said their sergeant was allegedly a vicious anti-Semite who gave Rubin dangerous assignments in hopes of getting him killed. In 1988, the Jewish War Veterans of the United States urged Congress to recognize Rubin's efforts. And U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida introduced a bill in 2001 to force the Pentagon to review the records of Jewish veterans who may have been denied the Medal of Honor because they were Jews. About 150 records remain under review, said Bob Zweiman, past national commander of the Jewish War Veterans. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...ws/12671084.htm

Oh man are you ever right!!!!!!!!!!(Riddler lite! ) I don't think he is all that legit either...at every bookstore I have worked at, his book ends up being returned a lot.(And the books curl up after sitting on the shelf for awhile, perhaps because they are evil) Dan, you need to revise your poll!

Agree about Kevin Trudeau! Arrest him already!!!! My best friend is one of those new agey kinda people, and since Kevin says what he wants to hear,(His patter is just like the more legit alternative folk) he thinks government folks are just out to stop him because of his views! Oh well, no one is perfect.

Ortiz made a good point in his defense saying basically no one gets the MVP for being a gold glover if he is hitting .230.... Speaking of MVP's, it's gotta be Andruw Jones, right? I mean Albert Pujols is a great player, but with the lead the Cards have, they most likely would win without him, the braves would not be in the lead right now, Jones carried the team when Chipper was out, and all these rookies were starting....Plus, he is the best center fielder in baseball.

Thanks for posting the link Mike! I recall the RKO documentary from the 80's (Ed Asner narrates) talking about the film as well The Body Snatcher, The Curse of the Cat People, Born to Kill, Blood on the Moon(a Noir Western)Run Silent, Run Deep, The Hindenburg(Ok, not the greatest film of all time, but I saw it as a kid in the theater, it made quite an impression on me, sue me! ) are all excellent films. Never saw it, but he directed one last film for cable called A Storm in Summer. He was 85 at the time.

have a great birthday!!!!!!!!!!

Lack of plan hurt Katrina-hit states' response By Dara Kam, Alan Gomez Palm Beach Post Staff Writers Saturday, September 10, 2005 UPDATED: 3:50 p.m. September 10, 2005 TALLAHASSEE — One thing Florida knows is hurricanes. Florida emergency planners criticized and even rebuked their counterparts -- or what passes for emergency planners -- in those states for their handling of Hurricane Katrina. Gov. Jeb Bush, the head of Florida AHCA and the head of Florida wildlife (which is responsible for all search and rescue) all said they made offers of aid to Mississippi and Louisiana the day before Katrina hit but were rebuffed. After the storm, they said they've had to not only help provide people to those states but also have had to develop search and rescue plans for them. "They were completely unprepared -- as bad off as we were before Andrew," one Florida official said. And how Louisiana and Mississippi officials have handled Hurricane Katrina is a far cry from what emergency managers here would have done. Mississippi was in the middle of rewriting its disaster plan when Katrina struck. Officials there were still analyzing what went wrong during Hurricane Dennis earlier this year when Katrina overtook them. Search teams from Florida were rescuing Mississippi victims before law enforcement officers there were even aware of the magnitude of the disaster. Louisiana also lacked an adequate plan to evacuate New Orleans, despite years of research that predicted a disaster equal to or worse than Katrina. Even after a disaster test run last year exposed weaknesses in evacuation and recovery, officials failed to come up with solutions. "They're where we were in 1992, exactly," said Col. Julie Jones, director of law enforcement for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, in a reference to Florida's state of emergency preparedness before Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Miami-Dade County. Since then, Florida has created what many consider a model emergency management system, initially developed by the late Gov. Lawton Chiles in response to Andrew and beefed up considerably by Gov. Jeb Bush in response to more than a dozen storms that have hit the state since he took office in 1998, including a record four hurricanes last year. The state, under Bush, has learned even from storms that did not hit here. Bush was mortified by the long, stalled lines of cars fleeing from Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and ordered a study of evacuation alternatives that led to the state's current plan to convert certain highways to northern-only routes. Meanwhile, Florida's western neighbors haven't faced as many storms, and their emergency preparedness apparently has not evolved as Florida's has. Local and state officials in Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as federal officials, simply weren't prepared to deal with a disaster of Katrina's magnitude, according to observers, citizens and national experts on the scene after Hurricane Katrina wreaked catastrophic damage on the Gulf Coast. One of the biggest differences between how Florida and other states handle natural disasters lies in the degree of cooperation between cities, counties and the state. In Florida, they are in constant communication with one another as storms advance and during the recovery phase. Not so elsewhere, as first responders from Florida discovered at dawn the day after Katrina made landfall. Search and rescue crews from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were poised in Pensacola on Sunday night in anticipation of Katrina's landfall Monday. After scouting the Panhandle and determining it was OK Monday morning, Jones said she called Mississippi officials to see if they needed help. "They said, 'We don't know,' " she said. "Monday night, Mississippi said 'We still have not been able to evaluate the damage, so please go.' So Monday night, we were at the border ready to go, and we were in Mississippi by 6 a.m. Tuesday. So before Mississippi could wake up and say, 'OK, we have to start doing assessments,' Florida was in those two counties, in Jackson and Harrison." Jones' crews made the first rescue in Mississippi at dawn the day after Katrina made landfall, and they spent a week in the area, ferrying Mississippi Marine Patrol officers whose vessels were destroyed by Katrina. Florida law enforcement officials in each county hold monthly conference calls to discuss disaster coordination, but it wasn't until after the storm hit that these Mississippi officials were making a plan of what to do. "The biggest frustration for us was sitting down and trying to get all the emergency managers in a county to sit down in their emergency operations centers and talk about a plan," Jones said. Part of the problem was that Mississippi officials were in the process of rewriting their state emergency plan when Katrina hit, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Lea Stokes said. They hadn't yet evaluated post-Dennis hurricane response surveys when the Category 4 storm and its 20- to 30-foot surge wiped out 75 miles of coastline. Stokes and other Mississippi officials also blame problems responding to Katrina on its size and impact on telephone services. Land lines, cellphones and even satellite phones were useless, Stokes said. "It was not so much a communications breakdown as it was a communication device breakdown," said Biloxi spokesman Vincent Creel. "So if we'd have had carrier pigeons, we'd have been using them. We'd have used smoke signals, but we didn't have water." Florida's emergency management chief, Craig Fugate, said just having any old plan isn't enough. It has to be adequate and a state needs an experienced organization well-versed in putting it into effect. "I've heard comments made in other disasters that the first thing they did was throw the plan away because the plan was worthless," Fugate said. "A plan should not be some requirement. It should truly reflect what your real needs are, and what your real resources are." Louisiana's plan doesn't do either. A November article published by the Natural Hazards Center, a University of Colorado research institute, analyzed what would have happened if Hurricane Ivan had hit New Orleans last summer instead of Pensacola. "Hurricane Ivan would have pushed a 17-foot storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain; caused the levees between the lake and the city to overtop and fill the city 'bowl' with water from lake levee to river levee, in some places as deep as 20 feet; flooded the north shore suburbs of Lake Pontchartrain with waters pushing as much as seven miles inland; and inundated inhabited areas south of the Mississippi River," wrote Shirley Laska, a University of New Orleans disaster expert. But the most recent Louisiana emergency operations plan doesn't address how to evacuate in the case of flooding from storm surge, saying simply that "The Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area represents a difficult evacuation problem due to the large population and its unique layout." It continues, "The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating." Buses were unable to transport New Orleans citizens for days following Katrina's landfall. The plan acknowledges that, in the event of a catastrophic hurricane, "the evacuation of over a million people from the Southeast Region could overwhelm normally available shelter resources." But it doesn't include a solution to the shelter issue. Louisiana officials could not be reached for comment this week. Mississippi and Louisiana officials, however, have increasingly decried what they called a slow federal response to the disaster, blaming the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But Gov. Bush defended FEMA. "If we weren't prepared, and we didn't do our part, no amount of work by FEMA could overcome the lack of preparation," he said. Natural Hazards Center director Kathleen Tierney agreed, saying emergency planners in the Gulf states should have taken a tip from the jazz legends that made New Orleans famous. "Organizational improvisation" is essential to cope with unpredictable events such as Katrina, Tierney said. "Research on jazz musicians shows that people don't just pull stuff out of the air when they're improvising. These are people with an extremely wide knowledge of musical genres. They have always practiced and practiced and practiced. Similarly, improvising involves a deep understanding of the resources you have at hand in your community." Local officials, she said, "could have listened to researchers. They could take seriously Congressman Patrick Kennedy's bill called the Ready, Willing and Able Act that calls for more interaction with the community. They could have approached this improvisational task with imagination." And they might yet, Biloxi spokesman Creel said. "Believe me, we're going to be doing a lot of what you call critiquing of this, but we haven't reached that point yet. We're still at the midst of it." http://www.palmbeachpost.com/storm/content...onse_0910.html#

Does it really matter why they didn't leave before the storm, or after? It doesn't matter as much after, but before...it sure as hell does! There was a mandatory evacuation order. Bush declared Louisiana a disaster before the storm hit. Did The mayor follow the emergency plan in place already? This is long, and should be another post perhaps, but it explains how royally the City and state FUCKED UP, making the feds job that much more difficult.... ....The mayor's mandatory evacuation order was issued 20 hours before the storm struck the Louisiana coast, less than half the time researchers determined would be needed to get everyone out. City officials had 550 municipal buses and hundreds of additional school buses at their disposal but made no plans to use them to get people out of New Orleans before the storm, said Chester Wilmot, a civil engineering professor at Louisiana State University and an expert in transportation planning, who helped the city put together its evacuation plan. Instead, local buses were used to ferry people from 12 pickup points to poorly supplied "shelters of last resort" in the city. An estimated 50,000 New Orleans households have no access to cars, Wilmot said. State and local plans both called for extra help to be provided in advance to residents with "special needs," though no specific timetable was prepared. But phone lines for people who needed specialized shelters opened at noon Saturday — barely 30 hours before Katrina came ashore in Louisiana. Many people from New Orleans ended up staying home or using a "last resort" special needs shelter state authorities and the city health department set up at the Superdome. Those who made it out of town initially found limited space. The state of Louisiana provided shelter in Baton Rouge and five other cities for a total of about 1,000. In the city of New Orleans alone, more than 100,000 of the city's residents described themselves as disabled in a recent U.S. census. Early mistakes Hospitals were exempted from the mayor's mandatory evacuation order. But at least two public hospitals, loaded with more than 1,000 caregivers and patients, had their generators in their basements, which made them vulnerable in a flood. That violated the state's hurricane plan but had gone uncorrected for years because the hospitals did not have the money to fix the situation, a state university hospital official told the Chronicle. The consequences came to bear in the images hours and days later: Elderly people dying outside shelters and hospitals that were losing power and, finally, their patients. Now, hurricane evacuation experts around the country are asking why New Orleans failed to prepare for the flood scenario from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. "Everybody knew about it. There's no excuse for not having a plan," said Jay Baker, a Florida State University associate professor who is an expert in hurricane evacuations and is familiar with New Orleans hurricane studies. Tami Frazier, a spokeswoman for Mayor C. Ray Nagin, currently working out of Houston, refused to comment on direct questions this week or to answer several written questions sent via e-mail. She cited the need to focus on rescuing citizens and recovering bodies. Robicheaux, the cancer patient who was trapped in a downtown New Orleans hospital, said he thought the city "decided basically to let it ride." "When you're in a city like New York and there's a big snowstorm, you expect them to have plows. That's not the way it is here. There are no resources to stockpile supplies." Saturday evening, Hurricane Katrina had intensified to Category 4, with the possibility that it could strike land as a killer Category 5 storm. About 8 p.m., Mayor Nagin fielded an unusual personal call at home from Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, who wanted to be sure Nagin knew what was coming. Still, Nagin waited to issue a mandatory evacuation, apparently because of legal complications, said Frazier. She said the city attorney was unavailable for an interview to explain. But Kris Wartelle, spokeswoman for the attorney general of Louisiana, said state law clearly gives the mayor the authority to "direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from any stricken or threatened area." "They're not confused about it. He had the authority to do it," Wartelle said. The mandatory evacuation order came at 10 a.m Sunday. Former Kemah Mayor Bill King, who has spent years trying to boost funding and organization for hurricanes planning in the Houston-Galveston area, said Nagin's decision to wait to order people out compounded the tragedy. "To call an evacuation on Sunday morning when the storm was going to hit on Monday morning at 6 a.m. is just ... negligence," King said. "If he'd called it better than that he would have saved lives." Special-needs evacuation The Chronicle reviewed Louisiana's Emergency Operations Plan, adopted in 2000. It calls for the establishment of specialized shelters for people with special medical needs. It also recommends that cities use public transportation to evacuate residents if necessary. The city of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan suggested people develop their own way to get out. "The potential exists that New Orleans could be without sufficient supplies to meet the needs of persons with special considerations, and there is significant risk being taken by those individuals who decide to remain in these refuges of last resort," it says. People who called for information on special needs shelters Saturday were directed to sites in Alexandria and in Monroe, La. — cities 218 and 326 miles away. The state scrambled to find 20 ambulances and some specialized vans to pick up fragile residents who needed rides. "There were transportation systems in place to take people out of New Orleans, which was the preferred solution," said Kristen Meyer, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Hospitals. But she's not sure how many got out. Some, including Lower 9th Ward resident Lois Rice, a paraplegic, became trapped in their homes when the floodwaters rose. She was rescued after using her air mattress to float into her attic. Florida, by contrast, for two decades has required counties to establish and maintain permanent databases of "special needs citizens," and arrange rides for people with no transportation. The state also has shelters established for myriad medical conditions. Florida emergency officials agree that last-minute planning simply doesn't work. "Unless you planned in advance, it would be a catastrophe," said Guy Daines, a retired Florida emergency manager who is considered an expert in specialized evacuations. In New Orleans, many people with special medical needs ended up at the last resort shelter in the Superdome. New Orleans' own special needs evacuation plan, however, says that shelter is "NOT TO BE INTERPRETED AS A GUARANTEE OF SAFETY, and the City of New Orleans is not assuring anyone protection from harm within the facilities that are being offered or opened for this purpose." "When I saw them loading special needs people into the Superdome the day before the storm, my heart was breaking," said Patti Moss, a Texas nursing professor who has developed a tracking system for such vulnerable citizens here. "They were in the path of the storm." Two of the city's hospitals dedicated to serving the city's poor, University and Charity hospitals, quickly lost power, according to Leslie Capo, a spokesman for the Louisiana State University health sciences department. After days in the dark, it took the National Guard, the U.S. Army and a Black Hawk to rescue Robicheaux. "We had been kind of left on our own and I thought, 'This is a fine thank you,' " he said. Planning for the poor In storm-vulnerable Jefferson Parish and New Orleans, the American Red Cross worked before the storm to promote a "buddy system" to encourage everyone without cars to find rides through churches and other organizations. But in an interview published July 18 in New Orleans City Business, Jefferson Parish hurricane planner Walter Maestri insisted New Orleans needed to do much more for those who didn't have cars. "New Orleans has a significantly larger population without means of transportation, so it's a much bigger problem for the city. ... The answer is very simple — evacuation," he said. As Hurricane Katrina approached Sunday morning, New Orleans officials advertised city buses would be used to pick people up at 12 sites to go to the "last resort" shelters. It's unclear how many buses were used. Planners decided not to use any of the New Orleans school buses for early evacuation, Wilmot said. Photographers recorded images of them lined up in neat rows and submerged — though one was commandeered by Jabbar Gibson, 20, who ferried 70 passengers to safety in the Reliant Astrodome. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3344347 did FEMA do it's job? Not real well at first. You could say now they are doing a "decent" job, but it is far from perfect. You mentioned it was the worst natural disaster in our nation's history. But people seem to think that is no excuse for any delays. Have you heard the story today that the Red Cross was kept out of N.O. by the Louisiana Homeland security? Heard it on T.V. last night, can't find a link yet. BUT if that is true, they killed people by their actions. Supposedly, they didn't want food and water brought to the Convention center, and the Superdome because it would be a magnet to bring even more people to those crowded locations! The fact is, there really is blame enough for every level of goverment, but people on the far left hate Bush more than anything else, so he, and his administration are the only ones they want to see blamed....

Who's to Blame for Delayed Response to Katrina? New Orleans' Emergency Plan Not Followed, Federal Government Slow to Take Lead NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 6, 2005 — In New Orleans, those in peril and those in power have pointed the finger squarely at the federal government for the delayed relief effort. But experts say when natural disasters strike, it is the primary responsibility of state and local governments — not the federal government — to respond. Full Coverage: Katrina Katrina Internet Charity Scams Try to Dupe Donors Person of the Week: Complete Coverage New Orleans' own comprehensive emergency plan raises the specter of "having large numbers of people … stranded" and promises "the city … will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas." "Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves," the plan states. When Hurricane Katrina hit, however, that plan was not followed completely. Instead of sending city buses to evacuate those who could not make it out on their own, people in New Orleans were told to go to the Superdome and the Convention Center, where no one provided sufficient sustenance or security. 'Lives Would Have Been Saved' New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said "80 percent" of the city was evacuated before the storm hit, but Bob Williams says that's not good enough. Williams dealt with emergency response issues as a state representative in Washington when his district was forced to deal with the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. "If the plan were implemented, lives would have been saved," Williams said. There's no question the federal government plays a major role in disaster relief. But federal officials say in order to get involved, they must first be asked to do so by state officials. As one FEMA official told ABC News, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco failed to submit a request for help in a timely manner. Shortly before Katrina hit, she sent President Bush a request asking for shelter and provisions, but didn't specifically ask for help with evacuations. One aide to the governor told ABC News today Blanco thought city officials were taking care of the evacuation. Nonetheless, some experts argue that the federal government should have been more proactive. "If the city and the state are stumbling or in over their head, then it's FEMA's [Federal Emergency Management Agency's] responsibility to show some leadership," said Jerry Hauer, director of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services. Both the president and Congress have vowed to investigate questions of blame. It may already be safe to conclude that there will be plenty of it to go around. ABC News' Dan Harris filed this report for "World News Tonight." http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/HurricaneKatrina...TC-RSSFeeds0312

Bob Williams also happens to be the president of a conservative think tank, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, and possesses no relevant disaster management experience. I wonder if he has an ulterior motive in publishing this op-ed and appearing all over cable TV in the last few days? Par for the course for the WSJ editorial page. I think I'll just turn it over to the folks at Media Matters. ← Well, we all know Media matters isn't an left wing site!

Total hackery. Just because New Orleans was always poor and high-crime doesn't mean that the feds were not responsible for maintaining order post-disaster. The whole point of a federal response is that local authorities are not equipped to handle natural disasters, regardless of how professional or competent they are to start with. ← Hardly "total hackery." There's more than enough blame to go around on the federal, state, local, and even (in some cases) individual levels. Lots of people and organizations they trusted fucked up on this one. ← Of course there's plenty of blame to go around. That, however, is not what this shitbag is saying. He's arguing that: 1) The NO local police is first and foremost to blame, and that those who disagree are just "Bush-bashing"; 2) That Howard Dean is charging racism--without so much as providing a quote, instead choosing to put Jesse Jackson's words in Dean's mouth; 3) That Ray Nagin, who was a REPUBLICAN until running for mayor, is representative of the Democratic party as a whole; and 4) That it's something extraordinary that the poorest city in America can't magically come up with a better police force. It's a cynical attempt at a whitewash of the Bush administration's actions in New Orleans, laced with spin from top to bottom. Feebly attempting to excuse the inexcusable? That's my definition of hackery. ← Big Wheel, IF Kerry was president, and a Republican Gov and Mayor left hundreds upon hundreds of buses unused(except to take some people to the Superdome) you don't think you would be bitching much more about the locals, than what the Feds did or did not do? You and others would be screaming bloody murder, wondering why the fuck they didn't bus everyone out of town. I know, everything would have gone perfectly if only Kerry had been the president, and it wouldn't have been an issue. http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/07/D8CFNMPG0.html

Well, knock me over with a feather, a balanced report from the BBC!!!! Multiple failures caused relief crisis Analysis By Paul Reynolds World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website The breakdown of the relief operation in New Orleans was the result of multiple failures by city, state and federal authorities. Evacuation at last, but why so late? There was no one cause. The failures began long before the hurricane with a gamble that a Category Four or Five hurricane would not strike New Orleans. They continued with an inadequate evacuation plan and culminated in a relief effort hampered by lack of planning, supplies and manpower, and a breakdown in communications of the most basic sort. On top of all this, there is the question of whether an earlier intervention by President Bush could have a made a big difference. The planning Before Hurricane Katrina struck, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) was confident that it was ready. Its director, Michael Brown, said: "Fema has pre-positioned many assets including ice, water, food and rescue teams to move into the stricken areas as soon as it is safe to do so." Mr Brown even told the Associated Press news agency that the evacuation had gone well. "I was impressed with the evacuation, once it was ordered it was very smooth," he said. Yet on Saturday 28 August, the day before the evacuation was ordered, Mr Brown did not say that people should leave the city. All he said was: "There's still time to take action now, but you must be prepared and take shelter and other emergency precautions immediately." This has made Fema appear complacent in the period immediately before the hurricane arrived. If it did not expect the worst, it would not have prepared for the worst. The Brown statement went out on the same day that the National Hurricane Center was warning that Katrina was strengthening to the top Category Five. Everyone knew the dangers of a Category Five. A Fema exercise last year called "Hurricane Pam" had looked at a Category Three, and that was bad enough. The evacuation It was announced at a news conference by the Mayor Ray Nagin on Sunday 28 August, less than 24 hours before the hurricane struck early the next morning. The question has to be asked: Why was it not ordered earlier? The Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said at the same news conference that President Bush had called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation. The night before, National Hurricane Director Max Mayfield had called Mayor Nagin to tell him that an evacuation was needed. Why were these calls necessary? School buses still lined up after the hurricane Again, as with Fema, the New Orleans mayor should have known that on the Saturday, Katrina was strengthening to Five. It was already clear on the Sunday that the evacuation would not cover many of the poor, the sick and those who did not pay heed. The mayor said people going to the Superdome, a sports venue named as an alternative destination for those unable to leave, should bring supplies for several days. He also said police could commandeer any vehicle for the evacuation. But how much support was there at the Superdome? And how much city transport was actually used? There is a photo showing city school buses still lined up, in waterlogged parking lots, after the hurricane. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Update: a reader has pointed out that there are detailed plans for Louisiana and the City of New Orleans for an evacuation and these make it clear that buses should be used to transport those without cars. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are questions for the mayor, dubbed heroic by some, to answer. The relief operation The scenes which most shocked the world were at the Superdome and the Convention Center. Yet it turns out that neither Mr Brown nor his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, knew about the crises there until Thursday. This, despite numerous television reports from the scene. It was not until Friday that the first relief convoy arrived. It was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap, and that essentially the lake was going to drain into the city Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Secretary "The very day that this emerged in the press, I was on a video conference with all the officials, including state and local officials. And nobody, none of the state and local officials or anybody else, was talking about a Convention Center," Chertoff told CNN. Note how he blames local officials. Nor did he know about the significance of the breach in the floodwalls until a day later. "It was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap, and that essentially the lake was going to drain into the city," he said on NBC. update: it is possible of course that the engineers had not themselves concluded that before Tuesday but the potential could have been realized. Other, more successful operations, notably the airlift by the Coast Guard, should be acknowledged. And in a disaster area the size of Great Britain, resources were stretched. But ironically the failure at the Convention Center would have been fairly easy to put right. Reporters drove there without problems. One took a taxi. What, one wonders, was Fema/the mayor's office/the governor's office doing while all that was played out on live TV? One lesson agencies might want to learn is that someone senior should do nothing but monitor TV. Some of this might explain why people at the Superdome and the Convention Center had to wait so long. It does not explain why communications were not better. Another sign of slowness was that the Department of Homeland Security did not issue the first ever declaration of an "incident of national significance" until the Wednesday. Such a declaration allows the federal government a greater role in taking decisions. One lesson agencies might want to learn is that someone senior should do nothing but monitor TV In fact, the arguments between federal and state authorities about who was able to do what is another part of this story. The Department of Homeland Security said the local authorities were inadequate. The locals responded that Fema had been obstructive - it had, for example, stopped three truckloads of water sent by the store Wal-Mart. And so on. It took days to sort out who should send troops and from where. Indeed, the intricacies of the various responsibilties of state and federal authorities do not always allow for quick decision making, though that did not stop rapid action in New York City on 9/11. Nor does Governor Blanco escape criticism. It took until Thursday, for example, for her to sign an order releasing school buses to move the evacuees. The president's response Mr Bush has been blamed for failing to rise to the occasion. His critics argue that he took too long to get back to Washington and did not provide the inspirational leadership needed at such a time. Nor, it is said, did he intervene early enough to get things moving. Washington Post correspondent Dan Balz concluded: "Anger has been focused on Bush and his administration to a degree unprecedented in his presidency. Senator Mary Landrieu [a Louisiana Democrat] said in an ABC News interview that aired Sunday that she would consider punching the president and others for their response to what happened there. Local officials, some in tears, have angrily accused the administration of callousness and negligence." The president's defenders point out that it was he who urged an evacuation of New Orleans (he has no legal power to order one) and that he did acknowledge the "unacceptable" pace of the relief effort. Further, they say that aid is now flowing and reconstruction will take place. Another issue for Mr Bush is why Michael Brown was appointed director of Fema. He had previously been its deputy and had been hired as its general counsel by the director Joe Allbaugh, George Bush's chief of staff when he was Texas governor. Mr Brown, a lawyer from Oklahoma, played a role in studying the government's response to national emergencies. Before that he had run the Arab horse association. Senator Hillary Clinton has said that Fema should be removed from the Homeland Security Department and made an independent agency again. The gamble When Hurricane Camille, a rare top Category Five storm, hit Mississippi in 1969, just missing New Orleans, the levees around the city were strengthened - but only enough to protect against a Category Three hurricane. The gamble was taken that another Category Five would not threaten New Orleans anytime soon. This attitude prevailed among successive administrations. Lt General Carl Strock, the Army Corps of Engineers commander, admitted that there was a collective mindset - that New Orleans would not be hit. Washington rolled the dice, he said. After flooding in 1995, the existing system was improved. However, the sums were relatively small. About $500m was spent over the next 10 years. From 2003 onwards, the Bush administration cut funds amid charges from the Army Corps of Engineers that the money was transferred to Iraq instead. The latest annual budget was cut from $36.5m to $10.4m. A study to examine defences against a category Four or Five storm was proposed, at a cost of $4m. The Times-Picayune quoted the Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi as saying: "The Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies." But in any event, there was no plan for a major strengthening. This would have taken billions of dollars and many years. And an Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman, Connie Gillette, said there had never been any plans or funds to improve those floodwalls which had failed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Update: a reader has pointed out a quote in the New York Times indicating that the failed floodwalls had in fact previously been strengthened. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- '"Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said [it] was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded." "It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."' It is a long and complex chain of responsibility. All these issues, and many more, will now be the subject of congressional and other inquiries. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4216508.stm

Oh, something I forgot about, are those people wanting to stay behind able to flush a toliet when the water is still so high??? Here is the forced evacuation info... New Orleans Mayor Orders Forced Evacuation

I caught Entertainment tonight to see what they would say about him, and they only talked about Gilligan's Island!

10,000? Damn! I caught the last half of Nightline, and they showed how hard it was to convince people to leave. The part I saw showed a middle aged plus daughter, and her elderly parents. It took a lot of talking and time to convince them to leave. Then they showed a rich guy who has a historical home, and fire was approaching. He had stayed to protect it from looters, and wasn't going to leave even with the fire looming! National guard stopped by, he still wouldn't budge. There seem to be a fair number in the French quarter. Not much damage from the flooding or the storm, which is great for rebuilding, but these people who were sweeping, and cleaning up don't want to leave, nor do they think they should have to. Which brings up an interesting point. IF they can stay, why can't everyone who wants to stay? Obviously, it wouldn't be safe for people to stay in many parts of town, but if the French Quarter really is more or less aok, kicking people out where there isn't a real problem(Short of clean water, seems there is some electricity there) is going to look bad on TV. And from what I heard on nightline, it looks like the mayor wants to push everyone out starting today....truly a no win situation....

That's what i was gonna say! Congrats, you are a lucky man!

I am sure many like myself watched many an episode of Gilligan's Island as a kid, and even Far out Space Nuts. 70! Wow! Bob Denver, TV's Gilligan, Dead at 70 Tuesday, September 6, 2005 (09-06) 11:47 PDT Los Angeles (AP) -- Bob Denver, whose portrayal of goofy first mate Gilligan on the 1960s television show "Gilligan's Island," made him an iconic figure to generations of TV viewers, has died, his agent confirmed Tuesday. He was 70. Denver, who underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery earlier this year, died at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Carolina, according to agent Mike Eisenstadt. Denver's death was first reported by "Entertainment Tonight." http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n.../e113847D19.DTL