September 9, 2005
For those of who that haven’t noticed I want to remind you that my posts include only snippets of articles with a link to the entire article.
President Bush: Next Friday is National Day of Prayer …Bush asked for patience on the part of storm victims, and declared a national day of prayer and remembrance for Friday of next week… (wait! He can’t do that, can he?) http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/9/8/162102.shtml
Stress reduces breast cancer risk says study
Women with high levels of stress in their everyday lives are at less risk than others of developing breast cancer for the first time, according to research in the British Medical Journal published on Friday… speculated that it may be because daily stress suppressed production of oestrogen, which is a risk factor in breast cancer. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050909/sc_nm/breast_dc
King David’s Palace
September 08, 2005 Elul 4, 5765 …The recently ended season of excavations at the top of the City of David slope was accompanied by much excitement. With every passing day, more and more parts of an enormous building were unearthed. Dr. Eilat Mazar, the archaeologist in charge of the site, believes this could be the palace King David built after conquering Jerusalem from the Jebusites. The discovery has stirred up the old argument among archaeologists as to whether the events described in the Bible in fact occurred, and in this context, the importance and greatness of David himself…. The large structure might be a palace, temple or fortress, says Mazar. Analysis of the finds in her possession has led her to conclude that it is a palace. "For years, there have been those who contended there was no evidence of public construction in 10th century BCE Jerusalem," says Mazar. "Based on this, they claim that David and Solomon were not important rulers, as described in the Bible… http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/622357.html
Muslims Invited to Debate 'Religion of Peace' Claim
September 09, 2005 - A Christian Arab organization in California has invited two leading Muslim figures to publicly debate the question of whether Islam truly is a peaceful religion, but one of Muslims said on Thursday he would not "dignify" the event by taking part…Siddiqi had told him he did not believe in debate. "I said, okay, we can switch to a dialogue," but it was still unclear whether he would come…In their absence, Saieg said, the meeting would look at quotes by Muslim figures on the issue of Islam and peace, and hear from Christian experts on the program…One of them, Daniel Scot, is a Pakistan-born pastor who was recently found guilty in an Australian state tribunal of vilifying Islam. Scot and another pastor involved in the case denied the charges and are appealing, amid a growing political campaign to repeal the controversial new law which allowed Muslims to bring the complaint against them…Also on the panel Saturday is Anis Shorrosh, an Arab Christian theologian and author who has held major debates with Muslim experts in Britain… http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200509/CUL20050909a.html
College bars Christian from sharing faith
Religious expression not 'cultural, educational, social or recreational' (I guess anti-war or anti-American activities are) September 9, 2005
A man barred from speaking about his Christian faith on a New York state college campus filed a civil-rights lawsuit claiming violation of his free-speech rights…Officials told Greg that he needed to file a facilities use permit application to speak about his faith with students in a public, grassy area on campus in October 2003…But when he did so, his application was denied because the school claimed his desired religious expression does not constitute a "cultural, educational, social or recreational" activity…At first, Davis said, he was told by a school official he could speak about his faith on campus. But later the same day he was told he would need to submit a facilities use permit application even though he did not intend to make use of any school buildings. http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46231
Catholic Experts say Catholics still don't read Bible regularly
(unfortunately this in all likelihood applies equally to most Christians!! DB) Catholic News Service- … the Bible still is not regularly read, nor has it become an integral part of many Catholics' lives, said a panel of biblical experts….Recent research conducted in Italy, Spain and France found that many Catholics consider the sacred Scriptures as something "reserved for the clergy" rather than as an accessible resource for them to draw upon for truth and inspiration in their own lives, Italian Bishop Vincenzo Paglia said. …Cardinal Walter Kasper, said …”the word of God is not an intellectual treatise on "supernatural reality or arcane doctrine," he said; it is "person-to-person communication" with God's loving voice speaking directly to the individual.” http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0505102.htm
Al-Qaida's spectacular 'Ramadan Offensive'
(hopefully this won’t pan out) September 8, 2005– …al-Qaida is planning spectacular attacks next month against the U.S., Russia and Europe in what it is calling the "Great Ramadan Offensive." …The offensive, designed to overshadow the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, was first referenced in a May 30 letter written by al-Qaida's Iraq commander Abu Musab Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden. It is the subject of a report written by terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, to government officials. http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46235
Saddam Hussein: Kurds Deserved to be Massacred
Sept. 8, 2005 Saddam Hussein has reportedly told prosecutors that his decision to massacre 180,000 Kurdish citizens of Iraq was both legal and justified… The tribunal official said the former dictator views the mass killings as "retribution," which he said was legal under his regime. http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/8/111601.shtml
Tales of violence, filth, rats, gators from New Orleans
…Besides fending off looters, who often were high or drunk after breaking into drug stores, the group had to prevent alligators from climbing onto the roof… Alligators threatened to climb onto the roof, along with rats, sewage and swimming deer… http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46234
Boo! Hiss!
The chart topping hip hop rapper star who used a network hurricane fundraiser to charge "George Bush doesn't care about black people" was loudly and lustily booed during last night's NFL kickoff show…The appearance of Kanye West, who was beamed into the Boston stadium via remote from Los Angeles, received a strongly negative response from the crowd…"The boos were thunderous and lasted for much of his number…" http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2005/09/09/nfl_kickoff_show_falls_short_at_gillette/
Red Cross Blocked By Louisiana Dept of Homeland Security
Sept. 9, 2005 Red Cross workers arrived in New Orleans with enough food, water and blankets for thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims the night before levees broke and flooded the city, but were prevented from delivering the aid to stranded citizens by the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security… Though Democrats have insisted that the Bush administration was responsible for delays in getting relief to flood victims, Red Cross officials told Garrett it was the state who blocked their aid convoy...Red Cross President Marty Evans confirmed the stunning development, saying, "We were ready from literally the time the storm blew threw. We were ready to go. We just were not given permission to go in." … "At the very moment that Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, was screaming where's the food, where's the water, it was over the overpass [nearby], and state officials were saying you can't come in," Garrett said... http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/9/105455.shtml & also http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46224
New Orleans Mayor: School Buses Not Good Enough
Sept. 8, 2005 New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin garnered a ton of publicity with a profanity-laced interview he gave to WWL radio last Thursday, where he blasted President Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco for not coming to rescue his city in time… Turns out, Nagin, demanding more comfortable Greyhound coaches instead…"I need 500 buses, man… One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting, you know, public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here…"I'm like - you've got to be kidding me. This is a natural disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans." …While Nagin was waiting for his Greyhound fleet, Katrina's floodwaters swamped his school buses, rendering them unusable. http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/8/114045.shtml
Michael Moore Mocumentary
(remember I predicted the same thing earlier in the week) Sept. 8, 2005 Michael Moore might be focusing his camera's eye on Hurricane Katrina and what he sees as the Bush administration's willful destruction of New Orleans. MSNBC's Jeanette Walls notes Moore's website: "There is much to be said and done about the manmade annihilation of New Orleans, caused NOT by a hurricane but by the very specific decisions made by the Bush administration in the past four and a half years… More hurricanes, wars, and other disasters are on the way, and a lazy bunch of self-satisfied lunatics are still running the show.” http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/8/202722.shtml
Political Issues Snarled Plans for Military Help After Storm
9/9/2005 … one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis… To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established...Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential…Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area... This act was last invoked in 1992 for the Los Angeles riots, but at the request of Gov. Pete Wilson of California, and has not been invoked over a governor's objections since the civil rights era - and before that, to the time of the Civil War, administration officials said. Bush administration, Pentagon and senior military officials warned that such an extreme measure would have serious legal and political implications.
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
MoveOn.org claims contradicted by federal spending records
… records … obtained from the U.S. Senate's Energy and Water Development Subcommittee paint a different picture. According to an analysis of funding for Corps of Engineers projects from fiscal years 2001 through 2005, Louisiana was the top recipient of funding in the country, getting $1.9 billion of the Corps' $22.9 billion budget. The three Corps flood control projects surrounding New Orleans received a total of $391 million in direct funding during that five-year period.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200509/NAT20050909a.html
It is interesting many people want FEMA’s Mike Brown’s head on a platter but are curiously quiet when it comes to Kofi Annan, UN Sec. General, and how his failures have led to thousands, if not millions of deaths while filling the purses of his buddies…DB
'Time' reports discrepancy on Brown's background
9/9/05 …A longtime acquaintance, Carl Reherman, said Brown was very involved in helping set up an emergency operations center in Edmond and assisting in the creation of an emergency contingency plan in the 1970s, while Brown was working for the city manager. At the time, Reherman was a city councilman, and later became mayor… Reherman said the emergency plan that Brown worked on dealt with potential natural disasters such as tornados and manmade disasters since Tinker Air Force Base and a commercial airport are nearby and a rail line passes through the downtown…"From my experience with Mike, he not only worked very hard on everything he did, he had very high standards," said Reherman, who also knew Brown when he was a student taking classes from Reherman, who was a professor of political science at Central State University. "I'm an old Democrat and Mike's a Republican, so we got into a lot of discussions," said Reherman.…Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA's office of public affairs, told Time that while Brown began as an intern, he became an "assistant city manager" with a distinguished record of service…"According to Mike Brown," Andrews told Time, a large portion of points raised by the magazine are "very inaccurate..." http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-09-09-fema-timemag_x.htm
Who Calls the Cavalry?
September 9, 2005 … The popular impression left the past week-- that the government was wholly unprepared for Katrina--is not true. Significant U.S. military assistance was on alert throughout the week prior to Katrina's landfall. Why those highly trained and drilled assets did not move into New Orleans sooner is a question that should now sit at the center of a debate over who should have the authority--the states or the federal government--to be the "first mover."
…According to accounts provided by several sources involved with preparations for Katrina, the Pentagon began tracking the storm when it was still just a number in the ocean on Aug. 23, some five days before landfall in Buras, La...So where were they on the two days of globally televised horror? Why, for instance, didn't DoD fly all this help close to New Orleans as soon as it saw Katrina coming? The answer, in military argot, is that you don't deploy troops beneath a bombing run; Katrina predictably would have wiped out any help put in her uncertain path, just as she rolled over the Big Easy's wholly unprotected "first responders." …Then there's American history, tradition and law. Once disaster arrives, several federal laws designed to protect state sovereignty from being swept aside by a Latin-American-style national police force dictate that a state's officials, specifically the governor, is supposed to phone the federal government and describe what they need. If asked by Homeland Security, DoD will send in the cavalry. But this is one audible at the line even Don Rumsfeld doesn't get to call… http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110007230
Hurricane Katrina: Liberal Politics Kill
By Frank Salvato September 09, 2005 … Because no one knows a location better than those who live there, primary disaster response and emergency management fall under the authority of local governments…If a town floods or a hurricane hits, the request for emergency management moves up the chain, not down… Nagin's biggest failure, however, is the fact that he was delinquent in calling for the evacuation of New Orleans… Even after a phone call from … the director of the National Hurricane Center, at 8 p.m. on the Saturday before Katrina's landfall… Nagin, citing "legal complications," waited until 10 a.m. Sunday to order the evacuation of New Orleans… Katrina hit New Orleans at 6 a.m. Monday….Bill King, a former mayor from the Houston-Galveston Area who has been integral in that area's hurricane and disaster preparedness called Nagin's evacuation order delay "negligence." …President Bush, in preparation for the devastation that Katrina was predicted to leave in her wake, declared the three state area a federal disaster area two days before landfall and ordered FEMA to move truck loads of supplies to within safe distances from where experts said the most damage would occur…But because Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco feared political blame from the Bush administration for any acts of incompetence, she didn't cede authority by requesting federal assistance. FEMA resources and other federally coordinated assistance sat idle, thwarted by the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security…To this day she has not ceded power to the federal government although Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi remain federal disaster areas. http://www.therant.us/staff/fsalvato/politics/hurricane_katrina_liberal_politics_kill.htm
Assigning blame
September 9, 2005 Charles Krauthammer
…No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and human perfidy. The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush…This kind of stupidity merits no attention whatsoever, but I'll give it a paragraph…
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20050909.shtml
http://www.freewill-predestination.com/
President Bush: Next Friday is National Day of Prayer …Bush asked for patience on the part of storm victims, and declared a national day of prayer and remembrance for Friday of next week… (wait! He can’t do that, can he?) http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/9/8/162102.shtml
Stress reduces breast cancer risk says study
Women with high levels of stress in their everyday lives are at less risk than others of developing breast cancer for the first time, according to research in the British Medical Journal published on Friday… speculated that it may be because daily stress suppressed production of oestrogen, which is a risk factor in breast cancer. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050909/sc_nm/breast_dc
King David’s Palace
September 08, 2005 Elul 4, 5765 …The recently ended season of excavations at the top of the City of David slope was accompanied by much excitement. With every passing day, more and more parts of an enormous building were unearthed. Dr. Eilat Mazar, the archaeologist in charge of the site, believes this could be the palace King David built after conquering Jerusalem from the Jebusites. The discovery has stirred up the old argument among archaeologists as to whether the events described in the Bible in fact occurred, and in this context, the importance and greatness of David himself…. The large structure might be a palace, temple or fortress, says Mazar. Analysis of the finds in her possession has led her to conclude that it is a palace. "For years, there have been those who contended there was no evidence of public construction in 10th century BCE Jerusalem," says Mazar. "Based on this, they claim that David and Solomon were not important rulers, as described in the Bible… http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/622357.html
Muslims Invited to Debate 'Religion of Peace' Claim
September 09, 2005 - A Christian Arab organization in California has invited two leading Muslim figures to publicly debate the question of whether Islam truly is a peaceful religion, but one of Muslims said on Thursday he would not "dignify" the event by taking part…Siddiqi had told him he did not believe in debate. "I said, okay, we can switch to a dialogue," but it was still unclear whether he would come…In their absence, Saieg said, the meeting would look at quotes by Muslim figures on the issue of Islam and peace, and hear from Christian experts on the program…One of them, Daniel Scot, is a Pakistan-born pastor who was recently found guilty in an Australian state tribunal of vilifying Islam. Scot and another pastor involved in the case denied the charges and are appealing, amid a growing political campaign to repeal the controversial new law which allowed Muslims to bring the complaint against them…Also on the panel Saturday is Anis Shorrosh, an Arab Christian theologian and author who has held major debates with Muslim experts in Britain… http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200509/CUL20050909a.html
College bars Christian from sharing faith
Religious expression not 'cultural, educational, social or recreational' (I guess anti-war or anti-American activities are) September 9, 2005
A man barred from speaking about his Christian faith on a New York state college campus filed a civil-rights lawsuit claiming violation of his free-speech rights…Officials told Greg that he needed to file a facilities use permit application to speak about his faith with students in a public, grassy area on campus in October 2003…But when he did so, his application was denied because the school claimed his desired religious expression does not constitute a "cultural, educational, social or recreational" activity…At first, Davis said, he was told by a school official he could speak about his faith on campus. But later the same day he was told he would need to submit a facilities use permit application even though he did not intend to make use of any school buildings. http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46231
Catholic Experts say Catholics still don't read Bible regularly
(unfortunately this in all likelihood applies equally to most Christians!! DB) Catholic News Service- … the Bible still is not regularly read, nor has it become an integral part of many Catholics' lives, said a panel of biblical experts….Recent research conducted in Italy, Spain and France found that many Catholics consider the sacred Scriptures as something "reserved for the clergy" rather than as an accessible resource for them to draw upon for truth and inspiration in their own lives, Italian Bishop Vincenzo Paglia said. …Cardinal Walter Kasper, said …”the word of God is not an intellectual treatise on "supernatural reality or arcane doctrine," he said; it is "person-to-person communication" with God's loving voice speaking directly to the individual.” http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0505102.htm
Al-Qaida's spectacular 'Ramadan Offensive'
(hopefully this won’t pan out) September 8, 2005– …al-Qaida is planning spectacular attacks next month against the U.S., Russia and Europe in what it is calling the "Great Ramadan Offensive." …The offensive, designed to overshadow the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, was first referenced in a May 30 letter written by al-Qaida's Iraq commander Abu Musab Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden. It is the subject of a report written by terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, to government officials. http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46235
Saddam Hussein: Kurds Deserved to be Massacred
Sept. 8, 2005 Saddam Hussein has reportedly told prosecutors that his decision to massacre 180,000 Kurdish citizens of Iraq was both legal and justified… The tribunal official said the former dictator views the mass killings as "retribution," which he said was legal under his regime. http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/8/111601.shtml
Tales of violence, filth, rats, gators from New Orleans
…Besides fending off looters, who often were high or drunk after breaking into drug stores, the group had to prevent alligators from climbing onto the roof… Alligators threatened to climb onto the roof, along with rats, sewage and swimming deer… http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46234
Boo! Hiss!
The chart topping hip hop rapper star who used a network hurricane fundraiser to charge "George Bush doesn't care about black people" was loudly and lustily booed during last night's NFL kickoff show…The appearance of Kanye West, who was beamed into the Boston stadium via remote from Los Angeles, received a strongly negative response from the crowd…"The boos were thunderous and lasted for much of his number…" http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2005/09/09/nfl_kickoff_show_falls_short_at_gillette/
Red Cross Blocked By Louisiana Dept of Homeland Security
Sept. 9, 2005 Red Cross workers arrived in New Orleans with enough food, water and blankets for thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims the night before levees broke and flooded the city, but were prevented from delivering the aid to stranded citizens by the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security… Though Democrats have insisted that the Bush administration was responsible for delays in getting relief to flood victims, Red Cross officials told Garrett it was the state who blocked their aid convoy...Red Cross President Marty Evans confirmed the stunning development, saying, "We were ready from literally the time the storm blew threw. We were ready to go. We just were not given permission to go in." … "At the very moment that Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, was screaming where's the food, where's the water, it was over the overpass [nearby], and state officials were saying you can't come in," Garrett said... http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/9/105455.shtml & also http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46224
New Orleans Mayor: School Buses Not Good Enough
Sept. 8, 2005 New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin garnered a ton of publicity with a profanity-laced interview he gave to WWL radio last Thursday, where he blasted President Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco for not coming to rescue his city in time… Turns out, Nagin, demanding more comfortable Greyhound coaches instead…"I need 500 buses, man… One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting, you know, public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here…"I'm like - you've got to be kidding me. This is a natural disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans." …While Nagin was waiting for his Greyhound fleet, Katrina's floodwaters swamped his school buses, rendering them unusable. http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/8/114045.shtml
Michael Moore Mocumentary
(remember I predicted the same thing earlier in the week) Sept. 8, 2005 Michael Moore might be focusing his camera's eye on Hurricane Katrina and what he sees as the Bush administration's willful destruction of New Orleans. MSNBC's Jeanette Walls notes Moore's website: "There is much to be said and done about the manmade annihilation of New Orleans, caused NOT by a hurricane but by the very specific decisions made by the Bush administration in the past four and a half years… More hurricanes, wars, and other disasters are on the way, and a lazy bunch of self-satisfied lunatics are still running the show.” http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/8/202722.shtml
Political Issues Snarled Plans for Military Help After Storm
9/9/2005 … one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis… To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established...Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential…Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area... This act was last invoked in 1992 for the Los Angeles riots, but at the request of Gov. Pete Wilson of California, and has not been invoked over a governor's objections since the civil rights era - and before that, to the time of the Civil War, administration officials said. Bush administration, Pentagon and senior military officials warned that such an extreme measure would have serious legal and political implications.
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
MoveOn.org claims contradicted by federal spending records
… records … obtained from the U.S. Senate's Energy and Water Development Subcommittee paint a different picture. According to an analysis of funding for Corps of Engineers projects from fiscal years 2001 through 2005, Louisiana was the top recipient of funding in the country, getting $1.9 billion of the Corps' $22.9 billion budget. The three Corps flood control projects surrounding New Orleans received a total of $391 million in direct funding during that five-year period.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200509/NAT20050909a.html
It is interesting many people want FEMA’s Mike Brown’s head on a platter but are curiously quiet when it comes to Kofi Annan, UN Sec. General, and how his failures have led to thousands, if not millions of deaths while filling the purses of his buddies…DB
'Time' reports discrepancy on Brown's background
9/9/05 …A longtime acquaintance, Carl Reherman, said Brown was very involved in helping set up an emergency operations center in Edmond and assisting in the creation of an emergency contingency plan in the 1970s, while Brown was working for the city manager. At the time, Reherman was a city councilman, and later became mayor… Reherman said the emergency plan that Brown worked on dealt with potential natural disasters such as tornados and manmade disasters since Tinker Air Force Base and a commercial airport are nearby and a rail line passes through the downtown…"From my experience with Mike, he not only worked very hard on everything he did, he had very high standards," said Reherman, who also knew Brown when he was a student taking classes from Reherman, who was a professor of political science at Central State University. "I'm an old Democrat and Mike's a Republican, so we got into a lot of discussions," said Reherman.…Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA's office of public affairs, told Time that while Brown began as an intern, he became an "assistant city manager" with a distinguished record of service…"According to Mike Brown," Andrews told Time, a large portion of points raised by the magazine are "very inaccurate..." http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-09-09-fema-timemag_x.htm
Who Calls the Cavalry?
September 9, 2005 … The popular impression left the past week-- that the government was wholly unprepared for Katrina--is not true. Significant U.S. military assistance was on alert throughout the week prior to Katrina's landfall. Why those highly trained and drilled assets did not move into New Orleans sooner is a question that should now sit at the center of a debate over who should have the authority--the states or the federal government--to be the "first mover."
…According to accounts provided by several sources involved with preparations for Katrina, the Pentagon began tracking the storm when it was still just a number in the ocean on Aug. 23, some five days before landfall in Buras, La...So where were they on the two days of globally televised horror? Why, for instance, didn't DoD fly all this help close to New Orleans as soon as it saw Katrina coming? The answer, in military argot, is that you don't deploy troops beneath a bombing run; Katrina predictably would have wiped out any help put in her uncertain path, just as she rolled over the Big Easy's wholly unprotected "first responders." …Then there's American history, tradition and law. Once disaster arrives, several federal laws designed to protect state sovereignty from being swept aside by a Latin-American-style national police force dictate that a state's officials, specifically the governor, is supposed to phone the federal government and describe what they need. If asked by Homeland Security, DoD will send in the cavalry. But this is one audible at the line even Don Rumsfeld doesn't get to call… http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110007230
Hurricane Katrina: Liberal Politics Kill
By Frank Salvato September 09, 2005 … Because no one knows a location better than those who live there, primary disaster response and emergency management fall under the authority of local governments…If a town floods or a hurricane hits, the request for emergency management moves up the chain, not down… Nagin's biggest failure, however, is the fact that he was delinquent in calling for the evacuation of New Orleans… Even after a phone call from … the director of the National Hurricane Center, at 8 p.m. on the Saturday before Katrina's landfall… Nagin, citing "legal complications," waited until 10 a.m. Sunday to order the evacuation of New Orleans… Katrina hit New Orleans at 6 a.m. Monday….Bill King, a former mayor from the Houston-Galveston Area who has been integral in that area's hurricane and disaster preparedness called Nagin's evacuation order delay "negligence." …President Bush, in preparation for the devastation that Katrina was predicted to leave in her wake, declared the three state area a federal disaster area two days before landfall and ordered FEMA to move truck loads of supplies to within safe distances from where experts said the most damage would occur…But because Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco feared political blame from the Bush administration for any acts of incompetence, she didn't cede authority by requesting federal assistance. FEMA resources and other federally coordinated assistance sat idle, thwarted by the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security…To this day she has not ceded power to the federal government although Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi remain federal disaster areas. http://www.therant.us/staff/fsalvato/politics/hurricane_katrina_liberal_politics_kill.htm
Assigning blame
September 9, 2005 Charles Krauthammer
…No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and human perfidy. The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush…This kind of stupidity merits no attention whatsoever, but I'll give it a paragraph…
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20050909.shtml
http://www.freewill-predestination.com/
posted by David Bennett | 6:30 PM
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