Hurricane Katrina

Does anyone know how to get a hold of this damn movie so I can watch it again?? I can't seem to find it anywhere! Was this a once showing only? Not even underground sites seems to have it.

Michael Brown or George Bush didn't get charged, however, the people who ran the nursing home that didn't get the residents out, are now charged with 34 counts of murder.

And they are investigating the deaths of over 40 people in the county hospital.

I wonder how many more people were in similiar situations that ended up dying.

Sheila

I don't know where you get your information, but the US has already accepted over $1 billion in aid from 95 different countries so far. So this idea of the US refusing aid because it'd make us look weak is complete nonsense. At the most, there have been reports of some foreign supplies shipments being delayed. But even US citizens have been told that it's better to simply give money so that the Redcross and other organizations can just buy supplies wholesale rather than have to worry about the logistics and costs of receiving and distributing them across 3 states.

And as far as the American public, make no mistake, we ARE helping them. I live several states away and still probably everyone I know has either given money or clothes/supplies to the effort. Many more are planning to go there and volunteer over school breaks and vacations from work. People who can or who live in the immediate vicinity have already opened their homes, churches, and businesses to these people. It's a huge effort and it's definitely happening.

Now, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your generous offer of self-righteous criticism, but if you really want to do something helpful, give to the Red Cross or Salvation Army. It'll take less of your time than even writing a response to this post, and I'm sure those in need will appreciate it a bit more.

Lots of Americans (maybe even most of us) disagree with the Bush Administration. His popularity is in the dumper; the most recent polls had him at 38%. Even his own party is dissatisfied with him, going under 50% support last week. He is widely reviled by his critics as the worst President we've had to date, which he may not deserve...but that's for history to judge.

Michael Brown (now the FORMER director of FEMA) was a campaign worker for Bush when he was running for office. He had little or no emergency management experience when he was appointed FEMA director by Bush when the previous director, Joe Allbaugh (another Bush campaign worker with no emergency management experience), resigned to go be a highly-paid lobbyist (he is now helping Halliburton secure lucrative contracts in the New Orleans area for post-Katrina work).

FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Administration; before 2003 it was a separate government entity and the director was responsible for planning and executing relief operations for all disasters in the U.S. After 2003 it was merged into the Department of Homeland Security, which is run by Michael Chertoff (who is a lawyer, not an emergency preparedness expert) and is tasked with defending against all threats to the country not directly involving military action. That means their primary focus has been on terrorism, not natural disasters. FEMA's disaster-response functions are slowly being merged into the larger DHS, and eventually FEMA will be dissolved. That was the plan, anyway.

So what seems to have happened is, political hacks were brought in to run our disaster-relief agency, which was in the middle of being phased out. There hadn't been a hurricane that hit New Orleans in decades, so there was no urgency to prepare for one. The political hacks had no idea how to develop and execute a disaster-response plan, so they screwed around and argued with the state and local officials about jurisdiction while people were starving and dying in the Superdome. The President was on vacation (5th week!) and the political hacks told him everything was going great, so he didn't run back to D.C. to take charge until the news reports got bad. Then he ran back to D.C., kicked some butts and got things moving (too late for a lot of people, unfortunately), and went down to the Gulf Coast to personally involve himself as much as he could.

Now the people are being helped. A lot of them have been evacuated, order has pretty much been restored, and supplies are being delivered. There's going to be several investigations of just what happened, and the truth will come out because the survivors' stories will be incontrovertible proof of what actually did happen. The director of FEMA has been pre-emptively encouraged to resign, but it won't end there.

Our country is caring, but it has a long tradition of "tough love". The people in charge now believe that you don't help people by just giving them stuff, you have to encourage them to fix their problems themselves; sometimes that means not giving them things they need to survive, because if all the needs of survival are supplied by government there's no incentive to do anything on your own. They feel that government's responsibility to help the poor ends at providing the opportunity to succeed, not when success actually occurs. And there's lots of argument over how much help is needed to provide that opportunity.

It's funny, i kept hearing about the gas fiasco, then i get home and read some about it, and this movie, even though i only watched about 10 minutes of it, popped into my mind.

I'm in Athens, it's that much here...gas is being rationed and stations are closing down early, too. What sucks is i didn't see this coming at all, and my car has like only a quarter of a tank left, heh...i'm just not gonna be driving at all this next week or so - here's to hoping the pizza/wing places will still deliver.

And yes, this does make a good case for riding bikes/alternate fuel sources/hybrid cars.

Oh no! The dead have risen - and they're voting republican!