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BREAKING NEWS: Bush Takes Responsibility

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Anonymous:
Bush: Gov't Didn't Do Job Right, I Take Responsibility

Some Evacuees Could Be In Temp. Housing Until 2010

UPDATED: 9:22 am PDT September 13, 2005

BILOXI, Miss. -- President George W. Bush says Hurricane Katrina exposed "serious problems in the response capability at all levels of government."

He told reporters that to the extent the federal government didn't "do its job right," he takes responsibility.

Bush, at a news conference with the visiting Iraqi president, said he wants to find out if the nation is capable of dealing with another storm or a severe attack.

He said, "I want to know what went right and what went wrong."

Meanwhile, New Orleans is showing a few more signs of recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport plans to reopen to limited passenger service. An airport triage center that has seen thousands of patients has shut down. The doctors who've been working there are now backing up overworked staffers at area hospitals.

And dozens of the 174 permanent pumps are back in operation. Engineers estimate flooded portions of the city are due to be drained by Oct. 8. A contractor was back at one of the previously repaired levees after water was found to be seeping through. The seepage is said to be minor. Officials estimate the water system will take three months to repair.

A tourism official hopes visitors will be back in town in six months.

A National Guard engineer said it will be at least three months before New Orleans' public water system is fully operational.

Running water has been restored to some homes, but it's mostly untreated. The engineer says taking a bath right now is like jumping into the Mississippi River.

Southeast of New Orleans, residents have received disheartening news. A councilman in St. Bernard Parish says no one should expect to live in the parish again before next summer. Before Katrina, its population was 66,000.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is expecting to house thousands of hurricane survivors in "temporary cities" made up of trailer homes. Most would be in Louisiana.

Autopsies Planned On Dozens Of Bodies Pulled From Hospital

A coroner said autopsies will be done on more than 40 bodies found in a flooded New Orleans hospital.

Search teams found the corpses, many of them elderly patients, inside a hospital that was abandoned more than a week earlier after it was surrounded by floodwaters unleashed by Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. Frank Minyard, of Orleans Parish, said it isn't clear yet how the patients died. Other officials have said some were dead before Katrina arrived but high temperatures after the storm could have led to other deaths.

A "Help Please" sign was left on the window of Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, where more than 40 bodies were recovered after Hurricane Katrina.

Dave Goodson, assistant administrator of Memorial Medical Center, said the patients died while waiting to be evacuated over the four days after the hurricane. He said temperatures in the hospital rose to 106 degrees. The bodies were recovered Sunday, but the exact number is unclear.

Bob Johannesen, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Hospitals, said 45 patients had been found; Goodson said there were 44 plus three people found on the hospital grounds.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Ray Nagin said the city knew there were people in hospitals who needed to be evacuated. The city's first priority had been to evacuate patients in critical care units.

Minyard said the hurricane death count in New Orleans could rise significantly because searchers haven't gotten into some areas of deep flooding.

He said what they could find is a "very scary thought." But he added that the body count -- about 300 in New Orleans -- may be a reflection of successful evacuations before Katrina.

Officials initially speculated the hurricane might have killed as many as 10,000 people.

Mississippi Death Toll Begins To Slow
Even as military and civilian contractors step up excavation in the most devastated neighborhood in Biloxi, Miss., emergency officials predict the pace of finding corpses along the Mississippi Gulf Coast will continue to slow.

Gov. Haley Barbour said Mississippi's death toll is 218.

Joe Spraggins, emergency-management director in neighboring Harrison County, said crews are finding fewer bodies each day and he does not expect another spike in the death toll.

In a visit to the area on Monday, President George W. Bush told reporters in Gulfport, Miss., that there are a "lot of lives to be lifted up, (a) lot of hope to be restored."

In Biloxi, contractors began excavation efforts at the waterfront edges of Point Cadet, a largely blue-collar neighborhood of Vietnamese fishermen, casino workers and families who trace their roots to eastern Europe. Many tried to ride out the storm in 50- to 80-year-old homes.

Parts Of N.O. Might Not Be Safe For Years

Even amid reports that New Orleans could be drained of its floodwaters by Oct. 8, there are signs some evacuees might have to live in temporary housing for up to five years.

Brad Fair, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's housing effort, said FEMA is planning to house as many as 200,000 hurricane victims until 2010. Most of them would be housed in temporary cities in Louisiana, some with populations of up to 25,000.

Fair gave no cost estimate for such an operation. But he said while it might not be on the scale of building the pyramids in Egypt -- "it's close."

Tens Of Thousands Need Housing
In Mississippi, the most pressing need is for housing for families left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

More than 115,000 evacuees are in shelters or temporary locations arranged by the Red Cross. Many more are in hotels and private homes.

To give you a sense of the destruction, the coastal town of Pass Christian needs temporary housing for nearly its entire population of 8,500.

Housing also is needed for relief workers and those beginning the reconstruction.

More than 1,200 trailers or mobile homes are in Mississippi for distribution but the next challenge is finding a place to put them. One official said homeowners may be able to put them on or near their properties. Officials also are looking for spaces for mobile home parks.

Evacuees Wait Hours To Apply For Aid

Katrina evacuees in Houston are growing increasingly frustrated at the long wait for financial assistance.

There are an estimated 200,000 evacuees still living in Houston, and only one Red Cross processing center where many of them can get financial assistance. That's had hundreds of people lining up overnight to guarantee they will see a counselor.

On Monday, there were 8,000 people in line 90 minutes before they were allowed to file into the building, and police cut off the line before it could get any longer.

The Red Cross is urging evacuees to call a toll free hotline for aid instead. A Red Cross spokeswoman says it averages 25,000 calls an hour. Some evacuees said they've tried to call several times, only to get a busy signal.

Anonymous:
Interesting.....

http://www.crooksandliars.com/

Go to CrooksAndLiars to watch this ridiculous video of our completely insane and self-congradulatory prezboy. Can someone please explain to me what it is to "pre-sign" an "emergency declaration"? And, wait a
minute, last week the story was that he was "pleading" to no avail with the governor. Didn't she get a copy of that pre-signed emergency declaration?

************************************************

Bush thinks he was "Extraordinary" with Katrina

President Bush was very happy with himself today as he told reporters that he had pre-signed emergency declarations in anticipation of the big storm coming.

Bush: "I spoke to the American people.  I
said,'There's a big storm coming'. I pre-signed
emergency declarations"

Bush: "Which is by the way, extraordinary."

Bush: "Most emergencies- the President signs after the storm has hits"

Anonymous:
It's starting to be obvious to everyone that he is a liar.

Antigen:

--- Quote ---Ludwig von Mises Institute
Katrina and the Never-Ending Scandal of State Management
by William Anderson
[Posted on Tuesday, September 13, 2005]
For the most part, we know what happened ? and what did not happen ? after Katrina had battered parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast and flooded most of New Orleans. Despite promises of aid "around the corner," adequate government assistance did not reach many of the refugees, and especially the people of New Orleans who were stuffed into the Superdome, the New Orleans Convention Center, not to mention nursing homes and roofs of houses.

As we now know, government agents stymied attempts by private individuals and organizations to bring provisions to people who had none. People languished for about five days before the "cavalry" arrived, bringing provisions and some bit of hope.

More: http://www.mises.org/story/1909

--- End quote ---

History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unkonwn without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
--Robert A. Heinlen, American science-ficiton author
--- End quote ---

Anonymous:
washingtonpost.com
End of the Bush Era

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; A27

The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country.

Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.

The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to action. He failed to realize after Sept. 11 that it was not we who were lucky to have him as a leader, but he who was lucky to be president of a great country that understood the importance of standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly all of us rallied behind him.

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then penetrated the country's consciousness. Yesterday's resignation of FEMA Director Michael Brown put an exclamation point on the failure.

The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the past two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The president's post-election fixation on privatizing part of Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda -- for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Katrina region and for new approaches to the problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.

The federal budget, already a mess before Katrina, is now a laughable document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago. Katrina has forced the issue of deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a long absence. Finding a way forward in -- and eventually out of -- Iraq will require creativity from those not implicated in the administration's mistakes. And if ever the phrase "reinventing government" had relevance, it is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows political hacks to push aside the professionals.

And what of Bush, who has more than three years left in his term? Paradoxically, his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era, as he and we have known it, really is gone. He can decide to help us in the transition to what comes next. Or he can cling stubbornly to his past and thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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