You are crazy. The governor at the helm of disaster relief and can request the ship and any other Federal aid available, IF THEY JUST ASK. What are these idiots waiting for? Are they so dependent on the federal government to run their lives that they are completely incapable of governing a state of a city?

Why even have a governor???

This is not the article I was talking about but he does seem to be off the reservation on this one.

Thumb Up Ass
Here’s some more of that federal government organization that I’ve been so impressed with lately.

While federal and state emergency planners scramble to get more military relief to Gulf Coast communities stricken by Hurricane Katrina, a massive naval goodwill station has been cruising offshore, underutilized and waiting for a larger role in the effort.

The USS Bataan, a 844-foot ship designed to dispatch U.S. Marines in amphibious assaults, has helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and water. It can also make its own water – up to 100,000 gallons a day. And it just happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina came roaring ashore.

The Bataan rode out the storm and then followed it toward shore, awaiting relief orders. Helicopter pilots flying from its deck were some of the first to begin plucking stranded New Orleans residents.

But today the Bataan’s hospital facilities, including six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients, are empty. A good share of its 1,200 sailors could also go ashore to help with the relief effort, but they haven’t been asked. The Bataan has been in the stricken region the longest of any military unit, but federal authorities have yet to fully utilize the ship.

“Could we do more?” said Capt. Nora Tyson, commander of the Bataan. “Sure. I’ve got sailors who could be on the beach plucking through garbage or distributing water and food and stuff. But I can’t force myself on people.

“We’re doing everything we can to contribute right now, and we’re ready. If someone says you need to take on people, we’re ready. If they say hospitals on the beach can’t handle it … if they need to send the overflow out here, we’re ready. We’ve got lots of room.”

Now call me crazy, but the last time I checked neither the governor of Louisiana nor the mayor of New Orleans were responsible for ordering US Navy combat ships into duty. I’ll let you guys do the math yourselves, I wouldn’t want to be accused of unnecessarily bashing our federal government leadership or anything.

That is a great question shince the people in charge of disaster planning and recovery are a Democrat Governor and a Democrat Mayor, both of whom contributed more to the problem than the solution.

If Republican Guilliani from NY was the mayor of New Orleans, the damage and loss of life would have been half at least.

The guy says it better than I did:

In the annals of political one-liners, few bombed worse than Michael Dukakis’ mantra during the 1988 race that the election was about “competence, not ideology.” Besides underscoring the Duke’s uninspiring blandness, the phrase backfired on him as he proceeded to wage a campaign that was utterly incompetent.
But a much more pointed argument can be made now after nearly five years of rule by conservative ideologues: conservatism in action produces incompetent government. Paul Krugman broached this idea yesterday when he wrote about the Katrina response that, “for 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. But why should we be surprised that when we need a government solution, it wasn’t forthcoming?” Krugman’s insight can be extended to the core tenets of conservative ideology, which have proven to be fiascoes when carried out in the real world

I will try to get the post later as the site seems to be down, or maybe I have been banned as well, cyber shunning is rough.

Essentially he was pointing out the fiasco of Bush investigating his own performance during this dissaster, the man is funny, I keep thinking a fat version of Dennis Leary.

I saw a post somewhere that explains the problem with conservative government. Essentially conservatives don’t think that government can do anything so even when they see a clear problem they don’t try to fix it. This makes sense if you look back to 9/11 everyone said a terrorist attack was coming, but this crew didn’t have a clue how to stop it. It is sort of like the abstinence only people saying condoms don’t work, so why use one. Of course research shows that the only thing abstinence education leads to is more STD’s and pregnancies. Sometimes it seems that the current administration and their backers want to make the situation worse.

http://right-thinking.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10589/

Chris: This ’stop picking on poor Bush’ cop-out is very old at this point. Planning, execution and progress…

Michael: Well, if you weren’t so dense as to see, this isn’t a time to make a political bed of hay you can roll around in wearing only your underwear. There are things that can, must, and will be done. None of which should include blaming any one for what was done by God.

What did the 9/11 comission say about the leadup to the attacks? That the intelligence agencies hadn’t communicated with each other and if the right thing had been done, the attack could have been prevented. Well…if the engineering upgrades had been carried out, perhaps the leavies wouldn’t have given out. The federal government had other priorities, no?

Michael: You are turning your arguement from, Bush caused the hurricane into, Bush hadn’t built the Levies well enough, he must not have enjoyed building levies as much as he enjoys cutting trees.

Never said Bush caused the hurricane.

Michael: He sure did slack off on those levies when he was building them didn’t he? Now your argument is, the president should be the head of FEMA, as well as apparently the top general in charge of Allied soldiers in Iraq. Whether General Shinseki is right is a subjective matter, I don’t believe he was or is, the invasion was excellent, the post invasion is a test of Iraqi’s more than us, will they stand up for their own liberty, and overwelmingly they have, to point out the ‘damned if you do damned if you don’t’ quality in your statement, what would you say if 300 thousand troops were in Iraq? You would say we are occuping them, and need to make less of a ‘footprint’ on thier democratic transformation, let them create thier own democracy.

If you need an operation, you go see a doctor. If you need to fight a war, you go to the Army. When the Army tells you something you don’t want to hear…

Considering what went wrong following our invasion, a list you’d have to be blind not to recognize, the diagnosis of Shinsecki was in fact ‘dead on balls accurate’ (what’s that from? trivia). You can choose not to agree with him, but quite a lot of what he said would go wrong with too few troops sent in to secure the country – has.

Michael: This is why you guys lost the election, you can point at something and say its wrong, but you can’t come up with any ideas to fix it, just sit around holding your finger in someones face, hoping someone will think that declaring the absence of a good idea, will make you look like you have a good idea. Sorry bud, it won’t.

Hey – by the same token, you guys never think the buck stops anywhere but below the chief somewhere. This is important enough for the top dog to be on site. Things aren’t going right down there, not as well as they should be. Bush’s job description does go beyond the role of cheerleader and model…besides giving the same stump speech 100 times in a row and posing for pictures, he’s got to do something. Basically New Orleans is like a modern day Pompeii, only water instead of fire.

Who can crack the whip with more authority than the President?

Michael: This is why perparedness has suffered, preparing for that which you can’t imagine is politically impossible.

A Category 5 hurricane wasn’t predicted? Scientists weren’t aware of the ocean temperature having risen?

Michael: BTW, what engineering projects do you know of that were pending, discussed, or drafted for LA? I mean since you got your crystal ball out, why don’t you tell me how your going to blame Bush for Los Angelas falling into the ocean, you know, 20 years after Bush is out of office.

Check out this:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12528233.htm

The initial post indicates where the funding was cut.

Michael: As are all politicians, and this is a national emergency, so do something pro-active, you’ve got all these great ideas, or atleast your pointing at the absence of a good idea makes you seem like you have a good idea. America is not about its president, it is about its people, we are one, no matter who the president is, and we need to come together and help those in need, and leave political fights on the sideline for now, their will be plenty of time for that after every refuge is fed and housed.

Those that don’t die of hunger, dehydration or a bullet from an AK-47. The people will shoulder the biggest load, as we always do. The suits will smile and shake hands.

RT: I think the insurance companies have something to say about that, it is their territory after all.

Not the public land, the levies, municipalities.

Sorry, I block out things having to do with Clinton, it’s a defense mechanism.