Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: abstract who wrote (62502)	9/15/2005 3:31:57 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Any perception of an agreement we have is purely a figment of your (mis)perception of reality. And speaking of ignoring things, here's another item to add to the list. Blanco is Toast. Game. Set. Match. By Paul on Hurricane Katrina Wizbang For all of you who keep blaming Bush and trying to protect Blanco, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. Blanco got caught on tape by CNN admitting she did not ask for Federal Troops. When she didn't think the cameras were live, she made the startling admission to her press secretary. AND that's not even the worst of it.... Why didn't she ask for federal troops? As Blanco explained to her press secretary as she wiped away tears, if troops came in, they would "put good people in jail." She was more worried about the "poor looters" than she was the victims. This is outrageous. SHE WEEPS AT THE THOUGHT TO THROWING LOOTERS IN JAIL! Then she tells her press secretary, "I really need to call for the military, I mean, I really should have started that in the first call." BUSTED! When Miles O'Brien asks her what day it was she asked for Federal troops (Wednesday - 3 days after landfall), she tried desperately to stammer her way thru the answer like a 9th grade foreign language student trying to mumble their way the the oral part of a final exam. When pressed for an answer, Governor Blanco breaks down and has an Admiral Stockdale moment, replying: "I don't even know what day it is." Thank goodness The Political Teen got the damning video. thepoliticalteen.net While she was shedding tears over the poor looters going to jail, they were destroying not only the city itself but its reputation worldwide. Incompetent does not even begin to describe this woman. I truly hope this woman runs for reelection... I'll personally buy the air time to play this video. If you ever doubt the importance of your vote, watch this video. Related Update: If you missed Mary Landrieu getting absolutely taken apart by questions she can't answer on FOXNews Sunday, The Political Teen has that one too. It's a don't miss. thepoliticalteen.net wizbangblog.com

To: abstract who wrote (62502)	9/15/2005 3:56:06 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

Don't blink or you'll miss it if you watch the video from CNN. Mayor Nagin: "I don't feel like we're overwhelmed." CNN has a taped telephone conversation with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin in which he says the city doesn't need any help. This conversation was taped on Tuesday August 30, the day after Katrina hit. Now if Mayor Nagin freely told this to CNN, what was he telling state & Federal officials directly involved in disaster relief? And how does that jive with his later statements attacking FEMA & Bush? Hat tip to Mark in Mexico markinmexico.blogspot.com See Empty train segment & click on the link that says - (Watch the video detailing the failed evacuation plan -- 2:11) edition.cnn.com javascript:cnnVideo('play','/video/us/2005/09/06/pilgrim.placing.blame.affl','/us');

To: abstract who wrote (62502)	9/15/2005 4:04:19 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

CNN has lots of important info they don't seem to highlight. Instead they bury it among their ad hominem attacks against Bush. Empty train Nagin, whose desperate plea for help in the days after the storm made him a folk hero to some, faces criticism for turning away resources that could have moved more people out of the city faster. The mayor's disaster plan called for mobilizing buses and evacuating the poor, but he did not get it done. He said he could not find drivers, but Amtrak says it offered help and was turned down, so a train with 900 seats rolled away empty a day and a half before the storm. (Watch the video detailing the failed evacuation plan -- 2:11) Help turned away? State officials also are being blamed for turning back assistance during the critical first few days. Sheriff Steve Simpson, of Loudon County, Virginia, sent 22 deputies with supplies and 14 vehicles, including four all-terrain vehicles. But he called them back when Louisiana state police officials waved him off. "I said, 'What if we just show up?' and he says, 'You probably won't get in," Simpson told CNN. Later that night, Blanco cleared legal hurdles that would have allowed local officials to accept the help, but no one ever got back to Simpson. "I'm very frustrated, trying to figure out what went wrong in that process," Simpson said. The White House has suggested that Gov. Blanco also failed to call early enough for the federal help she needed. The governor's office says that before, during and after the storm, Blanco's message to the president was consistent. (Watch the video on political defensive moves -- 1:56) edition.cnn.com

To: abstract who wrote (62502)	9/15/2005 4:08:09 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

Feds not first in line for blame JULIA A. YOUNGS Seattle Post-Intelligencer COLUMNIST Out of the trauma of Hurricane Katrina, we have a great object lesson in American civics. This disaster has highlighted what it is that makes us American, and how departing from these basics is a recipe for tragedy. Over and over in the news and rehashing, we hear people decrying that the federal government simply didn't do enough to prevent this, didn't do enough to remedy that and simply doesn't care enough about the victims' predicament. What seems to be absent from the reports is the lack of prevention, preparation and protection that is incumbent upon local governments to provide. The federal government's role is to be a means to spread the risk in times of disaster but the first and foremost line of defense against tragedy falls to state and local governments. Our Founding Fathers started from the proposition that the states were sovereign. It makes sense that the local governments are in the best position to determine, assess and mitigate the peculiar vulnerabilities of the locale and plan for and around these. Throughout history we have reaffirmed our commitment to this principle -- e.g., the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878. Our federal government is ill-suited at best to minister to the needs of a town, let alone a community, family or individual. How is it rational to expect the federal government to be better at identifying the needy, the elderly, infirm or simply intractable in a community? It seems that many voices critical of the federal government's response have mentally written off one of the fundamental strengths of U.S. governance -- the idea that primary responsibility for people's well-being falls first to the individual, and from there flows through the family and community to local and state governments. It is only after passing through these channels that the federal government is, or should be, implicated. When we invoke the federal government as the initial responder, we effectively adopt a European model. We must resist this path, as it is inherently less effective. For a contrasting example, remember the European heat wave in August 2003 -- 15,000 deaths in France alone! Our news sources have again shot their credibility in the foot with their coverage of this event. First, let's put the New Orleans coverage in perspective. There is great human suffering, and a great need for compassion and aid, and we must and will respond. People are responding with support at every level of need, and the feds have authorized amounts of more than $63,000 per Katrina victim in assistance. That said, it is important to remember that fewer than 400 have been reported dead. This event ranks around 25th in U.S. history for fatalities caused by a natural disaster. Predictably, however, the ubiquitous and overblown media reports are shamelessly manipulating our perception of this tragedy -- presumably so that we all buy tickets for the train of manufactured outrage. If the goal of our media has been to report and inform, it has failed. Mainstream media is well known to favor governmental control and the nanny state. The industry is also no fan of the current administration. If the media is able to blow public perception of the suffering in Louisiana into biblical proportions, it gets a twofer: "Obviously, the federal government should have stepped in sooner/more extensively/ ... and obviously this particular administration failed." Let's look at reality: First, before the hurricane, the governor of Louisiana had to be begged by President Bush to make the evacuation mandatory. Complaints about the elderly and infirm not getting assistance in evacuation? The Louisiana emergency plan states that in an emergency, public transportation, including school buses, can be appropriated for evacuation purposes. Yet we see pictures of parking lots full of school buses that were never used, still sitting empty in their lots, flooded. Complaints that no aid was turning up? Red Cross supply vehicles were turned back on their way to the Superdome, because the governor didn't want the dome to be a magnet for more refugees seeking help. The level of suffering has primarily been a function of local government failing in its own duties and frantically trying to externalize the blame. What we learn from Katrina is that local areas must have functional disaster plans tailored to their individual vulnerabilities, and decision makers must be leaders enough to execute them. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we are not prone to hurricanes, but we are looking at a doozy of an earthquake one of these days, and rumor has it that we have volcanoes down the street. Our plan shouldn't be to wait for the feds. Julia Youngs, a Kirkland attorney, can be reached by e-mail at juliayoungs@hotmail.com. seattlepi.nwsource.com

To: abstract who wrote (62502)	9/15/2005 4:15:30 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

You might want to ignore this too. CNN does not connect the dots: The city's failure started a cascading effect Instapundit.com JEFF TAYLOR HAS STILL MORE ON THOSE BUSES: Had there been a futures market on buses in New Orleans, the value of the buses would have skyrocketed as Katrina approached, signaling their increased utility in the emergency. But even without such an overt market signal, any private owner of the vehicles would have exhausted all opportunities to save his or her property. Nobody who owned such a potentially valuable product would have done what New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin did: let it all go to waste on the assumption that drivers would be impossible to find. Greyhound, after all, did not leave hundreds of its buses to be destroyed. And, of course, this very fact caused Nagin to scream for "every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country" to come to the aid of his city. And it should go without saying that no private employer would long tolerate a workforce that, in Sen. Mary Landrieu's memorable description of New Orleans public sector workers, has trouble coming to work even on sunny days. Read the whole thing. UPDATE: Reader Ross Booher notes this from CNN: In the aftermath, the questions grew sharper: Why did aerial shots of the flooded city show hundreds of school and city buses window-deep in water? Why hadn't anyone used those buses to move people out? Did Amtrak really offer residents seats on trains the company moved out of harm's way? And if so, who refused that offer and why? Of course, Booher adds: CNN does not connect the dots by noting that if the City had evacuated citizens using the buses, trains, etc. as set forth in the City's Disaster Plan, there would have been no need to rescue those same people from roof tops, the Superdome, the Convention Center, overpasses, etc. The city's failure started a cascading effect. Yes. And although it wasn't at fault in the pre-storm failures, I think that the collapse of the NOPD's radio system played a substantial role in the unrest after the flooding began. instapundit.com reason.com cnn.com instapundit.com

To: abstract who wrote (62502)	9/15/2005 4:26:52 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

...."Americans are a fickle people. They do not tolerate arrogance. George Bush cannot save himself. Good bye George.".... I guess you haven't read or listened to anything Bush has said regarding Katrina. Perhaps you are confusing him with Governor Blanco. Or Mayor Nagin. Or Senator Landrieu. Talk about night & day comparisons. "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government. And to the extent that the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong. I want to know how to better cooperate with state and local government, to be able to answer that very question that you asked: Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack or another severe storm. And that’s a very important question. And it’s in our national interest that we find out exactly what went on and — so that we can better respond. One thing for certain; having been down there three times and have seen how hard people are working, I’m not going to defend the process going in, but I am going to defend the people who are on the front line of saving lives. Those Coast Guard kids pulling people out of the — out of the floods are — did heroic work. The first responders on the ground, whether they be state folks or local folks, did everything they could. There’s a lot of people that are — have done a lot of hard work to save lives. And so I want to know what went right and what went wrong to address those. But I also want people in America to understand how hard people are working to save lives down there in not only New Orleans, but surrounding parishes and along the Gulf Coast."

To: abstract who wrote (62502)	9/15/2005 4:27:44 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

WHY DID W ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY? Posted by B. Preston JunkYardBlog PunditGuy bucks poll-driven post-modern life and says the President accepted Katrina-FEMA responsibility because, well, he thinks he should have. The U.S. continues to be more vulnerable than Bush would like, and it is his responsibility to patch the weak spots. How often has he looked into the camera and said his number one job as president is to keep Americans safe? Hurricane Katrina put the fear of God back into him, forcing the question, “what if the U.S. had been hit with nuclear terrorism instead of a natural disaster?” He didn’t like the answer. That’s why he stood up in front of the American public yesterday and did the right thing. He told everyone he didn’t like what saw, and he’ll work to fix it. I agree that polls had little if anything to do with W's responsibility talk. As Rich Lowry said a while back, Bush is truly the anti-Clinton--where Clinton would go for small, popular initiatives, Bush will go for big, unpopular initiatives. That ethic is mostly to his credit, and is Reaganesque. Like the Gipper, Bush seems to expect that history will eventually vindicate him, and he's probably right about that. Except on illegal immigration, where history is likely to judge him very unkindly. But he still needs to defend himself, not to win over the Kos Kids of the left who live in a dream world beyond all facts, but to keep the middle from bolting and to keep his own supporters from becoming thoroughly demoralized to the point of just giving up. Once in a while you have to hit back, if only to keep your opponent from sneaking in a knockout punch. junkyardblog.net punditguy.com

To: abstract who wrote (62502)	9/15/2005 4:31:07 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

AND BLANCO MAKES THREE Posted by B. Preston JunkYardBlog Bush led the way, then New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin followed up and took responsibility for his Katrina-related failures. And now La. Governor Blanco is also accepting responsibility: <<< Echoing the words of President Bush a day earlier, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco took responsibility Wednesday for failures and missteps in the immediate response to Hurricane Katrina and pledged a united effort to rebuild areas ravaged by the storm. "We all know that there were failures at every level of government: state, federal and local. At the state level, we must take a careful look at what went wrong and make sure it never happens again. The buck stops here, and as your governor, I take full responsibility," Blanco told lawmakers in a special meeting of the Louisiana Legislature. On Tuesday, Bush for the first time took responsibility for federal government mistakes in dealing with the hurricane and suggested the calamity raised questions about the government's ability to handle both natural disasters and terror attacks. Blanco called Bush "a friend and partner" in the recovery effort. She described plans for a rebuilding effort that would span all levels of government but would be funded with all federal money. >>> Last time I checked, you don't accuse your "friend and partner" of genocide, but I suppose we'll all have to let bygones be bygones. If this conciliatory approach had been Blanco's attitude from day one, the nation would have been spared both the horror of watching a major city implode and the terrible accusations of neglect and worse that followed. But it wasn't. It's likely that her new approach has something to do with revelations that she knew she hadn't called for federal troops even while she was telling the world that she had. Where I come from, that's called a lie. Bygones... And while she accepts responsibility now, the fact is that she showed herself to be incompetent in a crisis. The people of Louisiana will deal with that fact in whatever way they see fit. (thanks to Chris) junkyardblog.net thepoliticalteen.net sfgate.com thepoliticalteen.net

To: abstract who wrote (62502)	9/15/2005 4:39:06 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

No accurate death toll estimates please, we're the MSM Power Line James Pinkerton thinks Hurricane Katrina demonstrates that reports of the death of the MSM were greatly exaggerated. He's right. The MSM was able to write the first draft of this story in a biased and misleading fashion, to the detriment of President Bush. Blogs and other new media were unable to prevent or counteract this. As Pinkerton puts it, "the MSM got there firstest with the mostest." However, though the MSM may have been able, in the short term, to trim two or three points from the approval rating of a president who can't run for re-election, there's a good chance it did so at a lasting cost to its diminishing credibility. For it seems likely that the one piece of critical concrete information the MSM supplied about the hurricane -- the estimated death toll of 10,000 people -- will prove to be wildly excessive. It will do the MSM and its apologists no good to say that 10,000 was merely an upper limit. People will remember the frightening number, not the weasel words that may have accompanied it. Nor, as Glenn Reyonolds suggests, will it be much use to say, as some have, that the number came from Mayor Nagin. It was the MSM's reliance on the ravings of Nagin that served as the springboard for the "blame Bush" coverage. The MSM hitched its wagon to an incompetent, hysterical mayor in full CYA mode. It will have to live with the consequences. The main consequence is that the MSM appears to have gotten the single most important fact about Katrina wrong. The public is likely to remember. powerlineblog.com techcentralstation.com powerlineblog.com instapundit.com