Save the USA

What America needs is some common sense. How can intelligent people let this pass?

For those displaced by Katrina, the US Gov’t is paying $60,000 per trailer, for an 18 month lease! So that $60,000 goes to the trailer company, not a dime to the people that lost everything. That’s $3,300 per month, which could get each family a nice condo, plus food, clothing and other essentials. But noooo, our government won’t allow that. W.T.F!

More Americans screwed while the pigs gorge at the trough.

What makes this doubly outrageous, is that there are plenty of Public Housing Projects that received little to no damage- yet the city has closed them down. The street lights are on, but the city won’t turn on the power to the projects. This video by Flux shows the water line on the 2nd step, with people refusing to leave their UNDAMAGED property. Trying to force them out, the city still hasn’t restored their their power since the Hurricane.

Street lights work, but they won’t give residents electricty. Who says this is ok?

Isn’t this enough already? Somebody arrest the perpetrators of this organized crime.

This is unbelievable!… from ABC NEWS:

Documents released today by Congress show that two days before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the White House received detailed damage forecasts from Homeland Security officials predicting that the city’s levees might be overtopped or breached.

Yet in the days after the storm struck on Aug. 29, federal officials, including President Bush, said the levee breaches could not have been foreseen.

Embattled former FEMA Director Michael Brown said, “I think we were all taken aback by the fact that the levees did break in so many places and caused such widespread devastation.”

Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff said, “I will tell you that really that perfect storm of combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners and maybe anybody’s foresight.”

And on Sept. 1, President Bush told “Good Morning America”: ‘’I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees” that flooded New Orleans.

The documents provided today by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, however, showed that the federal agencies overseen by Brown and Chertoff had compiled damage forecasts for the White House at least 48 hours before the storm’s landfall that predicted levee overtopping and breaches.

AND OUR “ELECTED” OFFICIALS DID NOTHING!
It’s called Criminal Negligence.

On Aug. 27, two days before the storm made landfall, FEMA had prepared a slide presentation for White House officials. The FEMA slides said a Category 4 storm surge “could greatly overtop levees and protective systems.” It’s unclear who at the White House received this briefing or how its contents were distributed afterward.

Did they see the slideshow? Why did they do nothing?
Did they not even watch the presentation? Why not?

Either Way- They didn’t do anything to prepare for the storm, and they left thousands of Americans stranded with no food and water for a week after the storm…

Despite this Major Warning, Bush Stayed on F@%king Vacation!!!

In a sane country, the above information would be enough to throw Bush and Co out of the WhiteHouse immediately.

Now there is an investigation, and the WhiteHouse has ordered FEMA witnesses to refuse to answer “almost every question” about the Katrina (lack of) response… and this according to Republican Senator Joe Lieberman.

And check out the ‘coincidences’ that parallel 9/11:

Hello…..People of America… How much is too much?

At what point do we STOP BUSINESS AS USUAL?

Katrina Survivors to Congress 128k mp3s: rt-click -> save as 1. Why all the M-16s? 2. Concentration Camps 3. They Blew it 4. Show Us The Levee 5. Martial Law or or Stream 64k or 128k (except #5) or even more options at archive.org

On Dec 6, 2005 several Katrina Survivors testified before Congress- their testimony should have been headline news across America… You can still watch the testimony at C-span (12/6/05), but if you don’t have 4 hours, these four mp3s contain some of the best clips of the hearing.

These are just a few of the Katrina stories that BushCo doesn’t want America to know.

I want to emphasize that there is more to the audio than the few rough quotes transcribed below.
(more…)

Bush & Co continue to exploit Sept 11th, repeating “3000 died” at every turn, “the world changed”… but isn’t that excuse ridiculous in light of the report that 6600 Americans are still missing from Katrina. They argue that “the world changed on 9/11″ yet if most of those missing from Katrina are indeed dead, then Bush, Chertoff & FEMA are directly - responsible for the deaths of twice as many Americans as were killed on Sept 11.

The Nov 2 NO Times Picayune, the death toll is anybody’s guess, the state had:

“recovered” or received reports on 1,067 bodies. But because of gaps in the data, no one, not even at the agency, considers that an official death count.

On Nov 21st USA Today reported that
There are still 6644 missing from Katrina

Why isn’t this headline news day in and day out?

Bush Underfunding of Levees Kills Twice as Many as 9/11

If Every Katrina Survivor knew this, they might be motivated to go to DC.

from the NY Times:

“President Bush broke the law and lied to the American people when he unilaterally authorized secret wiretaps of U.S. citizens,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “But rather than focus on this constitutional crisis, Attorney General Gonzales is cracking down on critics of his friend and boss. Our nation is strengthened, not weakened, by those whistle-blowers who are courageous enough to speak out on violations of the law.”

What’s frequently “overlooked” is that this spying is exactly what Hitler, Stalin and other dictators did. It’s what dictators have to do to remain in power. And now our President is doing that and telling us to trust him. After all that’s been exposed… trust this guy that still says “Saddam wouldn’t let the inspectors in”?!

This is madness, this idiot puppet “President” is blatantly assuming dictatorial powers (for his neocon masters)… where are America’s leaders? Where are all those “Leaders” in Congress, it’s like they’re all afraid or something….

What we need is Patriotic Americans in several large cities to start protesting, people willing to stay as long as it takes. These one day protests are just not cutting it. Time to camp out in numbers. Is freedom worth it?

I’ve been trying to start a Protest in DC the week before the SOTU
Cindy Sheehan has called for a Protest in DC at the SOTU Jan 31st
World Can’t wait is organizing a march for that weekend, Feb 4th.
Katrina Survivors are going to DC FEb 8-9th just $50 a ticket

Why not just combine them all, start showing up before the SOTU, and stay right on thru Feb until this cabal is ousted? If only someone would pony up some cash for tent housing, then they could afford to stay.

“Now is the time- it would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.” — MLK
(Get this Martin Luther King Jr. Speech for MLK Day this Jan 17th!)

Cheney alleged source of new “American” torture policies.
Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff,

“There’s no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated — in the vice president of the United States’ office,” he said. “His implementer in this case was (Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department.”

Is Bush Lying about his Lies?

The buck stops in the Oval Office. If the president was not deliberately lying to the American people, he nonetheless presided over what was in effect and in truth a massive deception. He would be much wiser to admit his mistake and assume responsibility, but it is apparently not in his character to do so.

Moreover at least three-fifths of the American people now believe that he did in fact deceive them. The question arises as to whether he and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are also deceiving us on the certainty of victory in Iraq. Granting for the sake of an argument that we must train a functioning Iraq army, why will no one in the administration predict how long that will take? Why after several years of that effort is there only one fully capable Iraqi unit (of 750 men)?

Media Matters: Fox News has Woolsey and Perle debate Iraq, it’s a fake debate because they’re both members of the Defense Policy Board.

But Media Matters missed the boat, because the more damning fact is that they’re both members of PNAC. That’s what Fox “News” is selling…? A debate between two PNAC members is “Fair and Balanced” ? Oh My God. It’s unbelievable that anyone buys that crap…. to end the war, everyone should buy the Highjacking Catastrophe DVD (which exposes PNAC) for their Fox News watching friends and family.

Martial Law: Congressman Ron Paul on the Alex Jones Show

“They [Bush, Cheney] are putting their back up against the wall and saying, if need be we’re going to have martial law.”

“We’ve heard all these statements by the President, by the administration, why they need more militarism at the federal government to keep people in check so nobody knows how this will turn out but I do know that the only thing we can do about it is try to alert the American people to what’s going on so they can be prepared.”

Alex Jones before the Austin City Council (mp3), where they voted to keep the Bill of Rights and Constitution intact, to deny the Patriot Act spying powers that the fascists so desire.

And another mp3, this from Cynthia McKinney, who was not surprised by the neglect in the wake of Katrina… in fact it reminded her of the gov’t reports recommending martial law in the event of a black (poor) uprising, it mentioned rounding up 21 million American Negroes into ‘relocation centers’…

Republican Congressman Ron Paul spoke to Alex Jones and as a Washington insider seems to have information that the incredibly corrupt Republican House of Cards is coming down.
interview with Alex Jones

“I think there’s a lot more excitement coming and it’s not going to be good for the Republicans,” stated Paul.

“The things that I hear have to do with Karl Rove and Abramoff and that’s much much worse than anybody would believe and it involves DeLay as well.”

“And that type of an indictment will be much more serious than the indictment of shifting campaign funds around…..there’s some political infighting which could make that really interesting.”

And then there is this damning information about Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist…

“The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Frist earned tens of thousands of dollars from HCA stock in a partnership controlled by his brother, outside of the blind trusts he created to avoid a conflict of interest.

“It seems that for years, Frist may have misled his constituents and the American people about his health care industry stock holdings and the conflict of interest they created as he drafted our nation’s health care policy,” …

“Within days of Frist’s July stock sale, HCA warned investors about weaker-than-expected financial performance, which sent the stock price spiraling downward by 9 percent in one day.”

Washington Post

Exposing the Republican culture of corruption in Washington, D.C. couldn’t come at a better time, as Bush is asking congress to abolish Posse Comitatus and allow him to set up Martial Law to quarantine US citizens.

Congressman Ron Paul

“To me it’s so strange that the President can make these proposals and it’s even plausible. When he talks about martial law dealing with some epidemic that might come later on and having forced quarantines, doing away with Posse Comitatus in order to deal with natural disasters, and hardly anybody says anything. People must be scared to death.”

Paul, himself a medical doctor, agreed that the bird flu threat was empty fearmongering….”My first reaction going from my political and medical background is that it’s way overly hyped and to think that they have gone this far with it, without a single case in the whole country and they’re willing to change the law and turn it into a military state?”

It seems they are already using New Orleans to try out their military state, setting up Guantanamo at a bus station, forcing people to sleep on concrete and do slave labor…all for being arrested for violating curfew…

Anthony Jack, former detainee, explains

“I was in my yard, and a young white guy came by the gate and I was talking to him and the police came and arrested both of us,” he recounted. “He was outside breaking curfew; I was inside… behind the gate. The police broke my gate down with a pick-ax. They broke it completely off the fence.”

They were then told they could either plead guilty and they would be sentenced to about 40 hours of “community service.” or if they wished the maintain their innocence they would be sent to Hunts Correctional Facility where they could wait as long as 21 days to be processed.

In the end, given the choice between unpaid work and continued incarceration, nearly all chose to plead guilty.

“The police are basically arresting people for curfew violations and public intoxication and just using it as a way to get free labor to clean up the prisons and court houses and the police stations. They’re just using it as a way to get people to do their dirty work for free.”

Brandon Toussaint said he was arrested going from the downstairs of is apartment complex to another apartment upstairs.Toussaint said he had already done a few days of work for the police, cleaning up and painting their facilities.
“If they needed someone to clean up their city, they could have just asked,” he said.

This abuse of power and disregard for the US consitution must be stopped immediately if we are to save what is left of our democracy. Otherwise, Guantanamo might be coming to a town near you.

As Ron Paul suggests…the government is on a delusional power trip that threatens the country.

“These guys are ready to start a war with Iran, Syria, North Korea or China. They can’t possibly do that, it’s so insane, we don’t have the money, we don’t have the troops, we probably don’t even have the ammunition.”

“But, if they are truly delusional they just might do something that’s totally irrational.”

3,000 city employees are fired in New Orleans, meanwhile government cronies are stealing the money set aside for aid and reconstruction. How much will the American people take before we say enough is enough?

FEMA has contracted with Carnival Cruise Lines, to the tune of $192 million, to house hurricane evacuees on three cruise ships.

The result, according to the senators: “Taxpayers are paying, per evacuee, four times the amount a vacation cruise passenger would have to pay. Three Carnival ships are only half full and mostly occupied by relief workers. Carnival’s overhead costs in the FEMA operation are far lower than during normal cruises. The Carnival ships are docked. No fuel is being used and no entertainment is being provided to the relief workers. Yet, taxpayers are paying $2,550 per guest per week, which is four times the cost of a $599 per person ‘7 Day Western Caribbean’ Cruise from Galveston, Texas.”

common dreams

Bush v Castro, Beyond Incompetence, Israel got their wall, Bush mia, Return to NOLA, Chumped, Katrina lack of response pattern, etc

(the previous flyer gallery was hacked)

More Flyers
Lies
Cindy
T-shirts

Bush says he may need more power in disasters
He wants Congress to look into whether presidential authority should be expanded in times of catastrophes like Katrina.
– Props to SpeakSpeak

Bush wants the power to order the military to arrest people in the US. Currently, the military is barred by the Posse Comitatus Act from arresting people in the US.

Protests can be declared “emergencies” for soldiers to arrest protestors.

Taken in the context of 100,000 dead in Iraq on a war of choice, could those same twisted decision makers allow thousands to suffer and die as an excuse to gain more power? And knowing the Republican Rubber Stamp Congress, you know this is going to happen. In effect we’re looking at the beginning of The Clampdown. In a few weeks? months? Soldiers on US Soil arresting citizens and locking them away indefinitely. Holy shit!

I suggest town hall meetings everywhere, demand airtime on your local ‘public’ radio station- create a Bill of Rights safety zone in your community- get your local cops (who are hopefully good people) on your side.

We don’t need soliders arresting American citizens- ever!
We don’t need to lock away American citizens without a trial.

People argue that good cops wouldn’t take out dissenters. This is not like the Nazis rounding up people and locking them up in camps…… Yet. It’s getting very close to that. Local cops won’t burst into someone’s home with a gun, but *some* troops will. Could closed military bases be turned into detainment camps? Just last week on the Floor of the House, Cynthia Mckinney said that in 1987 there was a government plan in case of a black uprising: martial law, detainment camps, using the military against American citizens.

Please send this to all of your Republican aquaintences. Do they buy this bit about the Katrina failure leading to using the military against our own citizens? What about locking away citizens without a trial- why does that make us safer?

Here’s a few other accounts about ‘levee explosions’ - backing up this previous post in which during an ABC News interview New Orleans 9th Ward resident Joe Edwards claims he heard a loud explosion.

Globe and Mail via BellaCiao

“Then we heard a loud boom,” says Mr. Anderson, a juvenile detention officer. “We thought it was a generator at first but then we later learned that it was the levee. That someone was trying to put a hole in it to relieve some of the water pressure or divert some water or something and that hole led to a much bigger one. “Someone was trying to do the right thing, I think, and it created a much bigger problem. It’s going to all come out, what happened. I don’t think you can blame this on racism.”

via Ernie the Attorney:

“If you’ve noticed, there has been no or very little mension of St. Bernard. That’s because it was really bad there and there was no help. They were not helping anyone get out. It was just people helping people. Helicopters actually flew over and just took pictures didn’t try to help anyone. He has six rolls of film. [He] got a boat and actually rescued people. He broke into a two story house and stayed there. There were bodies everywhere of people and animals. He also mentioned that right before the mass flood there was a loud sound like an explosion. We think they may have blew up the levee and trying to keep it quiet. That’s why they are not mentioning anything about us.

from the WashPost:

Mullen has a schoolteacher’s kindly demeanor, so it was jarring to hear him say he suspected that the levee breaks had somehow been engineered to keep the wealthy French Quarter and Garden District dry at the expense of poor black neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward — a suspicion I heard from many other black survivors.

Rosa Clemente was arrested shortly after writing this:
click here for an audio version of this account

We came up on the Convention Center, and after all the clean up, it still looked like a living hell, the smell of dead bodies was overwhelming, what was more crazy and shows the inhumanity, the VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as defined by the Internatinal Convention on Human Rights and the CRIMINAL MISCONDUCT of these devils, and that includes, Condi and Alberto, is that there were plenty of hotels, The Marriot, The Wyndham, The Holiday Inn, that were completely habitable, if this @#%$ supreme court can take my house on some eminent domain @#%$, why didn’t they declare eminent domain and take corporate property for the public good.

As Brad stated “This, the Convention center is our modern day slave vessel and our people are in the midst of the Middle Passage” meanwhile five feet from this hell were the castles; The Marriot, The Wyndham, Holiday Inn….

As New Orleans is under marshal law, last night around 6:30pm the military informed us that anyone on the streets would get a warning shot, and after that be shot on the spot, throughout the night, we saw groups of white men riding around in pickup trucks, vigilantes, along with the NOPD and the @#%$ NYPD, yes, yes yall the NYPD is in the house, this is the battle ground, this is the BATTLE FOR ALGIERS, ….

GET DOWN HERE AND HELP US!

entire account is a must read
(more…)

download the ABC News video clip at total411.info

JOE EDWARDS, JR., 9TH WARD RESIDENT: I heard something go BOOM!

MUIR: Joe Edwards rushed to get himself and as many neighbors as possible into his truck. They drove to this bridge, where they’ve been living ever since

EDWARDS: My house broke in half. My mother’s house just disintegrated. It was a brick house. All the houses down there floated down the street like somebody’s guiding ‘em

MUIR: Was it solely the water that broke the levee, or was it the force of this barge that now sits where homes once did? Joe Edwards says neither. People are so bitter, so disenfranchised in this neighborhood, they actually think the city did it, blowing up the levee to save richer neighborhoods like the French Quarter.

MUIR: So you’re convinced . . .

EDWARDS: I know this happened!

MUIR: . . . they broke the levee on purpose?

EDWARDS: They blew it!

So New Orleans resident Mr. Edwards heard an explosion just before the levee broke… seems like it’s worthy of an investigation, but instead the mainstream media buries the story. Implications?

It’s time for the Democrats to rise up and stop doing business as usual

Our personal safety and the future of the nation are at grave risk. The Republicans are craftily turning this fiasco that may be criminal malfeasance into an example of why big government doesn’t work. Well, it doesn’t work because we have a man with arrested development, who lives in a bubble, running the government into the ground. Bush has said he’s our CEO. Well, any CEO with his record of failure would have been fired long ago.

Hell yeah!

Over 100 trucks await orders from FEMA to bring water to NOLA“They’ve got their thumbs up their as

Food Not Bombs volunteers:
We spent a couple hours talking with the semi drivers, who were operating under FEMA to bring water and food into New Orleans - but, as we saw, all were just sitting in the parking lot waiting for directions. Some had been there for days, some for more than a week, without any food or supplies from the government or any other relief agencies.

Many shared stories of frustration with the bureaucracy of the federal government and FEMA. Dozens of tanker trucks carrying 50,000 gallons of water each were parked in rows, awaiting orders to travel into affected areas and fill up 10-gallon jugs to hand out. Only a few trucks at a time are allowed in, and it takes nearly 24 hours to empty a tanker, leaving the majority of them sitting around doing absolutely nothing.

It’s like they’re trying to drive people out by not providing residents with necessary supplies… now why would anyone want that… hmmmm?

from the SF Chronicle via BellaCiao

On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn’t being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters — more than three football fields in length — away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.

Are there any investigative reporters with telephoto lenses willing to risk it all to uncover the truth?

FEMA hired a mobile morgue to take care of the bodies in New Orleans. That’s why bodies are left in the streets, because nobody is allowed to touch them except FEMA’s morticians… problem is they hired a firm that previously dumped bodies in the woods!

from Raw Story

The Menorah Gardens cemetery chain, owned by SCI, desecrated vaults, removed hundreds of bodies from two cemeteries in Florida and dumped the gruesome remains in woods frequented by wild hogs, investigators discovered in 2001. In one case, a backhoe was used to crack open a vault, remove corpses and make room for more dead bodies.

SCI paid $100 million to settle a lawsuit filed by outraged family members of the deceased.

A secretary at the lawfirm that sued SCI over the Florida cemetery scandals gasped when informed that FEMA had outsourced handling of Katrina victims’ bodies to an SCI subsidiary.

“Oh, good lord!” she said.

Peter Hartmann, general manager of the Menorah Gardens Cemetery chain, was later found dead in his car from carbon monoxide poisoning outside his parents’ home in an apparent suicide.

RAW STORY calls to FEMA were not returned.

Waltrip, chairman of SCI, is a longtime friend of Bush’s father, former President George Herbert Walker Bush. The firm’s political action committee donated $45,000 to George W. Bush’s 1994 gubernatorial campaign.

LA Gov. Blanco requested aid from the federal gov’t and did not get it. This disaster was too big for the local authorities, and the feds were mia when called upon.

“This report closes the book on the Bush Administration’s attempts to evade accountability,” Conyers said in a statement. “The Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time.”

Conyers press release pdf
Congressional Report pdf

Katrina: Authorities bar Red Cross from NOLA; Blackwater gets carte blanche

Armed with assault rifles, contractors from private security firm Blackwater are patrolling the black-water-flooded streets of New Orleans.

Meanwhile, unnarmed Red Cross workers toting food and medicine have been unable to enter the city for days.

with some great reader comments:

Why do the police in New Orleans clear the city of the last remaining residents? Why can’t these residents stay in their homes if they are able to stay? And why do the authorities do this with guns?

…..

Since it would seem the goal of this project is to demolish the city… then give Halliburton billions to rebuild it for corporations and whites only… People need to realize that this is the biggest LOOTING operation since the fall of Baghdad - and the looters are NOT the poor blacks.