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azande
3rd-September-2005, 09:16 PM
..... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com

P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.

David Bailey
3rd-September-2005, 09:40 PM
Lovely.

Normally I can't stand MM, he's got way up himself the past couple of years, but he's nailed it precisely this time.

azande
4th-September-2005, 01:33 AM
:yeah:

Lynn
4th-September-2005, 01:31 PM
Why are people starving and dying? Why wasn't there more help sent and with more speed? There are bound to be reasons - are the people going to get answers?

Jazz_Shoes (Ash)
4th-September-2005, 02:22 PM
If this happened in L.A. they wouldn't have to wait five days...

ducasi
4th-September-2005, 03:19 PM
If this happened in L.A. they wouldn't have to wait five days... I've heard someone say this, I think it was on the news...

I'm wondering what makes you say this?

OK, because California is more densely populated and has a large naval base just up the way in San Francisco Bay, it probably wouldn't have taken so long...

But any evacuation of L.A. would still have left a (predominately black) poor under-class of people who would not have been able to evacuate.

I can't see any other relevant factors that would differentiate between L.A. and New Orleans.

(Besides the whole unlikeliness of a hurricane hitting the Pacific coast of America, and that L.A. is mostly above sea-level and so even if it was flooded (by tsunami, perhaps?) the water would go away, and not hang around.)

Jazz_Shoes (Ash)
4th-September-2005, 06:36 PM
L.A. is much more important than New Orleans in terms of wealth ect. Too many rich/"important" people live there, I think that it all comes down to the issue of money - they rich are the main priority. Look at it this way, if Buckingham Palace was flooded they'd get the Queen out first right? There are far more wealthy people in L.A. (i'd expect) than New Orleans, thus if it was L.A. they'd most likely get them out quicker, it seems that in Americas society the loyalty is given towards the rich first. I've heard alot of people say that it might have had something to do with Racism? But I don't want to get into that, it's just what i've heard.
Plus...I am probably slightly more angry about this as I dislike George Bush :angry:


Of course this is purely my own (unresearched) opinion, I have absolutely NO facts/information to back it up, just a hatred of the way society seems to work in the US, moreso than the UK.

However, i'd welcome anyone else's opinion that contradicts mine, I can usually see both sides of the argument if presented properly.

ducasi
4th-September-2005, 09:12 PM
L.A. is much more important than New Orleans in terms of wealth ect. Too many rich/"important" people live there, I think that it all comes down to the issue of money - they rich are the main priority. Look at it this way, if Buckingham Palace was flooded they'd get the Queen out first right? There are far more wealthy people in L.A. (i'd expect) than New Orleans, thus if it was L.A. they'd most likely get them out quicker, it seems that in Americas society the loyalty is given towards the rich first. I've heard alot of people say that it might have had something to do with Racism? But I don't want to get into that, it's just what i've heard. I agree with everything you say here. But once you evacuate all the rich/important people from L.A., you're left with the huge "(predominately black) poor under-class of people who would not have been able to evacuate."

That said, I just heard a journalist on TV say that New Orleans is America's Third World. (Based, not only on the level of poverty, but on the proportion of non-whites who live there.)

I'm not sure that's really the point. Once you've evacuated all the car owners from any city in America, you'll have pretty much the same result.

I'm not sure if this is really a debate worth having though, at least not at the moment.

New Orleans is the only place in the States that I have visited, and I loved it. I am appalled by what has been happening there, and I truly hope that they can sort out the mess it is in. And only once they've done that, will it be time for the cheap political point scoring.

David Bailey
5th-September-2005, 07:55 AM
New Orleans is the only place in the States that I have visited, and I loved it. I am appalled by what has been happening there, and I truly hope that they can sort out the mess it is in. And only once they've done that, will it be time for the cheap political point scoring.
The trouble is, there's clearly been a massive failure of political will and response at all levels from the local officials, all the way to the President.

Whilst it's easy to score political points by talking about Bush reducing the levee construction fund, or by pointing out that most of the people too poor to evacuate were black, or that New Orleans was a Democrat city in a Republican state, there's a more important point here.

Bush is the guy the buck stops with - and he's shown again that his response to national emergencies is slow, casual and incompetent.

And unlike 9/11, there's no equivalent of Rudy Giuliani to provide leadership at any local level (Giuliani is now being talked about as Republican candidate for the 2008 presidential race). So this exposes even more Bush's lack of clear and decisive leadership in these occasions.

FEMA (emergency management agency), and the Department of Homeland Security (responsible for national disasters), both of which have had money poured into them since 9/11, have both proven to be visibly inept in their core function of handling emergencies. For example, FEMA only "learnt" last Friday about the refugees stranded in the convention centre in New Orleans - which anyone with a TV should have known about days before.

There's also a comment from several sources that aid (food / shelter etc.) was withheld deliberately, to try to force citizens of New Orleans out of the city, in order to make reconstruction easier. This again ignores the fact that most of the remaining citizens coudln't get out - they didn't have cars, or they were ill, old or infirm. Again, reinforcing the belief (as Kanye West put it) that "Bush doesn't care about black people".

Bush now seems finally (a week after the event, two weeks after the prediction) to have woken up to the fact that people across the political spectrum aren't happy - but it's shameful that it's taken the press and bad publicity to force his hand, he should have been doing this a week ago, not playing guitar with Congressman "I'm not a racist" Trott.

ducasi
5th-September-2005, 08:33 AM
The trouble is, there's clearly been a massive failure of political will and response at all levels from the local officials, all the way to the President.

[snipped lots of good stuff] Now if Michael Moore had written about even half of the things that you just did, I'd have been more impressed. Rather than pointing out practical failures of America's emergency response procedures, he felt it necessary to make snide remarks about the president in a sarcasm-laden "open letter".

Make no mistake, I'm no fan of Bush, but I have some sympathy for him at the moment. I expect that during the days in the run up to the hurricane and immediately after it, all his advisers would have been telling him that everything was in order, and not to worry. Only when it became patently clear that that wasn't the case did he then have to act.

Perhaps a better man would have been more attentive to the situation and less prepared to just listen to his advisors, but realistically, who expected this to go so wrong?

David Bailey
5th-September-2005, 09:06 AM
Now if Michael Moore had written about even half of the things that you just did, I'd have been more impressed. Rather than pointing out practical failures of America's emergency response procedures, he felt it necessary to make snide remarks about the president in a sarcasm-laden "open letter".
MM is a bit of a tw*t, agreed - he's got more shrill and less effective at time goes on. He's just playing to his target audience, really, he's not trying to make any valid points any more now. Shame - Bowling For Columbine was great, but Farenheit 911 was cack...


Perhaps a better man would have been more attentive to the situation and less prepared to just listen to his advisors, but realistically, who expected this to go so wrong?
I'd have some sympathy if this weren't predicted.

There were a lot of warnings - the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a recent campaign about this very issue.

The New York Times ran a series of articles about this in 2002 - see here for more details (http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-rutten2sep02,0,1982966.column?coll=cl-calendar), but an extract from the 2002 article makes interesting reading:

"It's a matter of when, not if. Eventually a major hurricane will hit New Orleans head on, instead of being just a close call. It's happened before and it'll happen again ... a major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time.... Evacuation is the most certain route to safety, but it may be a nightmare. And 100,000 without transportation will be left behind.... Hundreds of thousands would be left homeless, and it would take months to dry out the area and begin to make it livable. But there wouldn't be much for residents to come home to. The local economy would be in ruins....

"People left behind in an evacuation will be struggling to survive. Some will be housed at the Superdome, the designated shelter in New Orleans for people too sick or infirm to leave the city. Others will end up in last-minute emergency refuges that will offer minimal safety. But many will simply be on their own.... Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising waters. Others will be washed away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days."

Again - this was written in 2002. In the New York Times.

In the summer of 2001 (before 9/11), FEMA itself predicted that the three greatest emergencies in the near future would be:
- A terrorist attack on New York
- A hurricane hitting New Orleans
- An earthquake hitting San Francisco.

One wonders what preparations are like in San Francisco at the moment...

stewart38
5th-September-2005, 09:44 AM
I agree with everything you say here. But once you evacuate all the rich/important people from L.A., you're left with the huge "(predominately black) poor under-class of people who would not have been able to evacuate."


I'm not sure that's really the point. Once you've evacuated all the car owners from any city in America, you'll have pretty much the same result.

I'm not sure if this is really a debate worth having though, at least not at the moment.

I am appalled by what has been happening there, and I truly hope that they can sort out the mess it is in. And only once they've done that, will it be time for the cheap political point scoring.


Yeah to all :yeah: