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MSNBC correspondant Keith Olbermann rips US gov't a new arsehole
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| VERTiG0 |
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Wow, this is some really awesome scathing diatribe. I wish more journalists had the balls to say what needs to be said. |
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| Sunsnail |
| wow, he has balls :toocool: |
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| washout |
| ur canadian hush. |
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| VERTiG0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by washout
ur canadian hush. |
Your point being? |
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| Mebot |
| wow, thanks for the link. A very interesting video, I look forward to hearing the debate over this, both on TA and in other media. |
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| hardcore trancer |
| quote: | Originally posted by washout
ur canadian hush. |
hush?dont forget which countries helping your sorry ass down there right now.:o |
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| smokeape |
| quote: | Originally posted by VERTiG0
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Wow, this is some really awesome scathing diatribe. I wish more journalists had the balls to say what needs to be said. |
Just quote the diatribe. We have enough rhetoric from the peanut gallery of journalists about what should've been done. This is the here and now and apparently what ever is going to be done is going to be done by military forces right now. Please post something postive in the future about the future outcome of relief efforts.
;)
[[[smoke]]] |
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| VERTiG0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by smokeape
Just quote the diatribe. We have enough rhetoric from the peanut gallery of journalists about what should've been done. |
Yes, because I'm going to type out a 5 minute transcript of this guy talking. Right. |
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| hardcore trancer |
Hey Vertigo make a thread in the political room about this you'll get alot more better response from people there.
btw awesome video,it is great to see people speaking out their minds about this disaster, and I really hope the Bush administration gets thrown into the waters there and let them all die. |
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| tylerc |
Olberman is the .
I used to want him back on Sportscenter, but I think he's doing a bit more good now. Good to see him speaking up, and good to see his network allowing him to do so. |
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| idoru |
| I quite liked that video. :) |
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| Zenchowdah |
| quote: | Originally posted by VERTiG0
Yes, because I'm going to type out a 5 minute transcript of this guy talking. Right. |
| quote: | Originally stated by Keith Olbermann
Also on this point, this is not typically a newcaster commentary, I can recall only twice previously offered such perspectives, but something that homeland security secretary Chertoff said at his news conference saturday made this necesary.
Louisiana is a city that is underwater.
Well, there's your problem right there. If ever a slip of the tongue defined a government's response to a crisis. Forget the history of slashed federal budgets for projects that might have saved the levees, drop the imagery of the government watching Monty Python's Flying Circus while New Orleans drowned, ignore the symbol of beaureaucrats like Mr Chertoff using only the future tense in terms of relief that they could have supplied last monday and tuesday.
We no longer need the president sounding like he's on some five day tape delay to summarize this debacle, we now have Mr Chertoff's indelible announcement that "Louisiana is a city." Politician after politician, republican and democrat alike has paraded before us, unwilling, or unable to shut off the "I, Me" switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us how moved they were or how devestated they were, congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a new supermarket.
But as that sorry cycle of self abosorption dragged on, they have resisted editorial comment, as the focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded, even television's meager powers were devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural, and government made.
But now our {} has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi, and Alabama, and New Orleans, and Louisiana, the state, not the city, and having given our leaders what we now know is the week or so they need to get their acts together, that period of editorial silence i mentioned should come to an end.
No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows we should never prioritize levee improvement for a city that is 45 feet below sea level over 454 million dollars worth of trophy produce for the politicians of alaska.
But nationally, these are leaders who won reelection last year largely by portraying their opponents as being incapable of keeping this country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressured the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a powerplant in Iraq, and which regularly defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer when a thing like that is accomplished. Yet, they couldnt even stop one school or powerstation from being devestated by infrastructural collapse in New Orleans. Even though our government had heard all the chatter from scientists and city planners and hurricane centers, and some group whose purpose the government couldnt quite discern, a group called the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Most chillingly of all of this is the Law and Order and Terror government, it promised protection, or at least a meager ration of it, against all threats, conventional, radiological, and biological. It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called "Standing Water". Mr Bush has twice stated that "we are not satisfied" to the response to the manifold tragedies along the gulf coast. I wonder which 'we' he thinks he's speaking for at this point. Perhaps its the administration, though, we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was "I'll protect you, the other guy might let you die."? I don't know which we Mr Bush meant.
For many of this nation's citizens, the mantra has been, as we were taught in social studies, as it should always be, "whether or not I voted for this president, he is still my president." I imagine anyone still giving him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect also, a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to 08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words that will define his government, our government: New Orleans.
For him, it is a shame, in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was a quick "I am not satisfied with MY governments response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "No one could have forseen." Had he only remembered Churchill's quote from the 1930's: "The responsibility of government for the public safety," Churchill said, "is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact the prime object for which governments come into existence." In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself, it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely upon whoever is in the white house. As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is getting ready to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break dug up. Could be next march, could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government's credibility, somewhere in the CITY of Louisiana.
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