The indefatigable Noladder sent this video clip of WWL's recent news report on the Dems' visit to the area. There was a very embarrassing sequence during a press conference where Rep. Charlie Melancon demonstrated that he didn't have a clue about the 8/29 investigation that Levees.org has championed.
Below is a rushed YRHT transcript and description of the WWL video beginning at the 2 minute mark:
Lee Zurick: Those in attendance say they are well in tune with the many issues surrounding the recovery, but when we asked about efforts to create an investigation team to look into governmental failures after Katrina, the question prompted confusion.
(Video clip)
WWL reporter Scott Satchfield: "What's the status of an 8/29 investigation... what's the hold up with that... and how can Congress get on track?"
Rep. Charlie Melancon looks quickly to Rep. James Clyburn, Clyburn looks back to Melancon and says "8/29, what's that?"
Melancon, who sponsored a bill calling for an 8/29 investigation echoes Clyburn's question, and asks the reporter "What's 8/29 investigation?"
=== Update: Please don't miss Lee Zurick's latest WWL Channel 4 investigation which will air tonight at 10pm. This one's going to be big.
It's one thing to bitch about N.O. and the Gret Stet, because there's plenty of corruption and stupidity and absurdity and just plain bad behavior upon which to let loose. But to keep bringing up petty things (and employing guilt by association) to justify utter indifference -- or worse -- in the face of a national scandal and catastrophe is quite another.
But Michelle Malkin specializes in that. And, of course, the above link is one post of mine she's NOT gonna link to.
Big Molluski, you are so my herolero! This Melanswansong faux Rep guy...he is yesterday's news. Gone! No Soup for that bastard!
All day my tongue it is tied, like to a chainsaw. My brain...my brain is an untenable high altitude boil. If there were words for such abject frustration you know I would have found them, somewhere here in da'valley of da'shadow of Democrat Bourgeois Nievete! Oh Fortuna! Are they all sheep in a jail house yard? Do they all bleed ignorance? Bleet peccary conviviality all the whilst twisting in their corkscrew shaped penises? I say yea and verily my tongue was thusly tied!
Where do we go from here? How do we get this moving again? Because, now this absolute shit'for brains congressman Melancon has admitted that the 8/29 Investigation is to DIE IN DA'HOUSE, that lying bastard. Hell, why don't we just get The Exorcist to simply APPOINT our Congressional Representatives if Melancon is to hand them such bullshit election ammo in a silver chalice? What...IS HE POSSESSED??? In the meantime---NO LEVEE INVESTIGATION?? Nadapunta! Silly we the electorate, eh?
But this is why we have smart bloggers. Thank you for letting me know I am not crazy. Well, actually I don't recall your acknowledging that but thanks anyway.
I wanted to play devil's advocate. but I can't. If he had introduced legislation for a Katrina investigation, it would have been possible that the language threw him and the editing made the exchange look worse than it was. Alas, his bill called for an 8/29 investigation. I'm not expecting much follow through.
I'm not a particular believer that an 8/29 investigation will solve anything, any more than the Warren Commission, The 9/11 investigation or the Pearl Harbor commission did.
The primary purpose of these investigation is to provide cover for the usual suspects.
I'm appealed that Melancon didn't remember he sponsored such a bill.
Was he an author or merely a sponsor? Which member of Sandy's family wrote the bill?
Mominem, Oh for Goddess sake, don't hold back. Do tell us what personal problem you have with Sandy Rosenthal? This is about the engineering, not how slyly you can sucker-punch someone from the relative safety of a fine blog's comments section. Your reference to her family goes innuendo and out the other. You appeal me. I know that was a typo on your part, but I also prefer a Freudian Slip over a Pavlovian Mid'drift with any evening dress. Drop the imperial fo'da empirical and call. Otherwise lay off the back-stabbing sniping of others who have actually stuck their hands into these still failing levees.
I honestly do not understand your obvious opposition to Levees.org. This is not a game of who is most popular on the playground. How appealing.
As for an 8/29 Commission? What better cover than no cover? Jeez Louie! What better Question than No Question? I suppose you would recommend we all simply just bend over and assume the position of the Corps of Engineers and ASCE that those levees failed due more to environmental factors such as Global Warming or the red herring talking point of local mismanagement, or the biggest misnomer of late: Funding, rather than Sub-standard Engineering factors. It's the Engineering, Stupid.
Is that it, for you? We should all just swallow the word of the Corps of Engineers without even attempting an Independent Engineering Investigation into their building of these failed levees? What? Get outta heah! You gotta be kidding me! Gimme the name of your pharmacist.
I refuse to assume your position, especially this close to the 3rd anniversary of my own near death experiences at the hands of those motherfuckers masked as civil engineers.
I don't care who you are, who your friends are, how connected you are, you will not stand between me and those levees with a Corps/ASCE press release in your hands. I stood in the deathwater and said NEVER AGAIN and meant it. Go run interference for someone else. Pick on somebody your own size for a change.
Note to all RT...well, there you have it, eh? Editilla d'Ass.
Memorial Day I stuck my arms up to my elbows into the Constantly Growing Leak at that failing 17th Street Canal Levee Repair and felt the Flowing Water. While lacking the psychological qualifications to describe my sense of loss and despair at that point nearly 3 years after the flood, suffice to say if/when that levee fails again...none of this will matter. Will none of this will matter? Will it be just so much water under the bridge...again? All of our pretty shit soaked in mold...again?
Oh for goodness sake, Editilla, why do some people feel the constant need to flaunt their self-righteousness? Mominem's comment could have been read as a swipe at Sandy Rosenthal, but I didn't see it that way. I took it to mean that Melancon didn't care enough to write his own bill. He expresses the jaded view that congressional investigations rarely accomplish anything, that are, in fact, usually cover-ups. What a monster.
Note to non-emergency personnel who stayed, it's nothing to brag about. Our 70% evacuation rate is one of the things we can brag about. I remember my first ever blog post was to call Jeb B. to task for implying that Fla. takes hurricanes more seriously than La. when prosperous Monroe county had a 20% -30% compliance rate with a mandatory evacuation order compared to poor Orleans parish's 60-70%.
The above is pretty harsh, and it's certainly knee-jerk. I'll apologize as I go ahead and post the comment because I think the same things could be said of your comment.
David, I have no idea why some people feel the need to flaunt their own self righteousness. Perhaps you should as Monimem. You could not get any more self-serving than such a smug sucker-punch. By attacking someone who is actually working pretty hard on the issue of safe levees he attacks me, and you, and anyone else effected by their failure.
You are certainly welcome to call my feelings self-righteous. I prefer to think of it as self-preservation.
Yeah, I'm intense about levees, but not bragging. I want to know who was there and who was not. It is important for me to know from whence one speaks regarding this flood on all levels.
If Mon's dig was not such a big dig then why mention her by name? Why dig at another New Orleanian by name? Why dig at all on someone who is at least trying to find a solution to this problem of Leaking Levees?
I don't do insipid behind-the-back talk. I am not privy to this apparent back'blog discussion which Mon's having with y'all about the efficacy of Levees.org. That is what is left standing by his sly question...that Levees.org is not "one of us". Well, screw that playground bullshit.
The 17th Street Levee Canal Breach "Repair" is leaking, David. Have you seen it? Sandy Rsenthal went and saw it and got a nationally recognized journalist to do a story in it for OpEd, Huff Posts and several other national media. Now we have John Barry's group opting for an independent investigation of this continuously expanding leak. Thanks Goddess.
But that water is still flowing underneath that levee wall and it is brackish and the Leak is growing. Even Harry Shearer mentioned it in his blog.
I admit that kind of thing makes me nervous: Leaking Levees. Flooding. Yeah, such a scenario leaves me a bit unstable. But don't even try to call it "knee-jerk", as if I don't know what I am talking about. I stood knee-deep in it, David, and deeper. My survival of that flood did indeed leave me with quick reactions, hell even a tick, but nothing close to knee-jerk. Knee-jerk implies that I was not there. You are wrong both semantically and spiritually. Yeah, I'm still pretty fucked up from that flood. I call it the "Tongue-in-light-socket-syndrome." I also call it gun-shy-trigger-happy. I still have yet to figure out how to apologize for such obvious trauma...but it is not trival, not merely skin deep, no knee-jerk flesh wound.
But what will you say if/when that 17th Street levee fails again? Have you gone to see it? Here are copious directions: http://noladder.blogspot.com/2008/05/jeudi_29.html
And rest assured that I will respond to anyone else who wants to misdirect attention away from the Engineering behind those failed levees. I will try to be nicer.
Again I ask any of you Mons: What better Answer for these levee failures than no Question at all, or worse a Corps directed ASCE study of its own roll in their failure?
But when you find the answer, please let us do shoot the messenger.
I was waiting for my lunch break to comment again that some day I'll learn until I'm fully awake to make serious or angry comments, but that's as close to an apology as I'll come.
I don't see how mominem's comment was a swipe at anybody but Melancon and expression of doubt that congressional investigations ever accomplish anything. It could have been taken as a swipe at Rosenthal, I suppose. To my way of think, interpreting something the offensive way that could be taken an offensive or inoffensive way seems like knee-jerk self-righteousness. Since I don't know you, I won't assume that's the case, but that's my general reaction when somebody choses the more offensive interpretation of two possible interpretations of a comment. And we can all trade horror stories.
If there's a back blog discussion about levees.org, I'm not privy to it.
And David, per your "note": who was "Non-Emergency Personnel" during that flood? I stayed, then the flood came because that 17th Street Canal Levee failed...then we all became "Emergency Personnel"...we all jumped in it and to it. Much of that you will not hear from me, but some of it you will. It depends on the psychological trigger. Why try to separate people into this or that category of survivor? We all swam in those waters. If that sounds grandiloquent, well whatever. I saw shit you would not believe. How's that?
There are so many pieces of this Heart that was broken that week of 8/29. Broken and scattered. There are those who stayed and left, those who left and returned, those who can't seem to return who stayed and left and returned and left again. Pioneers like y'all. Berserker Waifs like myself.
I have seen so many levels, lines of pain from this flood. I seek them out. I of course look for the joys too, but why try to separate the survivors into differences rather than distinctions? That one stone thrown ripples out across the country to return as vitriolic right'wing blame'gaming.
We are all in the same goddamned boat.
While I do apologize for being an asshole, my dog hunts so I will let this one lie for now. Thank you.
Actually, when I went from my making that comment to eating my sandwich, I realized that I should've just stayed out of it. Still don't mominem's comment was offensive, but there's no reason for all of us, including me, to go around insulting each other.
Damn right. Insulting me has gotta be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel full of voodoo dolls. Often I wonder if both feet could fit in my mouth at once, and if so how to maximize any comic effects of such a boo'hah assfall?
