If I read one more time on here about how the "Democratic Mayor and Governor DO actually share some of the blame but we need to focus...blah blah blah" I am going to punch my monitor. I believe KOS and other front pagers have even repeated this bullshit. This is the kind of shit that loses elections. I am so sick and tired of Democrats trying to appear subdued and respectful in the face of the Republicans stabbing this country in the back. (I know the political argument of appearing level-headed but hey, here's a thought: how's that working for us?) It is disgusting...
I understand a pacifists point of view but sometimes, and KOS even took a bunch of crap for saying something similar a while back, fighting back and going to the mattresses is necessary. When dems say stuff like this, most aren't saying it because they truly believe it, they are saying it to seem rational and that will always make your argument weak especially against people who are willing to lie at every step.
I know its ugly people but this is the world we live in and until Democrats start growing up and realizing we don't live in the fairyland, idealistic world of movies where the good person always wins in the end, we are going to keep losing, and in fact, dying, if you look at the last five years.
Even if you believe that the state should have been more prepared, keep it to yourself for chrissakes. Yes we need to properly study this and figure out what to do right the next time but even if the local officials share some of the responsibility (which I will disprove below), a competent federal government should have been able to negate those mistakes meaning the federal government, in failing its duties is 100% responsible for the ineptitude leading up to, and the aftermath of, Katrina. This is no small point and I think we need to really examine it...
Baseline, all told, NOLA had approximately 400 busses that could possibly evacuate people....with a capacity of 40-50 on each bus... That doesn't even touch the numbers we are talking about here. But even if you did try to use all 400, where are you going to get the drivers? Most of them are going to evacuate in the face of a CAT 5 hurricane because THEY can afford to do so and most of them probably have families. But lets say half of them do the "right thing" and stay. It would take them 15-20 trips each just to get the very poorest and elderly. Now ask yourself this, do you think YOU would want to drive back into a hurricane zone 15-20 times? (remember that its easy to say yes...now) So there you lose at least 50-100 more drivers, say, so it gets even tougher. Then add in the traffic jams of all the people evacuating in their own cars and it becomes impossible for the city to handle this on its own... Another aspect of this that people just don't seem to connect on is where the hell were all these people supposed to go? There is almost a quarter million displaced people in Texas right now. Was it the mayor and governor's responsibility to organize massive shelters like all the nearby sports stadiums for these people? Does anyone honestly believe that makes any sense? Could the governor have tried to organize some of this herself, yes but we are talking about over a million people being moved into all the surrounding states...doesn't that sound like something maybe the federal government should coordinate?
Does that mean that the state and local officials shouldn't have tried anyway? Of course not, but lets get fucking real about who is going to deal with a storm like this in a city that looks rather like a mobile home in a tornado.
Let me also make a quick point about having distance from the issue to provide calm leadership... Nagin got so pissed he was swearing at one point in interviews and the governor was crying and then blathering about shooting people. Did they lose their composure for a while? Of course they did (rightfully so I believe, considering), I wouldn't want a representative of me who wasn't somewhat taken aback by how awful this whole thing was for their constituents, the people who looked to them for leadership. That is why they cannot be the people expected to deal with something that is of such a great scale that people find it hard to find a comparable disaster in America'a history.
Do we really expect a governor or mayor to handle the largest natural disaster in US history? Come on people... don't spin their bullshit for them...
This is exactly WHY the national response plan has explicit provisions for local military commanders to simply take over a situation even without orders from on high. Yes we have laws and protections to keep the military from being used on its own people, but in times of dire emergency, these things OBVIOUSLY should fall by the way side and all the rules and red tape should be forgotten to save the people.
As I said before, even if you think they had messed up, the federal government knew a week in advance of this possibility (and if they didn't, then they must not watch the news) and if they felt the mayor and governor were not doing enough to handle the danger then they could have taken over without any questions asked and simply sent every single bus, truck, humvee, ryder truck, whatever it took, from the surrounding areas into the city to evacuate those people. The national guard should have been there on the spot to prevent the city falling into a scene from Somalia, and as much as I agree with the argument that the LA national guard is obviously in the wrong spot right now, THESE assholes are the ones saying they had plenty of troops and Iraq is not a factor. Ok, if thats true then why weren't there 15,000 of them on call and ready to take over the city within 24-48 hours of the hurricane passing through? And don't anyone try to give me the excuse it was tough to communicate or get in there because, while that may actually be true for the local officials, this is the US fucking military that can do amazing things in hours that none of us could possibly comprehend.
So please, lets wake the hell up and stop weakening the truth here by trying to sound rational...it doesn't work. This disaster is 100% at the feet of this president and his administration and anyone who denies that is full of complete and utter bullshit...and even if you are full of bullshit, how many times do you have to see that being wishy washy on issues makes you lose when you face lying, criminal, scumbags like this administration.
George Bush is to blame...
George Bush is reponsible for this...
George Bush should be held accountable for this...
Those are the only clear truths here and if you "just want to be honest" then it doesn't get any easier than that....
[Update] I forgot to mention that the money it would cost to protect one of the, if not THE, most important major sea ports in this country, could not possibly come from one of the poorest major cities in one fo the poorest states in the country, especially when they have poverty , and al lthe attending problems poverty brings, on the sort of scale that NOLA had. Where were the mayor and governor supposed to get the money to do the RIGHT projects to fix the levees or to be able to perform an effective evacuation plan on their own? Hell they probably didn't even have enough extra money to pay for the gas for a single round of busses to bus people out, let alone all the rest...
SO.FUCKING.ANGRY