Now I see why there were so many people left behind.
This man didin't have an answer for ANYTHING except to place blame elsewhere, and when asked about shifting the blame he answered there would be plenty of blame to go around.
Well, let's START with you and the Governor, and then we'll work our way up from there.
Interesting was, he said the NG was there the day after the storm. He also said they had wplenty of warning. Well, why wasn't the NG there the day BEFORE the storm????
A teacher friend of mine says that when she called from West Virginia to coordinate relief efforts in her area, the *Governor himself * answered the phone! The rest of us (In an IRC channel) said that it was great that he wanted to help, but that answering the phone is not the best use of his time. She thought it was admirable, and that he could do more at that grass roots level than higher. I think he could use his status for much more intense good by more prominent means, such speaking with heads of charitable organizations for instance.
*shrug*Natalie
Is this the same mayor that UK news coverage showed the day before the storm saying in very plain language "Get your ass the hell out of town" ?? (and yes - that is a direct quote)
Hey - if people won't listen to advice then it's a bit harsh to blame someone who was standing there shouting it . . . . .
And most of the people that had the wherwithal to do so, did. But as mayor he should have realized there were people, infirm, on welfare, needing medical attention with little or no family that needed to have their asses TAKEN out of town and he mobilized NOBODY.
The Liberal Media here is calling it an Evacuation of THe Wealthy, and for once I agree with them; WHO was thinking about the poor? HINT: In this case, it SHOULD have been LOCAL gevernment; the Mayor and the Govenor, calling the shots. They didn't.
All I know is that I saw a picture of school buses and buses with white tops in a parking lot, literally hundreds of them. This I think on yahoo. They were in a chain link appearing fenced yard wheel deep in water. Whey weren't they on the road? It was pretty apparent on the Friday before that Katrina was heading into the Southern gulf states. Wouldn't have been better to take folks 50 miles north and leave them in a pasture than abandon them & modes of transportation to the floods. The local authorities did not act. They are responsible for initial (you know "first responders"?) response. No one else is initially.
Ron
Very good, Ron, unfortunately it's much, much easier to blame Bush for not getting down there and drive the buses himslef.
Seems to me that if so many had no way of evacuating New Orleans, the local and state governments should have provided transportation. The federal government had declared the area a disaster area two days before the storm hit the gulf cost. It is against the law for the DOD to deploy within the US except at the request of the Governor
mike hunt
The law?? We're talking about president appoint bush here. Fact is he missed a ton of political hay because, as usual, he was asleep or on vacation. No matter. The ENTIRE dog 'n pony show's down there today. Hell, even the rice chick left crawdad long enough for a whistle stop.
I saw the footage of the now being told to quit FEMA director, in no uncertain terms, to get out NOW! (He didn't use all of the expletives that Nagin did, though.) This was at least a day before it hit.
Heck, I live in L.A. (los angeles), and I knew the score was going to be Katrina 1 and NO 00. What were these people thinking, and more importantly, what did the local gov't think they were going to do?
Right-o. The govenor can mobilize the NG when there is an emergency. Seems to me the Mayor should have called the Gov, and said, "Hey, Gov! We need to get these people out of here!"
Too many dropped balls on this one...
What's Bush got to do with it? Nice try, but the Weather Service issued an evacuation warning, and the local government did NOTHING! The Feds did their job, the local officials are the ones the blame rests with here.
Look it up.
He's pretending to be president.
Except pass the warning on and make sure that everyone that could evacuate did evacuate. I'm sure the local cops would take exception to your spin of the truth. From the very start, this was CLEARLY an issue that local and state officials could not handle. That's why we pay the idiots in DC.
The Feds didn't do crap until the embarrassment was world-wide.
You look it up.
Which includes the idiots in Crawford and DC!
There are so many dropped balls on this one it looks like a Bartman convention. Why wasn't the governor getting the river sandbagged if they 'knew' the levees wouldn't hold. When I lived along the Mississippi, when we got threatning weather or rising water coming at us, the Corps was there sandbagging everything in sight.
(Steve Bartman, the one who helped the Chicago Cubs steal defeat from the jaws of victory 2 seasons ago by catching a ball that Moises Alou was after. An event every true Chicagoan remembers as much as the Black Sox scandal or the Billy Goat curse.)
Charles of Kankakee
In all fairness, there was no communication system. I don't know why they -- the mayor/cops/somebody -- didn't have a generator with a radio plugged into it, or why they couldn't get on Fox News and say, "WE NEED THE GUARD TO COME IN AND HELP US."
Clearly the Fox News crews -- and the rest of them too -- were in the city on the overpasses and showing the mayhem and confusion. A reasonable person could see that food and water were sorely needed.
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Ask the community — no account required