Katrina Devastates South, Underlines Incompetancy of US Government
First, Let There Be Links:
- Condi finds time durning a hectic national crisis to buy some shoes and catch a play.
- Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and George plays Guitar while New Orleans Drowns.
- Bush’s Photo Ops
- Possible faked levy repair — “But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast – black and white, rich and poor, young and old – deserve far better from their national government.” — Senator Mary Landrieu
- Federal agency ’slow’ to accept business help — FT.com
- Why FEMA turned away help — Daily Kos
- After Failures, Government Officials Play Blame Game — New York Times — When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away, he said. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish’s emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said.
- Homeland Security won’t let Red Cross deliver food — Post-Gazette.com
- Many ways to aid victims — ZWire.com — The Associated Press displays daily images in newspapers and on Web sites featuring the dead lying on the ground or seated in chairs, with no one to tend to them. “USA Today talks about the body count and the things that are going on since it has been declared a national disaster area,” [Tom Dudelston, a funeral director with J. Warren Funeral Services in Casa Grande] explained. “They won’t let anyone in there. You have to be FEMA-certified and I am not,” he said.
- Just to give you a sense of just how badly FEMA has f*cked up. — Daily Kos
- Daley ’shocked’ at federal snub of offers to help — Chicago Tribune
- Updates as they come in on Katrina — WWLTV
- First Responders Urged Not To Respond To Hurricane Impact Areas Unless Dispatched By State, Local Authorities — www.FEMA.gov
- Explaining Michael Brown (Head of FEMA) — Ezra Klein
Someday, you folks are going to read about me in the newspaper. I’ll have been arrested for snapping and chewing someone’s throat out with my bare teeth in a slavering, rabid fit of rage. You read it here first.
I’ve had to deal with dumb people all day, and y’all know how that wears on my nerves. Particularly when dumb people are saying ignorant things about important situations. For example, one of my counter coffee-suckers, “Sodom&Gomorrah” Bill, who believes that New Orleans was leveled by a hurricane because of the sins of her citizens. Bill’s a Baptist. According to Bill, gays are sinners, and abortion doctors, and women who have abortions, are murderers, and Bush was chosen by God, and so on and so on, ad nauseum. Fortunately for Bill, he did not spew his filth and stupidity at me. I heard it from another friend at work.
Let me get this clear. Any “god” that would brutally murder thousands of innocent people by way of hurricane to get at a few so-called “sinners” does not deserve any worship from me. Furthermore, should these self-proclaimed “Christians” turn out to be right, and God actually is like that — which I heavily doubt — then allow me to say that I will be the first in line at the Gates of Hell, kicking my way past Cerebus and wading my way through to the front of the recruitment line to join up and beat some Heavenly ass during the Armageddon.
“Kind of . . . coincidental that this hurricane wiped out Sin City, don’t you think?” Bill said to my friend.
First up, jackass, “Sin City” is Los Vegas, not New Orleans. New Orleans is “the Big Easy”. You ignorant fuck. Secondly, no. Its not a coincidence. Its a goddamn tragedy that a lot of people saw coming, and no one managed to do anything about. The fucking city is a soup bowl, situated below sea level, and surrounded by four-story walls of dirt, and water on three sides. If someone so much as spills a cup of fucking tea there, the city will flood. It’s built badly. Yes, they party there. There’s crime and drugs and corruption and poor black people, and scads of naked titties at every available opportunity. Except for having somewhat less naked boobage, every major city in America is just the same way, as far as your “sins” go. Bill, go fuck yourself. People like you are the reason I’m not a Christian.
I was up at the cash register, chatting with a regular who was just leaving. We were having a nice talk about New Orleans, and all the problems, and who to donate to, and how the emergency response had been miserable, and so on. As we were talking, another fellow came up to pay, and stood listening to us while I cashed him out. He started with, “It was all their own fault” — meaning the people who had either chosen to stay, or who, for various reasons, couldn’t leave. It degenerated from there, with him basically saying that it was all those welfare blacks’ fault that they were in that hurricane, they had notice, they could have left, etc. The regular and I politely disagreed, but he overrode us. I said something like, how were they supposed to get out, they didn’t have cars, couldn’t afford gas — “They had three days notice. They should have walked out!”
“Walked where?!” I spluttered. “It’s like 500 square miles of devastation. Where were they supposed to walk to?!” The regular, and older lady, glared at this man and exclaimed to his face, in front of his wife and two little girls, with supreme disgust, “Walked out?! Well, isn’t that just a typical man’s answer!” I burst into laughter, and the older lady laughed a bit too, and the man’s wife and kids roared.
“Yeah,” the guy said, apparently realizing he was out-numbered, “my wife and I have been going around and around about this, too.”
I’m thinking, Apparently your wife is smarter than you. At least the kids have some hope, then.
Now, I’m not saying this is a race issue, but I’m willing to bet that if that convention center in New Orleans had been full of rich white Republicans, it would have been getting emptied out Monday morning, and the useless head of FEMA would have know about it before Thursday. (You need to scroll down about a third of the way — you’re looking for the interview with Mike Brown, head of FEMA.)
A lot of the people who couldn’t get out were old people, sick people, injured people. A lot of the people were able-bodied, and just didn’t have the means. Didn’t have a car, all the buses and planes were booked solid, all the rental cars were rented out, did have the car but couldn’t afford gas, nowhere to go and no money to spend to get there . . . pick a reason, there are lots of them. The 2000 census puts New Orleans’ population at 484,674. When you tell almost 500,000 people to get out of a city right fucking now or they’re going to die, you better believe that all the Greyhounds get filled up pretty damn fast. Come on, now.
I’ve heard a lot of ignorant fuckers saying that the people who stayed behind for whatever reason, were black folks on welfare. These shitstains seem to think that the survivors in New Orleans got what was coming to them because they were just welfare-suckin’ ghetto niggers, and why are we wasting all this effort on trash like that? The 2000 census says that 68% of the population of New Orleans is black, 28% is white, and about 4% is something else. If the majority is black, then the majority of the people we see in the pictures is going to be black. That doesn’t mean, as some people I’ve heard are trying to say, that the majority of the people we’re seeing in dire straights in New Orleans are black welfare ghetto folks. The majority are probably working class black people. I don’t know, and does it fucking matter? Whether they are poor or not, they are still human beings, and whatever their reason for staying in New Orleans, they are suffering now, and need to be rescued. End. Of. Fucking. Story.
Hell, for that matter, I’m a small-town white girl who works 45 hours a week, and there are times during the month when I can’t afford a full tank of gas! And I drive a Festiva — the gas tanks in those are the size of fucking coffee cups!
“They should have walked” — Jesus Christ in a car with an empty gas tank. One of the guys who just got rescued today — I saw this on CNN at work — was a double amputee that the rescuers found sitting in his attic, surrounded by flood waters that reached up to his roof line. The guy didn’t have a car or any family. He should have walked out?
Lots of congresspeople are saying that “this isn’t the time to cast blame”. “We have to concentrate on the rescue effort right now.” I don’t know about the rest of you folks, but I can bitch and work at the same time, and I don’t think this is a unique skill. I think right now is the perfect time to cast blame, and I’ll bet I know where most of the blame should go.
The plain and simple fact of the matter is that we should have had our rescue personnel standing by before Katrina hit. We should have had plans in place to evacuate everyone, forcibly if necessary. We should have all our ducks in a row years before this happened — not just to deal with the devastation, but to deal with any natural catastrophe or large-scale terrorist attack. I’ll even be generous, because government agencies move slowly, but I’m going to say that about six months after 9/11, we should have been ready at a moment’s notice to handle any kind of major tragedy. We should have had the plans and people in place. Am I wrong, or should the government have spent more time on that, and less time on whether or not we needed a constitutional amendment to prevent gay folks from getting married? Just a thought.
August 28th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
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