This article was taken off the Steve Czaban website. For those of you that don't know, Czabe has a nationally syndicated sports talk show on the radio every morning based out of Washington DC. I love this article, the sarcasm button works on his computer, why can't it work on mine? Anyway, here it is, what do you guys think:
"It didn’t take a genius to be able to predict the tone and coverage of the Hurricane Katrina anniversary by most of the “Drive By” liberal media.
I said it would go something like this.
(Condensed talking point) “It’s all President Bush’s fault, because he’s STUPID, and HATES black people.”
Sure enough, here it comes. Today on the Today Show, Matt Lauer has Mike Brown on the set. Hmm, I thought? That’s odd. He was the guy everybody HATED a year ago! Why would they give him a forum?
Oh, I get it. So he can throw PRESIDENT BUSH UNDER THE BUS!
Which is exactly what he did.
The Washington Post ran a headline front page article: “President and His Critics Mark Katrina Anniversary.”
Ah yes, never forget those critics. Lest anyone forget, how much this was Bush’s fault. We’ll put it right there in the headline.
Look, let’s be honest okay?
New Orleans was a very clean, politically honest, highly efficient city before Katrina.
The levee boards were NOT comprised of political grifters and scam artists.
Everybody wanted the levees to be built higher.
Nobody EVER thought a hurricane would EVER do this.
Tens of thousands of residents were NEVER told to leave the city, it all caught them by surprise.
The Superdome should have had temporary hot showers, a temporary kitchen, full-sized beds, wi-fi hotspots, video games, daycare, and senior activities set up in 4 days notice to accommodate a crowd of 40,000 plus refugees for a week.
The argument that “if Geraldo could get into New Orleans in a day, why couldn’t the buses” is an excellent point. Because dropping Geraldo, his mustache wax, a camera man, and a producer into the city, is no different than getting 500-plus fully gassed up buses with certified drivers and a place to put those 20,000 homeless refugees.
Mayor Ray Nagin did not leave an entire fleet of school buses sitting in a flooded parking lot. That photo you saw was doctored.
Governor Kathleen Blanco was in complete command. She only cried to show how much she cared about the devastation. Once the cameras were off, she went right back to kicking ass and taking names.
The New Orleans Police Department really shined. It was perhaps their finest hour.
The media thoroughly vetted the accuracy of every one of their sensational stories they ran with, like the ones about families having to eat floating corpses, or serial gang-rapes in the back of the Convention Center.
The fact that the ENTIRE city hasn’t been TOTALLY re-built after ONE FULL YEAR is an outrage, and a national disgrace. The tsunami victims had their straw huts back up and running in about 6 months.
Global warming will continue to produce more of these monster storms if we don’t DO SOMETHING right away. It’s a proven fact that smokestacks cause hurricanes, didn’t you see the movie?
I mean come on people! You know all this is true. And I know all this is true. Stop hiding behind your lame excuses! It’s all Bush’s fault, and oh by the way, he’s stupid, and hates black people."
Quote from an Army Corp rescuer last night on the NOVA "1 year later" show:
"I couldn't believe over 100,000 people stayed!"
Watching the program last night it was obvious - THAT was the biggest problem. Simply TOO many idiots hung around. The fact that less than 1% of them died is a miracle, and a testament to the rescue operations.
Furthermore, I watched a 20/20 special the other day about the people that obviously couldn't get out because they were in the hospital. The rescuers were forced to make split decisions on who should go and who should stay through the use of a helicopter. The interviewer was damn near accusing these guys of making bad decisions and it seemed like she was trying to get them to say they made some mistakes. , I'd like to see that interviewer, or any of us for that matter forced into a situation where we had to decide on what people live and what people die (maybe). I think the rescuers last year did a unreal job that I wouldn't want to have to do in a million years. I personally thank God that there are people like that out there. Now unfortunately, the only thing we will hear about is who's fault it was that it happened.
I saw the same show; felt VERY sorry for the accusations being thrown at the nurses/docs.
So what should the solution have been to get those people out of the city?
Ok, then you are in agreement that they should have had the foresight to get out of town. I agree with you then. I thought you meant that someone should have shipped them all out, like the government for instance. Never mind.
There comes a time when all individuals must take responsibility for their own safety. I realize that there were some legitimate excuses for not leaving but the main excuse was " I've never left before and I ain't gonna do it this time." How many times had that city dodged the bullet before? They just didn't take it seriously till it was too late. End of story!
That's not a terribly remarkable figure when you understand that an LSU study ("Hurricane Pam") done a couple of years before Katrina showed more than 100,000 people living in the Greater New Orleans metropolitan area (Metro NOLA population was about 1.3 million before Katrina) did not have independent means of transportation to leave the city in the event of a mandatory evacuation:
Most of us assume that it would be simply a matter of deciding whether or not to heed an evacuation order. For some (almost 10% of the population of New Orleans) the ability to heed that order requires that they get some help -- maybe the public transportation that they've relied upon for most or all of their lives, or perhaps, hoping that they're not too late in calling one of the few friends who has a car and might have a little bit of extra space to squeeze in one more evacuee.
City and State leaders did a very poor job of providing public means to aid in the evacuation of the large number of people they knew would be otherwise unable to leave New Orleans, particularly given the late hour at which evacuations were ordered.
I don't know that a person is an "idiot" if he or she is too poor to own a car. The poverty issues in New Orleans are still another facet of Katrina that warrants exploration in other contexts. Katrina revealed what a lot of people had long known about that city -- that the chasm between wealthy and poor was immense and not closing.
There you go, ruining a perfectly good knee-jerk thread.
Buses should have been running into neighbohoods, bull-horns blaring 24/7 leading up to that thing. After the storm, more messages needed to get out that the levees had breached and the water was rising (apparently caught people in their sleep the night after).
Although any level of authority COULD have provided the measures, I tend to side with those who put the blame more at the local or state level for not more effectively handling the evacuation.
The slow response of FEMA afterwards was nothing to write home about, but there never should have been THAT MANY people to deal with.
That certainly would seem to have been one solution. I think it's particularly appalling that nothing even resembling that plan was put into action as Katrina approached, given the facts revealed by the Pam study.
I don't think there's any level of government that doesn't share some part of the blame for the situation that has existed in New Orleans for the last year. In the days before the storm, the onus was clearly on the state and local officials to make adequate arrangements and give sufficient notice to permit timely evacution of however many wished to leave the city. Clearly, there's little the local or state governments could do to protect those who had the means to leave but chose not to. But for those who wished to find refuge from the storm (i.e., those who found themselves at the Superdome and the Convention Center before Katrina hit), it's incomprehensible that there was no infrastructure to allow evacuation.
The response of FEMA is becoming more understandable in light of the revelations that the Department of Homeland Security was largely unimpressed with the magnitude of the problem and slow to cut through red-tape to permit FEMA to respond adequately to the situation that grew geometrically worse over time.
Katrina didn't actually hit NO. The much worse Katrina wind and water damage was done to the east in MS.
In a way, "les Nouvelle Orleaneais" who decided to stay, included the rich ones on high ground, actually dodged the hurricane bullet, again. ie, they rolled the dice and won. What the low-landers got hit and killed with with was sub-standard Army civil engineering that was not tested to Category 3, and which failed after the storm passed.
So do subsistence-level black residents, many employed poorly or not at all, and many who don't trust The Man's weatherman, of the low-lying areas:
1) bet, again, that the storm will not proably not be so bad and stay in their low-cost homes (the devil they know, and are affording). Was the Army Corps of Engineers, Nagin, FEMA etc running around screaming to these people that the levees were going to break? Or did they silently toe the dubya/FEMA line that "nobody foresaw the levees breaking"
or,
2) do they hop in their vehicules and drive for unknown 100s of (gas)miles to a hotel and start racking up absolutely certain hotel+food bills of at least $100+/day for an unknown number of days (the devil they don't know and probably can't afford), while leaving their (probably uninsured) homes unguarded for looters?
From a comfortable, middle-class distance of several 100 miles, it's so easy to call the stayers stupid. But "walk a mile in their shoes" and see if you make the same decision they did.
I think if you are going to criticize you should indeed walk a mile in their shoes, that way you'll be a mile away from them, plus you'll have their shoes.
"johnsmith"
plonk!
What the does plonk mean?
I think he was equating you with a piece of turd as it falls in the toilet.
Onomatopoeia
I don't know you enough to say if I agree or disagree... but I do believe that's what Señor boutons_ was inferring.
Ahh, thank you for the information. So what you are telling me is that this little boutons character is also famous for being a gigantic -bag. I see.
He put you on ignore. He doesn't like people he can't shout down or call a nazi or a repug.
Oh, so he's kind of like a dictator. Gotcha, I'll remember that from here on out. Very open minded boutons, for shame, for shame.
Plus, what's not to like about this quote, it's pure magic?
Especially when quoted by yourself!! It just gets better!!! More please!!
That was the point jackass. I see reading comprehension isn't one of your stronger skills. Seriously, are you up to a seventh level knight yet Frodo?
I'm old, but is that a Dungeons and Dragons reference? Are you serious?
I'm sorry, I don't speak gigantic nerd, what are you talking about?
He's referring to another poster who is known for both his lack of coherency and his frequent childish attacks on other posters.
I'm fairly certain you are not him, because if you were, the phrase "gigantic nerd" would be misspelled.
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