Posted on 09/02/2005 8:44:35 PM PDT by nwrep
Shepard Smith eyewitness report on O'Reilly: Mayor Ray Nagin intervened today to help tourists (many foreigners) staying at the upscale W hotel downtown escape New Orleans ahead of many of the people in the Superdomw. Tourists were shipped in buses to the Superdome and other connecting buses took them to safety.
Black Mayor Ray Nagin favors "W" tourists. Imagine that headline after all the racist garbage thrown at the President.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1475443/posts
HURRICANE KATRINA- archive of links
various FR links & stories | 09-02-05 | the heavy equipment guy
Posted on 09/02/2005 5:35:55 AM CDT by backhoe
Thanks for the links. Got some reading to do.
I think there is a stark contrast to the 9/11 attacks. In NYC and WDC, this attacks were mostly against people who normally are self-starters. Why aren't you seeing this finger-pointing and racemongering going on in MS and AL.
Why?
Because MS and AL are self-starters. They haven't been raised, like the majority of those left in NO, with possibly 3 or 4 generations of people on the government dole. Welfare is the real culprit here and is the ruin of this country.
Yeah, there is the usual anger and frustration in disasters, but I've never seen anything like this, where people will basically sit and die and not try to help themselves. Nagin is an enabler, and should bear the responsibility for these people because he enabled the frustration to be aimed at the federal government.
Why should it be left for the federal government to act initially. Local government should have been there and should have acted. Short of that, these people should have acted on their own.
I'd would have pulled up and left of my own doing. Instead, all these people just sat there waiting for ol' Uncle Sam to do it all. Pull yourself up and help yourself when all else fails. That's what has been lost on welfare.
How much do think he charged them per head?
I heard someone cursing up a storm yesterday,blasting the federal government for not ''fixing'' this problem fast enough. If this is the same guy '' the mayor'' he sounds like he's ''losing it''.Doesn't inspire much confidence.
I'm sure you are aware that the highway has a checkpoint and those who try to walk (in case you're wondering why they haven't), are turned around and sent back to the dome.
#####
I was talking about the people congregating near the Fox satellite truck, who were stranded in an area with "no food, water, help or information", according to Shep. The food, water etc was at the Superdome. That is where I was saying the people could have walked to. I never said they could have walked out of the city. Sorry for the miscommunication.
Yeah, there is the usual anger and frustration in disasters, but I've never seen anything like this,
#####
Today I saw video in a dry area of NO that looked exactly like a normal day in downtown Port-au-Prince.
He hadn't been properly bribbed yet.
Bush called the governor twice, not the other way around, to take over... he was told no. He also called the mayor, he said everything was under control. That's why Bush came on television and asked everyone to get out re: state of emergency early. It had to be requested by the state.
Obviously, by Nagin's rant then shock when he was asked if he knew the governor had to request it (states rights) for federal entities to get involved. I saw it, I am telling you he had no clue of the Standard Operating Procedures.
#####
Posted in case any freeper has not known this already!
I will add that I was shocked to see "normal" programming on Brit Hume's show Monday evening. I realized that even the people whose business it was to know what is news, had not realized the enormity of the damage to the Gulf Coast. The President, and Homeland Security were in gear long before the media started ranting about how slow rescue and recovery was happening.
But I don't think this is your average parking garage- it's probably higher. They accomodate lots of bus excursions to games and even RVs that would need to get into the garage due to their lack of extensive ground-level parking.
Just did the same thing with Celine Dionne. Too many tears for the situation! Geraldo the sissy-baby a little better tonight. They think that their diatribe was the ONLY thing that made things better. Did not get home early enough to see Shep. How was he?
If you consider that tourists will not likely require further sheltering but rather will flee back to their homes,Bingo!
It took ten posts; everyone else was dragging their knuckles ...
(THIS should have been a no-brainer for MOST folks here!)
Sort of depends. From what little information was contained in the article, these particular tourists had rooms at a hotel. They probably could've waited another day while people with no shelter were evacuated.
Now, if their evacuation was a way to do right by them because they were going to be evicted from their rooms to make space for others, then sure - bus them out. If, however, there were no pressing reason for them to be moved, their priority is secondary to those who were without shelter.
If the tourists in question were lodged and sheltered, then they were already a step ahead of those they were evacuated out ahead of.
Now, I'm not going to question this any further. It may be that these tourists had other factors requiring their evacuation. It is likely that their rooms in the hotel required for rescue and recovery purposes. In that particular case, I agree that just evicting them to fend for themselves would've been a bad idea, and unfair.
There was another group of tourists to which this had happened. They'd made private post-disaster evacuation arrangements and their buses were confiscated. They were unfortunately left to fend for themselves after having been evicted from their hotel, left without their transportation, and none of them were supplied with information or the basic necessities.
Classism would apply if there had been no pressing need to evacuate those tourists. They were already provided with shelter, toss them some food and water, and evacuate those with the most apparent need first.
Of course, we'll never have all the information here. It was nothing more than a passing mention as far as totoal coverage of the disaster goes. It is possible the mayor's motives were suspect, but not very likely. In a chaotic situation like NO, a lot of decisions are going to have to be made quickly with imperfect information.
Not so fast... My understanding is that the W Hotel PAID for the buses to evacuate their guests
______________________________________________________
This is part of the problem. In a disaster you do not let a hotel pay for buses to evacuate their patrons and you do not let Jesse Jackson determine that buses will go get students at Dillard. You do not allow money nor politics to determine where the assets go.
But I guess from now on FEMA will have to concentrate its assets first where ever the press set up and the rest of the people maybe in more dire need can just die.
People needed to be gotten off roofs first in this thing. That is what I saw happening. The people in the shelters should have been safe, but since the people of N.O. could not behave in a disaster, they were not.
You are welcome to suspect anything, but taking care of strangers is one of the staples in Judeo-Christian morality. This "rule of thumb" exists in part because they are KNOWN to suffer more in a typical situation, and nobody in crisis has time to evaluate the suffering with precision that you suggest.
Though shall care for the widows and orphans in your midst, and for the strangers, for you too were a stranger in the Land of Egypt.
Observe that these people spoke English. What is a foreigner to do if (s)he does not.
I don't know whether you travelled much, but I do hope that you will be treated better than what you advocate yourself.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.