Wow, I like this guy! Denver has about a dozen libs writing for our two local rags that I wouldn't mind trading for this guy. Thanks for posting!
Very nice column. Thanks for posting it.
The more I think about this the more I think this is corruption in action. Why do they get to benefit from their failure to care for the people in their city? What's next, a raise for Nagin?
Did a single NYPD or NYFD officer get such a trip 9 days after 9/11? And even if it were offered, would any of them have accepted??
Australia can report on the Red Cross/State Homeland Security but not one US media outlet will report it.
I was hoping Drudge might have been waiting for a newspaper writeup to link to. So far it's only been blogs and transcripts to link to.
But it is so good to see the truth coming their way. . .nonetheless.
Good for him!
Hey Reps in Congress? Why is it an Aussie can defend Bush and you stand in your closets fearing the intruder? Stand up and Fight back!
I think it is clear where the blame lies. The Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana failed the people they claimed to care about the most, the poor and sick. Its ironic that those in charge happened to be an African American man and a liberal white woman. Not that it matters but since it seems to matter so much to the race baiters on the left I'll cut that bait for them because I'm certain that had President Bush taken over from the get go they would have been the first screaming that a whitey chauvinist was stealing all the glory.
Now they are trying to cover their butts and I think they should resign because they failed horribly and showed ineptitude over and beyond the call of duty. How can anyone not see how this morally decrepit pair should be held responsible for failure to lead in a crisis when even today they perform like recalcitrant children unable to make the necessary decisions to evacuate let alone rebuild New Orleans? I think its time that Democrats and Republicans put this pair out of their misery creation business and call for their resignation, it would be and excellent time to set differences aside and agree on something and that something is that the Governor of Lousiana and the Mayor of New Orleans are not fit for the offices they hold and will likely be more of a hinderence rather than a help to the efforts to bring New Orleans back from the brink of no return.
I think it would be fitting if both were sent out of town on a yellow school bus to honor those who died because the Mayor couldn't get greyhound buses and then let them ride cross country together for 24 hours so the Governor has time to decide whether or not to get off or not. These sick individuals are not leaders, they are an embarassment and an example of the worst bureaucracy has to offer.
The foreign press picks this up before our own does. Does that prove my tagline or what?
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NOBODY was supposed to be left trapped in the New Orleans flood bowl death trap as 200,000 low-income residents were as a result of the gross and possibly criminal negligence on the part of the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, who failed to follow their own evacuation plan prior to the landfall of Katrina.
New Orleans is in a Storm Surge Zone, below sea level, and surrounded by levies that were only designed to withstand storms lass than a slow-moving Category 3 hurricane. That means that any person staying in New Orleans during a Category 3 or higher hurricane is facing a very high risk of death. Katrina was forecast as a Category 5 and hit as a Category 4.
What Is "Storm Surge" and Why It Matters.
The 2004 Hurricane Pam Exercise was modeled on a catastrophic destruction of New Orleans after only a slow-moving Category 3 hurricane. It was based on the assumption that there had been a complete evacuation of New Orleans. Shelters outside of the New Orleans flood bowl had already been identified:
The interagency shelter group identified the need for about 1,000 shelters for a catastrophic disaster. The shelter team identified 784 shelters and has developed plans for locating the remaining shelters.
Hurricane Pam Exercise Concludes.(2004 New Orleans Disaster Prediction)
President Bush requested that Governor Blanco allow the Federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, and Governor Blanco, for political reasons, refused:
The Southeast Louisiana Evacuation plan supplement, revised in 2000, page 13, read paragraph 5, stated:
5. The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.
In spite of that, over four hundred New Orleans publicly owned buses, as counted by members of FreeRepublic on post-Katrina satellite images, remained parked in neat rows and 200,000 low-income New Orleans residents were left trapped in the ¡§New Orleans flood bowl¡¨ (as scientists call it) in the face of the incoming storm surge.
Those 400+ buses, at 70 passengers per bus, could have taken 28,000 of those low-income citizens per trip out of New Orleans on the inbound lanes that the Governor and Mayor inexplicably left unused during the evacuation.
As a result, 200,000 of the poorest residents of New Orleans were left trapped din a disaster waiting to happen with no where to go but the Superdome.
While 800,000 of New Orleans' residents with private transportation were being saved, 200,000 of New Orleans', low-income residents were left abandoned by the Governor and the Mayor in the New Orleans flood bowl to face a Category 4 Hurricane Storm Surge.
If the levies had failed catastrophically instead of at a few certain point as they did, the death toll would have reached Hiroshima proportions.
Excellent post, naturalman1975. Passin' it on with a big, ole BUMP!!!
Bump