While Bush fiddles, New Orleans dies

Newsday ^ | September 4, 2005 | Jimmy Breslin

[gitmo]

This is a review of the performance of George W. Bush in tight times in this nation. It might explain the single solitary most catastrophic collapse of American government in all of our times. Mark ye well. This was the week when we turned a major American city into Haiti, and racism put its hand out and started to choke a nation, and it may not let go.

With the water coming from the sky and the bottom of the sea, driving with such ferocity that a major American city, New Orleans, followed its face into the water, George W. Bush was at North Island in Coronado, Calif., speaking to a blindingly white audience of 9,000 sailors in uniform.

At the hour, blacks were drowning in New Orleans. Blacks pushed through water that was up to their chests and was thick with the rawest sewage of a major city. Blacks were on rooftops begging to live. Wherever cameras swept, the only thing that was white was a towel being waved by a black woman begging for help, while the tiny black legs of a baby dangled from her shoulder.

Bush was in white Coronado to speak to a military audience on the anniversary of V-J Day.

Get those sailors in their whites clapping.

He barely seemed to understand there was a hurricane for the first three days. He was in Coronado, outside San Diego, and in his speech, he managed to mention New Orleans, by saying that people should not return to their homes until rescue crews could do their work.

Nobody had to be told not to return to their homes because they don't have homes to return to, and no bus fare to go anywhere.

[gitmo]

I thought bilgewater sorta covered that. That stuff is disgusting.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

No bus fare to go anywhere

And no busses, thanks to Hizzoner Nagin...

[dufekin]

Change "Bush" to "Blanco" and I might agree. What an indecisive twit! If there's a racist demagogue in this story, she's the one. She has all the leadership skills of President James Buchanan (1857-61)...oops, that's overstating her performance immeasurably. Bush and Nagin tell her to make a decision to protect lives, and she wimps and demands another few days before trying to save anyone.

[onyx]

Rich target area.

I am sooooooooo sick of this BS.

[billnaz]

Let the RATS keep it up. Eventually it will come back to bite them squarely on the posterior.

Even Ted Kennedy and Shrillery Clinton are smart enough to stay away from the Kool-aid on this one!

[scott7278]

NEWSTRASH Ping

[Jorge]

At the hour, blacks were drowning in New Orleans. Blacks pushed through water that was up to their chests and was thick with the rawest sewage of a major city. Blacks were on rooftops begging to live.

Bush was in white Coronado to speak to a military audience on the anniversary of V-J Day.
Get those sailors in their whites clapping.

Please tell me this article is a joke..a parody of the racial paranoia we hear from a Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.

It's amazing how this disaster has brought the nut cases out of the woodwork.

[kenth]

I couldn't find a byline anywhere. If they believe this complete and utter BS, why don't they sign their name to it?

[smoothsailing]

I think I'll just stick with my tag-line on this bilge.

[samiam1972]

This sounds like a DU rant! Pitt, is that you?

[Travis McGee]

I hope that sooner or later the MSM discovers that New Orleans did have a written emergency plan to cover the evacuation of the poor, but that the idiot mayor of New Orleans ignored it, and allowed the evacuation buses to be ruined by the flood, forgotten.

The city leaders had at least two full days to use these hundreds of buses to evac the poor, exactly as their own emergency management plan called for.

Here's the southeast Louisiana evac plan supplement, most recently revised in 2000. Go to page 13, read paragraph 5. It states:

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.

[Marauder]

This crap reads like something Bob Herbert would sling together, or maybe even Leonard Pitts.

[Virginia Queen]

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN BY AN IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!
Excuse me. I shouldn't insult idiots like that.

[zarf]

Jimmy Breslin?

[gitmo]

Correction:

This was the week when a major American city demonstrated to the world what a hellhole it really was, and black racists put out their hands and started to choke, rape and murder people who were mainly white.

Amazing how stress makes one's true nature show. Some of us find out we are heroes. Some of us find out we are vile. But I can't recall any disaster that turned up this much scum.

[demkicker]

I can't wait for these bastards to get what they wish for: HEARINGS about "who" dropped the ball in New Orleans. It will then soon become apparant that the foul mouthed mayor of New Orleans and the incompetent teary-eyed-nit-wit mayor, Blanco, caused most of the damage by their pathetic apathy and pass-the-buck mentality. The blame will not stick to Bush unless he crawls into a hole and doesn't defend himself.

[Anti-Bubba182]

I can see why no one would want a byline on this.

[FeeinTennessee]

Should read:

While Mayor Nagin runs and hides, New Orleans dies

[FlingWingFlyer]

"Who writes this drivel?

Good question. Obviously they are too embarrassed to put their name on it.

[PositiveCogins]

by cwb

From even before the beginning of this crisis, the Louisiana Governor,
Kathleen Blanco, has treated this
situation as a political issue. As I watched her last Sunday morning
press conference, I was amused at how
she invoked the presidents name on several occasions.

Blanco noted how she spoke to the president the day before (Saturday)
and how it was Bush who called
her to issue a state of emergency for the state of Louisiana. This was
unusual since I know (from living in
Florida) that it is usually the Governor who makes this declaration. But
even more unusual was how
Blanco noted that it was also the president who called her to insist and
plead that she issue a mandatory
evacuation.

At the time I didn't realize why she was turning all this responsibility
over to the president...but than I
realized why. Just a year ago when Hurricane Ivan barely missed the city
of New Orleans, both the
Governor and the city planners took extreme heat for the inconveniences
they caused their population
when hurricane Ivan didn't hit their city. Both state and local
officials took criticism from all areas,
including their failures to prepare for that hurricane.

Amazingly, that criticism led to the slow reactions we saw this past
weekend as katrina approached the
Louisiana coast. Each public official looked to the other to make the
life-saving calls because they didn't
want to be responsible for another false alarm. In other words, their
was no leadership from the start.
When President Bush called on Saturday to ask what the heck was going
on, the governor finally took
action because she now had her scape-goat should Katrina not hit the
city.

What's outrageous about this is that we only have to go back to
hurricane Ivan to see what this reluctance
meant. From the beginning the mayor was warned of his inadequate city
plans. This was even exposed in
an AP report from September 19, 2004 by Kevin McGill titled "Ivan
exposes flaws in N.O.'s disaster
plans." Not only was the mayor warned about his problem of relocating
the poor, homeless advocacy
groups insisted he make changes.

A quote from the article notes: "They say evacuate, but they don't say
how I'm supposed to do that,"
Latonya Hill, 57, said at the time. "If I can't walk it or get there on
the bus, I don't go. I don't got a car.
My daughter don't either."..."Even the ACLU criticized the mayor,
noting, "If the government asks people
to evacuate, the government has some responsibility to provide an option
for those people who can't
evacuate and are at the whim of Mother Nature," said Joe Cook of the New
Orleans ACLU.

The mayor had a full year and yet nothing was done. And this is
reprehensible since even the American
Red Cross informed the mayor that they would no longer be setting up
shelters within the city for
hurricanes over category-2. They informed the mayor that is was just too
dangerous and that his city was
ill-prepared to handle the crisis. Others even warned that the Superdome
was insufficient since it would
turn into an island with thousands trapped. This all happened a year
ago. Mayor Ray Nagin's
spokeswoman, Tanzie Jones responded to the criticism... "Our main focus
is to get the people out of the
city," she said. Hmm...yet we all see the pictures of school buses
siting useless in drowned-out parking
lots.

The politics didn't stop there. Every state governor has a National
Guard at their disposal...not to mention
all the State Police and law enforcement agencies at their call.
Louisiana still retained 66% of their NG for
a crisis just like this. In fact, having been declared a state of
emergency by the president (last Saturday),
the governor not only has the power to request federal resources, she
can request the NG from
surrounding states. She did neither before this storm.

But what makes matters worse is that this governor failed to use her own
National Guard for the purposes
of law enforcment. This was a political decision because she did not
want to be the person giving orders
that might result in the shooting of "poor, black people." Can you
imagine the outrage come election time.
This was made more difficult since not only did the mayor of NO...but
also her own Attorney General,
begin justifying the looting shortly after the hurricane passed.
Ironically, these people even had almost a 24
hour window to clean up this mess (and evacuate) after the hurricane
passed...and before the levees
broke. Sadly, they dropped their guard thinking they got away with
another near-miss.

While we all understand the need to survive, this lawlessness broke out
immediately, with people taking
everything in sight. As a result, chaos ensued and the governor, for
political reasons, just would not take
control of a situation that would surely destroy her political chances
if poor, black people were killed. You
could even hear the justification by some as if these people were owed
these things. The sad fact is, there
was a lack of leadership from the start. Is it any wonder cops were
laying down their badges and walking
off the job. It wasn't Katrina that destroyed this city...it was the
politicians

11 posted on 09/03/2005 10:57:34 AM PDT by cwb (Liberalism is the opiate
of the *asses)