We know where your guns are!

[Jamie6.5]

AS for New Orleans, it was a highly Democratic Party majority city with a Democrat (idiotic) mayor in a state with a (lame) Democrat governor. Oh, yes, it was a majority poor black city also. Not big Bush fans to begin with.

The NOAA/weather service warned those in power in LA and N.O. what Katrina was, and to get the he77 out. They ignored the warnings. Besides, a good portion of the populace stocked up on party stuff and decided to "hunker down" and hold hurricane parties like many do in Florida every year.

The most telling post-Katrina photo I ever saw was the one with all the school buses parked in their lot. Water half way up to the windows.
If Ray Nagin had a lick of sense and any leadership at all, those buses would have ferried the citizens out in the 36-48 hours prior.

 

[Gunner3456]

-snip-
If Ray Nagin had a lick of sense and any leadership at all, those buses would have ferried the citizens out in the 36-48 hours prior.

No, no, no! You can't think or fend for yourself. You have to sit and wait for the federal government to come and save your azz from your own stupidity so you can blame them for everything that goes wrong, dontcha see?

 

[Jamie6.5]

That sounds about right Gunner.

 

[CEF1959]

Do you or anyone you know honestly believe that?

And the leftists you are so fond of have the unmitigated gall to call me a right-wing whack-job?

Man some people are F&@KED UP!

I'm with Jamie on this one (though not the F&@KED thing. There's a rule against disguising profanity with markers like that on the board).

Katrina was just a screw up. To view it as an intentional act by Republicans against a black population seems paranoid to me. They definitely screwed it up, and it seems reasonable to say they cared less because it was a population that didn't mean that much to them. It seems reasonable to ask: Would the response have been better if it'd been a white Houston suburb? Or an anti-AlQaeda military operation? Yeah....

But I don't think there's any evidence at all that the Bush administration intentionally left people to suffer because they were black. Just neglect. Nothing shocking about that.

 

[Gunner3456]

I'm with Jamie on this one (though not the F&@KED thing. There's a rule against disguising profanity with markers like that on the board).

Katrina was just a screw up. To view it as an intentional act by Republicans against a black population seems paranoid to me. They definitely screwed it up, and it seems reasonable to say they cared less because it was a population that didn't mean that much to them. It seems reasonable to ask: Would the response have been better if it'd been a white Houston suburb? Or an anti-AlQaeda military operation? Yeah....

But I don't think there's any evidence at all that the Bush administration intentionally left people to suffer because they were black. Just neglect. Nothing shocking about that.

I agree with you, but I have a question about the State's responsibility there. Where was Louisiana's NG? Where was the State at all? Where was the local leadership to get those people out of Dodge? There was enough warning, after all, and the state government sat on its azz the whole time too.

If I'm going to choose to live ten feet below sea level (and the level of the Mississippi River which borders the area) behind a dike and in a hurricane zone, I'm going to be ready to get myself out of Dodge. Oh wait, I'd never live in a catastrophe-waiting-to-happen place like that in the first place.

Geez, when you're in the French Quarter in NO, you have to walk UP the sloping dike wall to get to the level of the Mississippi and then look DOWN at the city from the mighty river! If we had a national catastrophe and the grid failed, NO's pumps would stop and the place would flood 10 - 15 again with no help from a hurricane!

Sorry, but I'm never planning on the government to come and save me because it won't happen in time. That's why the old joke: "I carry a gun because a cop is to big and heavy to carry."

 

[Jamie6.5]

I'm with Jamie on this one (though not the F&@KED thing. There's a rule against disguising profanity with markers like that on the board).

Okaaay,... I fixed it.

 

[CEF1959]

I agree with you, but I have a question about the State's responsibility there. Where was Louisiana's NG? Where was the State at all? Where was the local leadership to get those people out of Dodge? There was enough warning, after all, and the state government sat on its azz the whole time too.

Agreed. The whole local apparatus got overwhelmed (Hello? You live under sea level in a hurricane zone) and relied on the feds, who said, "We've got it. Those were Army Corps levees, and this is what FEMA does. Outta the way."

So state and local officials went away to high dry ground, with warm dry beds, trusting idiotically in "Brownie" and his cast of clowns. I'm not sure Louisiana or New Orleans government was ever known for efficiency. Great parties, though.

Heckuva job. All the way around.

 

[Gunner3456]

The sad thing is that the "repair and upgrade" of the dikes is now for a level 3 hurricane.

So what happens when they get a level 4 or 5? Is that my fault, too? After all, they will dump another $100 billion of our/my tax dollars into starting all over again when that happens.

Katrina, although huge, was not nationwide but was rather a microcosm of what could happen in a national disaster including an economic collapse.

There was very real gun confiscation, no power, no water, no food - all of the worst nightmares. However it was a very small part of the whole of the US so there was help eventually.

Anyone notice the difference when later there were very major floods farther North along the Mississippi in the heartland? Those people took care of themselves and I never heard the whining.

 

[4Freedom]

Would people in white Houston neighborhood be shooting at the relief helicopters and looting stores and engaging in anarchy as the people in those neighborhoods in NEw Orleans did? I think people are looking just the surface of the Katrina story and never want to do investigate any deepre like I did. I think a heck of a lot of effort went into helping those people. The city itself was in the worst possible location and there was many warnings, which nobody heeded about the risk of castastrophe. Also, the people of New Orleans were not very receptive to help and people went around looting stores, gangs went around shooting at releif helicopters and were attacking relief workers. I think the people of NEw Orleans are partially to blame. And yes, I do get sick and tire of George W bashing, not to say I really liked him so much as a president, but please enough with the GW scapegoat crap.


BTW.. Isn't our tax money partially helping to house (even to this day), a large number of those people who lost their homes in NEw Orleans?