Puleeeeeeze. Somebody do something. Fast.
Where is the city council in all of this? The Governor? Parish leaders?
First the Mayor of Nawlins' failed to remove his people from harm's way and now he wants them to return to a cesspool of disease and distruction?
I forgot. His city is bankrupt (or so he announced last week) and the solution is to bring in 180,000 or so residents to revive the tourism trade -- nevermind the health and welfare of tourists (much less his own citizens).
Has anyone thought to ask WHY he moved his family to Houston????
Hopefully, more stable and responsible "minds" will prevail -- one way or the other. Methinks General Honore and Admiral Allen need to take the irresponsible Mayor Nagin on a short walk through the streets of his own city ....
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Eye on the Harpie Corps
Dr. Carl F. Horowitz writes in Townhall.com: .... let's put away the FEMA jokes for just a minute, and give a modest round of applause for the feds. In the week following the main levee's breach, the military and the Coast Guard managed to rescue more than 32,000 stranded civilians, many from rooftops by helicopter. The Army Corps of Engineers all but completely repaired levee breaches, and began pumping large quantities of water. Fact: Federal response time for Hurricane Katrina was faster, not slower, than for hurricanes Hugo (1989) or Andrew (1992), each a brutally destructive Category 5 storm in its own right.
The primary villain in the Hurricane Katrina saga, of course, was Katrina herself. Yet the aftermath of the storm seems to have unleashed a pent-up fury among paint-by-numbers Bush-haters. The entire Democratic Party and its unofficial brain trust, it seems, have gotten in on the action.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi denounced President Bush as "oblivious" to the suffering of others. Her California Democrat colleague, Rep. Barbara Lee, was even more barbed. "If anyone ever doubted that there are two Americas," she huffed, "this disaster and our government's shameful response to it have made the division clear for all to see."
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We'll keep an eye on the outspoken Congressional harpie-corps of Bush-bashers to see if they now remain oblivious to the relief efforts the President proposes.
The primary villain in the Hurricane Katrina saga, of course, was Katrina herself. Yet the aftermath of the storm seems to have unleashed a pent-up fury among paint-by-numbers Bush-haters. The entire Democratic Party and its unofficial brain trust, it seems, have gotten in on the action.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi denounced President Bush as "oblivious" to the suffering of others. Her California Democrat colleague, Rep. Barbara Lee, was even more barbed. "If anyone ever doubted that there are two Americas," she huffed, "this disaster and our government's shameful response to it have made the division clear for all to see."
---------
We'll keep an eye on the outspoken Congressional harpie-corps of Bush-bashers to see if they now remain oblivious to the relief efforts the President proposes.
Saturday, September 03, 2005
WHY?
Why did the wealthiest nation in the world watch in helpless disbelief as two natural disasters devastated a region of 90,000 square miles?
What else could we have done?
Three days before the storm, the President declared LA a national disaster area. The LA Governor called in National Guard units and FEMA resources were set up outside New Orleans. The Red Cross set up a distribution center 80 miles away. The Mayor of New Orleans had the total public transit system, city and government vehicles and a fleet of school buses at his disposal ....
And the buses sat in the parking lots.
Two days before the hurricane hit, NOAA announced "Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks... maybe longer," it went on to say. "Power outages will last for weeks... as most power poles will be down and transformers destroyed. Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards."
Those who had the resources to leave, left. Those who didn't, waited -- either because they did not have the resources to leave, chose not to leave for a variety of now defense-less reasons or chose to rely on historic pride in having weathered previous hurricanes.
And the buses sat in the parking lots.
Then Katrina came with savage fury. In her wake, resources and aid stood ready.
Until the flooding.
The levee system which had been in a state of upgrade since 1965 collapsed. It broke, coincidentally, in a section that had already been rebuilt to withstand a category 3 hurricane ....
No matter that funding to determine upgrades to withstand a category 5 hurricane was to begin in 2006 .... The buses that might have carried thousands more lives to safety were now sitting in floodwaters.
And with the second natural disaster, all post-hurricane infrastructures and conduits for basic needs, sanitation, communications, aid, access and delivery systems were rendered useless. Chaos reigned.
Survivors of the hurricane and the rushing floodwaters waded or swam to higher ground.
To stand in lines awaiting other buses.
While their own sat in flooded parking lots.
What else could we have done?
Three days before the storm, the President declared LA a national disaster area. The LA Governor called in National Guard units and FEMA resources were set up outside New Orleans. The Red Cross set up a distribution center 80 miles away. The Mayor of New Orleans had the total public transit system, city and government vehicles and a fleet of school buses at his disposal ....
And the buses sat in the parking lots.
Two days before the hurricane hit, NOAA announced "Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks... maybe longer," it went on to say. "Power outages will last for weeks... as most power poles will be down and transformers destroyed. Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards."
Those who had the resources to leave, left. Those who didn't, waited -- either because they did not have the resources to leave, chose not to leave for a variety of now defense-less reasons or chose to rely on historic pride in having weathered previous hurricanes.
And the buses sat in the parking lots.
Then Katrina came with savage fury. In her wake, resources and aid stood ready.
Until the flooding.
The levee system which had been in a state of upgrade since 1965 collapsed. It broke, coincidentally, in a section that had already been rebuilt to withstand a category 3 hurricane ....
No matter that funding to determine upgrades to withstand a category 5 hurricane was to begin in 2006 .... The buses that might have carried thousands more lives to safety were now sitting in floodwaters.
And with the second natural disaster, all post-hurricane infrastructures and conduits for basic needs, sanitation, communications, aid, access and delivery systems were rendered useless. Chaos reigned.
Survivors of the hurricane and the rushing floodwaters waded or swam to higher ground.
To stand in lines awaiting other buses.
While their own sat in flooded parking lots.
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