Except that both pages have included misinformation (which I believe the federal government is only too happy to allow stand uncorrected), namely this paragraph:
The truth of the matter is, that declaration by Bush was in response to Hurricane Cindy from 7 weeks before and had nothing whatsoever to do with Katrina.
It’d be nice if someone would edit those pages to reflect the truth. I don’t trust myself to put it in an unbiased and non-bitter manner.
Amigo, the state of Louisiana has known for decades that this was going to happen. There have been repeated studies of the levee system and the adverse affect of what was being done to the Mississippi delta, each of them pretty much predicting exactly what did happen. They were ignored and the corrupt local government entities diverted the funds to other things, primarily their own wallets.
Louisiana has always had a “our government is more corrupt than your government” sort of perverse pride. And it is that corruption that is directly to blame for what happened in New Orleans. If they had spent the money on levee maintenance and improvement around the city like they were supposed to, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
You can’t hang this one on Bush. It rest squarely on the state of Louisiana. I will grant that the FEMA situation is unacceptable and it happened on Bush’s watch, but that is a totally different can of worms.
Jesus wept. Then he wiped a sleeve across his cheeks and said, “Fuck this shit. I’ve had my fill. If ye need to bellow bullshit, keep thy head tucked firmly up thy own hindquarters, so that the echo of thy bullshit fallest on thy ears only and not on the ears of others who are sick unto death of it.”
If Clothahump (or any one of thousand of others) wrote the Bible.
A couple people have mentioned tha the levees were under the control of the federal government and that repairing them at a local or state level wasn’t possible because of jurisdictions. Does anyone have a cite for this? I’ve heard both sides argue over the levees (the Right* saying that it’s LA’s and NO’s fault for not taking care of their own house and the Left* saying it was a Federal job with a slashed budget) but, aside from showing that there was a budget, indeed cut, for the ACoE to work on the levees, I haven’t seen anything saying that NOLA or the state couldn’t have done so on their own accord. Just curious.
Right/Left used for convience. I know it’s not solely a partisan issue.
Who’s in the shit? We all are. The levees could have been built larger and stronger, but who wanted to spend the necessary $?
After every disastrous fire, people gnash their teeth and say that such-and-such an ordinance should have been passed regarding sprinklers, smoke detectors, a fireman in a fucking closet, etc. but when folks have to pay for this shit, people’s wallets slam shut like a turtle’s asshole.
Have we known that NO would be fucked twelve ways for Tuesday if a major hurricane hit? You bet. Did the locals and the state and the feds want to spend money for preventive action on a statistically unlikely occurrence? No. Collectively, we played a losing hand and Mother Nature has now taken the hand, the pot, the table, and pissed in our drinks.
The aftermath is ugly, and we’ll all pay for short sight. Kindly stop looking for convenient scapegoats.
Oh, puh-leeze. I don’t remember being personally asked to support funding the levees around New Orleans. We have to be rational about this. The voters of New Orleans will have their chance to judge the Mayor’s response, and the citizens of Louisiana will have their chance to judge the Governor’s response. The rest of us get to judge the Federal Response, from absentee Bush to unqualified Chertoff to even less qualified Brown right down the ladder.
On the evidence, the Bush Administration’s performance here sucked hugely, so hugely many people are wondering what the HELL they’ve been doing to make America safer over the last four years. Less than nothing to judge by their performance wrt Katrina.
The levees are maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, and improvements thereto aren’t the purview of a local official who can award a contract to Fred & Ed’s Levee Improvement & Storm Doors, LLC.
We, meaning you and me and everyone who pays federal taxes in the US of A have funded the ACoE, and our elected officials decided how to spend the money. Hindsight being 20/20, we should have made those levees nukeproof, but would the electorate have nodded yes to make that investment? Not on a prayer-other projects took precedence.
Despite the fuckups of this administration, your charge is one that won’t stick.
Ah, more bullshit. “The electorate wouldn’t support it?” The money went to tax cuts (which the electorate would have supported) and to pay for the war in Iraq, which the electorate wouldn’t have supported (until the Bush administration lied about the dangers present in Iraq).
If the Bush administration had told the American people that one of the three greatest dangers was the levees breaking or being overtopped, they would have supported continuing to fund the levee projects at the same rate, not bringing them to a halt for the first time in 37 years. The Bush administration made choices. They have to be accountable for those choices. Do you disagree with the idea that people should be held to account for the outcomes of the decisions that they make?
While your head is up there, you might want to check to see if you have any polyps on your colon.
If this had happened in the Hampton’s, everybody would have been rescued in time to get dinner at the Four Seasons and figure out which summer home to flee to during reconstruction.
Bush sat on his ass, and like all of his other cronies who were on vacation, and didn’t do a damn thing until it was far too little, and far too late. Even Republicans in Washington are grumbling about Bush’s ineptitude. But not you…oh no, Bush was a fuckin’ beacon of light and visionary hero.
And granting the FEMA situation is unacceptable is rich…who was the dickhead who put his woefully inexperienced buddy as the head of the organization? And wasn’t this the same idiot who decided FEMA should be a part of Homeland Security? I am sure we all feel a hell of a lot safer knowing that.
All the denial in the world isn’t going to change the fact that this was indeed Bush’s biggest fuckup to date…and considering he has quite a litany of fuck ups, that is saying a lot…