Bush Admin & FEMA start shifting blame to locals - Crass ass covering or justified?

The BBQ Pit
41

That’s because you’re a stupid ass who formulates his ideas out of the brown stuff that comes out from the opposite end of his mouth.

He was very much disliked in NYC (Hundreds of civil rights lawsuits of which he lost every one. A tawdry affair with and nasty divorce. They started calling him The Grinch in the papers) and the only thing that saved his sorry reputation was 9/11. In fact, there was talk coming from Gracie Mansion that he (Rudy) may bend the 2 term rule he, himself had enacted. After a look at the polls he decided against it.

42

No, not there, but re: his years in office before the disaster, such as his Disneyification of Times Square.

[QUOTE]
No, that is you, not them, or me. The people you are talking about aren’t simple talking heads spewing lies about Bush because they hate him. Instead, they are concerned citizens who have criticized Bush due not to a pathological hatred of him, but due to actual harm they have been witnesses to.

43

Yes, but she did call a state of emergency, which you claimed she didn’t.
She fucked up. So did you. Just admit it.

Oh. that’s right, you can’t! You’ve got Bushitist. The inability to see what a fuck up you are even with thousands of bodies floating around the Gulf Coast.

44

From what I’ve read, the New Orleans disaster plan itself says it would take at least 72 hours to evacuate the city.

By Gov. Blanco’s own admission, she did not order a mandatory evacuation until Sunday, and only after President Bush called her personally and appealed to her to evacuate her people.

Then the evacuation plan itself was botched badly. Rather than get people out of the city entirely, she ordered those left to simply collect at the Superdome and Convention center - and then failed to stock them with even basic supplies and emergency equipment.

FEMA’s own disaster manual to the states says that they should not expect federal help to arrive for between 72 and 96 hours. Therefore, the mayor’s job was to make sure that the people were either out of the city, or if they were located to safe havens within the city that those havens had supplies for at least 72 to 96 hours. That did not happen.

So then, because there were so many people unevacuated, the ‘first responders’ had to spend their efforts rescuing people rather than dealing with evacuees. They were abandoned because there weren’t enough early resources to both rescue people and deal with people who were safe but hungry and thirsty. So rescues got the priority.

By the time the feds got organized and started arriving, there was general lawlessness in the city which made it hard to carry out relief operations. So then they had to wait for the military and national guard, which were being mobilized in other states and would take some time to arrive.

Clearly, there was heavy foot-dragging by the local government which made this situation much, much worse. Local officials were also very lousy at their job. One official (the head of New Orleans Homeland Security), for example, was being interviewed on the news, and he was absolutely incensed that there was no command and control at the Superdome. It was an outrage! Later, an analyst pointed out that the official who was outraged was the one responsible for command and control. It was HIS job, and he didn’t even know it.

And there’s no doubts that there were screwups by the feds as well. The Dept. of Homeland Security showed itself to be confused with muddy chains of command, not up to the job.

So plenty of blame to go around. But here’s a warning to the left: If you continue to make outrageous, shrill accusations like those flying around on this board now (Bush’s staged photo-op, Bush should be impeached for ‘doing nothing’, the obligatory Halliburton conspiracy, yada yada yada), then you’ll marginalize yourselves and you’ll help deflect criticism away from the real faults that the feds should own up to.

Right now, if I was going to assign responsibility for this, I’d have to say it’s 50-50 between the feds and the local government. But of course on this board it’ll be about 99-1 against Bush.

45

Actually, I don’t believe I ever claimed she didn’t declare a state of emergency. Find where I did, if you can. Maybe I did but I don’t recall doing so.

Now, did the article I posted claim she didn’t? Yes. Did they retract this claim? Yes.

46

You said she did nothing and then linked to an article that said she didn’t call an emergency.

If she fucked up (and she did-- that has been stated in this and other threads, repeatedly) then there’s no reason to imply or left implied things that arent true. Of course no one would notice this, what with your tendency for hyperbolic crap-spewing.

47

Sam. It only seems like 99 to 1. It’s probably a bit smaller.

48

I believe you are reading it wrong. The Friday referred to is two days ago, not the week before. Katrina was barely out of Florida on the 26th and no one was calling for an evacuation then.

49

Exactly. I never said she didn’t declare a state of emergency. (To be honest, I’m not quite sure why she would haveto declare such a thing…since the president had already done so!). But my point is that she didn’t do anything after a state of emergency had already been declared…regardless of who declared it.

I declare! :stuck_out_tongue:

50

She did it before the president.

Reading comprehension is a key tool in fighting ignorance.

51

Actually, given the proficiency of the Rove machine, it will have nothing to do with “the left.” All it takes is any single person who does not like Bush to get that sort of thing reported as “the left.” In each of the threads you mentioned, of the tiny fraction of the politically interested posters on the board who have participated, the majority of posters in those threads who actually oppose Bush have also opposed the more outlandish claims. The majority of “left wing” posters commenting on the “photo op” have noted that 1) such is par for the course for all VIPs, 2) that it is unlikely that Bush, himself, knew about any staging, and 3) that some of the claims of staging have been exaggerated or fabricated. The “impeach Bush for doing nothing” has picked up very little support.

On the flip side, a single left-wing blogger’s claim that he “thought” about not sending money to “red” states (but then decided to send money anyway), has been turned into “Calls by the left to send no money to red states.”

Until the Left creates a publicity machine equal to the Right’s, we are going to see the marginalization of the Left even when they are low-keyed and rational–just as we see in your “warning.”

52

It seems pretty clear that just about everyone in charge who could have screwed up their response did. Astounding.

I don’t know about you, but the first politician who actually admits that he/she fucked up big time, that he/she deserves blame, that he/she is ashamed…

that politician will go up in my eyes. Because at least he/she will be telling the truth.

53

You’re right that some people could spin the ‘left’s hysteria’ if it were even just a handful of cranks. But I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts it won’t be. It’ll be widespread among the ‘movement’ on the left. Message boards like this one will be full of conspiracy threads and wild accusations.

In the meantime, Drudge has this quote from the New Orleans Disaster plan:

And right above that they link to this photo, showing all those buses still sitting in their yard, now under water. This looks like one of the primary screw-ups of this evacuation to me, and the aftermath of that screw-up led to the refugee problem at the Superdome and Convention center and the huge rescue op needed to save all those people on rooftops which delayed aid to the others.

How much different would this entire problem have been if, instead of maybe 100,000 people stuck in the city there had been 10,000?

54

For what it’s worth, Michael Moore has now weighed (ha ha) in with his thoughts about Hurricane Katrina.

It’s interesting. While he carefully notes that there are many shades of grey when it comes to the response time of local, state and federal officials, he is quick to point out that the initial failure to handle the hurricane and its destructive aftermath rests with the mayor of New Orleans as well as with Governor Blanco. He wonders why, if the state of Louisiana had evacuation plans already in place, wasn’t the National Guard mobilized immediately to begin moving residents to higher ground. He also notes that the mayor had many, many vehicles at his disposal that went unused. Indeed, Moore asks, why wasn’t the mayor coordinating some kind of evacuation plan at the most local of levels, given his intimate knowledge of the city and-------

Nah, I’m just kidding. He blames Bush.

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It’s Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

55

Interesting that you give credit to Drudge for the juxtaposition of that quote and that image, yet paint the entire “Left” as “hysterical,” especially given that I, Left Wing Nut that I am, probably posted that exact same thing before they did (or at least did so independently of them, seeing as how I don’t read that rag). Cite.

AND I called for the heads of every one of these fuckers, from the Mayor and Governor all the way up to the Non-Commander-in-Chief.

But just go on calling us all shrill and histrionic, in spite of evidence both to the contrary and to the fact that we’re absolutely entitled to be a little fucking hysterical, given the gravity of the situation and the enormity of the fuckups all the way around. You do your party proud.

56

This is just my opinion.

If all of those school buses had been stationed around the city, waiting for the poor, mostly black, residents to board them and leave the city before the hurricane hit, it wouldn’t have happened.

IMHO, it’s not in the nature of poor, quite often, uneducated people to act in a manner that we might ascribe to middle-class citizens. Most of the (white) middle-class citizens took the early(local) warnings to evacuate quite seriously. They had the means to leave. The poor, whether white or black, may have had a choice, and I"m sure some took it. But a small minority.

You could have had those buses going up and down the streets with bullhorns blaring, but they would not have reduced the population that remained by such a figure–100k down to 10k.

57

All local plans automatically get kicked into the shitter by a Force 5.

There is no way to plan for a post-Force 5 situation, because nobody can say with any certainty what resources you will have left after the storm.

Beyond a certain level of destrutive force in a natural disaster, beyond a certain threshold of damage to a community, no local authority can cope with the problem. Because all local authority is destroyed. Just as it has been in this case. Outside help is then required.

58

Unless, of course, the state’s mandatory evacuation plan had been implemented by the governor before the Category 5 hurricane hit. This would drastically reduce the number of deaths and, subsequently, reduce the amount of post-hurricane outside help that is necessary.

59

I disagree, to a point. While I agree that there certainly would have been stubborn hangers-on, and the reduction in numbers remaining probably wouldn’t be quite as large as Sam Stone claimed, many who would have liked to have escaped certainly would have been smart enough and willing to do so, had they had the means. But even if you were 100% right, that very few stragglers would’ve taken advantage of the way out, that doesn’t mitigate the fact that the State of Louisiana Emergency Operations Plan CALLS for “pre-positioning” of transportation to evacuate those without means, and they DIDN’T DO THEIR JOB! Even if they thought no one would take them up on it, they had a fucking LEGAL OBLIGATION to provide the means. Period. They fucked up. They didn’t even bother to give people the OPTION. Their heads should fucking roll.

60

samclem. I don’t know that we can say that it wouldn’t have made a difference. Watching busloads of people leave town can do a lot to kick start your flight response no matter how reluctant you may be to up and leave your meager belongings, and as we’ve seen, even “poor uneducated people” can haul ass with the best of them.

I’m just sure the city had enough personnel left by Saturday and Sunday to effect a bus evacuation.

Had city and school buses been pressed into service, my own gut feeling that the unprecedented use of them would have prompted (panicked) many poor residents to leave. But I’m not sure if there would have been enough coordination on the city and state level to massively organize the safe evacuation of 100,000+ plus residents safely, since they ain’t exactly unafraid to use guns. What procedures would have been in place to prevent them from bringing pets, too much baggage and contraband? What contingencies would have been in place to refuel the buses and handle vehicle breakdowns or whatever? Also, where were school bus drivers to be found? Would they have considered the use of volunteers? Did the city even have enough foresight to tell them to stick around Thursday and Friday? Or did they flee town in their own vehicles by then?

I think the use of them would have been great. But not enough foresight planning for that contingency left the buses unused and ultimately as drowned as the rest of New Orleans.