It just goes to show sometimes how much we don’t know. I had no idea that President Bush had moved the city of New Orleans to a spot below sea level and prone to hurricanes. At least that is what I conclude must have happened based on the many criticisms I have read. Even worse he must have used mind control to force state officials to call for an evacuation at almost the last moment. But unbelievably he somehow also forced people to stay behind in the area despite the warnings. But the most despicable thing he had done must was to remove the distributors from hundreds of school buses that might have been used for evacuation instead of being left behind – at least that is what must have happened to keep local officials from using them for evacuations. And just think of what his policies have done to some of the populace – people so confused that they mistook televisions and DVD players for food and water. Impeach Bush now and stop his city moving and mind control abilities now!
Besides, who knew that local, state, and federal government bureaucracies could be inept at times? What a shock!
In related news Hurricane Katrina Damage Caused by Hurricane, According to NOAA.
26 comments
The school buses were left behind because they did not believe in jesus.
Besides, who knew that local, state, and federal government bureaucracies could be inept at times?
No, it’s not possible!
If Anderson Cooper and the boys and girls at CNN were in charge of things, nobody would have died.
What we do know is that the president and R’s in Congress reduced the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers by 44%. As a result a study to assess the impact of category 5 storms hitting the gulf coast was shelved. This, of course, in an era when hurricane frequency and strength seem to be increasing.
It’s hard to believe that a terrorist attack on New Orleans would’ve resulted in a better response. We just need to ask ourselves (and the rest of the American electorate) on question: Do you feel safer now than in the past? It might not be terribly fair to the neocon ascendancy, but do you suppose they’d have a prayer of winning an election next week?
Todd,
Neocon accendancy – have you lost your mind? Why do you look at this massive devastation and think about elections and whose going to win them. Political looters wanting to take advantage of a natural disaster.
The budget was cut in 2001 and the corps plan for levee expansion started in 1965 and was never completed. And the amount for the study of 20 million really couldn’t be found in the corps 4 billion dollar budget? There were no plans to do a massive update of the system to withstand a level 4 or 5 hurricane anyway, something that would have taken a decade to do if even possible. If every engineer was still employed by the government there would have still been no massive improvement to the system. Besides they reported today that one of the Levees that broke had been recently upgraded.
You might also want to check the info on hurricane frequency and power, especially since the facts you state our totally wrong.
Just go to the website of the National Hurricane Center and check out a table that lists hurricanes by category and decade.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
The peak for major hurricanes (categories 3,4,5) came in the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when such storms averaged 9 per decade. In the 1960s, there were 6 such storms; in the 1970s, 4; in the 1980s, 5; in the 1990s, 5; and for 2001-04, there were 3. Category 4 and 5 storms were also more prevalent in the past than they are now. As for Category 5 storms, there have been only three since the 1850s: in the decades of the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s.
For the North Atlantic as a whole, according to the United Nations Environment Programme of the World Meteorological Organization: “Reliable data�since the 1940s indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased.”
Todd, I think it’s because of people like you I’m going to have to stop surfing the internet for a long time.
Sometimes I get so angry it’s harming my soul.
I would have shelved the study also. It was already known they would get washed out. Least it didn�t take a few mil to make it official.
Todd (and others) might do well to look at federal actions regarding flood control projects over a longer timeline before affixing too much blame on the Bush administration.
I also agree with brian, above. I read a long article in Popular Science a couple years ago that made the case very clearly, and had me wondering why so much money had already been spent on ‘the bowl,’ rather than simply prohibiting further development in an area whose days were numbered anyway. Is available land reallly that hard to come by down there?
“It was already known they would get washed out.”
That’s not what the president said yesterday.
Notice the strength of Todd’s response.
And Jeff, you should know better! If the Gulf Coast Dead can be used to unseat conservatives and expand the leftist agenda in the US, it will be worth it. Protecting abortion, expanding the protections and acceptance of perverse sexual practises and consolidating the power of the Democratic party is certainly worth the lives of a few thousand Louisianans, Mississippians and Alabamians. And truth, or even outmoded notions such as basic human decency, can not stand in the way of so great a mission.
Political looters, indeed!
I wouldn’t get too upset with Todd. He’s just an average sort of mediocre liberal guy, probably decent, unhappy with himself, looking for some reactionary forces to blame for the things that go wrong with his own life, and has oodles of time to tinker with his keyboard.
The air will clear around New Orleans. Some sanity, hope and faith will be restored. The Black Congressional Caucus can go back to promoting its regular myths; and the MSM will find another asteroid, tsunami, blizzard or natural disaster to dump on the President.
We will all move on with life, even those who have suffered much due to complex and ancient factors having nothing whatsoever to do with the November 2000 election.
As Padre Pio said, “Hope, pray and don’t worry.”
“Notice the strength of Todd’s response.”
It didn’t have to be strong. I can respect people coming to terms with their feelings. (“Sometimes I get so angry it’s harming my soul.”)
The closest indicator of hurricane strength and frequency, by the way, is not global warming, but solar activity and lunar orbit cycles. How that connects with ocean temperature is not at all understood.
Politics aside, it is clear the administration has botched its protection of its citizens. I also noticed the strength of the reponse to my query, “It’s hard to believe that a terrorist attack on New Orleans would’ve resulted in a better response. We just need to ask ourselves (and the rest of the American electorate) on question: Do you feel safer now than in the past?” Y’all felt more comfortable making this a political discussion than a debate about the competence of the Bush Administration. I take that to mean there is no argument in favor of competence.
How do you explain the lack of experience the FEMA director has in emergency management? The president’s own mis-speak on not imagining this could happen? The lack of federal response and mobilization before the hurricane hit?
The president and his administration have to answer for their unpreparedness. Our second consecutive president to get caught with his pants down. Sad to say, this one will be far more costly in terms of human life.
And as for the Bush-defenders who are struggling with their anger, the only suggestion I can make is take a deep breath and send something of your tax cut to the Gulf.
Todd,
I think we can give the President some credit.
“Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.”
The fact that the President both declared a state of emergency before the hurricane even hit and then called them to change the volumantary evacuation order to mandatory shows a lot. What do you think would have happened if the order had been left at voluntary only – might there have been an even greater loss of life?
Time and time again it is red states that give more in charitable contributions than blue states. In fact it is per-capita richer blue states that are at the bottom of the charitable giving list while the poorest state Mississippi is near the top. There I am sure is some connection between personal charitable connection and the attitude that taxing the rich takes care of any personal responsibility. There are of course exceptions, but this rule seems to play out. The funny thing is with the tax breaks not only did the economy improve, but people actually had more money to give to charities which can do a lot more one on one than any government agencies. If you are so upset about the tax cut did you voluntarily send your’s back to the government? Do you think that others upset by the tax cut did the same? If you really want higher taxes, you first – volunteer. Funny how the very legislators that complained about the tax cuts also paid for high price tax attorneys to make sure that their own share had as many loop holes as possible.
I will conceded that mistakes were made, but there is a lot of blame to go around from the Mayor of New Orleans on up to try to make this a partisan issue is so crass. To concentrate on political points during a natural disaster shows something about the character of those who do so.
Would there have been a better response to a terroist attack? The answer is yes. A terrorist attack, even one on the scale of 9/11, would have affected a limited geographical area, on which rescue efforts could be focused, and would have left most of the necessary infrastructure intact. For example, fully functional hospitals would be receiving critical patients, not despartely trying to evacuate them. What we have here is a major hurricane plus a major flood plus serious civil unrest plus the need to completely evacuate a large city whose infrastructure has been decimated. Any one of those alone would be a challenge. And we’ve got them all at once. That being said, there are many serious questions that remain unanswered. For example, why did it take so long for the supplies pre-positioned around the city (Bush declared New Orleans a disaster area before the storm hit so the supplies could be moved in) to reach areas where we knew large numbers of people were concentrated? And why weren’t more troops prepositioned to enter the city to maintain order? Even with Iraq, we still have enough manpower in the aggregate for emergencies like this. At this point, we do not have enough information to answer those questions. Let’s focus now on helping the victims. There will be plenty of time later to investigate, to uncover the truth, and to score whatever political points need to be scored.
That’s it. I’m taking a month off from all blogsurfing and newsreading.
“Time and time again it is red states that give more in charitable contributions than blue states …”
I know it’s a holiday weekend, and we might have our minds on other things, but the relative levels of charity sermon doesn’t quite connect, Jeff. Maybe you blogged about generosity last month. So-called Red States also have higher divorce rates. I don’t think either stat has any particular meaning in a thread that discusses the president’s poor leadership and the poor federal response.
“I will conceded that mistakes were made, but there is a lot of blame to go around …”
That wasn’t so hard. The city, county, and state could’ve mobilized sooner, especially to evacuate hospitals and other high priority citizens. As they said, they couldn’t imagine the worst.
The feds I have less patience with. They’ve been studying worst-case scenarios ever since the Soviets got the Bomb. On that point …
“A terrorist attack, even one on the scale of 9/11, would have affected a limited geographical area, on which rescue efforts could be focused, and would have left most of the necessary infrastructure intact.”
Not necessarily. A single nuclear weapon with an EM pulse would’ve been worse. Likewise a well-planned biological outbreak. Clearly, Homeland Security doesn’t have its act together. Perhaps it needs to be removed from this president’s plate. He and his people came up embarassingly short. I can only imagine the morale boost this was for al-Qaeda and other authentic enemies out there.
So, yes, Jeff, the damage was done by a hurricane. The rescue and relief effort, as Ann Coulter might say, was tantamount to treason.
First you tried the hurricane’s getting worst meme and now you trot out the NYT’s story on higher divorce rate in red states.
“This is a deeply flawed misuse of statistics. The reported “divorce rate” is not the rate per marriage, but the rate per population. When one looks at CDC data, one finds that of the 10 states with the lowest ratio of divorces to marriage, half are blue states, half are red. The same 50-50 split holds true for the worst dozen states.”
“There appears to be no meaningful correlation between politics and divorce.”
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr48/48_19_3.pdf
As someone who lives 2 hours west of NO, I would like to say to everyone: Please remember that 1.5 million people lived in this affected area. If there are 70,000 there still, that means that over 90% of them evacuated and got out. It feels like a lot of them are here in Lafayette. We are glad to help and as sad as the situation is in NO, the truth is that many many are already getting on with their lives and many of us here are helping them happily. What bothers most of us is hearing all this blaming from Blanco, to Nagin, to Bush. Probably mistakes were made, but the thugs in NO may have done more harm than anyone in getting relief to people. The crime rate in NO is sky high and was never really dealt with. Many of the places these people are being displaced to are fearful and worried about who is coming here. BUT what we love seeing and hearing is from other parts of the US positive, you’re-with us attitudes. This hurricane has changed the complete social landscape of southern Louisiana and we would love for the rest of the US to stop complaining and passing blame about who’s responsible. Just to hear and read other news articles about normal topics and realize that not everyone’s life has been completely changed and affected is very comforting to us. Your prayers are needed and so lovingly accepted!
The Center for Disease Control does divorce statistics? Hmm.
I’m still mystified about the connection to red state charity. How did that drop in on our conversation?
Todd,
Because of your comment about tax cuts and giving in charity. What exactly did tax cuts have to do with the topic? But since you brought up the topic of charitable giving and connecting it to tax cuts, I opened up the conversation to those who talk against tax cuts yet are also not likely to be very charitable themselves.
Jeff,
“Because of your comment about tax cuts and giving in charity.”
That was more of an address to those angered by comments they read. No wonder you lost me on it. I was talking therapy, not charity.
Jeff,
“Political looters!”
Brilliant, and accurate.
todd, you got too much politics and not enough charity. political looters fits you nicely. antonio
Antonio,
It would be more apt to say it is a form of political charity, not looting. Looting implies theft, and I’m not sure anyone has stolen anything on the CJ this week. Other commenters have given the impression I’ve contributed too much to this blog. Pray tell, what have I carted away, if I’m giving too much?
Jeff began the commentary by using humor to lessen the blame on the president. My suggestion (free will offering, if you will) is not to blog on politics if you’re not prepared to discuss politics.
You were discussing politics, Todd? I couldn’t tell. Demagoguery isn’t much of a discussion.
Blaming Bush for N’Orleans comes across as both cheap and desperate. Forget about issues when you got a falling sky to pin on the man.
Personally, I don’t put the blame at the feet of President Bush. I think it has a lot to do with the ineptitude of Homeland Security and, in particular, FEMA. How could Michael Brown not know that the storm was on a possible emminent track towards New Orleans? Had he been cut off from the world for 3 days? For crying out loud, it’s been like watching a train wreck in slow motion and seeing no one else do a thing about it until after the fact.
There is plenty of blame to spread around here, with FEMA and Michael Brown’s apparent head-in-the-sand approach to hurricane preparedness, with the Governor of Louisiana (Kathleen Blanco) who lolly-gagged around in getting the formal requests of the National Guard troops (a state’s right formality that Bush could have done like during 9/11 but in this case had no precedent to do so), and a select few of the people stuck behind in the city for their at times defenseless lawlessness.
Could this tragedy be fully avoided? NO. Could this event have been better handled in most senses? Yes, even Bush acknowledged the Federal response was lacking at first.
Let’s stop the political bickering of who said what and get to the core issues still at hand: the people who still need help after the storm and the collection of those who perished, not to mention the rebuilding of one of the nation’s most beautiful cities.
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