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Pastimes : Lake New Orleans -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paret who wrote (666)	9/10/2005 12:57:33 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1118

What a great blog, that. The link deserves reposting. sluggerotoole.com Read down the replies - there are some excellent points. Of course, the place has it's share of Bush-bashing idiots and liars, too, including one who claims Blanco asked the feds to send in the cavalry two days before the storm. But there are many good ones. For example, these two: "People, Gerry N. says all that needs to be said: FEDERALISM The short version, for those of you who failed social studies, is that all political power does NOT reside in one person/gov't entity, eg, like the President. Local matters (such as a Cat 5 hurricane) are first supposed to be handled locally. Then, if requested, the State steps in. Then, IF REQUESTED, the Feds step in. FEMA is not some big behemoth waiting for the opportunity to spring into action...it is an agency that COORDINATES and TRAINS local/state/federal resources to handle emergencies. The trouble in New Orleans is CLEARLY a problem of state and local negligence....I am utterly confident that any reasoned and fair investigation will reveal this to be true....and the Federal missteps were largely due to the increased need DUE TO that negligence. There was a serious cascade effect. For example, had the mayor and governor done their jobs and evacuated the city (what part of MANDATORY was hard to understand?), there would have been a MINIMAL need for search and rescue. I find it remarkable that the very people who despise Bush so are the same ones that, in this instance, want to give him Emperor-like power...." - Posted by: JABBER at September 9, 2005 05:00 AM This one came a few posts later: "It never ceases to amaze me how many of the same people who last week were frothing at the mouth and calling President Bush a fascist tyrant are now crying long and loud complaining that he /didn't/ behave like a fascist tyrant." - Posted by: Achillea at September 9, 2005 05:41 AM Also read down to the posts by fustian at 05:56 AM and dcolm at 06:43 AM on 9/9. I'll end with this gem of a post: "FEMA prestaged its relief materials and equipment before Katrina hit New Orleans, and then sent in its usual search-and-rescue teams and coordinators, having never been informed by local and state officials that the city had not been evacuated. FEMA assumed that the locals had followed their disaster plans. Then, after the levees were breached or the canal walls broke, FEMA was asked by Mayor Nagin to find hundreds of buses to carry out an evcuation. So what this meant was that FEMA was forced to transform its relief mission to an evacuation mission WHILE ON THE ROAD, something it had never before attempted. Between Tuesday and Thursday, while overseeing an affected area the size of the U. K., FEMA managed to round up 1100 buses from a hurricane-shattered region--somehow contacting bus companies, drivers, and dispatchers even though power, land lines, and cell-phone services were down--and came in across submerged roads, blocked freeways, and destroyed bridges, into a city 80% underwater and full of people rioting, murdering, raping, and starving because two-thirds of the police had disappeared and the state government had refused to let in the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and had not sent in enough National Guard troops. And after this Herculean effort, FEMA was crapped on by the world's media, the Democratic party, and half of the country, and the president was declared a racist idiot responsible for the deaths of thousands. Me, I'd be tempted to say "The hell with all of you" and retire, but the FEMA people and the Prez are made of sterner stuff. Posted by: Tom W. at September 9, 2005 11:35 AM