OCCOM BILL wrote:
Isn't the marvel that is the North Sea Wall in your neck of the woods? Surely you realize that had the Eye of Katrina passed just a little bit West; they would have been praying for the Levees to break... just to let some water out. New Orleans was spared the worst of it and the whole idea of blaming Levee spending or wasting more money to rebuild them strikes me as ridiculous. Doing so is ignoring the FACT that the next Katrina may very well drown the entire city like rats. New Orleans is an unsafe city, much like Galveston, and will remain so until and unless we build something like a North Sea Wall... and that's likely never going to happen.
Blaming Bush is sillier still. Katrina did the damage, not Bush... and it was a weakened Katrina that didn't even hit directly at that. A direct hit by a Cat 5 storm is catastrophic, no matter what the hell you do. Neither the old levies nor any plans for future levies could protect a sea-side city, below sea level in the face of a storm of that magnitude. Those who choose to live there do so at their peril. No shortage of studies have predicted the effects of a Cat-5 storm in that area and I assure you few people who live under the threat of the Atlantic Hurricane Season are unfamiliar with the dangers. It may sound a little cold-hearted, but in this case it really is appropriate to lay some blame at the feet of the victims. You wouldn't catch me within a hundred miles of a Cat-5 storm under any circumstances. There was more than enough warning to evacuate and the vast majority of the victims chose not to. Sadder still; this will come up again.
Amen. What we have here is a prime example of a dysfunctional generation, not just in New Orleans, but all across the nation, a generation that is immature, does not wish to take responsibility for their own actions, and wishes the government to take care of their every need, and worst of all, wishes to blame virtually everything on one man, George Bush. Obviously, this does not include everybody, but the percentages that apply are becoming an alarming problem that does not look like it will reverse itself anytime soon. This sounds harsh, but even though I live a thousand miles from there, the warnings were clear and they were urgent for days leading up to the disaster, and there was no question about what any wise person would do, leave. I remember some of the people being interviewed proudly proclaiming they would rather die right there than anywhere else and then laughing about it. It did not turn out to be very funny.
Actually, I should perhaps somewhat tone down my accusation of people in general, as I think the worst segment of society seeking to blame Bush is the liberal element and the news media. If you actually talk to the people from New Orleans, a good percentage totally understand it was not the fault of George Bush, at least not to the extent that the media and some politicians would like to lead you to believe for the advantage of their own political agenda.
Furthermore, the people responsible for evacuating the city were not George Bush or Brownie, that responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the mayor and the governor. There is no question that they had all the information needed to make the correct decison but failed. It finally got to the point that Bush had to call the governor to advise her to evacuate. And we all know that if he had "ordered" her to do it, he would probably have caught heck for overstepping his authority and acting like a dictator. Buses and trains were available to help get people out, but the governor and mayor failed to enact a long standing plan meant for such a scenario. The news media can keep up their drumbeat to try to rewrite history in an effort to blame guess who, George Bush, but sorry, some of us remember it all too clearly.
Now this little tidbit of news:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186688,00.html