Anyway I'm sure everyone has heard of this in the news. This is probably the worst natural disaster to ever hit the USA. New Orleans is under a toxic lake, thousands are dead and missing, and the government's a total mess. The federal government took 4 days to get supplies and rescuers to the ground, and by that time it was total anarchy in New Orleans. People were dying left and right from lack of food, water, and medicine and nobody could even bury the bodies. People were looting to survive or just for the hell of it. It will take billions to repair the damage and take care of the survivors. I just wanted to know what everyone is thinking about it. This is also a pretty political and emotional situation so I hope that everyone can remain respectful even if there are strong disagreements. Anyway, it’s surprising how much political bickering is going on right now. This partisan politics atmosphere is getting so bad that the only sense of national unity is by helping the victims. I for one think everyone should at least finish getting everyone out before pointing fingers. There is plenty of blame to go around. The mayor should have organized buses to get the poor and the elderly out and the governor should have sent the National Guard to lift out the sick from the hospitals and help with the evacuation. The federal government should have gotten there faster. I mean, when Israel offered to give the US hurricane aid, they were able to do it within 24 hours.
President Bush has been taking a lot of heat lately, and for good reason. He has built his whole presidency on making the US safer and the government more responsive, and when he faces a threat with 5 days of warnings, he and the government agencies that he built screws up royal. The guy who was in charge of the disaster coordination, Michael Brown, didn’t even know that thousands of people were without food or water for a day even when it being broadcasted on the news 24/7. You know the resolution and empathy he showed during 9/11? There was none of that here. It was hard picking which was his worst moment. Was it when he called Hurricane Katrina a “minor economic disturbance” in his first speech addressing it, made one day after learning about the disaster? Was it when he said he didn’t “think anybody expected” the New Orleans levees would give way, when experts predicted it for years? Was it when he said Michael Brown was “doing one heck of a job?” Or was it when he joked about how much he enjoyed himself too much” in New Orleans and said how he was “looking forward to sitting on the porch” of Trent Lott’s ruined house when he was visiting the people left homeless in New Orleans? The only sensible thing he’s said so far is that the politicians should not be bickering right now and should be concentrating on saving the people still trapped in New Orleans. He’s also saying he wants to lead an investigation on what went wrong with the response to the hurricane. Uh…can you say “cover-up” people?
Republicans are saying all this criticism is just partisanship to make the GOP look bad, but its not like they are making it difficult. Here’s a gem from Barbara Bush, which she made when visiting the thousands of refugees in the Astrodome.
"Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them."
Yeah, those people just lost their homes, their jobs, all their possessions, and their loved ones but hey they were poor anyhow, so its not like they were worth much anyway. Unfuckingbelievable. At least we know where Bush gets his “compassionate conservatism” from.