What’s so overwhelming about that fact? What’s the big, big difference between having your house flooded or having it blown off the map? Once your homeless, what does it matter how you got there?

Pablo on November 17, 2006 at 5:09 AM

I have been in a hurricane and I have been in a flood. Floods are about 100 times worse–floods last much longer, cover vastly larger areas, and spread disease like nothing else.

To your question, on an individual basis, homeless is homeless. You can’t ignore the difference in scale and concentration however. I totally agree that NOLA govt is a sham, but that doesn’t mean that this catastrophe was any less.

And who was responsible for the poor shape that those levees were in when Katrina hit?

DannoJyd on November 16, 2006 at 5:24 PM

Army Corps of Engineers are responsible for maintenance; I believe the funding is primarily federal and secondarily state but could be wrong.

I don’t think the feds had any responsibility to do more than they did, and think that given the political swamp NO is, that they did a fine job. But you can’t pick and choose when states should be making their own decisions. Perhaps if the republicans hadn’t pushed the b.s. ‘compassionate conservatism’ theme, and done their best to abrogate decision-making of the states previously, they would not have been on the hook for getting LA out of the trouble it was in.

You can blame Katrina, and the MSM, but I think they wouldn’t have gotten into that pickle in the first place if they hadn’t made such an effort to take over local decision making. You spend years setting yourself up as the state’s daddy, expect them to come crying and blame you when they skin their knees.

Add to that a stomach-churning dose of pork-grabbing, corruption, sex scandals, and a party leadership that has completely ignored its base, and you lose. The republican party acted and governed just like democrats, to the point where the public was left asking if it’d really hurt to vote for the real thing. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see much difference.

Seems to me this conveniently ignores the overwhelming fact that it was not the hurricane that knocked out NOLA, it was the levees breaking, something not germane to the Mississippi victims. Big, big difference.

What’s so overwhelming about that fact? What’s the big, big difference between having your house flooded or having it blown off the map? Once your homeless, what does it matter how you got there?

From Bryan Preston, at Hot Air, discussing the downfall of Republicans this fall. His view: it wasn’t Iraq. It wasKatrina. That storm turned out to be the hurricane that changed history. The Bush administration felt the brunt of what turned…

If GW would have come out with the mopey droning Clintonesque “I feel your pain” schtick, he may have fared better.

Self-reliance as a character trait does not exist in large proportion any longer. Most folks just rely on someone to write them a check. Others get upset because the “other guy” isn’t writing the check fast enough.

The MSM won the election.

I have tried to explain this previously. If politics was like the Star Wars series, then the 2006 election was THE MSM EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

The decline of the conservatives’ umpf began with the Schiavo case. Libertarians didn’t like the heavy government interference and the feds intervening. It could have hurt the liberals because they didn’t oppose it but it hurt the conservatives more.

The out of control spending, the border, the amnesty and no balls on fighting the media and the left on Iraq were major contributors. The WH needed a communications dept. on the WoT and is still lacking it. Now it’s too late. I have no idea what the function of Karen Hughes was meant to be or what she’s doing at State. Not a good pick on top of it and too late, anyway.

The Left had nothing to run on, except “we need a new direction”. The Right responded with “we’re bad but they are worse” or “you might not be in love with us but wait until you see what they do to you”. The media of course worked double-time for the liberals and will continue to do so in the next 2 years. Fortunately there are more venues now and the libs will give us all enough to work with.

The independents once again decided the outcome and it’s hard to say what they were looking for. I can’t figure them out and I’m one of them. One thing they were tired of was the spineless approach from the conservative leadership and the WH. The constant defense became depressing.

Sadly, not many took the times and the current challenges of the WoT seriously and won’t until it’s probably way too late and too costly. The American people do the right thing, mostly, but only when the knife is really, really close to the bone. Until then, the party goes on, in an optimistic and multi-culti fashion. 2 jobs at least, 5 TVs and 3 SUVs to a household and life’s not bad.

The economy is good, gasoline is cheap again, hearts are big – therefore the minimum wage hike is ignored, probably the amnesty too, never mind that the cycle will repeat itself, like from the Reagan one…until the terrorists strike again…then we’ll refocus the minds and the instincts.

Conservativecaveman, just go look at the chart I linked to. It’s pretty clear from that chart that the GOP cratered hard in the Fall of ’05 and never recovered.

Fwiw, Mississippi’s recovery is still ongoing. Its disaster area is far more widespread than New Orleans’. The main difference between its plight and that of NOLA is in the reaction, and how Mississippi chose to rise up and deal with the disaster while NOLA chose to blame everything on Bush.

Why is it we seem to simply take Democratic Dirty Tricks as part of the environment — like mosquitoes at a picnic, annoying but not much we can do, right?

We’re stuck with a massive press apparatus that we can’t overcome — they control the news cycle so even our victories die silent deaths.

It seems to me that rather than simply accept these monsters in the garden, a smart group like conservatives could figure a way to deal with the worst of it. Maybe the GOP should hire some powerhouse media relations people to not only find ways to unlock the liberal grip on the news cycle but to ensure news media outlets that leak highly classified information are actually prosecuted for the crime. Or is the press above the law? I must’ve missed that court ruling.

Bush should’ve learned from Clinton. If he had only walked out on the White House lawn, made a speech about battalions being sent in to aid and rescue and how he “feels their pain” — then did lots of photo ops in leaky rowboats helping people out of the water — standing with his arm around Ray Nagin and blistering the press for trying to focus on drowned school buses while people still needed help — maybe even taking in a displaced family into the White House like many did in the nation — and, before the sunset, demand Congress make his taxcuts permanent …

You don’t just throw up your hands and crawl into the corner — you learn how to tame the lion. The media can’t help itself about somethings — it will cover some stories no matter whose face is there. The GOP has got to learn those and other tricks if it wants to play the media gotcha game with the big boys.

Arnold
Tarheel Redneck

People often make this comparison–that NOLA didn’t recover as quickly as did the folks in Mississippi. Seems to me this conveniently ignores the overwhelming fact that it was not the hurricane that knocked out NOLA, it was the levees breaking, something not germane to the Mississippi victims. Big, big difference.

honora on November 16, 2006 at 4:50 PM

What?
No one is making that comparison. My argument is the opposite, that Miss. and others got knocked the frack out and they’re dealing with it. But the “real story” is NOLA, only because we saw black people in dire straits on TV.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/sports/15833555.htm
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/katrina/quickphotos/passchristian/
http://www.spaceandculture.org/uploaded_images/40238228_dd55a542ee-748320.jpg

People often make this comparison–that NOLA didn’t recover as quickly as did the folks in Mississippi. Seems to me this conveniently ignores the overwhelming fact that it was not the hurricane that knocked out NOLA, it was the levees breaking, something not germane to the Mississippi victims. Big, big difference.

honora on November 16, 2006 at 4:50 PM

And who was responsible for the poor shape that those levees were in when Katrina hit?

Republicans have spent the last week so frantically delivering their talking points that you’d think that it was still election season.

They’re desperate to convince pundits, reporters and the public that the 2006 elections are anything but what they were: a complete rejection of the Republican ideology, incompetence and corruption.

Hmmm? Can you fit that into the above Katrina scenario? The Democrats were successful in convincing a majority of those that voted and the new and old news medias that these were the election talking points.

I hate to say it, but the “victims” of the Katrina disaster IN NOLA, are victims of their own making. My heart really goes out to the people in Biloxi, Pass Christian, Miss. coast. Those guys had their communities wiped off the map.

People often make this comparison–that NOLA didn’t recover as quickly as did the folks in Mississippi. Seems to me this conveniently ignores the overwhelming fact that it was not the hurricane that knocked out NOLA, it was the levees breaking, something not germane to the Mississippi victims. Big, big difference.

I liked the analysis, too. And I don’t much like the notion that an election could be swayed so dramatically by something like this, it’s hard to ignore.

Republicans and right-thinking people saw through the BS from the media on this mess, but I suppose the swing voters who don’t see things through a partisan prism could have been convinced — somehow — that the aftermath was all lack of planning.

Dare I say that Madame Malkin was one of the most severe critics of FEMA on this, too. I suspect she would say that the greatest efforts of the government were too late to have the greatest effect, and maybe that’s true.

Bryan Preston of Hot Air has a long, detailed post analyzing how Republicans lost the midterms:What cost the GOP its majorities in Congress and statehouses? Nancy Pelosi and her wing of the Democrats are running around as though the elections……

What Katrina did was blow over the rock of American politics, and, if we would ever look, show us what slithers beneath.

Also, I live on Gulf Coast in Texas. Most everyone with a good deal of common sense knows what to expect in the event of a Hurricane.

I hate to say it, but the “victims” of the Katrina disaster IN NOLA, are victims of their own making. … But alas, “Society failed NOLA” and it’s all our fault, because those poor people couldn’t get out. IDIOTS. It’s just stupid. — Kai

A month or two before Katrina, there occured a hurricane (I can’t remember its name) which was bearing down, folks thought, for the Texas Gulf Coast, toward Corpus and points south. As it happened, it went well below Brownsville, making landfall in Mexico. There was no great emergency, no loss of life that I can remember, very little property damage to speak of.

The thing is, has the hurrican made landfall at Corpus, had it continued inland to low-lying districts, had it even come all the way into San Antone, Texas was ready.

My family and I live on Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX. Right next to our housing area, there’s a large open field where, when I was a young soldier stationed here, there had been dozens of warehouses. Now, there are open, grassy fields where the wooden warehouses had been, the docks are gone, but the roads for trucks to service the warehouses are still there. Nowadays, these fields are used for units on post to play soccer, and today I just drove by them to see them lining the grass out for fall touch football.

For at least a week before the pre-Katrina hurricane didn’t hit, those roads were filled with semi-tractors and trailer upon trailer. FEMA and the Texas emergency folks had a tent there to allow them to coordinate the receiving and dispatching of those trucks, all civilian contractors presumably in the pay of Texas.

The trucks themselves were full of necessities for folks poking their heads up in the aftermath of a hurricane.

When the hurricane blew over — or, rather, nudged south — the trucks and FEMA folks dispersed. The trucks appeared over a period of about two days, waited about as long, and took about as long to disperse.

The country, from the Carolinas to Florida and around the Gulf to Texas, had ample warning of Katrina’s approach. Watching the TV as Katrina blew in was painful. Cars jammed the two- or three-lane road out of Chocolate City, the opposing two- or three-lanes empty. Later, all roads out, north- and southbound, east- and westbound, were openned, but too little, too late. As we’ve all seen, buses upon buses were left to rot, and I’d wager that a few did. Many in the Chocolate City PD up and split.

Mind you, as others here have pointed out, Biloxi and Mobile and points in Florida and even in Texas, just as hard-hit, began digging out and pitching in as soon as the leaves stopped wiggling.

Why the “disaster” of Katrina? They didn’t have Fort Sam Houston’s truck fleet. More to the point — as neither Texas FEMA nor Fort Sam Houston are heirs to any blame here — Louisiana and *PARTICULARLY* Mr. Nagin’s now-melted Chocolate Slums had no plan, no provision, nothing in place for services to their people. What is more, these are people *USED* to services.

Here’s the “wiggly worm under the rock” part: the storm blew in and rearranged furniture in the most systematically and institutionally *CORRUPT* state in the country. Louisiana is close to being the Third World, and Chocolate City is its rightful capital. The Blanco administration flailed about, gobs agape, making the Long family and Edwin Edwards look like Guliani on 9/11.

Nagin was the worst of the bunch. First he was lost, then he was found, then he was lost again. The plan for city shelter, evidently, was “crowd into the dome”…and then claim racism afterwards.

The *REAL* “wiggly worm” part is that Nagin was re-elected! He had marital relations with the proverbial canine and he’s still trusted by the citizens of Chocolatesville with the reins of power! During the campaign, he coined the now-oft-remembered racial appellation for his city…either completely oblivious that by saying that his city was in black hands and history waying that his city is a basket case, ergo saying that black leadership is a disaster in the making…or completely ignoring it.

Then, the racists cranked up.

The levee districts responsible for keeping water from reclaiming the technically underwater Cuidad de Chocolate are evidently divvied up among competing interests in and around the city. There’s evidently lots of Corps of Engineers money to be had. As we now know (if we have *NEVER* even *HEARD* of politics in Louisiana before), public service is the quickest way to make a buck out in the parishes if you don’t own an off-shore oil-drilling platform. For *GENERATIONS*, these hoods neglected and got by on contracts, probably keeping the levees within minimum specs, to the detriment of city. They were helped along with this by the geniuses at the Corps of Engineers across several federal administrations, probably going back to the days of Huey Long’s “dee-duct box”.

The wards of the city hardest hit were the ones closest to the levees which burst…and the infamous Ninth “Ninf” Ward is among the poorest and blackest. Now, generations of inattention and a culture of corruption have conspired to blow away these daub and wattle houses, and it’s the fault of the Republican president. His guys dynamited the levees to kill black people…fresh from flying aircraft into buildings on 9/11 and miraculously surviving, and on their way to starting an earthquake in Iran.

There is a culture of entitlement in this country which looks to the top *FIRST*, laying blame for *EVERYTHING* untoward on the life of the effected community, while completely ignoring the thugs, villains and pimps who’re selling you “the dream”, who *SHOULD* be looking out for you. Nobody’s picking on Blanco much, and, as I said, Nagin’s been reenlisted. You can’t blame the pimp for introducing you to the hooker with a razor. You’ve gotta blame the po-lice for not seeing that she was carrying a razor in her purse…in the dark.

An overwhelmingly partisan population, which can’t seem to pick or maintain competent leadership — Marion Berry, Cynthia McKinney, Waters, Conyers, Gwen Moore, Charlie Rangel — but seem to stick with folks who sell them a bill o’ goods, and reelect them up to and into the grave.

…but, you’ll never see ‘em *DEMAND* or organize any trucks, ready and waiting as the next disaster looms, to relieve the suffering of those bone-headed constituents of theirs. It’s much more profitable to *DEMAND* restitution, investigations and the heads of the high-and-mighty after the fact.

By the time of Hurricane Rita, Houston, San Antonio and other areas of Texas had taken in tens of thousands of Chocolate City citizens. Then, as if on cue, here was another hurricane to fill their sails, to see them to their new homes.

…and, at Fort Sam, the trucks were back.

The hurricane hit this time, and trucks began to roll. For what must’ve been a week, the fields by my house were abuzz with activity. No muss, no fuss, no vandalism, no wandering truckers in the housing areas. These guys and gals were pro’s. After the first trucks went out, more arrived, to be sent on.

Baytown, Houston, and Galveston were hit hard. Power was out for quite a while afterwards. It rained in buckets quite a way inland. Then, storm done, trucks rolling, Texas dug its way out, and went back to dodging the purse-snatchings, drug sales invitations, burglaries and assorted outrages intendant upon inviting folks from Chocolate City to stay for a while.

The New Orleans culture of entitlement ran up against Texas municipal and state law enforcement, and nobody’s had a minute’s rest since. I remember visiting a friend of mine years ago in Houston. In his neighborhood, all the houses, even the meanest among them, had burglar bars on the windows. What was curious is that they’d *ALL* mounted them on the *INSIDE* of the windows. I don’t think that there was a massive, across-the-board Do-It-Yourself dumb-out in that seedy part of Houston…I think that it’s because thieves in that part of town were even *STEALING THE BURGLAR BARS*!

…and, even in these hard-boiled neighborhoods, the crime rates skyrocketed…from what they must’ve been before.

All Katrina did was uncover a rather nasty rock in this country…and all the denizens underneath wriggled out. Race, institutionalized and politicized poverty, sloth, municipal malfeasance and the 24-hour cable news cycle all conspired to make the most telegenic and powerful — and, as we know now, politically *IN-astute* — man into the equation the bad guy. Some of his subordinates behaved like minor league circus clowns…but only *AFTER* the State of Louisiana and the City of Nagin *BOTH* had *UTTERLY* failed.
…mind you, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, to say nothing of Texas, all seemed light-years ahead in handling *THE EXACT SAME LEVEL OF DAMAGE* by comparison.

This doesn’t let Mr. Bush off’n the hook, though. He’s had well over a year to fight back…and he didn’t. Maybe we ought to’ve assembled the trucks here at Fort Sam for the November 7th election. It sure turned out to be a disaster.

To put it nicely, she did not come back with a favorable impression of NO (and, most of the locals she talked to on Bourbon Street said that the hurricane had cleaned up that part of town).

While she was there, FEMA had a bunch of trailers sitting in Arkansas ready to be used as temporary houses for Katrina victims. I believe these trailers got mentioned a lot on the news as evidence of FEMA incompetence because they were sitting empty in AR rather than in New Orleans. What the news never said is that FEMA (not for lack of trying) had been unable to get the local authorities to give them authorization to bring the trailers in. So, FEMA (and, by extension Bush) get a bad rap for incompetence while the local boys got great press coverage even though they were the ones holding things up.

The people in NO were driving my mom crazy. They’d come in without any flood insurance. She’d help them to file papers and get the government grants they were eligible for. Instead of being grateful that they were getting some help, they were pissed off that they weren’t getting the grants AND the insurance payouts.

On a more heart-warming note, she did have a cool story about a Vietnamese man and his wife that she helped. They were recent immigrants (in the country less than 3 months). They had lost everything in the floods. The man, who could only speak a little English, looked at my mom with tears in his eyes and said something along the lines of, “Why are you helping me? In Vietnam they wouldn’t have helped. Why are you helping even immigrants?” My mom just smiled, shook his hand, and said, “Welcome to America.”