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New Orleans, New York and liberals

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Liberty Belle

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To my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs."
Novelist and New Orleans resident Anne Rice


Let me get this straight.

Ms. Rice, you live in (what was) a very attractive city which lies below sea level. On one side you have a giant lake; on the other side you have the Gulf of Mexico. Running through the middle is the Mississippi River. All of which are above you.

Preventing those giant bodies of water from flooding and drowning you are levees. These levees are described as "century-old." People have been warning about the devastating effects of a direct hit from a hurricane for decades.

I've heard a great deal of complaint in recent days that the federal government may not have allocated enough money to speed up the upgrades to those levees. This does, however, raise the question of why city and state residents were waiting around for the federal government to send enough money to upgrade this, instead of paying for it themselves. I mean, it was only your homes, businesses, and lives at stake. Perhaps these upgrades would have been expensive. If only this city had some sort of events to attract tourists, from which to collect taxes.

Anyway, your state and local officials decided to spend your tax dollars on something else that they (and presumably you) found more important, and then they waited for the rest of the country to pay for these life-preserving necessities.

Your beloved city and region has a colorful political history, in which there is, oh, a wee bit of corruption. I'm from New Jersey, so I can't throw stones at that glass house. But you guys have managed to pick leaders who give you the worst of both worlds - they're scandal ridden and incompetent in a crisis. Look, Rudy Giuliani might have run around with Judith Nathan before his divorce, but he was a hell of a leader in our darkest hours.

You know the National Review crowd isn't a fan of Pataki, but the man was a rock after 9/11 compared to Governor Weepy I'll-Evacuate-Eventually and Mayor It's-Everybody's-Fault-Except-Mine. Nobody's throwing around the adjective "Churchillian" about any of your officials these days. We didn't pick your local officials; you guys did.

Rice asks, "how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid?"

Ahem. What about those buses left unused, less than a mile from the Superdome? JunkYard Blog notes that it's written in the Southeast Louisiana Evacuation Plan that buses are supposed to be used for evacuation of those who don't have personal vehicles. As JYB observes, "there is something very peculiar about a city and a state that have a plan on the books for years that outlines what to do when a hurricane is about to strike, yet when a hurricane comes roaring in, the responsible officials just chuck the plan and try winging it. Delaying and then winging it in the face of a monstrous Cat 4/5 hurricane is
never, ever a good idea, especially for New Orleans."
(See more here.) Ironically, Nagin told CNN, "I need buses, man," when he had plenty sitting around unused before the storm hit. Now they're flooded and useless.

But it's not like state and local officials could have seen this coming. They have never had a hurricane bearing down on them before and. oh, wait, there was Hurricane Ivan just last year. And after that dodged bullet, Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged they needed a better evacuation plan.

I would note that we've seen some pretty intense disasters in other parts of the country, like planes crashing into skyscrapers and subsequently collapsing, earthquakes, tornadoes, blizzards, and yet somehow, none of these disasters had the total breakdown of law and order, civil society, etc. Jonah Goldberg's early joke about a Mad-Max style post-apocalyptic tribal anarchy may have been in poor taste, but it has turned out to be nightmarishly prescient.

We failed you? No, oh brilliant creator of Exit to Eden, you failed. You might not think of it this way, but: Your leaders failed to upgrade the levees. You elected a bunch of weepers and blame-shifters who lost their head in a crisis.

Over the past decades, your elected officials have let a criminal element incubate and grow until they ruled the streets, instead of the forces of law and order. In pop culture, a New Orleans thief is always a charming rogue with a devilish smile. In reality, they're a bunch of thugs.

If the number of residents who are looting thugs were such a "tiny minority," we wouldn't have seen this widespread, relentless anarchy. Madam, a noticeable number of your neighbors saw this disaster as an opportunity to smash a window and run away with a television, an act that reveals much about the inadequacies of the local school system, since that thief won't be enjoying that television with any electricity anytime soon.

I would also note that this is one hell of a police force your local officials hired and that you and your neighbors tolerated. 50 percent turned in their badges during the crisis and quit. Your police superintendent is conceding that some cops were looting. Just want to
refresh your memory - four years ago, New York and Washington, planes falling out of the sky, thousands dead, no idea what the hell is coming next, and the cops, among others, showed up to work.

To save you guys now, I - and a lot of other Americans - will pitch in. We are witnessing the biggest mobilization of civilian and military rescue and relief crews in history. But I have a sneaking suspicion you're going to want the rest of us to pay for the rebuilding of your city. (In the near future, we're going to have to have a little chat about the wisdom of building below sea level, directly next to large bodies of water.) And if you're going to come to the rest of us hat in hand, demanding the rest of us clean up after your poor judgment, I'd appreciate a little less "you failed us" and a little more "we've learned our lesson."

Jim Geraghty is reporting from Ankara, Turkey, where the locals keep
asking him how something like this could happen in America.
 
how could this woman say that the people of this country turned their backs on new orleans when BILLIONS OF DOLLARS are heading their way in the way of federal relief (our tax dollars at work again) and private donations by folks like me who barely have a dollar to their name, yet still find it in their hearts to drop what little they have into a red cross collection bin at the local wal-mart.....what about all the other thousands of people who called in donations during the numerous pleas on television by celebrities and entertainers???!!! I have a friend here in ennis...a nurse practitioner...who has temporary closed down her lucrative practice to go down to the disaster area and VOLUNTEER her time to the many in need!! She will never see a dime for her time and efforts...she is simply overjoyed to be part of the many down there helping out...however they can!! What about the folks like our own Carol, who have opened their homes to the many without homes...complete strangers that she is opening her heart and her home to??? What about that, MS RICE!!! :shock: :shock:
 
Ranchwife, It doesn't matter how much you give to some people, it is never enough.

It's kinda like feeding the "Bears" in a park. If you feed them 5 days a week, I promise you they will show up the other two days and expect to be fed then also. Before you know it, ALL the bears in the park become dependent on the free handouts and will stop their natural feeding habits.
 
Profiteering ghouls have been using debit cards distributed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina - intended to buy essentials for evacuated families - in luxury-goods stores as far away as Atlanta.

"We've seen three of the cards," said a senior employee of the Louis Vuitton store at the Lenox Square Mall in affluent Buckhead, who asked not to be named. "Two I'm certain have purchased; one actually asked if she could use it in the store. This has been since Saturday."

The distinctive white cards were distributed by the Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency and carry a value of up to $2,000.

"It doesn't say anything on the card other than alcohol, tobacco and firearms cannot be purchased with it," the store employee told me. "There's nothing legally that prevents us from taking it, unfortunately. Other than morally, it's wrong."

The source told me that the two women who had made purchases with the card each bought a signature monogrammed Louis Vuitton handbag in the $800 range.

"They didn't look destitute by any stretch. You would never have said, 'They must be one of the evacuees.' … The one that I dealt with yesterday was 20. She'll be 21 next month." The source described the reaction of other store-keepers in the mall - which includes luxury brands Ferragamo, Burberry, Judith Leiber and Neiman Marcus - as "outrage."

"It doesn't say anywhere on there, but it would have to be a good amount to be shopping in here," the source said with a dark chuckle.
 
I got this in an email from a close relative who evacuated her home 30 miles from downtown New Orleans before Katrina hit. She and her husband, who works for the dastardly Halliburton, watched the news and had brains enough to figure out that they had better get their kids and anything they wanted to save to a safer place. They are staying in Houston and she has a pretty good perspective of the type of folks who stayed behind in New Orleans.

This takes a while to load, but it's worth the wait. Do you want to spend federal money to rebuild this below-sea-level hell hole for this kind of people?

http://www.infowars.com/articles/new_orleans/police_loot_walmart.htm
 
Liberty Belle said:
I got this in an email from a close relative who evacuated her home 30 miles from downtown New Orleans before Katrina hit. She and her husband, who works for the dastardly Halliburton, watched the news and had brains enough to figure out that they had better get their kids and anything they wanted to save to a safer place. They are staying in Houston and she has a pretty good perspective of the type of folks who stayed behind in New Orleans.

This takes a while to load, but it's worth the wait. Do you want to spend federal money to rebuild this below-sea-level hell hole for this kind of people?

http://www.infowars.com/articles/new_orleans/police_loot_walmart.htm
Doesn't that video just leave you shaking your head? Wouldn't you geuss that these police let things slide the rest of the time as well? Spending taxpayer dollars to rebuild where a city should never have been doesn't make sense.
 

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