It seems the blame game has begun in earnest, what with Elijah Cummings on CNN speaking for the Congressional Black Caucus claiming that race is why it took a while for relief to get to New Orleans, so, I will just direct you to this comment at One Hand Clapping:
Sorry Joel & ROE, but you guys are WAAAYYY off base in criticizing FEMA. Disaster preparedness is the responsibility of State and Local authorities – in this case LEMA (The Louisiana Emergency Management Agency). There is a state-wide director for disaster relief in every state – that person is called the Governor. There is a local director for disaster relief in every municipality – that person is called the Mayor. FEMA is a coordinating body that assists State and Local authorities in getting the resources they need. Because they are the “go to” people most folks are under the impression that they are in charge, and in fact if the State and Local authorities abdicate control over a disaster area they will take over. Typically after the initial response to a disaster the local guys do just that, leave FEMA in control. That’s because they have the experience and personnel to manage disasters of this scale.
Disclosure: I’m a volunteer coordinator for MEMA (The Missouri Emergency Management Agency), I’ve been through three major floods and a few big storms that generated enough tornado damage to get the affected counties disaster relief – believe me when I tell you what we are seeing from FEMA now is lightyears ahead of what I’ve seen from them in the past. Typically it took two to three days just to get the disaster declaration, then another two to three to get FEMA deployed – of course by then the local guys had been on the ground working around the clock for five or six days and we were more than happy to dump everything in FEMA’s lap. That’s the way the system is designed. Bush saw that and tried to skip a few steps to speed things up, he pre-declared the areas disaster areas. So what we are seeing in NO is the result of a convergence of factors:
First, the storm damage was bad, but the flooding has made relief efforts ten times harder than anything they could have imagined. Second, Mayor Nagin’s performance has been pathetic. This is the worst case of poor planning and criminal incompetence I’ve ever seen. Like I said, Bush declared the gulf coast area a Federal Disaster area on Saturday – two days before Katrina hit. That freed up FEMA resources for local and state coordinators and allowed for the pre-positioning of supplies so they could be rapidly deployed to the affected areas. Mayor Nagin waited until the last minute to call for an evacuation of the city, but the poorest people could not evacuate – why weren’t school busses used to get them out of town? Mayor Nagin made the last minute decision to declare the Superdome and COnvention centers as refuge relocation points – why weren’t they stocked with water, food, bedding, generators, and fuel? Why weren’t hospitals offered additional resources by the Mayors office? Mayor Nagin made the decision to allow looting and told the police to focus on Search and Rescue – but looting hinders S&R efforts (as we’ve seen) and no one I know could believe that decision – it’s emergency management 101, preserving order preserves life. There’s plenty of blame to go around – Blanco deserves her share too – but the real culprit in the aftermath here is Nagin.
That would be the Mayor of New Orleans, the guy who neglected to utilize these funny looking things:
Of course, because he was ranting and raving about getting the Feds in there faster and not ‘doing enough,’ he has achieved hero status in some circles:
Since he isn’t getting the Giuliani treatment, largely because he’s dealing with a far more incompetent federal bureaucracy and he’s calling out the fuckups, I’ve decided to point out that New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is kicking ass and taking names.
That’s real goddamned leadership. He can’t save the city by himself. Louisiana can’t save the city by itself. At this point in 2001, Bush had already picked up his firefighter photo-op, had already made the requisite promises and speeches. Nagin is dealing with a liquid Hiroshima, and while people are suffering and dying, he’s got to deal with the “hard questions” about whether his city should be destroyed or merely given up on.
Nagin is Giuliani without the institutional support, dealing with what’s arguably a much more difficult situation. He’s not Republican, however, which excludes him from being an American hero among the conserverati. Sad thing is, we could use a lot more like him.
Bush = Evil
Nagin = Hero
FEMA has made some mistakes, but when the post-mortem is done on this, Mayor Nagin is not going to be the Great American Hero some have deluded themselves into believing.
ArchPundit
I don’t subscribe to Bush being evil, but Nagin has been asking for help one step ahead of where the current problems are since Monday night. He was rather remarkable in predicting each problem and saying what kind of help teh City needed. The State is a different story, but I’ve been talking about Nagin mostly calm demeanor since Monday.
There are a lot of things to criticize LEMA and Blanco with, but Nagin has been pretty incredible.
BinkyBoy
Please John, go watch Koppel scour Brownie. Brownie is so out of his league, so incapable of understanding that he’s the man in charge. His pitiful defensive posturing just made me weep for the people of New Orleans.
I’ve never said Nagin is innocent. Nagin will take the brunt of this disaster’s effects, yet I still believe that Bush owes the COUNTRY more than we’ve gotten. His chipper demeanor in the face of the worst tragedy to hit this nation in my lifetime is a disgusting reminder of his callousness and his almost psychotic inhuman-ness (I’m making up new words). This country surged ahead, contributing a hundred million dollars to the relief funds before Bush ever tried to address the nation.
Plus, he’s the one that appointed Brownie, then congratulated him on public TV. That right there condemns the man, to me at least.
FEMA deserves a great amount of the blame for much of this, and I think time will prove me correct.
Darrell
Good post John. From your link regarding those New Orleans city owned buses under the control of Mayor Nagin:
That really does look to be criminal incompetence on the part of Mayor Nagin. What’s really tragic is that from the wide angle arial view photo on junkyardblog.com, you can see how close those city buses were to the Superdome.
Vlad
Nagin has seemed relatively competent since the hammer came down. That doesn’t exonerate him for any past misdeeds, but it’s better than an unimpeded train of fuckuppery, as some people *cough*Chertoff*cough* have going for them at this point
Trent
First of all, this:
was for a hurricane that occurred 7 weeks ago.
Second of all, Republicans are attacking any criticism of the Federal response by smearing the messenger.
Can we attack his wife too?
You know, the anti-American, un-patriotic people are the Republicans. I’m sorry. There’s too much of this going on and it’s got to stop. It’s the most hateful, divisive, and unamerican thing you can do.
Anderson
Why, then, were crucial decisions at the whim of the mayor?
There was no plan. That’s the problem. City, state & federal officials should’ve had a coordinated plan for a 4/5 hurricane that threatened a levee breach. They didn’t.
That’s why you have plans—so that people will know what to do & how/when to do it.
Brad R.
From FEMA’s website (emphasis mine):
I’m not abdicating Nagin from his responsibility for this catastrophe (the assloads of unused busses are a good illustration), but the buck stops at FEMA. They should have been in constant contact with local agencies, making sure there was adequate emergency planning. Brown’s insistance that the situation is just rosy only makes matters worse.
neil
I don’t see why Jesse has to fluff the mayor. There is plenty of blame to go around here without every Democrat being a hero and every Republican being a villain.
Even if every Democrat _does_ have to be a hero, can’t we make an exception for Louisiana Democrats? It wasn’t that long ago!
Darrell
A day or two ago on a thread about looting, virtually everyone posting was lecturing on how we should just “let them loot”.. and that anyone suggesting that looters be arrested would be guilty of “diverting” resources away from saving lives. Glad to see that f*cking lie put to rest
Tim F
Neither NO nor LA have the tax base to properly safeguard New Orleans and other lowlying towns on the Mississippi delta. Like many red states Louisiansa depends heavily on the federal tit to keep it functioning. That would explain why when the federal levee funding fell through the governor didn’t simply cut a check. NO is a relatively poor city and it’s the largest city in LA. Good luck issuing bonds.
It’s an American paradox that the people who hate the central government most wouldn’t last a year without its largesse. Louisiana and its civil engineering challenges is one example of many.
Trent
I hear Nagin has a black child.
Also, he sounded a little crazy. Probably unbalanced.
Acts a little light in the loafers, as well.
Cromagnon
Remember, with the Bush Administration, the buck stops somewhere ———————————————————–> over there…
Don
There’s no shortage of blame to go around on all levels and I don’t think any rational pundit is denying that. I’m not willing, however, to wipe culpability for all areas off the fed’s shoulders because they’re clear in one area. I continue to be most troubled by one line from a poster on MetaFilter.
If all these folks had been displaced by a dirty bomb, poisoned aquifer or any other terrorist incident we’d be seeing even more panic in the streets and there’d be no lack of local prep to point at. If the federal level isn’t ready to step in on these things, why? And isn’t the quality of management and readyness of resources for these things supposed to be watched and evaluated by DHS?
Back on the one hand posting, this gives me pause:
Maybe I’m just working on a different definition of rapid.
Andrei
Wow… of all the people to criticize at thi moment, the mayor of New Orleans who is trying to cope at this moment (while we all sit here typing away) with a disaster of blibical proportions, facing a task that will make 9/11 look like small time work in comparison, is the last person who should be feeling the wrath of the righteous right or the likes of you.
Tell you what… like you’ve asked others to do on your blog n the comments… why don’t YOU wait a few weeks before asking for the heads of those who failed to manage this disaster correctly.
There’ll be plenty of them to fire soon enough… don’t worry.
For now though, this was an entirely tasteless post, John Cole.
Absolutely fucking TASTELESS.
Let me repeat.
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING TASTELESS.
Darrell
What “coordinated plan” could there possibly be for Cat 4/5 hurricane striking a levee that every engineer has said would be lucky to stand up to a Cat 3?turning the city into a deathtrap. These are disaster relief personnel and volunteers, not miracle workers
Trent
Gee, Andrei, you seem surprised and appalled at their blatant hypocrisy. I’m surprised you’re not numb to it like the rest of us.
(Very well said, btw)
jobiuspublius
I asked this yesterday, or so; why does everything have to be binary? Why does every conflict have to consist of angels and demons? Have we forgotten that we are talking about politicians? I thought government could not do anything right. Is that pre-9/11 thinking? Not if I trust my eyes.
Bob
Can’t wait till Trent Lott’s patio is fixed up.
Is Bush so fucking clueless that he has no concept of how venal and uncaring he sounds? I never heard of Nagen until the last few days, but at least he sounds like he gives a fuck about the thousands of people dying.
At least Cheney has the decency to remain hidden.
Brad R.
Holy crap, I agree with Newt Gingrich!
ppGaz
Nagin = No Hero.
However, it is not necessary to judge everything through Karl Rove Glasses … optical devices which are designed to convince you that if your guy can be characterized as even slightly better than some other guy, he must be a real hero.
Other than people on the ground and people dangling from chopper rescue lines, I don’t see a lot of official heroes around this week. Not in New Orleans City Hall, and not in the White House, either.
Brad R.
The difference is, the government responded competently to 9/11 (and to be fair, it normally responds competetently to hurricanes). The situation in NO is a clusterfuck.
Katherine
I am a lefty and I have been bitching about the failure of any evacuation plan for those without vehicles since before the storm fucking started. A hell of the lot of people on the right ignored this, and continued to talk about people choosing to stay, right up until Nagin started chewing out the federal response.
I hold the state and city primarily responsible for the failures before the storm–though the federal government also bears some responsibility–and the federal government primarily responsible for the failures after the storm–though the state and local governments still bear some responsibility.
Vlad
Newt’s a sleaze in person, but he’s shrewd, and nobody ever accused him of not knowing which way the wind blows.
Darrell
Did you see the arial view photo with the Superdome? Those NewOrl city buses were max 2 miles away. It is entirely f*cking reasonable to ask why in the hell, with that many buses so near, did he not deploy these resources WHICH WERE ALREADY IN PLACE to save lives. It is entirely fair to question his handling of the evacuation given the photographic evidence, especially given his vocal criticisms of other agencies
John Cole
What, Andrei? You mean it is inappropriate to point out the legitimate failings of government? I mean, that is all you guys were doing when you said Bush was strumming a guitar instead of doing something, right?
That is what the CBC was doing when they said this administration wasn’t acting fast enough because most of the people were black, right?
That is what everyone was doing by claiming Bush funding cuts were the reason the levee failed, right?
That is what everyone is doing when saying Michael Brown is a total fuck-up, right?
This is what they are doing when they say FEMA didn’t do anything because they are nothing but political appointees, right?
This is what they were doing when they were blaming the war in Iraq for a ‘slow’ response, right?
That is what Kos is doing saying New Orlenas underwater is what Grover Norquist and Republicans want, right?
And I am the fucking hypocrite. Heh.
This is called returning fire. Tell you what, I am not going to personally make judgement on Nagin until we know what happened. But the idea we should treat him as a hero, at the very least, laughable right now.
Like I said, there have probably been lots of mistakes. I will wait to find out what they are, and not make any more posts like this if you go look up the words hypocrisy and sycophant.
ArchPundit
====There was no plan. That’s the problem. City, state & federal officials should’ve had a coordinated plan for a 4/5 hurricane that threatened a levee breach. They didn’t.
Actually, there are fairly detailed plans with all three levels and when FEMA is involved they take care of logistics. In terms of evacuation, that the State of Louisiana. He provided the emergency shelters for those who couldn’t evacuate and transportation to them–in all that was about 10 sites including the Superdome.
Cities can’t be the lead agency in such a situation because if you evac everyone, the City doesn’t have jurisdiction. There’s a lot of responsibility for the state which should have activated the National Guard on Saturday night or Sunday and staged them to come in as soon as possible, but Nagin pretty much used what resources he had as the plan dictates. The assumption is that he’d be backed up with troops and supplies–he wasn’t.
The ridiculous statements about the Convention Center are hard to figure since he’d announced it on the 29th and it’s right below the damn bridge everyone is coming in on…
ppGaz
Shhh … Bush and Brownie are on tv.
I have empty my Platitude Filter, it’s all clogged up.
John Cole
Brad R.-
You are agreeing with Newt, I am agreeing with PPGAZ.
When it starts raining frogs, it is time to worry.
Trent
Another point about Nagin: He may be mayor, but he’s the mayor of a small city that’s decidedly poor and corrupt. i’m not excusing any mistakes or errors on his part, but he’s not even in the minor leagues. The feds are supposed to be the pros. They’re the ones that we look to for results.
So i think it’s absurd to start laying into him for mistakes.
The thing is, you’re not laying into him for mistakes, you’re laying into him for speaking truth to power.
Katherine
Oh, publicly saying that looting would be ignored was damn stupid. I would actually expressly authorize taking supplies necessary to sustain lives from stores, and expressly forbid everything else. But there really were not enough local cops to do much in any case, it seems.
Katherine
and I don’t know if planning the evacuation was the state’s or city’s responsibility or both but whoever it was fucked up badly.
Vlad
That wasn’t meant as a joke or a pun, BTW. Just a Freudian slip, that looks awful when you notice it.
If you want a Dem to beat up, feel free to have at Governor Blanco. She screwed up by not asking for help before Wednesday (from what I’ve heard), and she’s displayed approximately zero intestinal fortitude throughout the whole thing.
Trent
People aren’t bitching about the evacuation plan. They’re bitching about the time it took to get basic food and water to the area.
Vlad
“speaking truth to power”
God, I hate that phrase. 90% of the time, the people who use it are just looking for an excuse to act like a dick.
ppGaz
Exactly right. One would hope that the appropriate political prices are paid, down the road.
In Nagin’s case, he’s the mayor of a town with no people, at the present time. So I don’t know exactly what his future is, but if I were younger and lived in that town, I’d love to run against him. Just give me one debate and ten minutes, and I’d rip him a new one!
Ancient Purple
But on an up note, Halliburton has been hired already to help get things all spiffy in New Orleans.
Vlad
[i]”That is what everyone is doing when saying Michael Brown is a total fuck-up, right?”[/i]
You have to admit, getting canned by a horse breeder’s association isn’t exactly a proud point on your permanent record.
ppGaz
They aren’t now, but later when there is time to go back and look objectively at what happened here, the people who “planned” for this week just might end up being tarred and feathered.
Ted Koppel totally ripped Brownie on this last night. How could FEMA and the City of New Orleans NOT be ready to move 25,000 people out of that city on a moment’s notice, knowing the realities of their geographic and hydrologic situation?
If there is justice, heads will roll over this issue.
Except for Brownie, who will get a statue on the Capital Mall.
Tulie
Couple points on the busses plan:
1. City money could not have been used for gas until mandatory evacuation orders were given. Gas was already in short supply by that point.
2. Getting people gathered into pickup places is NOT an instantaneous event.
3. Traffic. Don’t scoff – I grew up on the Gulf Coast, have been evacuated multiple times. Twice spwnt the night on the freeway with thousands of other people because it would take 10-12 hours to get to Austin, 200 miles away. If you remember, they were diverting people off of the freeway after the evac order so they wouldn’t be just sitting on the road when the storm hit.
4. Put those people who couldn’t afford to leave on their own where? Was NO going to pay for hotel rooms, even if they weren’t sold out from Bastrop, TX to the Georgia border? Just drop them on the side of the road on higher ground?
It’s easy to point fingers when you don’t know what mass evacuation is really like. There is no way that the bus plan would have worked. Think things through.
ArchPundit
Planning an evacuation is beyond what a City can do–it can’t send people to nowhere. That’s the problem–Cities are relatively small and when you have to evacuate 500,000 people from just the area of New Orleans, the state and FEMA have to provide shelters and transportation. The City officials have to protect the infrastructure and provide emergency services within their jurisdiction.
The larger problem is that when the plan was put together, no one considered the poor other than the city–they are the only ones that provided any shelter even though it was in the City.
Furthermore, a City doesn’t have the airlift capacity or ambulatory capacity to move the sick and infirm–that is probably beyond the capabilities of most states, not just cities.
ppGaz
Cheer up. It took a Cat 5 hurricane to do it.
Soon, everything will be back to normal.
I’ll be bitching about something around here before long, it’s my nature.
jobiuspublius
Let’s not forget, it seems that Dear Leader has been defunding N.O. since about 2001. How is N.O. supposed to meet new responsibilities if it is dependant on funding from the feds? Another NCLB? It would be interesting to explore all the fed allocations to L.A.
And why did Dear Leader have to mess with FEMA? It seems he has produced an inferior product.
N.O. is a disaster on a 100 year waiting list. You can just imagine the chairs on the titanic.
ppGaz
Good points …. but wouldn’t a proper plan have included drills, and public education? If I am mayor of that town, I am telling my citizens, you live in a bowl that can fill up with water in 24 hours. You must heed these instructions and warnings and be ready to react quickly, your life depends on it. Etc.
Thoughts?
jobiuspublius
But he’s not in the running so he can say anything foolish that tempts his opponents to say, “Yeah, you see even Newty Toot Toot agrees with me. I am ass!”.
Tulie
No drills will eliminate the panic and crowding of an evacuation. They can’t. It is not feasible to mandate that all busses have full gas tamks at all times. How do you decide which 15000 people get to go?
No city in hurricane country has evacuation plans. Cities can’t do it. If you can, you get out. If you can’t, you don’t, and then fuckjeads blame you for not getting out.
Happens every time.
Darrell
But the mayor did execute an evacuation plan – a last minute evacuation of thousands to the Superdome. So don’t pretend that the city was powerless. Tulie makes some fair points questioning where to take evacuees. It probably wouldn’t have worked perfectly, but it couldn’t have been worse than the Superdome clusterf*ck. A public plea to other parishes and Texas would have certainly yielded results on housing and volunteers. But Nagin didn’t even think or bother to ask.
Tulie
Sorry for the typos, I’m pissed, depressed, and on my way to medicinally drunk.
ArchPundit
He did scream about getting out, but there are several types of people left
1) the infirm
2) health care/emergency types
3) Poor/no transportation
4) vacationers without flights
5) others
We don’t really know how many types are in each category, but it. This is a failure, but not one that a Mayor of a large, but not huge city doesn’t have resources to fix. Think about the number of buses you need to get 10 percent of the population out? If the Superdome required nearly 500–then you are talking about about at least 1500 buses. Where do you get them and how do you get them there that fast. And you still don’t have somewhere to stick those people once you get them out of the area.
You can’t get enough airlift capacity for the very sick and ambulances are similar to buses in trying to corale since you’ll still need them in the City after the disaster. And what hospitals do you get them to?
The logistica are mind numbing, but what is amazing is that the City was able to provide just about everyone during the storm shelter who wanted it and a way to get there and then they had natural pick up places for when help arrived. That’s pretty good on the City’s end.
jobiuspublius
Case in point for what I said above about Newty Toot Toot. pp, mind your credibility.
P.S. I’m not calling you an ass. I just illustrating how one can be compromised by getting to close to an opponent.
ArchPundit
=====So don’t pretend that the city was powerless. Tulie makes some fair points questioning where to take evacuees. It probably wouldn’t have worked perfectly, but it couldn’t have been worse than the Superdome clusterf*ck. A public plea to other parishes and Texas would have certainly yielded results on housing and volunteers. But Nagin didn’t even think or bother to ask.
The Superdome kept people alive–what didn’t happen is no one came in and got them out quickly. FEMA and the State couldn’t even come up with buses for a couple days to get them to another place–how would a City do that?
Ambulances…
Copters…
The logistics are just daunting in such a task and a City simply doesn’t have those kind of resources.
Tim F
If it turns out that the local government abdicated responsibility then so be it. I have nothing invested in the city or state government of Louisiana. If they fucked up they let their city down and, to a lesser degree they let down the entire country.
However, it is a fundamental principle of our nation that certain things need safeguarding beyond the local level. The national park and marine reserve system is one example, major ports and shipping facilities such as the port of New York, the Atlanta railheads and the New Orleans port at the mouth of the Mississippi serve also qualify. New Orleans would never have been built in the first place if it hadn’t been for nationwide investment.
Your random river hamlet could disappear entirely and Bush won’t necessarily hold primary or even secondary responsibility. The difference here is that the federal government has had a major commitment in maintaining New Orleans since the port was founded. When John declared in his first post on the subject that New Orleans is a ‘national treasure,’ he wasn’t kidding. Emphasis on ‘national.’
jobiuspublius
I wonder who are the screw balls responsible for the Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida messes?
Saw Dear Leader speak surrounded by Nagin, Landreu, etc. He was given a podium and a short speach this time. He’s playing the magnaminous one. Nagin, is all smiles now, in a t-shirt. Good thing Landreu kept her grace and gratitude in front of Cooper. But, you don’t know what she’ll have to face in the next elections.
jobiuspublius
Oh, while Dear Leader is playing the magnaminous one, the Black Caucus, NAACP, etc. are the furious ones. Let’s see who their allies are tommorow?
Darrell
No food, unbearable stench to the point that evacuation personnel had to wear masks, shootings, rapes. Those people could have been evacuated by NO city buses which were nearby
Not true. FEMA could come up with their own vehicles. Note the big trucks driving in 4ft. water and the buses delivered. The problem was that bridges and roads were underwater or destroyed. The city was underwater.. still is. It’s not that FEMA “couldn’t come up with” buses, they couldn’t get them in.
Did you see the picture of all those city buses? Have you seen how close the buses were to the Superdome? The city had an adequate number of buses. The buses were located in a near perfect position for evacuation. The city emergency coordinator and mayor appear not to have even thought to utilize those buses which were already in place
Katherine
With an evacuation to the dome, buses can make multiple trips. In the interstate, on that traffic, they couldn’t. The city bus fleet wouldn’t have been up to it. They decided back in June or July that they didn’t have the resources, they were making public services announcements about it that they were supposed to air in September. Since Nagin does not have a reputation for corruption, I have to wonder why the state or federal government could not pay for some damn buses to lower the death toll in one of the most likely scenarious for a catastrophic disaster. Insert obligatory references to the bridge to nowhere and Wyoming’s “Worlds Largest Pile of Homeland Security Money” here. Maybe he didn’t ask. But I know how much success the Republican, RNC-hosting mayor of NY had in asking AFTER the disaster. So I doubt asking would have done much. On the other hand, he is the mayor of that city; surely he could have done SOMETHING. One gov’t officials screwup doesn’t mitigate another’s all that much, to me.
Darrell
Case in point example of extremist thinking. Don’t dare agree with the “other side” even if they have a valid point. You might get yourself ‘compromised’.
Darrell
The larger arial photo makes it clear that there were almost certainly more than the 205 buses which could be counted in the higher res photo. 275 buses X only 2 trips each = 36,000 people evacuated.
ppGaz
Hey, don’t hold back. You’d be neither the first, nor the last.
Nobody around here is really an opponent, certainly not John (at least AFAIC). This is just verbal theater.
James Dobson is an opponent. Tom Delay. Karl Rove. People who have the power to do real harm. Rush Slimebaugh.
Bloggers who disagree with me? Just folks at the bar who have had one too many and don’t have a ride home ;-)
Anderson
Gotta give the point to Archpundit. The mayor would in theory load up the buses … and send this *horde* of people *where*?
OTOH, we can ask why there weren’t rations and water stockpiled at the Dome and CC. The answer, I would guess, is that the mayor “assumed” that before those were necessary, the other components (state/federal) would come get the people. Oops.
jg
I think there’s plenty of blame to go around. The diffrence between Bush and the mayor or governor is they showed up. They were on site to provide leadership. When the limits of their effectiveness were reached people looked above them for more leadership and found a ‘On Vacation’ sign.
rkrider
Here I thought this was more of Bush’s incompetence. But I see it’s politics as usual, right out of Rove’s playbook, how stupid I’ve been. The spinning starts now by the right wing blogs to BLAME THE DEMOCRATS. The mayor of N.O. is a Dem who used to be a Repub (the worst kind of Dem) and the Gov of LA is a Dem.
Read the four page fucking letter from Kathleen Blanco, sent to Bush, on the 28th of August (at Crawford, remember he was still on vacation) requesting the Federal Government’s help:
Dan
I wanted to address one of John’s points – our need to wait until we can do an honest, impartial and thorough investigation of what happened. When you get down to that, I really do believe that this is important and necessary.
On the other hand, I think that the liberal response of blaming Bush, based on the evidence at hand (but not lying or creating panic), is the right one.
This administration is one of the most highly politicized in history. Already we’re seeing them respond to the aftermath of Katrina with the same reaction as always – back-patting and congratulations while serious work needs to be done (the worst offender being a Democrat, don’t get me wrong), press appearances, blaming someone else for the failures (in this case, flood victims), and above all, the assurance that everything is going according to plan.
I mean, if everything wasn’t going according to plan, that would mean that the plan was bad, right? And if the plan was bad, that might mean that someone could have written a better one, which might suggest that someone screwed up… and we simply can’t have people thinking that, now can we?
So, the plan’s good, because it has to be good. And if you have a good plan, you never have to change it, or get anyone’s opinion, or make anyone accountable except for those who are “disposable”.
I’m not sure how much the federal government had to do with this. If nothing else, Bush is guilty of gross insensitivity for taking off the following day for CA. Everything I’ve seen suggests that this administration was woefully unprepared for a specific event that could likely have been created by a nuclear weapon or another means, one which they should have spent the last four years planning for. We have some important questions, and the answers to them need to be right.
The sad fact is, though, Bush has to own this now. Otherwise, those in power will close ranks, somebody else will take the fall, and it’ll be medals and business as usual again. We’ll get that nuanced and definitive report John wants, but it’ll take much longer, it won’t be as influential, it will be more open to charges of inaccuracy and partisanship because the right people won’t be involved, and it’ll probably end up as a paragraph on page 12 of your paper.
The questions will have been asked, but they won’t have an impact on anything. Business will continue as usual. And next time, we still won’t be ready, and people will die because the plan is wonderful, because it has to be.
John Cole
You all might read this.
Watch out- Andrei is going to explode at your shameless comment. Oh wait- you are mindlessly ATTACKING Bush.
You are safe.
ppGaz
Well, since we are talking about a plan and not an ad-hoc crisis response ….
You send them, first of all, to a location where they are not likely to be under water in 24 hours. Preferably, to a prearranged staging area that has food, water and sanitary facilities, and for the sick and infirm, to prearranged medical staging areas equipped with the basics for medical care.
If you have planners and money, you can prearrange these things. All you need is the will and the courage to make the plans and put the pieces in place.
If these things can’t be done, honestly, it isn’t right to put people back in that city. You are asking them to play roulette with their lives for half of every year.
jaime
Remember, everyone…black People loot, white folks scavenge.
Anderson
Well, since we are talking about a plan and not an ad-hoc crisis response …
Right, except there was no plan, and the mayor would be the official least able to make a plan. I’m just concurring with Archpundit that the mayor’s not particularly to blame for not busing everybody out—that would require the coordinated planning that was, evidently, absent.
John Cole
Anderson- Read this.
Greg Hackenberg
I left my house on Sunday. It still stands, but I have no idea when I will see it again. It’s in a city, know for its crime and incredible culture, a culture that has spread through every pore of this country in a way no other has. It may be gone, for good. I had a car, a reliable one, and money for gas. I had family to stay with; there were no hotel rooms available as far east as Tallahassee, or as far west as San Antonio, on Sunday, but I still could have found the money. I am young, and had the strength to work myself to exhaustion Saturday screwing plywood over the windows of my house, and I had the money and fore though to buy and keep a small supply in my shed. I am able to sit in the air conditioning, and type this while outside the heat index tops 100.
I do not rely on a cumbersome bus system for transportation, or a train system that ceased all operations Saturday. My only family are not on the other side of the country. I am not elderly. I don’t work in the kitchen of a hotel that required me to report for work on Sunday (they have guests, you know). I am not poor, I have options. Many of my neighbors (and I mean neighbors) do not.
This city is a poor city. It has great problems, on levels only places such as Detroit and Newark can really understand. The school system is bankrupt, barely able to maintain or afford the gas for the busses you see. I suspect the drivers might have had some concerns for their families as well. It has a mayor I happily voted for, as did nearly all the republicans. A businessman, he promised to make the city better, and he did. He may be the best we’ve ever had. He immediately began weeding out the corruption that tarred this city. He received standing ovations at restaurants. He hired bright people and gave them what limited resources he could to make things better. Check and see what software your city uses to run its web site, I might have been a licensed version of the one his programs developed. Things were starting to look up.
You want racism? How many of your cities would have accepted the contents of some of the worst crime ridden housing projects on Sunday? Don’t even begin to explain, you know the answer. How many would have taken the elderly, many worn and brittle after a life of hardship and toil we cannot imagine. How many could set up the necessary equipment for their care in time? Where would you have put them? That is of course if the great conservative magic could have produced all these people from out of the city, on time, lined up like perfect school kids.
Would you have even cared? I mean, lets get real. We sweated out Dennis, as did the whole gulf coast. Remember Dennis? We evacuated for Ivan. Did you even know? We evacuated for Georges. Do you even remember the name? How many of your cities stepped up then? Would any of them had even listened?
You want to know how this works…when the contra-flow (both sides of the interstate running outbound) plan was first being set up to evacuate the city, Mississippi refused to allow it to extend past their border citing manpower shortages. And you know what? It was true. They did not have the resources to deal with their own evacuating populations, and Louisiana. Mississippi, you see is pretty poor too.
Now it seems the mayor who fought for funds for coastal restoration, the funds needed to complete the levee system as designed was “criminally negligent” as are those who remained in the city. It’s been made clear to me now, the crime was poverty. And there is no greater crime.
Darrell
Yes, especially his ‘insighful’ commentary after seeing photographic evidence which directly contradicted his assessment
Says it all, don’t you think?
jg
Mindless attack? He was on vacation. People were looking to him and he wasn’t there. I didn’t bring any conspiracy theory crap into it.
ppGaz
Hmm. Not sure about thaaaaaaaaat. He can’t do it by himself, but he can lead. He can inform the citizens. He can go to the state and to FEMA and pound on the table and attract attention to the problem. There are a lot of things he can do besides …
Holy shit … is that a big hurricane? Everybody out!
DJ Any Reason
Wow John, how many ways can you manage to look like a complete dumbass in one post during your mad scramble to absolve the administration of any wrongdoing in this disaster.
To note off the top of my head:
1) Those busses are clearly partially submerged – the blog you got the photo from points to an image with the interstate right next to them, but no obvious way to, y’know, get on the interstate. Moreover, you need people to drive those busses, and in what can generously be called poor conditions, you’d probably want someone with experience. Perhaps its a bit hard to find several hundred experienced school bus drivers right now in NOLA? Perhaps, even if they were at hand, it might be hard to get them to be busses? Now, Nagin could have pre-planned for this and had them ready to go (although that would’ve required keeping several hundred school bus drivers IN New Orleans) had he known the extent of the damage. However, you yourself claimed earlier today that nobody predicted a breach in the levee, and so nobody could’ve foreseen how bad this would be. So which way is it John? Did Nagin fuck up for not foreseeing the need to have several hundred people ready and able to drive those busses through flooded streets (and, let’s not forget, keeping their fingers crossed that the engines aren’t flooded and they’ll even start), or is Bush absolved of all guilt because nobody could’ve seen it coming? You can’t have it both ways.
2) As to your boy in MEMA, its nice that’s he’s dealt with a few floods, and I don’t mean to minimize that, but if he’s shocked that FEMA is working harder at handling this than at the disasters he’s worked on, then he’s a fool. Of course FEMA’s going to do more with Katrina – when in any of our lifetimes have we seen anything even in the same order of magnitude as this disaster? Moreover, there comes a tipping point – Nagin, with the resources of his city (a city under water) can only do so much. The resources available to the federal government and Louisiana are far greater, and far more easily accessed right now. If FEMA, or whatever federal or state agency should be working on this disaster (read: ALL OF THEM), aren’t putting in several orders of magnitude more effort than he’s used to seeing, then its an absolute unexcusable deriliction of duty.
Finally, the reason people are deifying Nagin while vilifying Bush right now isn’t because somebody’s more accountable than someone else for what happend – its a matter of what they’re perceived as doing right now that it has. Bush is running around, getting photo ops, delivering speeches about gas prices, and visiting Mississippi while NOLA is under water. Nagin is desperately trying to save the lives of the citizens trapped in his city, and clearly so. Perhaps Bush is working just as hard, perhaps Nagin is busy twiddling his thumbs whenever he’s not on the radio, but somehow that doesn’t pass the smell test.
Once again, John, stop being such a f’n apologist.
The Comish (sic)
Trent and rkrider may want to check their facts. Trent said this:
“First of all, this:
Like I said, Bush declared the gulf coast area a Federal Disaster area on Saturday – two days before Katrina hit.
was for a hurricane that occurred 7 weeks ago.”
However, an August 29th article in the Washington Post noted that Bush had already declared states of emergency in Louisiana and Mississippi, which freed up workers and funds *before the hurrican hit*.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/28/AR2005082800146_pf.html
And rkrider, the letter that you’ve quoted was a request that Bush declare a state of emergency in Louisiana. The law requires that the state request such a declaration before the federal gov’t can declare a state of emergency, which frees up the workers and funds. Bush responded to the letter you’ve quoted by providing what was requested *the same day*.
Trent also said this:
“I hear Nagin has a black child.”
Which just makes him an idiot.
John Cole
The fact is that all the finger-pointing right now is fucking sutpid. The way I see things so far
Yhe evacuation plan was inadequate/ non-existent, a hit for all levels of government, but more so the local authorities. FEMA deals chiefly with the aftermath of disasters. They pre-positioned shit, and went to move in to assist the state and local government as they always do. As they went to move in, the levee broke. State and local officials, already overwhelmed with the fucking SCOPE of this disaster, were now fuxored, but not as much as the people trapped.
FEMA then had to shift gears, and then provide services beyond what they normally do, including picking up all the slack from the state and local folks, who were totally screwed. It took time to marshall the resources, which were already disjointed and dealing with a fucking disaster the scope of which was unheard of in Mississippi and Alabama. Listen to the survivors from previous hurricanes to compare this one with the past ones.
Meanwhile, while people would have liked to get shit to the people trapped, they were busy dealing with a lot of other stuff, namely getting thousands of people off of rooftops, trying to stop the flooding, getting shot at by armed lunatics, etc.
It took a while. People died. There most likely was inadewquate planning, and things that could have been done differently, but there always is. But I think the scope of this tragedy, the inability of the state and local officials to fulfill their role because of the fact that ALL of the infrastructure of New Orleans was simply GONE, and the extent of the number of people in need just made things worse.
I am not yet ready to flame people for inadequate responses. There will be a time for that. But claiming the response was slow because of race, or claiming Bush ‘didn’t care’ and was just playing a guitar, or shit like that that we have seen so far is fucking outrageous. I know ytou all hate Bush. I really do. But there is a lot at play here.
Darrell
Anderson wrote:
John Cole responds
Oops, looks like you were proven dead wrong about that “no plan” business, huh Anderson. That’s what happens when you follow dogma instead of facts. Did you see the photos of the buses? Did you see the arial pic showing how close they were to the Superdome? How many buses in NORTA? 500 or more? How many school buses? Another 500? possibility of Church buses and tour buses? Yet the Mayor was “least able” to do anything about the evacuation? ‘Reality based’ community, right?
Anderson
Thanks, John. Interesting. I wonder who wrote this for them? Precisely the kind of vague consultant-speak that omits the useful details.
Favorite part, after much definition, etc. of “evacuation zones”:
Says it all.
Cromagnon
The 82nd Airborne Division can deploy a Bde to anywhere in the world on 18-hours notice! It took 5 DAYS! for a few dozen NG trucks to arrive with some essential supplies in NOLA. (More time than it took for the US Army to defeat the Iraqi Army in Kuwait/Southern Iraq in 1991) Why??? I don’t know, but when I was in the Army we were told that a leader is responsible for everything ones subordinates do or don’t do! So who’s the CINC???
Anderson
Didn’t see Darrell’s comment. Darrell, you call that a plan? It’s a wish list. It’s like we’d gone onto the beaches with a “plan” that said “troops will be delivered in special-purpose watercraft.”
My point about the mayor/bus issue was, where were the buses to go? Was there a plan for this?
Also, and correct me if I’m wrong, a lot of people simply didn’t show up until after the flood, so that the buses by then were useless. As I understand it, that was always a given for emergency planning—FEMA thought so in its “Pam” exercise.
So in any event, there would be 1000’s of people at the last-resort points. Thus, getting food/water in for those people was always already a priority.
Am I wrong? Please explain.
Anderson
Oddly, my comment got botched; I was admiring the part about how “evacuation zones will be defined after further study,” or words to that effect.
Anderson
Wow, text is dropping at random from my comments; that’s “gone onto the beaches on D-Day.”
Time to start drinking & steady my typing.
Darrell
Can you read or are you that dishonest?:
Nothing but a “wish list” huh? Like I said, that’s the kind of ‘thinking’ you get when you follow dogma instead of facts. Remember, reading is fundamental
John Cole
DJ ANY REASON:
That may be the dumbest comment I have ever seen here, and that is saying something. The idea is to evacuate the citizens OUT of the city, and to do so BEFORE the hurricane hits (when the busses are, btw, dry).
jobiuspublius
I can’t help feeling that the mayor should have done something ad hoc, if he was not able to do nothing else. Not for the sake of perfection, but, I think one has to try something even if the impact is minor. Women and children first. But, the fact is he will get scapegoated no matter what he should have or could have done. Remember, everybody expects Dear Leader to be a the big leader and not the tinker in chief, and rightly so. Who do we expect to secure the N.O.? The NOPD or the Nat. Guard/Army?
Anderson
All very true, EXCEPT that the infrastructure’s being “gone” was exactly what was expected to happen. It’s like saying “the earthquake response would’ve been better, but damn! there was this earthquake.” The potential for flooding was why a hurricane was such a terrible threat to N.O. So it had to be figured into any plan.
I’ll concede that the state bears at least equal responsibility with the feds for the lack of planning and immediate response. Once the city had those people at the Dome & CC, it was time for the state/feds to come in.
David
So who is doing the looting and who is doing the finding? Blacks? Whites? Hmmm…You should see the photos and their headings…plus one photo is taken down because of the political correctness.
And as usual the media got it upside down.
“After Hurricane Katrina Law-Abiding Blacks Shop, While Whites Racists Loot”
Darrell
That would seem to fall under the category of Section III part 5 of the City of New Orleans Emergency Preparedness plans for hurricanes
Hey, no one expected the mayor to do everything here, but cut the dishonest crap about how how the city and mayor had “no plan” and how the mayor was “least able” to evacuate citizens given all the resources at his disposal, and given that New Orleans was supposed to have a well rehearsed plan for evacuation in the face of a hurricane
Anderson
Can you read or are you that dishonest?
Oh, fuck you, Darrell. The part you quote proves my point. Shall do this, shall do that. Nothing specific. It’s a plan to have a plan.
I’ll take the Pepsi challenge against your reading skills, or honesty, any day of the week.
Andrei
Get a grip Cole. Returning fire??? That is what you give me? You were the one who said, accurately, that Hastert was tone deaf when he made his remarks. Un-friggin-real. I mean… I have nothing to say to that if you think this is some sort of contest that must be won with “returning fire.”
You posted a photo of school buses under water and then are trying to pin the issue on ONE mayor because you want to “return fire?”
Wow… I mean just WOW.
Thank friggin’ God.
This says it all.
The Comish (sic)
Archpundit:
[quote]”The logistics are just daunting in such a task and a City simply doesn’t have those kind of resources.”[/quote]
The City had plenty of resources. New Orleans’s city budget last year was well over $600 million. Plus, as has been pointed out earlier, the federal government gave the city millions of dollars when a state of emergency was declared *before the hurricane hit*. The City had plenty of money to evacuate its citizens.
Archpundit:
[quote]”Furthermore, a City doesn’t have the airlift capacity or ambulatory capacity to move the sick and infirm—that is probably beyond the capabilities of most states, not just cities.”[/quote]
What are you talking about? Are you actually suggesting that the only way to move the sick and infirm is through federal intervention? Do you think you have to call FEMA to move the sick and infirm from (for example) a car crash to a hospital? Hell no. During my grandfather’s last days, my father and I were able to move him around without federal planning. That wasn’t because Homeland Security moved him, it was because we put him in an effing car.
Louisiana’s state budget last year was over $14 billion. My family’s budget last year was a couple thousand. The suggestion that a local (or even state!) government doesn’t have sufficient resources to move the sick and infirm is preposterous.
Archpundit:
[quote]”Cities can’t be the lead agency in such a situation because if you evac everyone, the City doesn’t have jurisdiction.”[/quote]
This is patently false. The City has jurisdiction over its citizens. The City is given explicit jurisdictin over the evacuation of its citizens. It’s the *federal government* that doesn’t have jurisdiction over the evacuation of the people within the city.
And that’s the way it should be. Cities have to be the lead in evacuations because they know the city the best. They know the streets and traffic and neighborhoods and people. People who live in Washington, DC do not.
Joe Albanese
It was God’s will:
So all of the planning in the world would not have mattered anyway – it was God’s will.
Right wingnuttia on full display.
Anderson
Comish, the point I believe is getting the people OUT of the city, which implicates the state level of responsibility.
As for the size of the budget, etc., N.O. has a lot to spend on besides hurricanes.
And none of this addresses the fact that, according to FEMA, 100,000 people were going to be stuck in the city regardless.
Look, I used to live in N.O. but don’t any more; I don’t give a shit about the mayor; but it seems pretty obvious that a disaster that *wipes out the city* is one that’s going to require most of the planning and response (& hence responsibility) to be above the city level. And that is most glaringly where they fell short.
The # of people at the Dome & CC was in itself a small victory—they weren’t drowned or in attics. The mayor could’ve done better (he should have shut up about using copters to patch the levee, once that bastard broke it was beyond a short-term fix), but he is the only official who would get even a low passing grade on handling this horror.
Andrei
Deal.
Hypocrisy
1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2. An act or instance of such falseness.
Sycophant
1. A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people.
I already knew what they meant FWIW.
Now, your turn to stop acting like an asshat and “returning fire” in the partisan blame game like that means anything in a disaster like this. I expect a hell of lot more from someone as intelligent as you.
rkrider
Believe what you want John, but if I’m POTUS and I see people on the TV in one of my cities dying because they don’t have food or water, I’m going to do whatever I can to get them food and water. If reporters can get in there to talk to the dying people, I’m sure as hell there was a way to get them supplies.
Anderson
It’s the end of the world as we knew it, and Shanks feels fine.
The longing for apocalypse is so conspicuous in these guys. Better to have a world wiped out than a world with sin in it.
rkrider
It’s called leadership!
ppGaz
Wow. I am not surprised, and yet this is still shocking when you see it.
These crazy rightwing motherfuckers need to be slapped.
I’m serious. I consider them dangerous and un-American, I don’t want them in my country, and I don’t want a government that phones these guys up to ask for policy guidance.
rkrider
I don’t want them in my country, and I don’t want a government that phones these guys up to ask for policy guidance.
Shit, did you know that FEMA, on their website is directing donations to Pat Robertson? (Operation Blessing)
raymond
In my view, blaming Nagin for not dealing with the New Orleans disaster is about as bright as blaming the WTC security guards for not handling the fire and evacuation better. In both cases, it was a problem so big that it required help from outside.
Andrei
Also, to clarify… if you want to call the mayor of New Orleans out during the on-going disaster unfolding, a man who has been knee-deep in the shit storm himself, please feel free to do so. It’s your blog. You make your own bed and sleep in it.
But I come from a military kind of family and was raised with a more military sense of responsibility: When a lower ranking officer fails (like a mayor), the blame lies on the general (like the President) for providing poor leadership that filters through the ranks that helped cause the failure, not the lower rank officer.
For me, the buck stops with the President. Maybe I’m being too simplistic… Fine, I’ll take that criticism at face value. But I’m still appalled at Cole for the very nature of this post. I honestly expect better from him.
On the way home, I was listening to NewsHour on NPR. The analysis at the end of the show pointed to three looming events that have yet to occur that will probably make what we are seeing now pale in comparison.
1) The death toll count when it is announced. Knowing just how many people have died during this catastrophe will fuel a massive fire of discontent.
2) The bill we will foot to rebuild this region of the country, especially in the context of the war in Iraq and the tax cuts this adminsitration has been wanting to make permament. (Among other things.)
3) The long term effect on the general economy of this country once the impact and scope of this disaster settles in.
But go ahead, let’s all argue about the Mayor of New Orleans, who ordered a city-wide evacuation, tried to warn people, and who has been trying to deal with this crisis as its unfolds as only one person in the network of people who are responsible for leading this country. Because yeah… that’s what we really need to do right now.
This event is going to be bigger than 9/11. Far bigger, and its impact far more significant in so many ways.
Joe Albanese
Its really amusing to watch John do his back flips to make excuses for the obviously woeful performance of Bush and company. He lurches from one thing to the next… its all the fault of New Orleans.. see all the buses? the levee projects that bush cut won’t have mattered.. it was a cat 4 storm after all…. they’re doing the best they can… its really not FEMA’s job after all… yada yada yada…..
I don’t get it John, I really don’t. You, as you frequently point out, are not reluctant to criticise Bush when you feel it warranted. I just dont’ understand how you don’t see that it is warranted in this case when just about the whole world is coming to that conclusion. Read what some on the right are saying like the Washington Times….. the National Review’s The Corner…. read Andrew Sullivan who said:
What is even more disturbing about your miserable performance” these last few days John, is the way you attack anyone that has a contrary position to yours. To you they are “pricks”, “bush haters” “stupid” “disingenious” etc. etc. Are you that unsure of yourself that, like a little school boy, you have to resort to name calling to bolster your pathetic apologies for the incompetency of the Bush Administration?
Joe Albanese
Oh, and one more thing? Where the fuck is Dick Cheney?
George Turner
Um, no. John’s just calling out the usual bed-wetting morons who blame Bush for everything from the existence of bread molds to the wobble in the Earth’s rotation.
Yawn.
h0mi
Didn’t they do a disaster drill last year in NO?
What happened? What went wrong now that wasn’t wrong then?
The Comish (sic)
Andrei:
“But I come from a military kind of family and was raised with a more military sense of responsibility: When a lower ranking officer fails (like a mayor), the blame lies on the general (like the President) for providing poor leadership that filters through the ranks that helped cause the failure, not the lower rank officer.”
If, in fact, you come from a military family, I’d expect you to have some basic understanding of the chain of command. Part of the reason why the higher ranking officer takes the blame is because the lower ranking officer is *required* to follow the higher ranking officer’s orders. And if the higher ranking officer didn’t give any orders on the subject, then the higher ranking officer doesn’t take any of the blame.
The Mayor of NO is not within the President’s chain of command. The Mayor was not acting under the President’s orders. So your “military” analogy is drivel.
Andrei:
“But I’m still appalled at Cole for the very nature of this post. I honestly expect better from him.”
So let me see if I’ve got this straight —
Criticism of Democrats, who are dealing with a crisis of “Biblical proportions” — Shameful, disgusting, excrable.
Criticism of Republicans, who are dealing with the exact same crisis — A OK.
Which I guess is why it’s ok for you to post such criticisms in other threads.
Hypocrite.
Joe Albanese
Geroge Turner comes back with a brilliant retort:
ahhhh… the intelligence of the right is truly awe inspiring.
ppGaz
Well, it’s not like we haven’t been trying to tell people for the last 3 years. I honestly believe that Katrina marks the end of the “suspension of disbelief” period that this government has enjoyed. Their party is over, and I mean, permanently.
But all due respect to all who are due respect here … the feeding frenzy to browbeat people who are taking their time to absorb all this and make sense of it, not helpful.
Personally, I just this hour realized that I am in some kind of state of psychic shock over this whole thing. We don’t want to watch any more, but we feel obligated to at least pay attention while people are suffering, even though we can’t really do much more than give money and hope that it does some good. But my point is, the whole country is reeling. Maybe getting your favorite adversary to say uncle at this moment isn’t the most important thing in the world?
Beleive me, plenty of time and opportunity to enjoy the accountability period later. I think you are seeing the collapse of the Spud government here, but it’s not going to all happen in one day.
John Cole
Andrei isn’t big on ‘understanding’ of any kind.
Incoherent rage at anyone who disagrees with his narrative- check. Andrei has that.
Total agreement with any assessment that blames Bush, Cheney Republicans, Halliburton, in that order, for anything and everything- got that too.
Outright venom and totally unjustified outrage for anyone who counters the bullshit proffered up by Kossacks or the other lunatics. Why, he has that, too.
But understanding? Pffft.
I am evil for noting that more people than just FEMA may have some blame to go around. Dontcha get it?
jg
I’d be impressed if Bush acknowledge the existence of bread molds or that the earth is round.
The Comish (sic)
Anderson:
“Comish, the point I believe is getting the people OUT of the city, which implicates the state level of responsibility.”
No, it doesn’t. Getting people OUT of the city is the city government’s job. (See John’s link from earlier, where the City of New Orleans said evacuation is their job.) Where to house them once they’re out of the city will probably involve some cooperation between municipalities, but since we’re dealing with adults who are presumably all looking out for everyone’s best interests, that cooperation probably would not require anything more than a call from Mayor A to Mayor B asking, “Hey, if our city is under water, mind if we send some folks to stay in your city?”
Anderson:
“As for the size of the budget, etc., N.O. has a lot to spend on besides hurricanes.”
Well then thank goodness the only thing the state and local government have to spend money on is hurricanes.
And what do you suppose the city of NO is spending money on right now besides hurricane? I’m thinking that’s pretty much the sum total of their expenses right now.
But I am curious: Do you think the City’s other expenses — paving roads, writing traffic tickets, etc. — were more important than evacuating its residents before a Cat 4 hurricane? If not, shouldn’t the government have put those expenses on hold and paid for the evacuation?
Andrei
Yeah… in the same way that when the FBI comes rolling in on a crime scene and takes over for the local police, those local guys just say, “you can’t do that! You’re not in charge of the chain of the command!”
Or the same way when most Federal agencies come in and take over in times of crisis on other types local of situations they are told to go away, because you know.. they aren’t in charge.
Right. Got it.
Oh! I didn’t realize President Bush had been doing ANYTHING the past 4 days. My bad.
You obviously miss the point of what the phrase “the buck stops here” means with regard to leadership. It seems clear as well that I expect more from the executive branch of this government than you apparently do.
I didn’t call you evil, John. I called you an asshat. And you claim I’m not big understanding?
Anderson
Comish, I’m too worn out to argue, but you seem like a nice guy, so let me try to respond:
I just can’t agree, b/c we are talking 10,000’s of people. You can’t just dump them on another city. Maybe it would’ve been better than having them stranded, but I can’t blame any mayor for not thinking that was an option.
I’ll give you the budget point—one of my first reactions to this disaster was that budgeting for uncertainties is not a strength of democracies in general. There’s always the urge to buy something “now” and not invest in “later.” This mistake of course cuts across the board, city/state/federal.
One more thing that just occurred to me: Blanco’s been governor less than a year, this guy’s mayor for what, 2 years? The blame has to extend to their predecessors in office. I think that’s another reason I blame the feds more—we’ve had 4 years since 9/11 to gear up for this.
Bottom line is what some guy wrote in to Andy Sullivan with: he’s seen what his gov’t will do for him in a time of crisis, and what it will do is, leave him there to die.
Nighty-night, sports fans.
ppGaz
I hope that some of you got to see the NBC Evening News tonight. A special one-hour version. Basically, the story was this: Massive Failure of Government. In detail, and from many angles, that’s the story. And it’s a story that will turn out to be bigger than 9-11.
Massive Failure of Government. Can’t get much more direct than that.
Not necessary to stamp feet and wave arms now, folks. The story is out there, people get it.
Joe Albanese
another bed wetting moron attacking Bush out of blind hatred:
.
Andrei
“Getting people OUT of the city is the city government’s job.”
Agreed.
We are WAY PAST THAT POINT. We were past that point on TUESDAY NIGHT. I’ll grant you this, the city failed in getting people out prior to the storm, and ok… I’ll even give you that the Mayor failed in that regard. He didn’t try hard enough.
It’s grown much larger since then, and in the time it has, much higher level portions of our government have been failing its citizens en masse.
But let’s get back to “returning fire” and get immersed in the blame game by showing photos of buses submerged in water, because obviously, it REAL FUCKING IMPORTANT to make sure Democrats get blamed with the GOPers in this mess, since the left (who are not in power) is accusing the right (who actually ARE in power) of whose fault it is.
I’ll go even a step farther: I blame all political hacks who run this country right now for this crisis. Dem or GOP. I don’t care. They all are at fault.
We happy now?
I still stand by my original statement that I find this sort of post far beneath someone who has the intelligence (and compassion) of John Cole.
John Cole
Joe Abanese, one more time. I don;t think there is anything wrong with criticizing the President. But that isn;t what you do. You simply dump on people. Even if it is deserved on not. And you do it in a selective, steady stream, ignoring anything that contradicts.
Do you see anyone who has said the plans were adequate? I mean, anyone?
I am all in favor of finding out what really happened, fixing the blame, and making things better in case this ever happens again.
But that isn;t what you want or what you do. Instead, we get a constant stream of”Bush Dumb.” ‘Bush Doesn’t Care’ and other malicious and mendacious bullshit from you.
And then, when peole point out how quick to lay blame, without facts, you smear them, attack them, or label them Bush apoogists.
You are, in short, an incoherent and bitter mess.
John S.
John,
Good job in not further contributing to the politicization of this disaster. Perhaps you styled yourself above the fray on this matter, and clearly you deem responding to people with political rhetoric as ‘returning fire’, but as of this moment you officially have stooped to the level of those you excoriate.
At least you dropped the false pretense by letting us all know that you’re not above playing political football with this sensitive issue (until after we have all the answers) since you filed this under Politics.
John S.
John, I really think you are upset – and understandably so. I am upset, too. We all are. This is an absolute disaster. But you are guilty of this very thing that you are condemning other people for (substitute Bush Hater for Bush Apologist). And quite frankly, you are starting to come off as incoherent and bitter mess, too.
Take a breather. Clear your head.
John Cole
John S.-
I could deal with calmly refuting things until I heard the Congressional Black Caucus members claiming this was about race. Then I got livid. Then I pointed out one of the reasons WHY all these unfortunate people are trapped there. This is a colossal disaster, and claiming the efforts have been slowed because of racial considerations made me insanely mad, and I am still that mad people would even assert such a thing.
At least you are willing to admit that this issue has been politicized, something some people won’t even recognize.
John S.
Yes, John. Politicizing tragic events is a loathsome act that sadly always has the utmost bipartisan support.
airmail
An email sent to Andrew Sullivan that I think is well worth the read:
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_08_28_dish_archive.html#112569138469257629
To all those who say there is plenty of blame to go around, I completely agree. But the Bush administration has not taken responsibility for ANYTHING since he took his oath January of 2001. This isn’t a liberal or conservative issue; it is a fucking incompetence issue. I am sick to death of people defending politicians simply because they have an R or D by their name, and especially because they spout off some religious, faith-based bullshit. Just because you are a “person of faith” doesn’t mean you can find your ass with your own hand. Bush can have all the faith he wants but the only thing I have gotten in return is a tax cut I don’t need and a world of grief and dread I sure as hell don’t want. And as for the not anticipating the levee breaking, this is beyond idiotic. Memphis Minnie, a blues woman born and raised in Algiers, Louisiana, right across the river from New Orleans wrote the famous song “When the levee breaks” in 1929, 74 years ago. Yeah Bush who’d a thunk it, the damn levee broke.
Joe Albanese
The collected wit and wisdom of John Cole:
and then he has the balls to say this:
What was that definition of hypocrisy again?
Just Some Guy
This isn’t about Bush, this isn’t about Democrats, this isn’t about Republicans.
If this was a terrorist attack, what would the response look like? Any category 4/5 hurricane that slams into the coast line is going to be a disaster. Hurricanes are somewhat predictable. We have a general idea of what direction they are going. We have warning.
But a terrorist attack is not predicatable. Although a terrorist attack will not cut as wide swath of destruction, it is not unimaginable that it could create a similar situation as New Orleans is in now.
So with no warning, no staging areas for FEMA, no mobilization of the National Guard, what would the response look like?
Answer that question and then head to your local Sam’s Club or CostCo. No one in the Federal government gives a flying fuck about you. Otherwise we wouldn’t still have people stranded in one of the most important port cities in the United States.
There are few things I want from a government. Fewer things I want from the Federal government. Responding to an incident like this is one of them, and they are failing.
DougJ
The whole lot of them disgraced themselves: Blanco, Nagin, FEMA, the whole bunch. This isn’t about politics, it’s about competence.
As president Bush said “the results are not acceptable”. I expect him to give Brown a pink slip once this over (he can hardly do it it now, so stop whining, Bush-bashers). And I expect voters to do the same with Blanco and Nagin.
John S.
Dear, sweet Brownie? I hardly think so, Doug. Bush was just hailing his efforts the other day, and since Bush doesn’t follow the polls, it won’t matter WHAT the people think about the job Brown did (or didn’t) do.
bennett
Anyone who is chalking the current situation up to incompetence, and looking to blame someone, anyone, for “failures” has no real idea about the scope of this disaster, nor the logistical impossibilities being faced, nor any clue whatsoever the size of the effort underway. While you jackasses are complaining about “dear leader”, real people, heros, are working their assess off for hours and hours and hours under stresses that you and I can only imagine, and doing it damn well. Do a google search and find the feeds of the radio frequencies, and listen to the real thing. Turn off your damn TV, and listen to the reality, and read the few blogs that are being written by regular people on the ground. Let it all unfold, and then lynch whoever you want, but this crap is a disgrace. I have never in my life seen so much ignorance in one place as I have seen here, and on several other lefty blogs. I don’t know why John puts up with you jackels.
Just Some Guy
Padron my French.
Holy Shit:
http://www.osei.noaa.gov/OSEIiod.html
DougJ
Let’s make it a gentlemen’s bet. Or how about this: if Brown is canned, you vote Republican in 2008, if he isn’t, I vote Democrat in 2008. Is it a deal?
ppGaz
Today, in Mobile Alabama:
Yes, he called him Brownie, on camera. They winked.
DougJ
How about your, ppgaz, you willing to put your vote where your mouth is on this one?
ppGaz
“My vote?”
What do you think this is, a reality tv show?
Drop dead.
John S.
Sorry, Doug. In the next election, I will pay careful consideration to who I think will be less likely to sit on his ass in a situation where the lives of Americans are in peril. No bet will corner me into voting randomly for some incompetent jackass – regardless of what letter appears next to his name.
The stakes are too high.
rkrider
so if those people trapped on the overpasses and in the stadium were white do you think they’d still be waiting for food and water? (did you watch Fox tonight?
keep defending Bush, his support is crumbling, look around the internet and the media. Fox news, Joe Scarborough, Newt Gingrich, lifelong Republicans, Jonah Goldberg etc., etc are waking up to what an incompetent asshole Bush is. But you just keep defending him.
This country needs leadership, not a drooling monkey.
ppGaz
Well, that’s a list of people who know which side their powerbread is buttered on. They latch onto a winner, but will dump a loser in a heartbeat.
BTW, on the McLaughlin Group tonite, Pat Buchanan joins the anti-Bush parade. Dumps on him big time.
The show consensus: New Orleans is as big a threat to Bush’s reign now as 9-11 was a boost four years ago.
That’s big.
madrino
I would bury New Orleans as no one want’s to address the real problem about protecting the city.
For DUMBOCRATS AND REPUBLICANTS, Port Fourchon is critical. Perhaps we need a catagory 5 hurricane to hit this area to beat the truth about the crap CONs and CRATs don’t want anyone to know.
Then perhaps they would be honest about the real problem in the Gulf. How about $8 / gal gasoline! Would that make you all happy. Thirty percent of oil from gulf oil platforms and foreign oil shipments go through here.
Port Fourchon is the biggest oil port in the US and is the hub of 22,000 miles of oil pipeline. Most of the gulf pipelines off of Louisiana are now exposed to hurricanes due to soil errosion. These pipelines were originally under the wetlands that the Mississippi river made. In fact, the coast from western Alabama to east Texas was built by the Mississippi river. Twenty five square miles are lost to Louisiana each year due to the sinking and errosion of these wetlands. EVERY REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRAT IN LOUISIANNA HAS TRIED TO GET WASHINGTON”S ATTENTION FOR THE LAST 60 YEARS WITH NNNOOOOOOO SUCCESS!!!!!!
So don’t even think about bitching about the price of oil or gas. MAYBE THEN THE DUMBOCRATS and REPUBLICANTS WILL PAY ATTENTION.
This port is the lifeline for the US for oil and has been badly damaged. Even a cat 1 hurricane causes billions in damages when the are near this area. Ask someone that works for BP, Phillips, Exon…
To find out more, go to http://sea.portfourchon.com/home.asp
Congressman Hastert was right about New Orleans. If this problem isn’t going to get fixed, the US might just as well dump a pile of dirt over it because every year, this city becomes an even greater hazard to anyone living in it. In the future, it will only sink farther down and come closer to becoming a long streach of beach.
DougJ
I’m not defending president Bush. I’m just saying that I think he will clean house at FEMA. I won’t defend his choices to head up the agency. I do think that Chertoff is doing a good job in other regards and that he shouldn’t go.
ArchPundit
===The City had plenty of resources. New Orleans’s city budget last year was well over $600 million. Plus, as has been pointed out earlier, the federal government gave the city millions of dollars when a state of emergency was declared before the hurricane hit. The City had plenty of money to evacuate its citizens.
So a City like New Orleans can keep a fleet of medical helicopters, ambulances and buses adequate to move over 100,000 people without easy access to personal transportation within 48 hours?
Or an emergency declaration with less than 2 days can lead to the same fleet?
This is just an absurd claim. Cities like New Orleans provide an enormous amount of services to a population with very high needs. You are essentially asking them to spend it all on maintaining a fleet of vehicles for a relatively rare event–that’s why we have FEMA is such spending is inefficient in every municipality.
===
What are you talking about? Are you actually suggesting that the only way to move the sick and infirm is through federal intervention? Do you think you have to call FEMA to move the sick and infirm from (for example) a car crash to a hospital? Hell no. During my grandfather’s last days, my father and I were able to move him around without federal planning. That wasn’t because Homeland Security moved him, it was because we put him in an effing car.
Think about the silliness of this statement. Ambulances aren’t moving every sick and infirm person in the City of New Orleans in a short period of time–they move sick or the infirm in relatively small numbers at any given time and many are never moved by emergency vehicles that would be required for those now in nursing homes or who had surgery. You aren’t talking about moving one member of a family, but many people who don’t have that capacity at all.
====Louisiana’s state budget last year was over $14 billion. My family’s budget last year was a couple thousand. The suggestion that a local (or even state!) government doesn’t have sufficient resources to move the sick and infirm is preposterous.
In a short period of time? How long have you been out of touch with reality? $14 billion doesn’t go towards only disaster preparedness, but roads, health care, education, safety, law enforcement….and on and on and on. The infrastructure you think exists is a fantasy of people not aware of the challenges many people face.
You can use every school bus and city bus the city had access to that wasn’t also getting people from place to place during an evacuation and you don’t even come close to getting out the population without access to a personal vehicle. There is no way to do it in a major city period.
===
This is patently false. The City has jurisdiction over its citizens. The City is given explicit jurisdictin over the evacuation of its citizens. It’s the federal government that doesn’t have jurisdiction over the evacuation of the people within the city.
Saying the city should organize getting the citizens out is fine, the question is where does the infrastructure come from? It doesn’t exist except in the commandeering fleets of vehicles outside of a city and the US military.
Neither the people saying there is no warning or saying there was a lot of warning are right. The reality is that in such a situation you have about 48 hours. In that time you can order people to leave, set up an efficient contra flow system, get the message out, and provide shelter of last resort. That’s a temporary solution–from there, the City is out of resources and exactly why we then turn to state and federal agencies to finish the evacuation–hopefully from central points which the City did establish and in the mean time to feed people.
The State should have had the National Guard mobilized and stationed far enough from the coast to then go in immediately afterward. The federal government should have it’s emergency resources and military resources pre stationed as possible and ready to go when the area is clear.
Neither did the above in any serious way. And that is terrifying given they knew the likely outcome of a direct hit. In fact, there is some luck in it not being a direct hit because if it were, we wouldn’t have had the little bit of leeway we’ve had so far.
Beyond that, we probably need a new system of commandeering buses and other vehicles for such crises.
Everyone who had their own means to get out and wanted to, did. The problem is there is no possible system in under 48 hours to move that many people even if the federal and state governments move fast. The Contraflow system and packed roads are the only way to get people out, but at the same time they block any serious movement of buses into a City like New Orleans. This is understood by most. Then what one has to do is follow that up with agressive intervention afterwards–something that didn’t happen.
linda
from your pals at the corner:
N.O. RECRIMINATIONS [Jonah Goldberg]
From a reader:
It has been hard for me to read The Corner the past few days. I am concentrating on news from New Orleans local media, since I feel the national media (with the exception of Fox) has sensationalized things, if that can be possible. But as a New Orleans native, now living in the Washington DC area, with family in New Orleans (all safely evacuated) I am having a hard time keeping emotion out of ongoing discussions. I would like to offer you both a few quick viewpoints:
First, Mayor Nagin has been doing an outstanding job. A true reform Mayor, he came into office two years ago after literally decades of City hall corruption of all types. He immediately moved to clean up and “fix” City Hall, including inviting the FBI and Justice Department in to rid the city of police corruption. I think highly of him and it is unfair to expect him to complete three decades of preparation in the past two years, especially since hurricane response is one of the many competing priorities he faced. Yes, things went wrong but, believe it or not, many more things went right.
Second, Louisiana’s Democratic Governor has been a miserable failure where it matters most – rallying the citizens. As my brother put it, “I have a mother. I need a Governor.” What that means about Americans’ view of women in top leadership positions now I dont know, but if I were Hillary, I would go to New Orleans and shoot some looters on national television.
Third, having attended a conference in New Orleans on Homeland Security just last year, I can say with some certainty that the city and state have been working for the past five years closely with FEMA and the Offices of Emergency Preparedness of the adjoining states. There are mutually-supportive plans in place and they were wrung out as well as could have been done in advance. The FEMA regional director was highly regarded and I think was doing well. Having said that, however,
Fourth, I think there has been a failure at the Federal level. The First Responders moved in and did their job. The second wave (prepositioned FEMA response units and neighboring states’ assets) moved in and did their job. The third wave (distant Federal support) failed to show. I cannot see how this could happen. The airfield at the Joint Reserve Base at Belle Chasse (across the river) has been conducting flight operations for three days – how could it be that no C-130 loads of bottled water arrived? That some of this water was not airlifted by helicopter to people stranded for four days on bridge overpasses? We got Navy ships from Hawaii to Thailand faster than from Norfolk to Louisiana. I am a retired Navy Commander and I know what I am talking about – this is simply unsat. The President bears ultimate responsibility for that.
Fifth, much has been made of the behavior of some New Orleans policemen. Some have been filmed apparently looting and some have turned in their badges and walked away from the job. I think the bad rep these guys are getting is unfair. There are hundreds who risked their lives to stay on the job during and immediately after the hurricane – there are not many average Americans who would have done that. Some of these guys lost their own homes and families – after this number of days I think it is understandable that some have reached their limit, feel that they have done their duty and quit. Finally, every city has corrupt police officers and the very few who did loot (if in fact they did) are not unique to New Orleans. I love the New Orleans cops.
Sixth, it occurs to me that the apparent slowness of the current military response, compared with that of other recent humanitarian crises around the globe, may in part relate to who is in charge. During past emergencies, the responsible Unified Commander (top dog) has been a commander (and his staff) who have been used to running emergencies: USJFCOM (formerly USLANTCOM; Navy/Marine command traditionally) ran Hurricane Andrew and Haiti just fine; USPACOM (Navy command traditionally) ran part of Tsunami relief fine and other WESTPAC contingencies; USSOUTHCOM (Army command traditionally) has run relief operations in central and South America; and USCENTCOM (Army/Marine command) ran the other part of Tsunami relief fine. Katrina is being run by NORTHCOM (Northern Command, an Air Force command) and this is the first humanitarian emergency ever run by them. I think they are simply not up to it. This may be a matter for subsequent, sober analysis.
Seventh, Speaker Hastert’s remarks about Federal aid for rebuilding New Orleans just delivered Louisiana to the Democrats for the foreseeable future. This is unfortunate and yet another example of the national Republican leadership being off message. Louisiana went for GW, voting Republican for the first time since Reconstruction. There are currently slews of Republican Representatives and one Senator. A non-white, immigrant Republican almost won the last Governor’s race and until Speaker Haster opened his mouth the consensus of opinion was that the results of that election were unfortunate and would probably be reversed. Haster single-handedly changed all that.
Eight and finally, I think that Katrina is going to make a lot of fence-sitters on gun control hop down. The ardent anti-gun folks will never agree that private ownership is ever a good thing, but a lot of people (such as in our DC area) are going to note that, sometimes, you are on your own.
osted at 11:10 AM
Tulie
Greg Hackenberg:
Glad you are okay. Thanks for giving the perspective of someone who lives there. I’m from Galveston, and have run from storms in the Gulf several times. It’s expensive (about a thousand a week expensive), and there were times we stayed because we couldn’t afford to leave (Alicia, 1983, catergoy 2s I don’t remember the name of, more tropical storms than I can count). I’ve been without power for a month, and unable to reach family members for a week at a time.
But I’m lucky – I’ve never lost everything I had.
Sorry folks are too busy screaming at each other to listen to your viewpoint.
ArchPundit
====No, it doesn’t. Getting people OUT of the city is the city government’s job. (See John’s link from earlier, where the City of New Orleans said evacuation is their job.) Where to house them once they’re out of the city will probably involve some cooperation between municipalities, but since we’re dealing with adults who are presumably all looking out for everyone’s best interests, that cooperation probably would not require anything more than a call from Mayor A to Mayor B asking, “Hey, if our city is under water, mind if we send some folks to stay in your city?”
You aren’t paying attention to an important part of the plan
“. Shelter Demand
Shelter demand is currently under review by the Shelter Coordinator. Approximately 100,000 Citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal transportation. Shelter assessment is an ongoing project of the Office of Emergency Preparedness through the Shelter Coordinator.
The following schools have been inspected and approved as Hurricane Evacuation Shelters for the City of New Orleans: Laurel Elementary School
Walter S. Cohen High School
Medard Nelson Elementary School
Sarah T. Reed High School
Southern University Multi Purpose Center
Southern University New Science Building
O. Perry Walker High School
Albert Wicker Elementary School
It should not be assumed that all of the approved shelters listed above will be opened in the event of a hurricane or other major tropical storm. The names and locations of open shelters will be announced when an evacuation order is issued. This list is not for public information and should not be duplicated and distributed. In the event that shelters are opened, people who go to their nearest listed location may find, for one reason or another, that the facility is not open as a shelter, forcing them to seek an alternate location. It is also possible that people anticipating the opening of shelters may arrive before shelters are set-up and ready to receive them. For these and other reasons, shelters which are to be used will not be identified until they are ready to open and not until an evacuation order, related public announcement is made.
Last Resort Refuges and Super Shelters are described in specific SOPs covering their applications.
”
The City’s responsibility is to get people out the best they can…and then give them the best shelter they can–that is the plan.
Then the assumption is they will have to be bailed out–something the state and federal authorities should have mobilized to do better, and they didn’t.
ArchPundit
===so if those people trapped on the overpasses and in the stadium were white do you think they’d still be waiting for food and water? (did you watch Fox tonight?
I do. I don’t think it’s about the race of the people, I think it’s that state and federal authorities didn’t mobilize and there was no clear line of authority. There are a lot of issues related to why African-Americans are more vulnerable, but frankly after seeing Shepard Smith and Geraldo lose it on tv over black babies, no one is delaying helping people because of their race. They aren’t helping because they have their heads stuck up their ass.
ArchPundit
And let me add, you better tell the other Parish leaders they are incompetent since St. Bernards hadn’t heard from FEMA as of late this afternoon, JP’s Emergency Preparedness Director is furious that nothing has been done, and Plaquemines is completely out of any contact with anyone.
I think FEMA has been particularly bad, but I can also criticize LA for not having a decent communcation system or getting to the last two when one of the St. Bernard’s officials travelled to Baton Rouge to get a sat phone.
DougJ
That post from Jonah Goldberg was excellent, the most intelligent analysis I have read on this.
I have the strange feeling that many on the left probably agree with me. Disaster makes strange political bed fellows.
ArchPundit
===That post from Jonah Goldberg was excellent, the most intelligent analysis I have read on this.
Well, I’d add that I never thought I’d be impressed with Vetter (even well before his comment about the F) and so damn disappointed in the bs Landrieu has been throwing out. Vetter makes small points to thank his colleagues, but he always, always ensures that his focus is on the disaster itself. Landrieu sounds like a Washington press release.
And the comment about Blanco was dead on in that post.
ppGaz
I thought it was bizarre. I’d wager that he was drunk when he wrote it.
I will say that he got a LOT of DOD acronyms in there, though.
Any good high school English teacher would have given the paper an F just on the strength of those acronyms alone; what value do they add to his incoherent ramblings?
I’d have to say, one of the bottom ten pieces of work I’ve seen this week. Absolute crap.
But Dougie, keep trying, you’ll get something right yet. I have a lot of faith in you.
DougJ
Ppgaz, he actually isolated what he thought was the cause of the slow FEMA response and also gave a convincing argument that they should have been able to get there sooner from a nearby airfield. He also was one of the few I’ve seen to differentiate between Nagin and Blanco. I have no idea if what he is saying there is true.
All in all, it is one of the first attempts I’ve seen at a SERIOUS discussion of what went wrong with the response as opposed to the angry lashing out of people like you and the blind defense of people like John Cole. I think it may be the start of a serious discussion of what went wrong. Not perfect, but a start.
ppGaz
It’s way too early for that.
And call me crazy, but having you pimping Goldberg as the basis for a “serious discussion” is not exactly a confidence builder.
At least after 9-11 we had Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to explain why God wanted to kill Americans. Let’s wait and see what they have to say.
jobiuspublius
ROFLMAO Golden Parachutes and Freedom Medals.
BillS
Really? I think that Brownie will get a Medal of Freedom. That seems to be mark of totally F’n up in the Bush Administration.
For the record, Blanco should justifiably be toast. I’m not sure just how the NO voters will treat Nogin. My guess is that by raising hell with Bush he’ll be treated as a local hero.
Can anybody translate chubby little Jonah Goldberg’s latest incoherencies? Oh, never mind. He’s a waste of oxgen, anyway.
Greg Hackenberg
All of you who think you know what your talking about might want to consult this series published by the New Orleans paper. It might provide you with a little history some of the actual facts. That 80% of the city was able to escape within 48 hours of landfall was almost beyond comprehension, and shows how WELL the planning and coordination was…
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/
Darrell
ppgaz, Jonah Goldberg’s article was written by someone else, a reader, not Goldberg himself. The reader seemed thoughtful and his complaints on FEMA need to be answered at a later date. However, his praise of the mayor seems to directly contradict the photographic evidence of those buses sitting so close to the Superdome.. also, the Mayor’s last minute clusterf*ck evacuation to the Superdome, and Nagin’s ‘leadership’ choice to evacuate his relatively clean luxury hotel at the front of the line ahead of other evacuees more in need. I think that act speaks volumes on Nagin’s character
Mayor Nagin may have done some good work in the past, but it’s pretty damn clear he played a big part in this current disaster.
Anderson
Thanks, Darrell, I was about to comment that that wasn’t Goldberg.
qoeghaahg]
eqr
(Baby Quinn, age 11 mos., adds his own thoughts.)
OldManRick
For those who complain that the 101st Airborne can be anywhere in 18 hours that is because they have real plans. Their plans go down to the smallest movable unit. They are called orders. Someone has developed a default set of orders that gets every troop on its plane and then moves planes as larger groups.
When a mandatory evacuation was called for, a sample real evacuation plan would have:
1. Identified who was to drive the buses. When the evacuation was called for these people would show up at the bus park and be given the keys. The normal bus drivers would have had this in their contract or volunteers would be identified. Firemen and police could be back-up. They would have planned enough coverage for most of the buses.
2. For each bus, they have an emergency packet that designated:
a. Where it was to go for pick up. (with maps)
b. Where it was to go to for further instructions (with maps)
c. A radio frequency to tune to and an identifier for that bus so it could receive further instructions. Buses would be grouped for easy mass control.
d. Default location for final destination.
The plan would have coordinated with the cities further north to find out how many they can take and make sure the evacuation was dispersed.
A good plan would have primary and secondary options for each bus. A good plan would have a box of emergency rations and water to add to each bus. A bad plan would not know who was to drive the buses and where they were going.
The plan would also include provisions for positioning police and fire to speed the evacuation.
The fact that those buses are sitting there in the water shows there was no evacuation plan of any import.
Anderson
What OldManRick said. I nominate him for FEMA chief, since he knows what a “plan” is.
And while this is probably on a more recent thread:
[Ben Stein voice:] Anyone want to argue that the feds were in the back seat? Anyone? Anyone?
(How long will that stay on the DHS website?…)