More than eight months after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin outlined an evacuation plan for his city on Tuesday.
Heh.
You’d think this development might remind Nagin’s constituents, who will decide on May 20 whether to re-elect him, that he didn’t seem to have an evacuation plan in place last August. I repeat: this is a guy whose lawyers were literally researching the legal ramifications of mandatory evacuations 36 hours before Katrina hit, even though the threat of a catastrophic, city-destroying hurricane had been anticipated for years. This is a guy who had to be interrupted during dinner and urged to call the National Hurricane Center on the Saturday night before the storm, apparently because he wasn’t in constant communication with them all along (?!?). This is a guy who, against all reason and logic (and contemporaneous urging on this blog), waited until 24 hours before landfall to order an evacuation, despite reams of studies showing that it would take 72 hours to empty his city. This is a guy who had no apparent strategy for helping people without private transportation get out of the city, even though everyone knew that thousands of such people existed, and even though his city had hundreds of school buses at its disposal that could have been used to carry those people out of the danger zone. (It’s useful at this point to remember that, in the true worst-case scenario, nearly all of those homes in the Ninth Ward would have been entirely underwater, and nearly all of those people who took shelter in their attics would have drowned long before they had a chance to take shelter at the Convention Center and blame the feds for taking so long to bring them aid.)
Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that Nagin had “no apparent streategy”; his strategy was to tell those people: “Go to the Superdome, which we think can withstand the winds, but we’re not really sure. There won’t be electricity, running water, a functional sewage system, or adequate food or water, but you’ll probably be better off there than in your homes. Probably.”
As I said before, it’s absolutely unbelieveable to me that the residents of New Orleans are seriously considering re-electing the mayor who fiddled while their city drowned. If Nagin wins, I think we will officially be able to declare, once and for all, that accountability is dead in this country.
All that said, it’s truly excellent that New Orleans now has a better plan in place, especially with the official start of hurricane season less than a month away. In particular, I’m happy to see that Mayor Nagin has learned from his mistake in not getting help from Amtrak. Under the new plan:
“Amtrak trains will also be used for evacuation purposes, which we’re really excited about,” Nagin said.
The new plan “relies more on buses and trains and eliminates the Superdome and Convention Center as shelters.” Good. Another excellent and important development: “In the future, evacuees will be allowed to bring pets with them [on evacuation buses] as long as they have some type of cage to safely put them in.” That won’t just save animal lives, it will save human lives, because some people simply will not leave their pets behind, no matter the danger.
But although this new plan sounds great (assuming they actually implement it when the time comes, unlike their previous plan, such as it was), it’s truly a tragedy that they didn’t have an adequate plan last August — and it’s not forgivable on the basis that “hindsight is 20/20.” As I said, the threat of a storm like Katrina (or far worse) was long anticipated and feared, and New Orleans’s previous “plan” was self-evidently inadequate. Its inadequacy didn’t just become apparent because it didn’t work; the plan, as implemented, obviously didn’t deal with the serious problems that everyone knew existed. If the plan’s flaws only became apparent to the general public in retrospect, that’s because officials lied about the plan to hide its flaws. City officials get credit for doing a good job with the traffic problems — the contraflow worked very well — but they did absolutely nothing of significance to help those without private transportation.
I realize that my harping on this point, more than eight months later, may rub some people the wrong way, seeing as how New Orleans has seemingly learned from its mistakes, and the “blame game” is out of fashion these days. But I’m sorry, I believe in accountability, and I just can’t forgive that easily when the mistakes manifestly should never have been made in the first place, and those mistakes had very serious consequences, including the deaths of scores — maybe hundreds — of people.
P.S. Bayou View has a good post about the new evacuation plan and the future of the Gulf Coast.
UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers!
From comments on this post, an exchange that seems sufficiently relevant, I figured I’d put it in the body:
Nagin was on TV Saturday night on the 10 o’clock news saying that a mandatory evac would be ordered in the morning. He gave some reason that it could not be ordered at that time of night. Also, it should be noted that 72 hours before landfall Katrina was still redicted to hit FL possibly AL/MS. New Orleans was in the cone, but at something like 12%.
This is in no way to defend Nagin, only to keep in mind that Katrina was as unpredictable as she was destructive.
Also remember that people make up thier own minds. Take Key West for example, there are always people who chose to stay behind in the event of mandatory evacs. At some point personal accountability must be considered.
Comment by Kevin — Wednesday, May 3, 2006 @ 3:11:36 pm
Kevin, with all due respect, I’m not going to go back and rehash every point I’ve ever made that rebuts the arguments you are making. I would encourage you to click the various links in my post above; I tried to include most of the relevant ones. You also may want to take a look at this post.
I will say this: to say that “Katrina was an unpredictable as she was destructive” is not really accurate. Katrina was unpredictable in the sense that all hurricanes are unpredictable, yes — but as hurricanes go, Katrina was actually amazingly predictable. The computer models were in excellent agreement by Friday afternoon/evening, as I pointed out at the time — and thus, not surprisingly, the NHC forecast at ~60 hours out ended up being almost dead-on accurate. That’s in stark contrast to a storm like Ophelia, where the computer models can’t figure out what the hell it’s going to do because the steering currents are weak. With Katrina, the steering currents were strong and thus fairly easy to anticipate. By Friday night, and certainly by Saturday morning, it was clear that New Orleans was at very, very high risk; just because it took the media another 12-24 hours to catch on to the fact that Katrina wasn’t going to be another “Florida” story doesn’t change the reality that New Orleans was in the center of the “cone” of probability from Friday night on. Now, as you say, the cone was wide, and included lots of locations in addition to New Orleans. Duh. The cone is always wide, and always includes places that ultimately don’t get hit. That’s no excuse to not take the necessary measures in adequate time. You simply could not have had a greater threat to New Orleans, at 48-72 hours out, than New Orleans faced with Katrina at 48-72 hours out. Yet Nagin didn’t order an evacuation until 24 hours out (and didn’t announce his attention to do so until less than 36 hours out, as you say), and, contrary to the city’s then-existing plan, never mobilized the full resources at his disposal to help those who couldn’t get out (buses, etc.) — which makes you wonder: if the experts said all along that it would take 72 hours to evacuate the city (which they did indeed say), and if you couldn’t possibly have a greater threat at 48-72 hours out than you did with Katrina (which is true), and yet it is still somehow defensible to not order a mandatory evacuation at that point… when WOULD it be appropriate to order a mandatory evacuation in adequate time? Never, apparently. Doesn’t that basically mean we’re conceding that New Orleans is doomed anytime a major hurricane wants to make a direct hit?
Okay, so I did just kinda rehash a lot of my arguments. :) I can’t help myself; I feel very passionately about this. Anyway, I could go on for hours about why your points are misleading, but I don’t have the time, as I’m supposed to be studying for finals. Again, I’d encourage you to click the links to my previous posts on the matter.
Comment by Brendan Loy — Wednesday, May 3, 2006 @ 3:17:02 pm
P.S. Oh, and yeah, of course it’s true that there are people who will always stay behind. But 1) that doesn’t excuse failing to do everything you possibly can to convince people to leave (and mixed messages don’t help in that regard; there were people on The Weather Channel on Saturday night saying they would have left already, but the mayor was only calling for a “voluntary,” not “mandatory” evacuation, so they didn’t figure it was necessary (who knows how many of those people were ultimately unable to leave?)… there was also at least one nursing home that would have evacuated if the “mandatory” order have come sooner, but by the time it finally came, it was logistically too late), and 2) it also doesn’t excuse failing to do everything in your power (or at the very least, everything your existing disaster plans said you’d do) to help those who would have been willing to leave, but couldn’t. Whether that category accounts for 90% of the victims or 10% of the victims doesn’t really change the accountability factor: either way, it’s completely unforgivable that Nagin and his administration didn’t do more — didn’t even do what they said they’d do — to help those people out.
Comment by Brendan Loy — Wednesday, May 3, 2006 @ 3:34:55 pm
Actually, it was expected that the storm would be strong enough to send a storm surge right over the top of the levees, not that they would ‘fail’. These are two entirely different situations, which some people (not you) seem interested in conflating in order to further an agenda. Had Katrina followed a slightly different path, and/or stayed at Category 5 strength, we wouldn’t be talking about how long it took to get aid to, or evacuate, the folks in the Superdome and the ones stuck in their attics. There wouldn’t have been very many people to survive. Evacuating them would have been easy. Disposing of tens of thousands of corpses would be the big issue.
Comment by The Monster — Wednesday, May 3, 2006 @ 3:41:49 pm
Monster, you’re absolutely right. I’ve made that point time and time again here. I tried to make it in this post, pointing out repeatedly that this was not the worst-case scenario, and “in the true worst-case scenario, nearly all of those homes in the Ninth Ward would have been entirely underwater, and nearly all of those people who took shelter in their attics would have drowned long before they had a chance to take shelter at the Convention Center and blame the feds for taking so long to bring them aid.”
As for “furthering an agenda”… one of the nicest complements I’ve ever been paid was when, after Spike Lee interviewed me about Katrina, one of his crew members stopped me in the hallway and said something to the effect of, “I’m going to check out your blog when I get home. I haven’t heard of it before, but I really like you — you seem to be all about the truth. You don’t have an agenda, you’re just about the truth.â€? I’m sure he’d been seeing an awful lot of people who do have agendas, so I guess I was a refreshing change. At any rate, he’s right: my only “agenda” with regard to this hurricane is the truth, and correcting people when they misrepresent or misunderstand it. I am on record as criticizing people of all parties, races, etc., at all levels of government, for their mistakes — I just happen to believe Nagin’s mistakes were the most severe by far. That said, I am always open to correction if someone can provide a factual argument that my understanding of the truth is incorrect. (That openness is what’s largely missing from people with agendas; inconvenient truths are ignored.) But, having watched this storm as closely as anyone, there are some things I’m quite certain of, and one of them is that Nagin failed miserably. Reminding people of his failures is just part of my pursuit of the truth. I don’t have anything against the guy personally, beyond the fact that he majorly f***ed up, and I don’t think it comports with basic notions of accountability to re-elect someone who f***s up something as important as this, as badly as Nagin did.
Comment by Brendan Loy — Wednesday, May 3, 2006 @ 3:52:22 pm
|
Categories: Hurricane Katrina, 2006 Hurricane Season
|
May 2nd, 2006 at 8:50:38 pm
Apparently Nagin has never taken an Amtrak train anywhere. They don’t show up when there isn’t a disaster. Besides, does he really expect a Fed entity like Amtrak to respond any better than FEMA did?
May 2nd, 2006 at 9:00:30 pm
Click the link for the words “his mistake.” Amtrak says it offered Nagin the use of an empty train that was heading out of the city anyway, and Nagin declined. (Nagin claims he has no recollection of such a conversation, but frankly, I don’t see any reason to give him the benefit of the doubt.)
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:00:13 pm
Ok, this may seem trivial, but when I first read the part about pets, I wondered about pets that would be too big to put in a cage (such as a lab or golden retriever). Yes, there are cages for them, but not ones that are easy to transport, and unless someone travels often with their pet, as most people don’t with big dogs, they probably wouldn’t have one of these cages. Or what if someone doesn’t even have a carrier for their cat? I suppose in such situations a duffel bag or something could make do as an impromptu carrier. But would they really tell people that the couldn’t bring their dog on a bus in an emergency because they don’t have a carrier? Just something I wondered about…
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:18:05 am
Your frustration is not unlike GWB’s regarding the horrors of Saddam, the at-least 8 year history of Al Queda attacks on America, and most epecially the felling of the WTC.
Isn’t it ludicrous that the folks need to be harped upon? But this is what we have come to, Brendan.
For your own (and Becky’s) own good, try not to care so much about matters over which you have extremely little control.
It’s a tough thing to do. Maybe your very fine dad can help explain.
If you can’t do this, be prepared for a ton of resentment from the folks. Your efforts will not be appreciated. Anytime you force the folks into thinking about difficult choices (check out the current oil “debate”) like the looming social security disaster, you as the messenger are reviled and ostracized.
You’re a good, if not great, guy Brendan. Take great care in the battles you choose. Please.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:24:01 am
“Take great care in the battles you choose. Please.”
What a load of hooey. How much ass can one guy kiss anyway?
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:47:20 am
Ed, I don’t see how reminding people of the New Orleans mayor’s utter incompetence, less than three weeks before he’s up for re-election, is an poor choice of battles. Especially since I link-whored myself to InstaPundit, and he just linked to me, so it’s entirely possible that some N.O. voters will see this post. Granted, it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to single-handedly turn the tide of the election. :) But I don’t see the harm in trying.
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:49:40 am
Adjustments were made to public evacuation efforts here during Rita regarding allowing people to bring pets because of the horrifyingly inhumane practices by New Orleans during Katrina.
May 3rd, 2006 at 12:49:30 pm
You obviously don’t live in Louisiana. Nagin being reelected would be par for our historically stupid course.
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:07:20 pm
Ray Nagin is one of the finest dudes who ever lived and a fine mayor. Let’s all reelect him!
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:10:34 pm
It’s almost irrelevant whether Nagin’s incompetent. The objective level of competence is not important for an election. It’s the relative level of competence that matters. How good is the other guy compared to Nagin. I’d hate to throw my local bum out and then find out I’ve actually “stepped down” on the competence scale/honesty scale.
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:14:19 pm
As a resident of New Orleans, I have to stand up for Nagin. He’s the first honest mayor in decades. He’s cleaned up City Hall, brought in a lot of technology, and generally is looking out for the city, not himself. The real crime was our levees failed.
BTW, he didn’t wait until 24 hours to evacuate. He was on TV Saturday, the storm hit Monday. The thousands of flooded cars littering our city is proof enough that many people just didn’t want to leave. I’d rather not elect Lt. Gov Mitch Landrieu with his family’s political legacy. His sister’s threatening to punch Bush speaks on its own.
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:19:11 pm
Nagin was, of course, “on TV” throughout the weekend, but he did not order a mandatory evacuation until Sunday morning. That is a verifiable historical fact.
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:22:49 pm
The real crime was our levees failed.
Although it’s true that your levees shouldn’t have failed, given the storm’s last-minute weakening and wobbling course just east of the city, it wasn’t EXPECTED to weaken like that, and its exact track was by no means certain… it was EXPECTED to be strong enough that the levees SHOULD have failed, had it tracked directly over the city, which was a distinct possibility right up until the very last minute… and if that “worst-case scenario” had happened, you’d have no one to blame but Nagin for failing to order the evacaution sooner. Sorry, but I’m not going to let the guy off the hook because he got lucky with last-minute weakening and a right-hand turn that spared the city a direct hit from the right-front quadrant of a major hurricane. There is absolutely no excuse for his utter failures in advance of that storm. None.
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:10:14 pm
Brendan, there is not enough blame left after blaming FEMA and George Bush for this disaster.
Remember, it is because he turned down Kyoto. Remember, even though it took 5 days before federal help came to Homestead and only 12 hours for the Navy to start rescuing people, GWB turned his back on the African Americans of New Orleans. It is ok to blame the white Republican, but not the black Democrat. What are you a Racist( the last is a joke, I am not calling you a racist.)
It is funny though, Bush had to call the Governor to ask her to tell Nagin to evacuate. Bush offered to have the Army there sooner and asked Blanco and company to call in the NG, none of this happened. So of course blame Bush.
Idiots, one and all who blame the Feds for Katrina and they get the mayor they deserve in Nagin.
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:42:45 pm
That’s priceless. Buses.
Those of you who know New Orleans know that getting buses into the poor neighborhoods (most devistated by the storm) to get people is not a large logistic hurdle. It’s done all the time. Go down Claiborne Avenue on election day and the buses would be lined up on the neutral gound, ready to take people to the polls.
It is sadly ironic that, in the days before Katrina, when Blanco, Nagin, Landreau, and others needed people to help them win elections, the buses were there. BUT, when those very same people needed their help to get to safety, the buses weren’t there.
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:11:36 pm
Nagin was on TV Saturday night on the 10 o’clock news saying that a mandatory evac would be ordered in the morning. He gave some reason that it could not be ordered at that time of night. Also, it should be noted that 72 hours before landfall Katrina was still redicted to hit FL possibly AL/MS. New Orleans was in the cone, but at something like 12%.
This is in no way to defend Nagin, only to keep in mind that Katrina was as unpredictable as she was destructive.
Also remember that people make up thier own minds. Take Key West for example, there are always people who chose to stay behind in the event of mandatory evacs. At some point personal accountability must be considered.
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:17:02 pm
Kevin, with all due respect, I’m not going to go back and rehash every point I’ve ever made that rebuts the arguments you are making. I would encourage you to click the various links in my post above; I tried to include most of the relevant ones. You also may want to take a look at this post.
I will say this: to say that “Katrina was an unpredictable as she was destructive” is not really accurate. Katrina was unpredictable in the sense that all hurricanes are unpredictable, yes — but as hurricanes go, Katrina was actually amazingly predictable. The computer models were in excellent agreement by Friday afternoon/evening, as I pointed out at the time — and thus, not surprisingly, the NHC forecast at ~60 hours out ended up being almost dead-on accurate. That’s in stark contrast to a storm like Ophelia, where the computer models can’t figure out what the hell it’s going to do because the steering currents are weak. With Katrina, the steering currents were strong and thus fairly easy to anticipate. By Friday night, and certainly by Saturday morning, it was clear that New Orleans was at very, very high risk; just because it took the media another 12-24 hours to catch on to the fact that Katrina wasn’t going to be another “Florida” story doesn’t change the reality that New Orleans was in the center of the “cone” of probability from Friday night on. Now, as you say, the cone was wide, and included lots of locations in addition to New Orleans. Duh. The cone is always wide, and always includes places that ultimately don’t get hit. That’s no excuse to not take the necessary measures in adequate time. You simply could not have had a greater threat to New Orleans, at 48-72 hours out, than New Orleans faced with Katrina at 48-72 hours out. Yet Nagin didn’t order an evacuation until 24 hours out (and didn’t announce his attention to do so until less than 36 hours out, as you say), and, contrary to the city’s then-existing plan, never mobilized the full resources at his disposal to help those who couldn’t get out (buses, etc.) — which makes you wonder: if the experts said all along that it would take 72 hours to evacuate the city (which they did indeed say), and if you couldn’t possibly have a greater threat at 48-72 hours out than you did with Katrina (which is true), and yet it is still somehow defensible to not order a mandatory evacuation at that point… when WOULD it be appropriate to order a mandatory evacuation in adequate time? Never, apparently. Doesn’t that basically mean we’re conceding that New Orleans is doomed anytime a major hurricane wants to make a direct hit?
Okay, so I did just kinda rehash a lot of my arguments. :) I can’t help myself; I feel very passionately about this. Anyway, I could go on for hours about why your points are misleading, but I don’t have the time, as I’m supposed to be studying for finals. Again, I’d encourage you to click the links to my previous posts on the matter.
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:34:55 pm
P.S. Oh, and yeah, of course it’s true that there are people who will always stay behind. But 1) that doesn’t excuse failing to do everything you possibly can to convince people to leave (and mixed messages don’t help in that regard; there were people on The Weather Channel on Saturday night saying they would have left already, but the mayor was only calling for a “voluntary,” not “mandatory” evacuation, so they didn’t figure it was necessary (who knows how many of those people were ultimately unable to leave?)… there was also at least one nursing home that would have evacuated if the “mandatory” order have come sooner, but by the time it finally came, it was logistically too late), and 2) it also doesn’t excuse failing to do everything in your power (or at the very least, everything your existing disaster plans said you’d do) to help those who would have been willing to leave, but couldn’t. Whether that category accounts for 90% of the victims or 10% of the victims doesn’t really change the accountability factor: either way, it’s completely unforgivable that Nagin and his administration didn’t do more — didn’t even do what they said they’d do — to help those people out.
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:41:49 pm
Actually, it was expected that the storm would be strong enough to send a storm surge right over the top of the levees, not that they would ‘fail’. These are two entirely different situations, which some people (not you) seem interested in conflating in order to further an agenda. Had Katrina followed a slightly different path, and/or stayed at Category 5 strength, we wouldn’t be talking about how long it took to get aid to, or evacuate, the folks in the Superdome and the ones stuck in their attics. There wouldn’t have been very many people to survive. Evacuating them would have been easy. Disposing of tens of thousands of corpses would be the big issue.
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:52:22 pm
Monster, you’re absolutely right. I’ve made that point time and time again here. I tried to make it in this post, pointing out repeatedly that this was not the worst-case scenario, and “in the true worst-case scenario, nearly all of those homes in the Ninth Ward would have been entirely underwater, and nearly all of those people who took shelter in their attics would have drowned long before they had a chance to take shelter at the Convention Center and blame the feds for taking so long to bring them aid.”
As for “furthering an agenda”… one of the nicest complements I’ve ever been paid was when, after Spike Lee interviewed me about Katrina, one of his crew members stopped me in the hallway and said something to the effect of, “I’m going to check out your blog when I get home. I haven’t heard of it before, but I really like you â€â€? you seem to be all about the truth. You don’t have an agenda, you’re just about the truth.â€? I’m sure he’d been seeing an awful lot of people who do have agendas, so I guess I was a refreshing change. At any rate, he’s right: my only “agenda” with regard to this hurricane is the truth, and correcting people when they misrepresent or misunderstand it. I am on record as criticizing people of all parties, races, etc., at all levels of government, for their mistakes — I just happen to believe Nagin’s mistakes were the most severe by far. That said, I am always open to correction if someone can provide a factual argument that my understanding of the truth is incorrect. (That openness is what’s largely missing from people with agendas; inconvenient truths are ignored.) But, having watched this storm as closely as anyone, there are some things I’m quite certain of, and one of them is that Nagin failed miserably. Reminding people of his failures is just part of my pursuit of the truth. I don’t have anything against the guy personally, beyond the fact that he majorly f***ed up, and I don’t think it comports with basic notions of accountability to re-elect someone who f***s up something as important as this, as badly as Nagin did.
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:05:26 pm
P.S. As for my response to Press in comment #13 above, I was basically just parroting Press’s use of the word “failed” … and I suppose I was thinking of the term in the more global, general sense, i.e., the levees “failed” to protect the city from a flood. That would have been true in either an overtopping or a breaching scenario. But either way, you’re right, the overtopping scenario was the one that was anticipated (the possibility of breaches had been considered too — see, e.g., paragraph 22 of this oft-linked 2002 article — but it was seen as less likely), and in the worst-case scenario, overtopping would have been far worse than the (relatively) slow leak caused by the breach. Exactly how close we actually were to a worst-case overtopping scenario is something that I think is open to legitimate debate, but I think it’s beyond debate that a catastrophic overtopping scenario, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, was far too likely (as of Friday night, and straight on through Sunday night) for officials to have taken any course but to prepare for the worst. To me, that means mandatory evacuations by Saturday morning at the latest… and actually using those damn buses and other means to get people without transportation out of the city!
May 3rd, 2006 at 5:32:55 pm
A 20-something heroin addict commandeered a school bus and drove a bunch of people to Houston after Katrina, but Nagin couldn’t get one bus filled. ‘Nuff said ’bout him. BTW, I know someone who tried to evac an elderly relative on Amtrak–they said there were no seats available at the same time they claim they were offering seats to Nagin–liars are just thick as flies around a discarded refrigerator in Broadmoor. Landrieu and his fams are old line politicos with all that implies in Louisiana and Democratic party politics, but he’s not Nagin, so, holding our noses, he’ll get mine and my families’ votes. BTW, worrying that another Katrina is around the corner is just a form of mental masturbation–it’s been 40 years since Betsy and odds are a lot of other folks will need a lot of help to recover from a lot of natural and manmade catastrophes before N.O. becomes New Atlantis again. We need to get on with our rebuilding and just try to do it smarter this time–government won’t do it for us.
May 3rd, 2006 at 8:18:58 pm
I kept hearing something that struck me odd as I was driving out of the city after the evacuation call.
Nagin was on the radio several times telling people without transportation to get in touch with their local church. I was thinking, “no car? get in touch with your community church folk? That’s the evacuation plan for the no-transportation people?”
May 4th, 2006 at 1:24:04 am
Nagin’s New Plan: Swim!
Well, not really, but lots of skepticism about Mayor Nagin’s new hurricane evacuation plan….
May 21st, 2006 at 1:29:42 am
There is a reason that Ray Nagin is in office….STILL. It’s definantly not his elequence of speach or his ideals on God’s wrath of vindictive hurricanes . It’s because N.O. has no heart. There was a time that I can remember when it was a beautiful city to visit and to live. It had everything to offer for business, family, and of course, some geat music. Now we see corrupt political and law enforcement agencies. The poverty level has risen because of the lack of edjucation. It has been taken over by thoughtless, arroagant, selfish petty people that do nothing except sit and watch with their hands out waiting, still waiting for the federal government to give them something for free.
May 21st, 2006 at 11:43:55 am
So 90% of blacks of New Orleans re-elected Ray “Chocolate Town” Nagin for another term. Evidently, they have stuck by leadership of a level of incompetence that they can relate to. Certainly it had nothing to do with the fact that he was the only black candidate.
Understand that I don’t care what color a person is, only the content of their character; however, many of us are increasingly disgusted with minorities expecting an automatic pass for incompetence, ignorance, and criminal activity, due to the color of their skin, while at the same time, blaming all their troubles on the “racism” of Whites.
Why can’t more of them be like Congressman Kweisi Mfume and others, who pulled themselves out of poverty, gangs, the projects, and dispair with plain old hard work, just because they recognized that it was the RIGHT thing to do?
I won’t be spending my hard-earned “vanilla” vacation funds in New Orleans ever again, but when the next hurricane hits, I’ll be happy to donate a few chocolate bars; they, like New Orleans, will be “liberally” sprinkled with nuts.
May 24th, 2006 at 2:47:57 pm
http://www.outofiraqnow.org/bush-strums.jpg