Buy This Man A Clue
Well, the CNN headline has some truth: McCain says U.S. government failed New Orleans
(CNN) — Sen. John McCain blasted the Bush administration and all levels of government Thursday for the failed response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
“We know we didn’t have the right kind of leadership … where government agencies were getting information from watching cable television rather than have a flow of information,” McCain said during an event at Xavier University in New Orleans.
“It was not only a perfect storm as far as its physical impact … it was a perfect storm as far as the federal, state and local governments’ inability.”
“Never again will there be a mismanaged natural disaster,” he said, later assuring the crowd that “it will never happen again in this country; you have my commitment and my promise.”
John, why didn’t you tell the Shrubbery that he needed to get to the “Big Easy” when he showed up at your birthday bash on the day Katrina struck? You were a Senator in his party, didn’t you think he would listen to your advice?
Katrina, John, didn’t do all that much to New Orleans. The city came out of the storm in good shape because it passed to the East. It was the failure of the Federal levee system that killed all the people and devastated the city. It was the incompetence of the Federal government that caused the problem, followed by the incompetence of the Federal government to deal with the problem. You were a senior Senator in the majority party in the Senate, why didn’t you do something? Even in the minority, your buddy, Joe LIEberman, is the chair of an important committee, have you asked him to do anything?
Being a disaster tourist is easy, John, but you haven’t done anything since the disaster hit that indicates you give a damn, so why should anyone believe you now?
2 comments
I note that McSame also says we ‘need to have a conversation’ as to what to do about NOLA.
He’s so intent on bomb-bomb-bombing Iran and pretending all is well in Iraq that he hasn’t noticed what’s going on in his own country.
We had the conversation, and it isn’t just New Orleans, or just Katrina. The Gulf Coast from Beaumont, Texas to Mobile, Alabama got blasted in 2005 and private insurance companies bailed out leaving the people without parachutes.
People need Federal loan guarantees so they can rebuild. The insurance companies need to be investigated, and prosecuted where necessary to get back the Federal money they stole by assigning losses to the Federal Flood Insurance that they should have paid. HUD needs to start building housing, instead of just tearing it down. There are all kinds of things that need doing, that everyone knows needs doing, but no one is leading the effort.
There also need to be some actual, hard, written rules about what FEMA requires, rather than the current system that makes every rule the personal whim of a FEMA official. Lining up and shooting a few FEMA officials would be very popular among local officials on the Florida Gulf Coast who are still trying to figure what in hell they are supposed to do with the debris from the 2004 hurricane season, so they can work on the 2005 debris.