Stupid Katrina Quotes (off topic)

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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I found this to be really interesting, however, I wasn’t too surpised to learn that most of these quotes were from out President about New Orleans and Katrina. Here are the two that outraged me the most.

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” –President Bush, on “Good Morning America,” Sept. 1, 2005, six days after repeated warnings from experts about the scope of damage expected from Hurricane Katrina (Source)

  1. “What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) – this is working very well for them.” –Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the hurricane evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 5, 2005 (Source)

I personally think that Barbara Bush’s quote is really not appropate given the situation and the circumstances that people in New Orleans are currently undergoing.

For more quotes go to http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/currentevents/a/katrinaquotes.htm

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Thanks for reporting your stupidity. (on topic)

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Better quotes you could have come up with, and not show your bias, would have been the Mayor and Govenor.

They both don’t deserve the bandwidth it takes or the time to look them up and quote exactly.

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I imagine there are some really dumb govenor quotes too but to the previous critiques of the quotes she provided. Having a stupid mayor is one thing; he only controls a city. Having a govenor that is stupid is also really bad because he or she controls the National Guard and can pardon prisoners but having a stupid national leader is just frightening because they control 10,000 plus nuclear weapons.

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I’ll try not to turn this into some big ridiculous political rant…

OF COURSE no one anticipated the breach of the levees! The French that decided to build N.O. almost 300 years ago where it was didn’t anticipate the breach of the levees! “Hmmm, let’s build a city with a lake on one side, a mighty river on another side, and the ocean on another side! And it will be below sea level!” Hello!!! Anybody see anything wrong with this picture??? Anybody???

But everybody points the finger at the president. It’s ALWAYS his fault. He should have been out there on the levee, with his flowing roba and staff, keeping the storm waters away from the city, right? Wouldn’t the ACLU have had fun with that one…???

So? Many of the refugees (oh wait, we can’t call them that, 'cuz it’s somehow “racist” – knobs) here in Wisconsin want to stay! Can you blame them!?? High and dry vs. living in the shadow of the sea… sounds like a no-brainer to me! And it sounds like the former first lady is smart enough to realize a tremendous opportunity for a lot of people as a result of the disaster.

I really don’t care for the way that the president is getting the blame for a NATURAL DISASTER. This of course was followed by a lot of BUREAUCRATIC INCOMPETENCE, which was also not the presid

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Unfortunately; The incompetence in this situation started from the bottom juristiction[City] and floated upward…The Mayor of NOLA was a key in the dysfunction, it started on Friday, when he let 900± seats westbound on AMTRAK go without souls in them, and I would bet that his inaction was all in the name of economics, that why all the school buses, city transit buses were left to get flooded in their parking lots, they6 did not want to pay for the drivers, and fuel to move them to be used in the evacuation …Yet when he got the chance he blamed everyone else for inaction. Typical political obfuscation. Had he said they needed help in NOLA, the Govenor would have had to activate the Nat’l Guard per the Emergency Operations Plan for Louisiana and things would have escalated to the next level. As it was, the Feds had declared the region a Federal Disaster Area while Katrina was still off shore in the Gulf, the Army had prestaged in central Mississippi, and was hit as Katrina moved inland, meaning they had to regroup,first, and then move out to the Gulf Coast…

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O.k now I have to say something and get kind of political darn it…

300 years ago the French were stupid for building a city in a “bath tub” on hurricane prone coast. Today, governments with the cash ability to fix that are stupid for not doing something about it. Just because they are lucky so far, doesn’t mean that it won’t happen eventually. From what I heard, it went to congress on before and never happened so stupid congress never voted for it but the presidents could have least pushed and pushed for it. For so far, I haven’t heard anything about Bush or any other president say they were pushing for it to go through. As an aside, didn’t Bush appoint Brown as FEMA director? Doesn’t the president have the ability to check to see if resumes are legit or crap? Any proof of legit or crap? For so far, the side that say Brown was underqualified and fudged his resume is winning…

The crack about the underprivalege thing just shows how out of touch they are with the realities of the poor; not being poor themselves, I bet they don’t understand how that might be offensive to the refugees of New Orleans. To me it would sound like hey, they are used to being all cramed together anyways so this might actually be an improvement.

Now chances are, she didn’t quite think it through and is just very crappy at political speach improv like her husband who really needs to watch what he says too. I mean really, Bush has said some really dumb things that are just as hilarious as JFK saying he was a “jelly doughnut” instead of a Berliner.

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bla bla. bla bla bla bla. everyone’s an expert after the fact.

if the great masses down in that region weren’t molded into dependency to sustain life, they might have been a little more motivated to help themselves thereby avoiding this entire mess. incompitance of the officials is only half the problem.

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Junctionfan: Could not agree more with you. 300 year ago when NOLA was settled by the French, Hurricane was probably the last theing they thought about… In the intervening time, as the population and consequently the physical structures of the city have increased, there have been many efforst to improve the levee system, a problem has been the insipient corruption that exists in Louisiana politics. The natives either complain and shake their heads knowing that things are not going to change, any time soon, and then they brag about how corrupt their politics/politicians are…Always have been, and highlighted by such luminary figures like Hughy P. Long, and recently Edwin Edwards. Louisiana politics have operated like a Banana Republic Kleptocracy for years, with monies being siphoned off in all directions away from projects for which it was originally intended…

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Strange how people can write sensibly about railroads and then write political opinions that would make North Koreans shake their heads in disbelief.

You can’t blame this on the French. New Orleans had natural protection provided by sediment from the Mississippi. Natural breakwaters were destroyed because the Army Corps put the Mississippi into concrete channels designed to scour sediment out into the Gulf. This left New Orleans exposed to the full force of hurricanes.

The mouth of a river is a logical place to put cities: New York, Shanghai, Alexandria, Calcutta, and of course Amsterdam. The Netherlands spends half a billion per year to maintain their levees and they have reclaimed thousands of square miles of farmland from the North Sea. Compared to the Dutch, America prevented this flood like a third world country. China is still mostly a third world country and right after Bush lost New Orleans, China evacuated a million people to save them from a typhoon. Compared to China, America evacuated people like a third world country.

Bill Clinton appointed emergency management professionals to run FEMA and they did a good job. Bush replaced them with political operatives and losing New Orleans is the result. Bush’s political operatives will get second chance after second chance to show competence in preventing and responding to disasters for three more years. No matter if it is a flu pandemic, terrorists attack, earthquake, or more floods Bush appointees will prove just as incompetent.

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How the hell is anybody down there supposed to do anything without the money? Without money, the poor folk can’t do squat except pray they don’t get into the path of the crap fan.

New Orleans isn’t that wealthy of a city. The kind of funding to keep things going is a State/ Federal assistance requirment which wasn’t happening to the best of their ability.

Look at Rotterdam, Netherlands; the only reason why they aren’t another Atlantis is because of the flood gates and other flood systems. Japan is another country that has had to ignore costs and just go with the fact that it was a neccessary investment.

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So then, what you are saying is that both the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana knew the levees would breach, and went off and left over a quarter of a million people in the city anyway?
Along with the Mayor making absolute no realistic plans to evacuate anyone in the first place…leaving all the cities school buses and public buses in a parking lot that flooded regular even in a light rain…
In reality, no one did expect the levees to breach, they have always held before…the mayor and the governor were just playing the odds, and lost.
Then they stalled, trying to fix the screw up themselves, and hoping it wasn’t as bad as it seemed…then all heck broke lose!
Now they need someone, anyone but themselves, to place the blame on.

As for the people in the dome…well, lets just say that, after creating a zip code and a post office inside a public arena turned shelter, so they could receive their AFDC checks and Food Stamps, providing a free medical clinic, or disbursing the truly ill to local area Hospitals, (at no charge to them), then enrolling all of the kids in public schools, feeding them free breakfast and lunch, providing transportation to and from these schools, opening and staffing three previously closed HISD public schools, hiring most of the teachers displaced, forming job fairs for those actually looking for work, providing food, cots, showers, along with all the basic necessities like toilets, toothpaste, tooth

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This is not a rebuttle but a genuine question; is it FEMA’s responsibility to get buses and stuff ready when a mandatory evacuation is called or the municipal government?

Actually I don’t even know if the municipal governments in Canada have the authority to issue a mandatory evacuation. Something I think I will find out as a point of interest.

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Andrew,
Evacuation, if ordered by the President, would make it FEMAs job…If a Governor ordered it, it would be the states job, on a local or city basis, it is that city’s responsibility to organize and execute said plan.

By the way, Houston has it’s own version, HEMA, Houston Emergency Management Association…they can request evacuation with out the mayors consent, send fire and rescue teams, close roads and commandeer buildings and supplies…in the event of a city wide emergency, they can even request partial control over certain divisions of our city police force

The President cant arbitrarily order an evacuation, it would have to be a matter of national security or a nation wide emergency, in which case he could call out the national guard to enforce it…
Our Constitution forbids the use of our armed military forces being used as a national police force.

No matter how anyone trys to put a spin on all of this, you can place almost all the blame for this on the Mayor or New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana…they gambled and lost.

Ed

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[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard

So then, what you are saying is that both the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana knew the levees would breach, and went off and left over a quarter of a million people in the city anyway?
Along with the Mayor making absolute no realistic plans to evacuate anyone in the first place…leaving all the cities school buses and public buses in a parking lot that flooded regular even in a light rain…
In reality, no one did expect the levees to breach, they have always held before…the mayor and the governor were just playing the odds, and lost.
Then they stalled, trying to fix the screw up themselves, and hoping it wasn’t as bad as it seemed…then all heck broke lose!
Now they need someone, anyone but themselves, to place the blame on.

As for the people in the dome…well, lets just say that, after creating a zip code and a post office inside a public arena turned shelter, so they could receive their AFDC checks and Food Stamps, providing a free medical clinic, or disbursing the truly ill to local area Hospitals, (at no charge to them), then enrolling all of the kids in public schools, feeding them free breakfast and lunch, providing transportation to and from these schools, opening and staffing three previously closed HISD public schools, hiring most of the teachers displaced, forming job fairs for those actually looking for work, providing food, cots, showers, along

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Unfortunately; The good people of Houston, trying to be helpful and caring, may be the epitome of that saying," No good deed will go unpunished" . New Orleans was a city that was constantly at the top of the statistics for various crimes, it was actually two cities, one of the partying tourist mecca and then the one of abject poverty and everything that that visits on a society. Now it would seem that rather than being bottled up, it is exported around the country and visited upon peoples who only wanted to offer help to their fellow men. My feeling is that the social troubles for the nation are only beginning.

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AND, Thank YOU] VERY MUCH FOR REPOTING YOUR IGNORANCE

CASE CLOSED…

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…Just a comment: Seems to me Mrs. Bush {Barbara}, was way out of line with her comment…
And …Ed, sorry to hear of your misfortune of getting your new vehicle damaged with the circumstances you mentioned…
I sure hope circumstances for all displaced people soon start to get better.
And…I sure hope that forming hurricane…{Rita}, stays away from the damaged Gulf coast…and other land areas as well, but it sure looks like it’s headed for southern Florida in a day or two…Then where, we sure don’t know yet.

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QUOTE: Originally posted by KCMOWMAN

Thanks for reporting your stupidity. (on topic)

AND, Thank YOU] VERY MUCH FOR REPOTING YOUR IGNORANCE

CASE CLOSED…

CSXrules4eva…I had no intention of getting into a dispute with you or anybody else, over this topic, as a former resident of NOLA, I was only speaking of what I know…Nothing More…It is a careful man who speaks only of what he knows, it is the foolish one who opens his mouth and prover it to all within earshot how much he doesn’t know.

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Sarah,
I do agree that the comment made might be somewhat lacking in tacit and taste…but what you might not know is both the former President, and his First Lady, are doing public service messages here locally, for free, and working behind the scenes to raise money, and organize efforts to find housing for a lot of these folks…the National press loves to report on the stupid things famous people say, but rarely reports on the good things they do.

On another note, I volunteered to hand out donated backpacks and school supplies to the kids who were registering at our schools…
Their parents were some of the most rude and obnoxious people I have ever dealt with, and I worked for my States Attorney General for almost 9 years in the welfare fraud recovery and Child Support division.

So you don’t need to lecture me about poverty, or disenfranchised people…

I was handing out free school supplies to people wearing gold chains, and gold nugget rings that cost at least as much as I make in a month…I saw more diamond earrings and nose rings in a day than I have seen in my entire life, not the cheapy studs you get for free with a piercing, but the Zales quality stuff, all the while they are screaming at me to give their kid more free stuff…
Demanding I give their kids an extra box of (fill in the blank) because they have a cousin, niece, nephew, little brother …you get the point.
One woman told me she had twins, but could only bring one of them with her today…yeah, right, and I just fell off the turnip truck!

Now if they were really poor in the first place, how did they afford all that gold and diamonds?
And if they need money, well, Houston has a lot of pawn shops…

If you are basing your knowledge of the type of people in the Astrodome on the TV news reports, then you missed about 3/4 of the people there…all the National TV News shows are the old people in wheelchairs or on crutches…after all, these people make