"I take responsibility"

[Occhidiangela]

It is a very valid complaint. Talk is cheap, because a person who is given power is supposed to act on his words. Bush supposedly vowed to improve the disaster response after September 11th, 2001. Here we are, 2005; a hurricane later and it's not like we are in much better shape than we were. I think it's about time we see what this mythical "responsibility" thing is, not just hear Bushy boy mechanically move his mouth. The basis for my post is that must act according to their position, not just talk.

How soon we all forget.

1. Mechanically moving the mouth is what all politicians do. Ever hear of a man named Al Gore? He mechanically moved his mouth per his advisors and lost an election. He then wrote his own stuff, and was himself, in his concession speech. Lo and behold, we got a glimpse of a man, maybe even a leader. Were he not so willing to do what his "handlers' and other "advisors" advised him to do and say, were he not so enamored of his entitlement (as a child of privilege) to rule (and had the chads not hung and all that other crap) he might have made a decent president. We'll never know.

2. Last year, 4 hurricanes, one of which was a real sonofabitch, hit Florida. (George, soaks Fla Panhandle.) Friends of mine in Pensacola lost their house, and everything in it.

Did you hear all of the moaning and whining then? All this rending of garments. All this gnashing of teeth? No. Why? FEMA and the state and local agencies did well enough, and I will suggest that the reason they did not do "well enough" in New Orleans was that it was

A Compound Disaster.

The entire levee/flooding issue in New Orleans, per my opener in the other thread, has been a threat for apparently decades. And it has been wished away, hoped away, cronied away, ignored away, etcetera, for decades. Now the ostriches are crying because someone, Katrina, gave it to them up the arse. Katrina is unreachable, as a force of nature, so they look for and presume Human agency for an act of Nature. What crap.

Some of the culpable want the blame finger pointing anywhere but at them.

Moral Cowards.

I saw Mayor Nagin once again on CNN last night, almost twitching, as he described the stink and utter ruin of his fair city. (Despise him or not, that's gotta hurt, down deep, for your city to get creamed like that. The feeling of helplessness has to hurt Hizzoner . . .)

Walk, you are on solid ground if you remain focused on "is this all empty talk?" Your attempt to assert a profound neglect of disaster prep at the Federal level since 9-11 is

PURE BS!

New Orleans is a "one of" in that it is/was a compound natural disaster.

As to improved Federal action, as a single data point: I have been hearing public service announcements every freaking day for 4 years about "being prepped for emergencies" sponsored by federal awareness programs. Even though I live in a hurricane zone, I never heard federal level stuff like that before 9-11. State and local, yep, not federal.

Don't mix your tea with dog piss, it won't taste good.

Occhi