Has anyone else been watching the news (not FOX news)?

[SexyLexy]

It's an uphill battle to cheer myself up by coming here and browsing the forum. If it's possible to be in shock, full of fatalistic conclusions, and yet livid beyond belief all at the same time, I'd say that would be an accurate description of how I'm feeling right now.

People giving away their infants to strangers, women giving birth on the sidewalk and the newborns dying. nurses injecting themselves with IV solutions to keep their strength up because they don't have any food or water and have to ignore people near death, cart the dead to stairwells, hand-pump breathing bags and endure overflowing bathrooms, people living without food and water for four days in feces and garbage, roving gangs shooting at innocent civilians and medical crews, gang-rapes and looting, rotting corpses in the street, families drowning in their attics as their pets tangled themselves in power lines and electrocuted themselves, entire communities gone, fire-ants floating on gasoline and oil spills, reporters breaking down in complete heartache, stranded on police rooftops until the troops find them...

All the while, the FEMA director is congratulating himself on 'how well and efficiently' everything is going, claiming that he had no idea there were 30,000 people at the Convention Center, dying in cesspools of utter despair and their own waste.

Yes, there are many looters and gangs in the city. Yes, some people chose not to evacuate--but most of them had nowhere else to go or not enough transportation to find shelter. Most of them are poor, and almost all of them are black.

Normally I hate the 24-hour news networks for broadcasting meaningless garbage. They have their work cut out for them now: spreading the truth to the world about how much we really care about our poor.

You can bet that if this was Westchester, the Hamptons, Greenwich or Manhattan, the doors of the White House would be beaten down by now. The worst part is that most of the National Guard deployed in Iraq makes up a good portion of public service jobs in local communities, like firefighters and police.

I feel compelled to keep watching, day and night, because the volunteer sessions aren't until next week, and I owe it to them to, at the very least, be their witness. It's worse than 9-11, and I can't ever forget the looks on those faces. They're going to haunt me until the day I die.

I have never been more ashamed of our country than I am right now. This is not my America. This isn't happening here. This CAN'T happen here.

Maybe if I say it long enough, I can convince even myself.

[Matt Cruea]

How dare anyone try to place any blame on anyone else. FEMA, the citizens of New Orleans, the President, ANYONE. It's shameful.

This is no one's fault.

[SexyLexy]

The hurricane is no one's fault. The RESPONSE is a national embarrassment.

Turning people away from the Superdome to the Convention Center and then claiming they didn't know there were people there? Turning Canadian tourists around at gunpoint for trying to evacuate on buses? Saying that everything is 'ongoing' when it's stalled and 'hard work' when its disorganized? THAT's shameful.

What if this were a terrorist attack?

The rescue workers are doing their jobs. It's their bosses, and the plans that we should have had in place for ANY disaster, natural or otherwise, that need explanation.

If it were Clinton's administration, wouldn't you be asking the same questions? I know I would. It's beyond despicable that they could AIRDROP a sigle loaf of bread or bottle of water without the necessary paperwork. If they were there, standing by as they claim, why didn't that happen? Airdrops are far less risky than ground support, and there was one airdrop caught on camera at the convention center and then AFTERWARDS FEMA's director said they had NO CLUE people were there. It makes me sick.

[topleka]

This is not your America? Then move. Move to Israel where no one knows who owns what anymore. Move to the Philippines where they're trying to impeach the president on the basis that she accidentally called someone on the phone a few hours too early. Move to Antarctica and start your own perfect government. If you succeed, I'll defintely move in.

My father is the budget advisor for Washington state. You know, waaay on the other side of the country. And yet he's been spending the last days stressed and working overtime to allocate funds to send help to New Orleans. He's had to tell public schools they won't be getting that budget raise for the library anymore. He has to inform people searching for jobs that they'll have to wait longer. Why? Because the government ::gasp:: is doing what it can to help. And guess what. If kids from the schools come out "dumb" because they don't have enough reading material, or people's families are starving because they don't have jobs...guess who gets blamed? That's right: Katrina. Oh wait, no...the government. Haha. Surprisingly enough, the government isn't a magic genie that can do everything and fix things immediately. Is the situation terrible? Yes. Am I grieving for the tragedy that is occuring? Yes. How can I not? But believe it or not, people actually are doing their best to help, no matter how little it seems to the viewing public.

Sorry if I seem rather steamed up by this. There's a reason I try not to venture into the serious section. But considering what I've seen the past few days, I'm less than happy to know that people think the "government" isn't doing the best it can.

[Chris Nagy]

The response seems hardly that different from any other emergency response in any other large bureaucracy; i.e. horribly inefficient, rife with confusion, full of mistakes. How often does an entire US city get destroyed? This isn't exactly something you can practice. One thing you have you understand about chain of command: it exists to keep people from taking initiative and making huge mistakes based on emotional reasons. The side-effect is that sometimes when something should be done, it isn't. No one is perfect.

If I wanted to take a jab at the presidency, I'd mention how Bush cut flood funding to Lousianna by 44% to help fund the war in Iraq, but this situation is no one's fault. Good and bad will be determined by historians. Death in this instance, and gruesome death, was inevitable. If it hadn't been televised, if you hadn't gotten to see the images, the deaths would have had a much harder time affecting you or anyone else.

[Matt Alan]

Try taking this knowing you have family down there and you have no idea how the hell they are. Dead? Alive? Escaped to Texas?

I have no idea.

Try living with that and watching the news 24/7. It paints a drastically different picture.

[Henageshi]

It's awful about the hurricane disaster.

But it's like Matt Cruea said. It's stupid to blame it on anybody. I'm so tired of people saying "Where was President Bush during this hurricane?". WHAT DOES IT MATTER? He couldn't have stopped it no matter where he was.

Just so retarded.

[SexyLexy]

What if I don't want to? I was born here, too. The premise here: people don't abandon their country when it needs help, they do something. In many cases, the only thing left to do is rattle some freaking cages until people wake up. When I don't like something, I work to change it. Did I tell Conservatives and Southern Baptists to get out of the country during the nineties? No. Give me a break. (As for Israel, perhaps we should pour cement over the entire region, ala A Modest Proposal terms.)

Read my second post again. I don't expect perfection. I'm very well aware that there are thousands of people out there working 24 hours a day with no food, water or rest to save others, and I am frustrated that I can't be there with them until two weeks from now or longer. Unfortunately, we've had FOUR YEARS to prepare for something this big. billions and billions of dollars have poured into the creation of the DHS and individual states to ensure that adequate emergency facilities were available in major port cities. We should have had troops mobilized on Saturday, not Tuesday, because being safe is better than being sorry.

It is a gross mismanagement of our funds and troops that has cost dozens--if not hundreds--more lives because of a lack of organization within a department that was built SPECIFICALLY to solve that problem, so forgive me if I disagree with you as vehemently as I possibly can.

The main problem here is an ideology of reaction and not prevention. After September 11th, Americans were quick to lambast anyone, including each other, who openly questioned the President's motives and movements, calling them insensitive and unpatriotic. Those who questioned authority turned out to be correct; our intelligence priorites remained fixed in a Cold-War Era-mindset, and various agencies ignored the many warning signs slapped in their faces.


I know about that--the budget cuts. In all fairness, while it was wrong and hardly surprising, the levee work would most likely not have been finished in time. That's why I didn't mention it--if I had just simply blurted out some emotive cry like "Bush could have prevented all of this!" it wouldn't have been a valid argument. Instead, the press corps, who believe it or not, are only human as much as the next person and can't videotape what they don't see, are making my argument for me.

However, at least Bush could have claimed that he had made environmental precautions one of his bipartisan priorities had he not cut those funds to SELA. But Thank God for CNN, huh? Otherwise, we'd never know why gas prices had suddenly hit the roof! ...Hmmm.

[SexyLexy]

It's awful about the hurricane disaster.

But it's like Matt Cruea said. It's stupid to blame it on anybody. I'm so tired of people saying "Where was President Bush during this hurricane?". WHAT DOES IT MATTER? He couldn't have stopped it no matter where he was.

Just so retarded.

Well! It's hard to argue with that, considering no one is asking that question.

My main beef is with the DHS officials. Of course, most of them got their jobs with Bush's full approval, so I suppose that does throw a whiff of bad judgement his way.

You know what I'm sick of? The press conferences that say everything is just peachy when it's clearly HELL ON EARTH down there. It's a hell of a lot easier to accept mistakes when leaders acknowledge that there ARE mistakes in the first place.

But hey, if they had realized that a bit earlier, there wouldn't be this huge divide between Americans today. We can hardly expect them to be so level-headed now.

[Saren]

This is not your America? Then move.

Oh, that's a practical solution.

As far as I know, dissent is still legal.

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The government doesn't need to be a "magic genie" to listen to predictions and work out at least an evacuation plan that would not leave people without cars stranded (and not cut funding to the levees, as CNagy mentioned):

"For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare flooding a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl-shaped city bounded by the half-mile-wide Mississippi River and massive Lake Pontchartrain.
...
As much as 10 feet below sea level in spots, the city is as the mercy of a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry.
...
Scientists predicted Katrina could easily overtake that levee system, swamping the city under a 30-feet cesspool of toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins that could leave more than 1 million people homeless."

Good and bad may be determined by historians, but I hope people remember this, and learn from it, in the near future. Why did this happen? What went wrong? What could we do differently next time? (As cliche as those questions are, they're important.)
Next time this happens (and there WILL be a next time, global warming was a main factor in the severity of this hurricane and that won't be reversed or stopped anytime soon), I hope we don't have to hear any more "No one could have predicted this!" bullshit.

I could go on, but SexyLexy's saying things more coherently than I can right now.

You know what I'm sick of? The press conferences that say everything is just peachy when it's clearly HELL ON EARTH down there. It's a hell of a lot easier to accept mistakes when leaders acknowledge that there ARE mistakes in the first place.

That's one of the things which frustrates me the most - and my frustration is nothing compared to those who are actually experiencing it. They keep saying "Busses are coming, food is coming, supplies are coming", so where are those things? It's been 4 days, and no end in sight.