federal funding for Louisiana flood control projects was diverted to pay for the war in Iraq

[stacyQ]

No one person or entity is to blame in this mess, but believe me, the political fallout from this event will be felt HARD come the next election. Nagin is the perfect poster boy for the Dems to use next time around.................

And mightyred is right. We never get the entire story until at least a year or two later. By then, the country has moved on to some other new pressing disaster. The cycle is sad.

 

[MrBleeker]

Date: 9/3/2005 6:16:03 AM
Author: jennalyns
RA, when the Louisiana gov't said to evacuate, it's not like they gave out free plane or bus tickets to those people who had no money, no car, or no place to go, or were too sick to travel. Also, if you have ever lived in that area of the country- Florida, Lousiana, Mississippi, coastal Alabama- you would understand that often evacuation warnings are given but then nothing happens, so people can become jaded to the warnings.

You hit home some major points. Let me list them:

1) People didn't leave, because they assumed (like in the past) they would survive this hurricane just as they did those warnings in the past. Boy, were they wrong. Sadly, I wish they would have heeded the warnings.

2) This is the major point. Everyone is quick to blame Katrina on something. It was a natural disaster. Many things could have been improved, such as a quicker federal response, or levee increases prior to Katrina. But let me get back to the underlined quote above; why would something be changed that in the past, has been perfect?

The levee and pump system is an engineering miracle. It was built to withstand a level 3 hurricane.. and up to this point, it had never had to withstand anything higher than a 3. Well, guess what? People became.. what? Jaded. Why would any government (state or local or federal) spend probably billions of dollars to fix something that doesn't need fixing? Well, sadly, none would. And that is what happened here... something that was working, had no apparant need to be fixed. And sadly again, the only thing that will change that is what just happened.. hurricane Katrina. If you are a politician, what vaildity is there in spending billions of dollars to up the strength of a levee when it hasn't been needed in the past 40 years? None. Sadly, it should have been done, but wasn't. How many things need to be upgraded across the US but are not due to financial constraints? Probably many things that will never be upgraded; until something disasterous happens that brings about the awareness.

All the finger pointing is useless; we need to try and fix the situation quickly and learn from it. It was not racial (the governor and the majority of the reps / senators in the area were African American). It was not a Republican / Democrat thing. It was not a lack of warning.. plenty of people had adequate time to get out. Many choose to not leave; as evidenced by EMPTY school buses sitting around, and tons of other examples of normal life going on.

The saddest thing to me is, after the immense loss of life and ruined city, instead of focusing on fixing the situation and coming to those in aide, we are quick to point fingers. People, a natural disaster happened. If we were God, we would have moved everyone out, and saved the US this mess. But we aren't, its a disaster, and can't be predicted perfectly.

 

[AGBF]

Date: 9/16/2005 5:28:18 AM
Author: MrBleeker
If we were God, we would have moved everyone out, and saved the US this mess. But we aren't, its a disaster, and can't be predicted perfectly.

In another thread you said you (a biology major) believed in God. I just read that, then came and read this. You say with authority that people, if they had God's power, would have saved lives. What kind of God would do so much less to help than people would?

Deborah

 

[MrBleeker]

No no no, you miss the point entirely.

The jist of the sentence is that because a natural disaster hit, we had no control or prior knowledge to know how bad it would affect New Orleans. A large number of people clearly thought they were going to be O.K. staying put where they were.

My point was that, if we were God, we would have known that the severity of the storm was incoming, and we would have cleared the area, ourselves. That has nothing to do with the gov''t helping etc etc etc.. it was a generalized statement about the idiocracy of the public forgetting this was a STORM not a publicly or policially created thing to appease one side of a spectrum and alienate the other.

 

[AGBF]

Date: 9/16/2005 7:29:25 AM
Author: MrBleeker
No no no, you miss the point entirely.

I don''t think so. I understood that you wanted to exonerate the government. It was you comment on God that I found interesting. You said that if we were God we could have saved the people suffering. I asked why God didn''t do that.

Deborah

 

[MrBleeker]

Haha wrong. I''m telling you my point. It has nothing to do with us being God, or God helping people, or God saving anyone. It was a post to show that if we had the fore sight to know what would have happened to a) New Orleans and b) the levee''s, no one would have stayed in New Orleans; a vast majority of those who stayed would have left sooner.

To ask me why God didn''t save the people? That has nothing to do with my post in this thread, or the other thread. If you would like to start a thread about my religion, and how God let''s bad things happen to good people etc etc etc feel free, and I will be more than happy to explain my views to you and anyone else.. supported by Bible verses etc. But I won''t hijack this thread with that.

I''m telling you my point of the word God 2 replies above; to ''pretend'' that we were God, would mean that we would have known of the danger prior to its arrival and we (the entire New Orleans population) would have left sooner, faster, and have had more preparation. Nothing else was implied or explained.

 

[AGBF]

Date: 9/16/2005 12:01:59 PM
Author: MrBleeker
Haha wrong. I'm telling you my point. It has nothing to do with us being God, or God helping people, or God saving anyone. It was a post to show that if we had the fore sight to know what would have happened to a) New Orleans and b) the levee's, no one would have stayed in New Orleans; a vast majority of those who stayed would have left sooner.


To ask me why God didn't save the people? That has nothing to do with my post in this thread, or the other thread. If you would like to start a thread about my religion, and how God let's bad things happen to good people etc etc etc feel free, and I will be more than happy to explain my views to you and anyone else.. supported by Bible verses etc. But I won't hijack this thread with that.


I'm telling you my point of the word God 2 replies above; to 'pretend' that we were God, would mean that we would have known of the danger prior to its arrival and we (the entire New Orleans population) would have left sooner, faster, and have had more preparation. Nothing else was implied or explained.

I do not pretend to understand anything you wrote above. If you didn't want to discuss God, why on earth did you mention Him by saying, "If we were God, we would have moved everyone out, and saved the US this mess."

Deborah

 

[MrBleeker]

Date: 9/16/2005 5:27:28 PM
Author: AGBF


I do not pretend to understand anything you wrote above. If you didn''t want to discuss God, why on earth did you mention Him by saying, ''If we were God, we would have moved everyone out, and saved the US this mess.''

Deborah

Deb,

I don''t like to be rude, and I''ll try not to be, but let me spell it out like I would for a high schooler:

I mentioned the simple fact that the rain, wind, and flooding were a NATURAL DISASTER. Man (us) had no control over that. If we had been God, Alah, Muhammad reincarnate, I don''t care... prior knowledge would have let us move out of the area faster, and saved lives.

POINT: We didn''t know how bad it was going to be, because we are HUMAN.

LOL !!

 

[fire&ice]

I''ll go one step further - something worse than blame is excuses.

It''s my understand that people didn''t choose to stay. The mayor said that they moved the buses; yet, they didn''t have enough drivers to drive people out. Well, they had some - yet chose to no move ANYONE.