Picture it, Louisiana, 2005. You’re the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA for the Leftists in my audience), and a hurricane has devastated the Gulf Coast. What do you do? Ah yes, Firefighters! Put out a call to the nation’s firefighters (2,000 to be exact) who are trained in search and rescue!
The firefighters meet up in Atlanta… Days pass… People die… all the while 2,000 firefighters are receiving sensitivity training on sexual harassment and how to deal with ethnic minorities.
After all that nonsense is over… The firefighters aren’t sent to Louisiana or Mississippi… No, they’re at desks in South Carolina filling out paperwork.
No wonder the idiot in charge of FEMA was stripped of his command. We shouldn’t have stopped there. I’d say dangle him in a pool of standing water and bodies by his ankles until he drowns or passes out from the smell.
My friends, this entire nation is drowning. It’s drowning in a sea of Politically Correct bullshit that has yet again cost us innocent lives. Kanye West and other ignorant activists can blame Bush and the racist Government for all the deaths and lack of response… But it wasn’t racism or bigotry which held up the rescuers and killed all those people… It wasn’t racism or bigotry which allowed looting, rapes, murders to occur… It was our noble sense of sensitivity and political correctness. I’m not saying other mistakes were not made, obviously they were. When it comes to saving lives or sensitivity training, pick my honkey ass up off the roof and then go learn to call me Sir.
I agree with you for the most part, but the whole PC/Sensitivity thing to me just seems like an excuse. In my experience when someone would rather let a problem explode to follow some obscure meaningless at the time procedure then they aren’t worrying about doing things right, because it’s the right thing to do, they’re worring about their own neck/job.
And from a lot of the writing I’ve seen about FEMA it seems like they put everything on hold as much as possible. It’s sad when people want to help but they get stopped because of some stupidity. You and I see this almost on a daily basis, so you know what I mean.
As for the racism. I can see it. Not neccessarily racism in it’s purest form, more like classism. Many that never had to want, just don’t understand others that don’t have options, that can’t help themselves, that don’t have the resources to get their whole family away from a crisis area. I’ve actually met a girl in college who just didn’t understand why people needed financial aid. Didn’t understand the concept AT ALL why one would need to borrow money to pay for college. “Why don’t you just pay for it?” It’s people like her that most likely sat there and said “Why should I do anything to help? They were told to leave and just didn’t do it. Their fault entirely.”
And unfortunanetly(sp?) it’s people like this that hold offices in high places, that hold positions that can make and break entire communities. Not all of them are like this, but all it really takes is one asshole to bring everything down.
I don’t follow politics, cause it just pisses me off, but from what I’ve seen of Bush he is one of these assholes. At the very least he has asshole tendencies. When it all comes down to it, people are looking to him because he is supposed to be a leader. Someone that leads the people to, at the very least, not shittier than their life has already been state. But people don’t see that, they don’t see a leader they can stand behind, they don’t see a leader that gives them hope that although we are in the middle of a disaster, we can pull through this. They see a guy doing photo ops whenever and wherever he can. They see his mother making comments to the effect of “They’re all enjoying being refugees/evacuees”.
Maybe this country has just gotten used to the whole movie idea of a leader. The guy/gal that doesn’t sleep/rest until the crisis is over, who’s only focus is saving/rescuing/rebuilding etc, and everything else falls to the wayside. Or maybe we are just confused and don’t realize that a President is not a Leader.
*sigh* enough rambling
Political Correctness and Sensitivity is far from an excuse. 2000 firefighters were delayed for days so they could receive sensitivity training. How many people died during that delay? How many people could have survived? This is not an excuse, it is a sad reality.
Realize that 72% of the population of New Orleans is a minority… How the heck is it racist that a majority of the people who required help was a majority of the population? Should they have imported Caucasians to satisfy the sensitivities of our society? I don’t see anyone clamoring to label the Liberal Democrat Mayor of New Orleans and the Liberal Democrat Governor of Louisiana as racist for dropping the ball. This was a calamity, a failure at every level, not racism.
The residents of New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mississippi all heard the same warnings. They all had the same opportunity to leave. Those who stayed either ignored the warnings or underestimated just how dangerous the hurricane would be. That’s not the fault of a wealthy girl in a college auditorium who has no concept of what other people need… That’s the fault of the guy sitting on his roof who didn’t evacuate his family in time. It’s the fault of the democratically elected local, state officials who didn’t act, and it’s the fault of FEMA Administrators who felt that sensitivity training was more important than saving the life of a drowning American.
Sure, Bush could be an Asshole. He still won election twice. With every election, the Liberals of this country are pushed further and further from the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Governorships of states across the Union. Republicans win because people who follow politics, people with fervent beliefs, and people who care for their fellow Americans will vote Republican. Liberals, Moderates, and those who “don’t follow politics†vote for the other guy… If the key to winning elections in America was a complete lack of faith and confidence in a specific party, I’m sure things would be the other way around.
Sure, Bush isn’t a Leader.
And the Swedish Chef isn’t a Muppet.
Um. I remember a movie about a person who never slept. He went from hero to nuts. That’s what happens when you don’t sleep. I don’t care who you are either….everyone can pick their favorite president, and I’d still say even with whoever was in office, the same damn thing would have happened. Because you just don’t expect it. Even with the warnings. It’s that whole human thing. You know, like ignoring distress calls from an unsinkable ship that’s sinking…b/c it’s unsinkable.
This is the story I got this morning: Local (as in from my town) family was down there on vacation. They were out on a tour…and their guide said given the hurricane prediction, they ought to do the whole tour in the same day. So they did. And in the meantime things changed. Out in the middle of nowhere, they didn’t hear the evacuation calls. So when they got back they couldn’t. So they stayed another night in the hotel. They paid $2500 for a bus to get them to an airport. Said bus got comandeered, and eventually wound up, as far as I know, actually not helping anyone get anywhere. You’d think comandeered meant to bring help right? But no. It just went away. So…I forget who or what it was they got to get them out of the city…but someone did….and a friend of one of the other couples they had hooked up with drove 2 hours to get them and 4 more to get them to Houston so they could fly home.
Lot of people dropped a lot of balls on this one. Lot of people made a lot of great saves. A fribbling Hurricane demolished a city…so unless you’re gonna start yelling at whoever it is who runs weather into us like it’s a game, or God, then where do you get off yelling at anyone else while your butt is still up here with all the other people’s who are just watching from afar because that’s about all we can do?
People can be super, but there are no superpeople. The fact that you can even drain a city of 8 feet of water, forget how long it takes, astounds me in and of itself. Just because we’re way more modern now, that doesn’t change nature, which, as it happens, doesn’t really give a damn about people.
Bork bork bork!