The Poster Boy of Bush Haters

The Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin will become the poster boy for the Left in their continued hatred against President Bush. His rhetoric is unbridled. If I were a new orlease refugee, I would be wondering what in the hell this guys has been doing for a week. He had his head so far up his nether regions that he waited until the wather was lapping the levees before calling for a manditory evacuation and then did not provide any means to do it despite the fact he knew nearly 100,000 residents in the 9th Ward did not have cars. The Governor is fighting for her political life in Louisiana. She could not be elected dog catcher at this point so she is going to the well to get a former Democratic administration God (Read Clinton) to run her relief effort. If she would look in the mirror and admit she screwed up and was not ready like Haley Barbor where the Hurricane actually struck. Instead both the Mayor and the Governor are taking the easy and popular way out by blaming Bush. It's all the Democrats have since they never bring a solution to the table. Below is the story of the levee being repaired a mere five days after a football field size breach was discovered in the levee. Let's remember, dear reader, New Orleans is not suffering from the effects of the hurricane - they are suffering from a Levee break.

NEW ORLEANS, La. - A week after Hurricane Katrina, the levee break that caused
much of the area's flooding was repaired, floodwaters began to recede and the
mayor made his direst prediction yet: as many as 10,000 deaths in his city
alone.
Louisiana officials said Monday afternoon that the repeated
helicopter droppings of 30,000-pound sandbags into the football-field-wide break
in the 17th Street canal leading to Lake Ponchartrain succeeded in stopping the
water, and water was being pumped from the canal back into the lake. Some parts
of the city showed slipping floodwaters as the repair neared completion, with
some low-lying areas dropping more more than a foot.
"We're starting to make
the kind of progress that I kind of expected earlier," New Orleans Mayor Ray
Nagin said even before the plug of the break, which opened up a day after the
hurricane and flooded 80 percent of the city up to 20 feet deep.
The good
news came as many of the 460,000 residents of suburban Jefferson Parish waited
in a line of cars that stretched for miles to briefly see damaged caused by the
same levee break, and to scoop up soaked wedding pictures, baby shoes and other
cherished mementoes.
"A lot of these people built these houses anticipating
some flood water but nobody imagined this," sobbed Diane Dempsey, a 59-year-old
retired Army lieutenant colonel who could get no closer than the water line a
mile from her Metairie home. "I'm going to pay someone to get me back there,
anything I have to do."
"I won't be getting inside today unless I get some
scuba gear," added Jack Rabito, a 61-year-old bar owner who waited for a ride to
visit his one-story home that had water lapping to the gutters.
Katharine
Dastugue was overjoyed to find that floodwaters had gone across her lawn but
stopped just inches from her doorstep. As she stood waiting for a boat to take
her in, she made a list of thing she hoped to salvage before being forced to
leave again Wednesday.
"If I can just get my kids' baby photos," she said.
"You can't replace those." flooding, and thousands of homes were damaged.
In
New Orleans, Nagin upticked his estimate of the probable death toll in his city
from merely thousands to telling NBC's "Today" show: "It wouldn't be
unreasonable to have 10,000."
As law enforcement officers and even bands of
private individuals — including actor Sean Penn — launched a door-to-door boat
and air search of the city for survivors, they were running up against a
familiar obstacle: People who had been trapped more than a week in damaged homes
yet refused to leave.
"We have advised people that this city has been
destroyed," said Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley. "There is nothing here for them
and no reason for them to stay, no food, no jobs, nothing."
Riley, who
estimated fewer than 10,000 people were left in the city, said some simply did
not want to leave their homes — while others were hanging back to engage in
criminal activities, such as looting.
Nagin said the city had the authority
to force residents to evacuate but didn't say if it was taking that step. He
did, however, detail one heavy-handed tactic: Water will no longer be handed out
to people who refuse to leave.
In another effort of "encouragement," a
Louisiana State Police SWAT team, armed with rifles, confronted two brothers at
their home in the Uptown section of New Orleans, leaving one sobbing.
"I
thought they were going to shoot me," said 23-year-old Leonard Thomas, weeping
on his front porch. "That dude came and stuck the gun dead at my head."
One
officer, who did not give his name, said his team tried to make sure that the
two men understood that food and water is becoming scarce and that disease could
begin spreading.
Even though almost a third of New Orleans' police force was
missing in action, a caravan of law enforcement vehicles, emblazoned with
emblems from across the nation and blue lights flashing, poured into the city to
help establish order on the city's anarchic streets and give police a
much-deserved break.
Four hundred to 500 officers on New Orleans' 1600-member
force were unaccounted for, police officials said. Some lost their homes. Some
were looking for families. "Some simply left because they said they could not
deal with the catastrophe," said Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley. Officials said
officers were being cycled off duty and given five-day vacations in Las Vegas
and Atlanta, where they would also receive counseling.
At a news conference,
the leader of the National Guard effort declared the city was largely free of
the lawlessness that plagued it in the days following the hurricane. And he
angrily lashed out at a reporter who suggested search-and-rescue operations were
being stymied by random gunfire and lawlessness.
"Go on the streets of New
Orleans — it's secure," said Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore. "Have you been to New
Orleans? Did anybody accost you?"
Hopeful signs of recovery were accompanied
by Bush's
second visit to Louisiana that exposed a continued rift between state and
federal officials over the slowness of a relief effort. The first significant
convoy of food, water and medicine didn't arrive in New Orleans until four full
days after the hurricane, and the mayor and others said some survivors died
awaiting relief.
While an exact death count remains elusive, Nagin warned on
NBC's "Today" show that
Still, The Times-Picayune, Louisiana's largest
newspaper, published an open letter to Bush, called for the firing of every
official at the
Federal Emergency Management Agency' name. At a stop
in Baton Rouge, Bush said all levels of the government were doing their best,
and he pledged again: "So long as any life is in danger, we've got work to do.
Where it's not going right, we're going to make it right."
Louisiana Gov.
Kathleen Blanco has refused to sign over National Guard control to the federal
government and has turned to a Clinton administration official, former Federal
Emergency Management Agency chief James Lee Witt, to help run relief efforts.
Blanco, a Democrat, was not informed of the timing of Bush's visit, nor was
she immediately invited to meet him or travel with him. In fact, Blanco's office
didn't know when Bush was coming until told by reporters. As reporters saw the
governor sitting on the runway for a flight to Houston to visit evacuees early
Monday, her staff tracked down the details and her trip was rescheduled so that
she could meet the president.
While the New Orleans refugees were mostly
poor and black, Jefferson Parish brought the storm's destruction to a much wider
economic cross-section. The sprawling parish stretches from Grand Isle on the
Gulf of Mexico to Lake Pontchartrain in the north, and includes some of the
metropolitan area's most exclusive neighborhoods.
In the enclave of Old
Metairie, the rows of palatial, six-bedroom homes sustained little structural
damage but had some of the worst flooding. Only a few windows were broken and
the live oaks survived but the water rippled up the knobs at front doors and
completely covered Mercedes-Benzes, pickup trucks and BMWs in garages.
Many
residents were happy that the storm spared their homes, but angry that the
failure of the levee system left them swamped. Some were considering a lawsuit
against the federal government for having a levee that could survive no more
than a Category 3 hurricane.
"That's what so devastating, that goddamned
levee breaking," said Bobby Patrick, a resident of neighborhood now living in
Houston. "My home didn't lose a shingle but it's got six feet of water in it."
Since the storm, rumors had swirled that looters had crossed over the parish
line and began breaking into evacuated homes in Jefferson. Many were relieved to
return home Monday to find their belongings untouched.
Walter Zehner found
his front yard full of foul-smelling floodwater and a broken lock on his door
from rescuers looking for stranded survivors, but nothing missing. "It could
have been a lot worse," he said.
Across the neighborhood, residents took
what items they could fit in a boat. One woman loaded up her boat with her
collection of cashmere sweaters, her cat and the 1957 Leica camera that belonged
to her grandfather. A man packed his pickup truck with his silverware, his
wife's clothes and a cherished animal figurine.
Unlike the poor in New
Orleans, these refugees had other places to go. And few here planned to stay
through what could be a long recovery.
With police checkpoints on ever major
streetcorner and ID checks for parish residents, even looting was not a major
concern.
Said personal trainer Rod McClave: "I'm more concerned about them
damaging my stuff just for the hell of it."

___