Let me tell you something
Posted by TFG on September 1st, 2005
Watching this New Orleans disaster unfold, it’s pretty damn apparent that this country has gotten a severe case of Administralysis. How many private bass boats, canoes, jon-boats, pirogues could have been out there for the last four days pulling people off of roofs? Reckon any of those old boys have axes and chainsaws to cut through a roof? Reckon anyone on a roof or in an attic gives a damn who helps them out? How many 4×4 swamp buggies could have been toting water and hot dogs to those people on the bridge, and then taking a few at a time back to high-ground? Reckon those poor souls might be less likely to rush the bus if they’ve got something in their belly and a way for their Grandma some medicine? Snipers??? I daresay Beaudreux has a scoped deer rifle, and a good friend who can use it. And besides, this is your neighbor — you go get ‘em when they need you. Eff the dopeheads with the guns…they likely couldn’t hit you if you were standing in front of them, anyway.
I honestly think the Feds have done an OK job — about as well as a Fed job could be expected to go. And the Coast Guard, well, hell, what can you say? Those guys and gals have been there from the git-go and they ain’t stopped. But all this BS about being unsafe to drive private boats around and pick people off roofs is fucking stupid. We’ve been driving boats around in the dark on stump-filled lakes for decades. We’ve gone to great personal expense to build up bad-ass pickups that can haul trailers of Mrs. Bairds, Miracle Whip, and bologna over terrain that would make you urp. I could get a trailered smoker right this minute, and head down to, hell I don’t care, Baton Rouge, and start cooking breakfast burritos by sunrise tomorrow. I could find four more rednecks to do the same thing. Hell, I should do it anyway, and screw the administrators.
I swear, I’m about to blow a gasket watching this cluster-eff. This nation’s strength is in it’s people, not the dipsticks with a laminated badge. They’re good to a point, but gawdalmighty, get out of the fucking way already.
P.S. I blame the trial lawyers. Half of the fluids in New Orleans right now is drool from those circling vultures.
P.P.S. OK, that’s harsh. I know too many good lawyerly people. I don’t know many Feds, but I imagine they’re mostly good-hearted people. But you know it’s gonna happen…you know it. My grandkids will be on juries hearing cases from this.
P.P.P.S. You can’t possibly be serious. A donation scoreboard? Can I get one of those way-cool Chickenhawk Medals, since I registered a housing offer at MoveOn? What a bunch of fooking freaks…keep them far away from me, lest I thump them for their hose-head priorities.
P.P.P.P.S. The hurricane was the first major test of FEMA since it became part of the Homeland Security Department, a massive new bureaucracy that many feared would make the well-respected FEMA another sluggish federal agency. Test failed. Yeah, well…we just had to do something. Why am I conservative? I kind of like to take things slow and make sure we do the right thing, not run around like my hair’s on fire, unless my hair’s on fire.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:31 pm
Well, there are apparently freaks shooting at people. Also, probably every boat in the vicinity is currently upside down in someone’s back yard. There was this hurricane thing…
Boats are on the way, by the way. (That is, Coast Guard, National Guard, other military), and some are already there. It may not be as instantaneous as people want these days, but people are being rescued. It’s not that easy — it’s an entire flooded city, not just a lake. Still, If I had a boat, I’d go there, but I don’t even have a car.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:41 pm
Fuck em. We can shoot back. With better target acquisition, too. We can turn boats over and re-float em, if they’re in New Orleans. But the rest of the state (“A Sportsman’s Paradise”) is NOT flooded. Neither is Texas. Neither is Arkansas. And I can guarantee that a call for help from private citizens would be answered in spades. But they won’t do that.
You kind of make my point…an entire flooded city requires an entire city of boats.
September 1st, 2005 at 10:31 pm
My God, the Brits used anything that would float, crossed the English Channel, and took their boys off the beaches of Dunkirk with the Nazis shooting at them.
I’ve thought the same thing, Scott, where the hell are all the pirogues? Half the damn state is a swamp. You think these boys can’t negotiate debris?
September 2nd, 2005 at 2:01 am
Take the smoker on the trailer and feed the people in Reunion Arena. They need your help,too. And they’ll need it down the road.
September 2nd, 2005 at 5:22 am
A helpful government, with ass seated firmly on hands, will always do more harm than good. Consider the amount of regulation about to be unleashed for the rebuild of these areas. I’m an independant contractor who’d like to lend a hand, and yeah get some compensation for it, but lend a hand chiefly because it’s the right thing to do.
All I’ve heard in the last few days are calls for “investigations, research, and committees.” Dammit, somebody get in a truck and do something!
September 2nd, 2005 at 10:20 am
For the most part, I am right there with you. I think part of the problem is that you simply cannot GET to New Orleans. Most of the bridges by which you might cart a boat is are simply gone. All that being said, if you want to come up here an cook BBQ for the evacuees, I will be pleased to join you and contribute to the cause.
September 2nd, 2005 at 10:57 am
If the govmint was run by real rednecks who knew how to damn DO something, we would be in a helluva better situation. You take the cooker, I’ll get Daddy’s log truck. I’ll meet you halfway and clear a path. My boys Dave & Myk will ride shotgun. Literally.
I’m tired of sitting on my hands. I don’t have money to give to the Red Cross, or they’d have it. But shit, I’ve got a strong back, a chainsaw and a hammer, let’s put our people to use.
September 2nd, 2005 at 10:59 am
I’ve wondered if every vehicle the state owned could have been commandeered to drive down to some pickup point in or near New Orleans to ferry people out. I’ve wondered if all the media organizations for cities within 500 miles could have sent their traffic helicopters down to help out. I’ve wondered if we could deploy special ops teams in to secure areas and take out the dead-enders. I’ve wondered why empty barges and boats aren’t being used to ferry folks north on the Mississippi, or at least to Baton Rouge.
Before this is over, it will be by far the most expensive disaster we have ever had measured in dollars. It isn’t just New Orleans, but the 6-12 months of 500,000+ people living in hotels and with relatives and now not having jobs, and kids being displaced from their schools, etc., for which everyone is going to expect the federal government to pick up the tab. I’m sure the Mayor of Detroit is sincere in his desire to help by offering to house refugees in Detroit’s empty hotels, but I’m just as sure he expects a huge windfall of federal money for his noble efforts.
I am becoming very angry with the people at CNN, Fox, and NPR who seme to believe that all of this could have been prevented if someone had just done something different. The who are, of course, the usual suspects, but the what is never specified — because it doesn’t exist. Bad things happen to good people. I think someone’s even written a book about that. My God, if they would spend 1/10th the time talking about the logistics and what is being done to get aid in, focusing on distrubuting information that would prove useful instead of trying to pull my heart strings by sticking microphones in the faces of the poor souls who have been stranded for four days in something just this side of hell. Of course those folks are dazed and confused, angry, losing faith, and losing control. We know these folks exist and we should be doing everything we can to rescue them, but the news reports themselves aren’t doing squat to actually do so.
I don’t think the American people or the federal government became any better or worse over the last couple of years. The problems caused by Katrina constitute that over-used cliche of a perfect storm, where so many bad things came together at once that it overwhelemed our capacity for dealing with it. I take the lingering problems in New Orleans as a sign of just how devastating Katrina was, with the destruction, the flooding, and the total loss of infrastructure –including most critically communication — hampering efforts to help. Placed on top of the corruption and incompetence endemic to New Orleans and Louisiana politics, it presents a situation unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
No plan could have addressed this. And I think you want to think real hard before you decide you want a federal government capable of solving a problem this great in two days, much less devoting the resources to it for every conceivable disaster that might happen anywhere in this very large country. Did Mayor Nagin really want the army marching into New Orleans Monday afternoon? How about Tuesday afternoon? Maybe Wednesday?
I just love how some Europeans are saying this indicates how flawed anything and everything about America is. Yeah, right. Imagine how many people might have died in France if faced with something like Katrina instead of just an August heat wave. Bastards.
Finally, if you still need something after this to convince you to not put the lives and welfare of you and your family in the hands of the government, this ought to do it.
September 2nd, 2005 at 1:02 pm
Charles, sir…that needs to be a post. Much to ponder there. If you don’t put it on your site, I’m going to put it on mine.
September 2nd, 2005 at 1:15 pm
I imagine that big reason that private craft and vehicles aren’t being used must be the liability risk. Can you imagine what the lawyers would do to you if you took your little boat in there, picked up some people, and then somebody fell out and drowned, or, God forbid, one passenger knifed somebody? You’d be sued up to your clavicle and your life would be ruined.
IMHO, lurking behind a lot of the changes for the worse in this country are the LAWYERS.
September 2nd, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Scott, be my guest. Feel free to correct or embellish as you see fit.
September 2nd, 2005 at 2:25 pm
Baron, I think you’re absolutely right about the lawyers. I’m sure that’s why the govt. didn’t issue a call for help from private citizens. My personal opinion is that we shouldn’t let that stop us from helping our neighbors, and then just hope that we don’t get in trouble somehow. It’s a tough spot to be in, since our nature is to help.
(As you can see, I’m working out my own thoughts and feelings.)
September 2nd, 2005 at 2:38 pm
It is just beyond words. I have a very close friend on the ground in NOLA that is working for the Red Cross and he has told me a few times all ready that it is overwhelming. They can be helping 200 people in front of them and the word goes out that there is water elsewhere and people will storm the location. He has told me that they have stopped handing out the MRE’s in his location because armed thugs are brutalizing the people that get them and taking them from the elderly and the sick.
September 2nd, 2005 at 3:04 pm
Scott, I’ll buy your buddy a steak dinner when he gets back for doing the Lord’s work. Thank God there are people like him willing to go into that kind of environment. I simply could not take the thug part of it…not for one second. One of us would be dead.
September 3rd, 2005 at 2:01 am
Scott: a little while ago I was watching this new channel they’ve put on the cable here called Current TV. I think it’s some kind of new thing where people put their own amateur films on tv. Anyway, they showed this one kid who got some friends together and took their motorboat through the drowned streets looking for people. They managed to rescue quite a few people, but were finally told by the authorities (he didn’t say whether it was the National Guard or just the local cops) to leave because apparently some other rescuers had their boat commandeered by someone with a gun. So people did try to do what you wanted, but as I thought there was the criminal element.
September 3rd, 2005 at 6:45 am
[...] “Let me tell you something“, Scott Chaffin Filed under: News/Current Events, Philosophy, Culture by Ian | [...]
September 3rd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Andrea, that’s heartening to hear. Personally, though, I wouldn’t do it without a pistol on my hip, and probably even someone riding shotgun. That’s axiomatic to me.
September 3rd, 2005 at 9:31 am
Oh, and another thing — the kid (he actually must have been in his twenties, but he looked younger) as they were floating through the sunny, peaceful former streets, pointed at the roof of one submerged house and said that it was the garage of the house he lived in when he was going to college.