Trollcatcher you are brilliant! Now you are monitoring the times people post, and paying attention to how Gothamist's clock is set? This is getting creepy. And while having a child does require me to be home at that hour, don't worry about my social life. I suspect it is quite a bit more robust than that of the lonely stalker.

Jack - I'm sure George Bush was standing there with a machine gun in his hands, turning back the Wal Mart trucks himself, right? Or is your argument that the president is responsible for every action taken by every federal employee? That is quite a standard, one which no president could ever meet.

Dave H., Nola and other Bush buereacracy apologists, if you didn't watch 'Meet the Press' today, please read this first-hand account from the president of Jefferson Parish, Aaron Broussard; full transcript here:

MR. BROUSSARD: 'Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.'

And this breakdown, with video of it here:

'MR. BROUSSARD: I'm telling you most importantly I want to thank my public employees...

MR. RUSSERT: All right.

MR. BROUSSARD: ...that have worked 24/7. They're burned out, the doctors, the nurses. And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President...

MR. BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.'

I'm livening things up while you stand on the sidelines with your clipboard. Get a life.

[Gothamist's time stamp isn't set to daylight time, so the comment was actually posted at around 11:18pm]

I may be a square hall monitor, but even I know how to get out of the apartment once in a while. Sheesh.

Dave H. and other apolgists, please read what George W. Bush himself has said. It's a tad heartening he's admitted a mistake, but sickening nonetheless.

BBC: Massive Airlift Rescues Thousands

--

On Saturday, in a televised address from the White House, Mr Bush acknowledged the response had been too insufficient and spoke of an "incalculable" human cost.

"The magnitude of responding to a crisis over a disaster area that is larger than the size of Great Britain has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," he said.

--

Glad to know we sacrficed so much after 9-11 to prepare ourselves better for disasters! What is the terror alert today? Yellow or orange?

There's plenty of blame to go around, but here's one you can pin on Bush - creating the Department of Homeland Security, then putting FEMA under it.

As an independent organization, FEMA had much more control over resources and information, and could mobilize quickly. But thanks to the DHS bureaucracy and FEMA's spot in its totem pole, disaster response became slow and ineffective.

Actually, there's not a single word about Bush in my entire entry.

"Trying to blame this on Bush is a probably a very satisfying exercise, but ultimately not very helpful in the end."

If anything, the thing could be read as a defense against residents who refused to leave the city when they were urged to evacuate

These people are poverty stricken. They have no car to leave in and nowhere to go to. The government didn't have evacuation centers in place. See "Living Paycheck to Paycheck Made Leaving Impossible."

Were TONS of military forces prepared to rush in and aid survivors but prevented by a post 9/11 bureacracy? That's the first I've heard of it,

"New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday."

We're not asking for a faultless response. We're asking for an adequate response. This has not been one. Everybody says that. Even Bush said that.

Thank you Abigail and Dave H. adding some objectivity to this discussion.

Trollcatcher is the sad little hall monitor of Gothamist. You can characterize me as a troll, but so what? I'm livening things up while you stand on the sidelines with your clipboard. Get a life.

So if it isn't Bush's fault, it's someone's fault. SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE ACCOUNTABLE. I'm goddamn sick of hearing every leader claim "hey, it's not MY fault. Don't blame me"

I don't want to hear shit about the poor people not heeding warnings. They did heed warnings. The government told the people without cars to go to the superdome. So most people went.

So, the idiot leaders didn't even think to put any substantial supply of water or food in the superdome! Even if the city didn't flood, putting a supply of food in there would have been just plain common sense. After the first day it was widely reported that there was no food in there. The trucks of food and water should've started arriving ON THAT DAY.

Even if everything was a complete surprise, the delay of nearly four days after the hurricane passed is unacceptable, considering aid to the tsunami victims was sent much faster.

The head of FEMA screwed up on a number of things in Florida in 2004, and it was recommeneded to Bush that the guy should be fired. Bush didn't listen.

My original post was about the psychological mindset of people who would stay put even in the event of an imminent disaster. I'm not trying to be an apologist for the Bush admin., far from it. The second post was a trying to point out that the type of effective disaster relief now being begged for would require a much more powerful federal state with almost limitless power. To take it to the reductio ad absurdum level, disaster recovery would be much easier if every citizen was implanted with a satellite-identifieable microchip implanted in their arms. Would that ever pass muster with civil libertarians? Of course not, and with good reason. Let's face facts, the gov't we hobble to protect our civil liberties is the same gov't we've hobbled when we find ourselves in our worst case scenarios.

The point of my posts are not to excuse the Bush administration. They're trying to inject a little balance that man has a limited response to natural phenomena, that preparation for such an event can be minimal for understandable reasons, and finally that a satisfactory response by some people would have presupposed an omnipotent and fascist state with no limits to action or restraints upon response. I'm not saying that democratic civil societies are incapable of of responding to disaster; one is and it's doing it well right now, but a faultless response is not the standard we should adhere to.

Dave H., please go and read the BBC, CNN, NY Times and even President George W. Bush's own press briefings. Even monkey boy in the oval office is disturbed by FEMAs response.

Kind of mucks it up for apologists, huh?

Whoops, the very first sentence of my penultimate entry contains a mention of Bush; no need to point that out.

Actually, there's not a single word about Bush in my entire entry. If anything, the thing could be read as a defense against residents who refused to leave the city when they were urged to evacuate and local authorities who didn't plan adequately for an event that's been forseeable for years.

Regarding the Army Corp of Engineers, is this the first time Democrats' have rushed to their side, rather than decry them as despoilers of the environment? And if the upgrade of levees was such a small matter as a line item cut from a Bush budget, wouldn't the city of NO or the state of Louisiana perhaps floated a bond to take care of the matter, seeing as how it was so patently urgent? I remember NY registering a multi-billion $ bond issue regarding the state's watershed and water supply several years ago, even when the matter was far from critical to the city or state's survival. If NO and LA residents didn't do the same, why? I think it pertains to my earlier post about the avoidance psychology of disaster mindsets.

As for unprecedented 9-11 powers, I thought I read a lot of bitching on this site the last time the gov't wanted to take a look at what a suspected terrorist was checking out of the library or take a look inside of a middle eastern person's giant suitcase he was trying to drag on the subway while muttering "allahu akbar", (that would be profiling.) Both are examples that I think are reasonable from the viewpoint of protecting civil liberties, but both are also examples of the limits of the "unprecedented powers" the gov't has in preventing terrorism, let alone recovering from a natural disaster.

Were TONS of military forces prepared to rush in and aid survivors but prevented by a post 9/11 bureacracy? That's the first I've heard of it, but maybe. I thought neighboring states were recovering from their own problems. Plus, wouldn't that be standard protocol for a national guard to wait to be invited for assistance instead of just rushing in under seemingly no one's authority? Or should there be no protocol before military groups descend upon a populace and perhaps start shooting looters on site?

I'm confused, do we want a limited government with constrained powers or do we want an omnipotent state with the ability to respond at civil, urban, and military levels on a moment's notice to maintain order and coordinate municipal behavior at the drop of a hat? I'm all for some balance, but some people seem to be upset that we're not living in a federally-governed police state, even if it may have saved some lives over the past week.

Abigail,

Flooding is a problem with EVERY hurricane. It's unavoidable. You're never going to get a hurricane where nobody's hurt and nothing is damaged. But 40 years ago, they wouldn't have anticipated most of the city underwater simply because it couldn't have happened back then, even in a Class 5 hurricane. Back then, there were plenty of wetlands to help absorb the storm surge. It's almost all gone now, leaving the city completely exposed. Thanks to all the human engineering of the Mississippi River, the average daily sediment load in the river water has decreased by 83% in the last 50 years. 83%! That's sediment that's not getting to the delta and replenishing wetlands. Don't forget, New Orleans thought it had dodged the bullet Monday. It was only when the levees broke on Tuesday after the hurricane passed that the disaster started. Healthy wetlands wouldn't have let the water level get that high and overstress the levees. It is by any measure a manmade disaster.

"For the time being, let's try to concentrate on saving people instead of assigning blame."

Dave H., the issue is not assignment of blame but the soul crushing reality that despite the unprecedented powers and resources we the people gave the president after the horror of 9-11, a disaster hits and the recovery was abyssmal.

Let's pretend 9-11 didn't happen. The criticism would be similar, but not as bad in some ways. The fact we're living in a world where we have a department of homeland of security, the Patiot Act and tons of other things that should have 'untied hands to get work done look at what's happened.

Did you know that TONS of military forces from other states were ready to go in and help yet they were stymied by politicians that said 'Well, we'll only send them if they ask for them...'

Don't know about you, but when I see New Orleans city and local officials screaming 'SEND HELP!' If there's some stupid form to be signed in triplicate I'm sure they would have signed it immediately.

This is sickening because in many ways this country is no better prepared to deal with anything post-9-11 than pre-9-11. Sickening.

Actually, when Hurrican Betsy hit in the 60s, my dad was a medical student at LSU. He and others were airlifted into the 9th ward, which was flooded- they set up a hospital on the roof of a school. People were trapped on their roofs, older people had no medicine, and others were trapped in their attics. Sound familiar? You bet they've known about this problem for a long time. And in a city run by liberals, where the poorest STILL live in the 9th ward, nothing has changed since then.

Actually, they wouldn't have "known" all about the potential for disaster in New Orleans 20 or 30 years ago. It's not a static environment. Much of the disaster has been blamed on the erosion of the Mississippi delta, a gradual process caused by human intervention. A few decades ago, a healthy delta would have helped fend off much of the storm surge. Combine that with the continuing subsidence of the city. A century ago, the city was three feet higher. At the beginning of your 300-year example, the city was actually above sea level. Nobody starts a city below sea level, you know. It's only been fairly recently that scientists began warning about all the problems combining in a "perfect storm" way. Like it or not, Bush does have to shoulder a share of the blame. Under his administrations, the Army Corps of Engineers has had their budgets slashed. The Corps actually said their recent budgets were not sufficient to fund new projects, including the reinforcement of New Orleans' levees.

Trying to blame this on Bush is a probably a very satisfying exercise, but ultimately not very helpful in the end. If FEMA identified this as a potential troublespot in 2001, then they probably could have found the same in 1991, 1981, 1971, 1961, 1951, 1941, and on and on for 300 years.

Why would a city ignore a very real but seemingly extant threat? Who knows? Why would people refuse an evacuation order? Probably because no one ever expects the worst-case-scenario to occur. Despite a recent terrorist attack just four years ago, how many of you have your "Go Bags" ready and fresh batteries in your flashlights along with 5 gallons of fresh water. If NYC were attacked, would you be the unprepared dumbass that refused to take the smallest preparation for the seemingly inevitable? I would probably fall under that description. Would I be screaming that it was someone's responsibility to come and save me? Yep.

What's my point? Avoiding prepping for disasters is basic human psychology. A tourist destination like NO that regularly reminds its visitors and residents that "It's only a matter of time before we're stewing in a bowl of shit soup" is not likely. People that spend a good amount of time and attention on their survival and evacuation plans are generally characterized as being mentally ill. Think of "the survivalist" stereotype, when in fact tons of bottled water, canned goods, and firearms probably seem like a great idea in NO right now.

Where am I going with this? Probably to the fact that residents didn't evac not only because they were too poor or unable, but because the big one's supposedly been coming for a hundred years, but never actually did. The city was unprepared because as a tourist destination it didn't want to make its new slogan "From the Superdome to the Terrordome in 24 short hours!" Think of the mayor trying to talk Chief Brody out of closing the beaches in "Jaws." This is a f***king disaster. Preventable in the before stages and probably better managed in the after stages. Trying to blame it on a single administration is stupid and unhelpful.

For the time being, let's try to concentrate on saving people instead of assigning blame.

Nola, the reason why you get such a reaction here is because you can't have a civilized debate. You come out with fists flying. You don't seem to have a goal in changing the mind of the other commenters, let alone backing up your view with any hard facts. Your goal seems to be a childish, giddy high from bashing and trolling others.

In just three (count 'em, three) posts, you've said:

dumbass, wannabe, lightweight, loudmouth, the looney left bandwagon, nuts like you, you suckers, Ray Nagin's ass, dumbass (again), idiots

A troll, if I ever saw one.

"Nitwits like Jack don't know anything about the nuts and bolts of FEMA"

No, but I do know that somehow George W. Bush was able to fly over to an aircraft carrier and proclaim 'Mission Accomplished' in this whole Iraq war mess, yet somehow it took the idiot 3 days to leave his vacation home to get back to work and do something.

What that 'something' is, is still in question.

And nola, for all of your complaints about liberals that and Democrats that, I have news for you. Even George W. Bush admits the response to the tragedy is bad.

Keep on ducking the reality. With the anniversary of 9-11 a week or so away and elections a few days afterwards, the issue of incompetence and lack of leadership is going to come up whether you want to admit or not.

Geez. Bill Clinton gets a load of heaping crap for getting a blow job. But the incompetent handling of a national tragedy by George W. Bush is 'understandable'.

If getting a blow jobis the most heinous offense that can knock over a standing President, someone please get on the phone and hook George W. up with the 'happy ending' he deserves.

Jack - Get your head out of Ray Nagin's ass. Do you know when Nagin and Blanco finally got around to telling people to evacuate? After Bush told them to. Some leadership. The local leaders needed Bush to tell them what to do. But they are Democrats so you don't have an unkind word. Dumbass.

And by the way, the New York Times editorialized against the bill that would have given money to the Corp of Engineers in April.

lp - I didn't say not to be angry with anyone. I'm just mocking the idiots who get up every morning looking for something for something they can blame on Bush. People have been saying the levees needed rebuilding for decades. So go ahead and blame every President since LBJ, every LA Governor, every NO Mayor, every NO Levee Board Member, everyone in the Congress, etc.

I'm only criticizing the tendency people around here have to blame only Bush for everything. Nitwits like Jack don't know anything about the nuts and bolts of FEMA, they just can't get over losing election after election.