« Byron York gives aid and comfort to the left | Main | Clinton spoon feeds CNN some perspective »
September 02, 2005
Well excuse my French, Mr. Mayor, but you're an asshole.
“They don't have a clue what's going on down there,” Mayor Ray Nagin told WWL-AM Thursday night. "Excuse my French everybody in America but I am pissed.”
You know, Mr. Mayor, it's your damn city. It's built on ground several feet below sea level. It is riddled with levees, but not one of them is redundent, and not one of them is built to withstand a category 4 hurricane. Whose fault is that?
What the hell kind of civic planning is that? Why in the hell would a city on the Gulf of Mexico, whose very life depends on the levees that hold back the river, Lake P., and ultimately, the Gulf, not build levees that can handle a Category 4 hurricane? Why the hell wouldn't they be prepared for a Category 5 hurricane?
What's the civic planning there? Just a wing and a prayer? If you aren't going to at least build levees capable of withstanding the worst hurricane possible, wouldn't you at least build a couple of redundent levees in some of the more critical spots. No? Why not?
And if you are going to take these basic - very elementary steps -- how can you not be prepared for the aftermath when the inevitable happens? How can the city itself not have some contingency plans in place for this occurrence? Where's the civic planning?
Everyone is talking about the national guard, etc. not having enough pre-positioned supplies and provisions. Well where the hell is the city's pre-positioned provisions? If they city won't provide sufficient protection from the inevitable, the least it could do is be somewhat prepared for the aftermath.
Forgive me, Mr. Mayor, but you and your entire infrastructure are completely incompetent to run a major American city. That the City of New Orleans was caught completely off guard by this tragedy, so much so that you couldn't even hold the place together for at least a couple of days before the feds could come in for relief,is unforgivable. What you did, or failed to do, by your inept planning and forsight is what has caused this human tragedy. It's not the federal government's fault, no matter how much you'd like to pin the blame on them.
The people who are suffering in New Orleans don't deserve what's happening to them. It's a tragedy on a scale that this country never imagined would happen within its own borders. And it will be your legacy, Mr. Mayor. Not the federal government's, and not George Bush's.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.respectthebox.com/cgi-bin/mt/mtb.cgi/80
