Saturday, September 03, 2005

Why Doesn't This Surprise Me

The federal government's response to the post-Katrina relief effort has been a large clusterfuck from the beginning. That's why this doesn't surprise me:
Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.

The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.

“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.

The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.
I hope the President got a good photo-op out of it.

2 comments:

JeromeProphet said...

Exactly!

Katrina has been just one damned photo-op for the entire administration.

Wouldn't it be nice to see what would happen if all of the "refugees" were relocated into key Republican congressional districts. I suspect we'd see a faster response, and more support to rebuild New Orleans.

CNN has been running a series of reality checks on the federal response to Huricane Katrina. These short, but important forays into the rarified territory called reality have shown the late response, and spin control for what it is, both obvious, and disgusting!

As I stated before Katrina, and I'll say it again, I feel no safer today than I did the day after 9/11 - not one bit safer. This despite the looting of the treasury in deficit spending, and the deaths of so many of our brave, and honorable soldiers.

JeromeProphet

www.jeromeprophet.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

I know of two big houses that are only used a couple of months a year that will hold a lot of evacuees - one is located between 4th and 5th streets in Springfield and the other is in Crawford , Texas. Want to hold you breath long enough to see if any evacuees end up in those two garden spots?