Gustav
Watching the news shows which were following Hurricane Gustav it was only this morning when the Today show interviewed FEMA head Michael Brown that I heard the first reminder that what has really changed since Katrina is that Bobby Jindal, the REPUBLICAN, governor of Louisiana, is now in charge. We didn't have New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin having a turf war with former Governor Kathleen Blanco. We didn't have both of them sitting on their hands while simultaneously wringing them and not actually leading--something voters expected from them. Neither one of them stepping up and initiating the paperwork to let the Feds in yet expecting the Fed's to fix their mess. We didn't have a repeat of all those school busses parked in a flood to remind us that those that should have evacuated people had the resources to do it but didn't.
There were certainly a lot of lessons learned the last time around but let's not forget that Bush and "Brownie" are still around but Blanco isn't. She and Nagin cost this nation an untold resources and lives. Thank God this time around things were different.
1 comment:
You do realize that Brown resigned in 2005, right? And that Gustav was a significantly weaker hurricane? And that, during Katrina, the levees broke, whereas, during Gustav, they didn't? And that the evacuation went more smoothly, frankly, because so many people had terrible memories of what happened during Katrina?
So, unless Bobby Jindal fired Brown, magically reinforced the levees, threw elephants at the hurricane to make it weaker, and struck meteorological fear into the hearts of Louisiana residents? Sorry, he wasn't the major difference, here.
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