The Difference Between NOLA and the Jersey Shore.

[No Elephants]

Everyone in Louisiana and in Congress knew that the levees in Louisiana were inadequate. Despite the devastation it caused, Katrina hit land in Louisiana only as a level one or two hurricane. The area had seen many level five hurricanes. And the levees were not even breached. They were overtopped, which would have been an easier problem to remedy.

Hearings had been held on the matter in Congress. No one wanted to vote the money for the Army Corps of engineers to put in levees that would contain a hurricane greater than level one or two. The Red Cross moved its people out of the area. A magazine did a cover story on it, years before Katrina, with the cover photo showing NOLA under water, much as we saw after Katrina. Congress could not be moved.

And Republicans were downright ugly about the drowning of NOLA. One Louisiana Republican woman I heard speaking on TV at the time: "We prayed and prayed to God about New Orleans; and he sent us Katrina."

Not only politicians, either. On message boards and even in my little area of Boston, I witnessed Republicans saying the ugliest things.

I am sure none of that had anything to do with NOLA's generally going Democratic and sometimes even taking the rest of Louisiana with it in Presidential elections.

Republicans permanently re-settled a lot of the residents in red states like Texas. (Remember, Barbara Bush thought the uprooted folk should consider themselves lucky?) Not only was it horrible for people to have lives uprooted, but it diluted their voting strength. (Mitt, grooming himself to run for President while pretending to be Governor of Massachusetts, insisted on bringing some to our solidly blue state, but that's another story for another day.)

The levees? Probably still inadequate for a Katrina strength storm.

But Christie asked Obama to send him the Army Corps of Engineers to see about levees for New Jersey. Will he get criticized and vilified?

Diff'rint strokes for different folks.

Word to Republicans: With stuff like levees, your pretending that global warming does not exist is going to get more and more expensive.

[Enthusiast]

1. I'll never forgive the media for

lending support to the right wing meme that New Orleans was full of dangerous violent black people "stealing" essential food and water while courageous and resourceful white people "found" essential supplies. The contrast was just amazing and undeniable.

I continued to receive right wing "dangerous ni**er" "jokes" and stories in my Email for weeks after Katrina. These jokes served to kind of justify or support the right wing dangerous black people meme. The purpose of this Email barrage was to absolve the right of their outright ugly racism after Katrina. The message was, "The racism was justified because ni**ers are just not civilized."

I now seldom receive right wing Email from relatives. The message got out there, I'm a crazy leftie because I don't hate ni**ers and the President.

[No Elephants]

3. "Rush Limbaugh urges vote for Obama"

Rush Limbaugh urges vote for Obama
May 07, 2008|By Alexander Mooney CNN

Rush Limbaugh urged listeners in states with open primaries to cross party lines and support Hillary Clinton.

He has publicly urged Republicans to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton to keep the divisive Democratic nomination fight alive, but talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday he really wants Sen. Barack Obama to be the party's nominee.

"I now believe he would be the weakest of the Democrat nominees," Limbaugh, among the most powerful voices in conservative radio, said on his program. "I now urge the Democrat superdelegates to make your mind up and publicly go for Obama."

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-05-07/politics/limbaugh.obama_1_democratic-candidates-democratic-party-obama-supporter?_s=PM:POLITICS

By May of 2008, Obama had performed the rather remarkable feat of coming almost out of nowhere, in comparison to the well-known and well-connected Hillary, and coming from 30 points behind. So, I have to wonder why Rush assumed Obama would be the weakest of Democratic Presidential candidate?

(The quote from Rush says "nominees," but I take it that he meant primary candidates because there was no Democratic nominee in May 2008.

But, even try to imply to a RWer that he or she is being racist and stand back or the yowling could damage your hearing.

I use the term RWer advisedly because I don't believe that any political party is free of bigots.

I remember a Republican Southern woman on a board that I used to post on. She was going on and on about how I didn't know the African Americans in her town, so I should not be trying to contradict her when she posted things like they all hang out on the street corners; they don't work; yadda, yadda.

And to "prove" one of her points, she gave a statement and then linked to a white supremacist website. (Yes, stupid is forever.)

When I pointed that out, she said that she had read the info elsewhere and just googled for any link; and that was simply the site that had come up first.

A Republican from Massachusetts (and who was much smarter than she) then rebuked me for caring more about the website than whether the statement was accurate or not, but no one ever gave me another link to support her crazy claims.

[Enthusiast]

2. I didn't mean to ignore the central thrust of your post.

It's just that the blatant racism after Katrina is a pet peeve. Of course the GOP and their steadfast denial of global warming is looking more ridiculous by the day.

[No Elephants]

4. No worries, Enthusiast. My post did not really have a central thrust.

The "response" to Katrina was a complicated thing. I hit a few of the issues. Racism was certainly part of it.

However, I do have a feeling that, if NOLA were a Republican district in, say, North Carolina, the way that Bushco handled it may have been very different.

As it was, the response to Katrina in red states was different (if Republican Governors were telling the truth).

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. Don't get me started on the subject of Katrina... and how people to this day don't care

And make false equations between, say New Orleans and the Jersey Shore (although Asbury Park comes close to the situation in NOLA as far as I can tell.)

[No Elephants]

6. For some reason, we seem prone to false equivalencies.

And short attention spans, so the latest thing is more absorbing than things that happened several years ago.

I am very worried about loved ones very near Asbury Park right now and have not been able to get through by phone for a couple of days, though I have not tried yet today.

But, as my OP indicated, I do understand that the Jersey Shore (as it is called by New Jerseyites) is a very different situation from NOLA.