[GT40FIED]

Originally posted by Racing Rice
Nice post Darin. I've been saying alot of the same things. It amazes me that people want to point the finger at Bush and FEMA for not doing something soon enough. I have felt that the City and even the State levels are more to blame for the problems down there then the President is.

Well...that's true to an extent, but we're at a point in history where local and state governments are going broke in record numbers. They simply don't have the money to cope with anything even remotely like this. Add to that the fact that just yesterday the N.O. police chief said that as many as 500 of it's 1600 officers had simply quit...just up and left...and things don't look too good. What can the state government do anyway? They can declare a state of emergency, but all that does is speed up federal help. After 9/11, FEMA was there what...a day later (according to some even more distrusting of the government they were there a few days before)? The FEMA director just needs to be fired, plain and simple. A lot of people were going to die during this, no question. But maybe if they hadn't waited a week to send any significant help we wouldn't be looking at the possibility of 10K dead. That...and maybe we could swallow our pride and except some foreign aid for a change. Cuba has offered 1,500 doctors and 26 tons of supplies, France (who we just love to hate) has offered more aid than I can list, and even fuckin' Sri Lanka has offered money. But no...thanks for the offer...we're fine.