By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

But, even had then Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco and Ray “Chocolate City-School Bus Nagin” done what President George W. Bush urged with respect to evacuations pre-Katrina, the disaster would still have occurred. Why?

Because the disaster was caused by the Hurricane, not what governments did or did not do.

What made Katrina the mega-disaster it was, was the fact that for the first time 300 years the levees broke. Even if President Bush, Blanco, Nagin or even Barack “The One” had gone all “Chicken Little” before Katrina and found insurable bus drivers, most of those that stayed in NOLA would still have stayed.

President Bush begged Blanco to call out the National Guard and begged Nagin to demand evacuation days earlier than occurred before Katrina. His words fell on deaf Blanco-Nagin ears and the MSM always conveniently forgets this fact.

This time more will leave because of the recent memory of Katrina, and not the memory of what FEMA did in 72 hours instead of 48 or whether the doing deserved a good job brownie point. No, it will be the memory of what water from flood waters did. People would not stay today for a better likelihood that get MRE’s at the Super Dome amidst rotting dead rat flesh.

I speak of course of the actual aftermath of Katrina, not the TV show.

Some facts about Katrina and its after math:

1-The evacuation of New Orleans before Katrina was historic and marvelled at around the world.

2-The rescue operation by local citizens, state national guards and the US military was historic and marvelled at around the world.

3-The humanitarian aid provided, mainly by white Southern Christians to black Southern Christians was historic and marvelled at around the world.

The people of other nations see the reality despite CNN, just as they saw Dallas the TV show as marvelous despite J.R.’s personal sins, because they saw both thru the lens of the countries they live in, most of which have received aid from the USA in the past that their own nation’s couldn’t deviver in 72 days much less 72 hours. [NOTE on Dallas: Many say that when Russians and East Europeans watched Dallas, they marvelled at what possessions average people had.]

Popular Mechanics masterfully debunked most of the dem-lib msm of myths (see lies) about the response to Katrina. (Here is the main one, but read the whole thing):

GOVERNMENT RESPONDED RAPIDLY

MYTH: “The aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history.”–Aaron Broussard, president, Jefferson Parish, La., Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 4, 2005

REALITY: Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest–and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm’s landfall.

Dozens of National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters flew rescue operations that first day–some just 2 hours after Katrina hit the coast. Hoistless Army helicopters improvised rescues, carefully hovering on rooftops to pick up survivors. On the ground, “guardsmen had to chop their way through, moving trees and recreating roadways,” says Jack Harrison of the National Guard. By the end of the week, 50,000 National Guard troops in the Gulf Coast region had saved 17,000 people; 4000 Coast Guard personnel saved more than 33,000.

These units had help from local, state and national responders, including five helicopters from the Navy ship Bataan and choppers from the Air Force and police. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries dispatched 250 agents in boats. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), state police and sheriffs’ departments launched rescue flotillas. By Wednesday morning, volunteers and national teams joined the effort, including eight units from California’s Swift Water Rescue. By Sept. 8, the waterborne operation had rescued 20,000.

While the press focused on FEMA’s shortcomings, this broad array of local, state and national responders pulled off an extraordinary success–especially given the huge area devastated by the storm. Computer simulations of a Katrina-strength hurricane had estimated a worst-case-scenario death toll of more than 60,000 people in Louisiana. The actual number was 1077 in that state.

I defended Bush and Nagin (there is no defending Blanco) after Katrina, so this is not a partisan defense of President Bush. Certainly, his communication skills are less than desired in a President on all issues, and he seems not to value time spent defending himself.

The fact is that the disaster was that NOLA got hit by a hurricane and, most significantly, a levee break, and will always remain vulnerable due to its geographic location and the 200+ year neglect of the fact that natural forces lead inexorably to it being a city in the middle of the Gulf like a bowl in a sink full of water.

It should not be re-built as a large city, period.

And one more issue: nursing homes and hospitals.

Hurricanes approach NOLA most years. The act of moving nursing home residents and the those in feeble health in hospitals, etc., and of itself, has a high mortality rate. Most years levees don’t break and these folks live.

See the problem?

Should we have nursing homes located in city that we will be regularly evacuating?

Obviously not, and this is the metaphor that the left can’t let see the light of day.

I pray that Gustav eats a Spanish omelet before landfall and burps in the water.

But if Gustav waits to hurl on land and re-visits Burbon Street, what I hope is learned from this exercise is what a false history the msm wrote last time; that We the People in our localities and States are responsible for ourselves and can do a better job that any government in any event, especially one more than 1500 miles away; that Black folks, especially black men, can overcome their liberal plantation masters, especially under the leadership of a self-empowerment Indian-American Republican Governor and weather this storm like men; and that everyone realizes at the end of the day that the Presidential TV show is one for the MSM beltway agenda barely relevant to life on Planet Earth.

I hope we can learn the lessons without more deaths of nursing home residents, and here’s to hoping the msm let’s America see the real heroes this time.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports
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