Do you think Ray Nagin has a point? But articulated it poorly?
 

Or do you think Katrina is not comparable to 9-11?

During the CBS "60 minutes" interview, a correspondent pointed out flood-damaged cars still on the streets of New Orleans' devastated Ninth Ward. Nagin replied, "You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later. So let's be fair," according to CBS.

No not really a point at all imo. Its as dumb as him saying New Orleans was going to be a chocolate city again. Someone give this guy a shoehorne to hang around his neck. He needs something to get his foot out of his mouth as often as its there. :2 cents:

Ann coulter bashes the 911 widows and thats fine. He states the truth and its all over the news. Yeah the media is liberal lol

i share his viewpoint

If Nagin's city was all CLEANED and they simply werent REBUILT yet, then yes he has a point. Otherwise no, he's a dolt :)

I think N.O., the state of LA, and the Feds have shown they dont know how to work together to get a task done. So I dont lay 100% on him. But to make an excuse (or try to draw a parallel like that) is not how to get things done. It's how to justify things not being done. Bad move.

i agree 100% with him. if you watched Spike Lee's Part 1 and Part 2 documentry on new orleans/Hurricane Katrina, then you'd understand a little more where he's coming from.

FEMA has failed, our goverment to help them out down there has failed, insurance companys failed to cover any damage to houses/cars/etc, here we are a year later, and it looks exactly the same as the week the hurricane hit. its fuckin sad that theres no aid down there. no help. dead bodys are STILL in a lot of houses, garbage everywhere, houses in the middle of the roads...its a mess, and so far, theres no help in sight.

.. and as mayor he is the one who needs to whoop some federal and state ASS to clean it up.

If he was trying to say "These things take time, look at how long it's taking to rebuild ground zero." then it's a legitmate statement. But if he's saying, "NY is fucking up too so that's makes it okay for NO to drag it's feet." then he is wrong to do that. :2 cents:

I understand his frustration, as the government really failed him and the city of New Orleans but to call the place where 9/11 happened a "hole in the ground" is in very poor taste!

if it wasnt for him on that one radio station that he called into, and swearing up a storm ("get some god damn miliatry down here..do something!"), lord only knows when help would have arrived. It was at that time, the gov. started to finally help....5 days later. 1 person can only do so much. Yes, i think he made mistakes, but I think he did alot more good than bad. I think any 1 guy trying to get through a natural disaster, the size of Hurricane Katrina, deserves some props. fuck, even cops were turning in their badges and guns when he needed them the most. i dont think Nagin gets as much credit as he deserves.

Sure he's got a point - suppose his point is govt talks the talk and never walks.

N.O. was prob one of the worse exhibitions of govt incompetence and uneptitude in many decades - and still is. Major disaster relief in several third world countries where access is severely restricted can, and have, done better.

My thoughts...

Umm ya she got a pass on that lol. She wasnt bashing all of them, it was a small handfull that were getting paid by the extreme left to go out and rip on the administration.

I think Nagin is a moron and incompetent. Nonetheless, I think people are expecting way too much from him this quick. The city and surrounding areas were completely destroyed. Not just a few blocks, but a whole city. I just think it's silly to think that this thing would be rebuilt that quick.

He is comparing having the streets that are littered with cars and garbage not being done, to a huge multible skyscrapers being built, that first everyone had to decide what would be the pc way to go about it, and thousands of peoples remains having to been extracted first before work even started. Foolish.

I think anybody that expects New Orleans to be in good shape, only a year later, is living in fantasy land. I also think all of the agencies and everyone involved is so quick to point the blame at others instead of taking personal responsibility that real progress is going to be very hard to come by.

I think though the issue more was. Nagin claimed things were all done, the reporter then asked why arent the cars and debri removed from the public streets? At that point instead of admiting he was wrong he decided to put the blame on the 3000+ lost souls. :2 cents:

Didn't it take 9 months, or was it 6 months (I can't recall) for NYC to clean up ground zero? Forget about rebuilding. Just the cleanup.

I think Ray Nagin is useless piece of shit :2 cents:

exactly. plus theres alot more than just what's shown on tv. people who own property down there (and either parished or abondanded their property), still need to do alot of paper work, or their family do it for them, if they even survived.

sure people that still own land there can rebuild. but with what money? with what job being down there to go to work to? what car drive? or maybe its something harder, like trying to even prove that their property, is indeed, THEIRS. any documents that the owner might have had, are gone. so just proving to someone that its their property, may take several months. And if no one is left to claim land, then thats a whole new ball game. Now, times that by 100,000+...then add in clean up, landscaping, utilitys, car/house removals, etc etc etc.

it's gonna take several years to rebuild that city, and even more years to make it grow back to what it used to be.

The comparision is not a "fault" - it's a reality.

It's also not about either Nagan or Coulter - Nagan is the elected representative in the region, - Coulter is an irrelevance.

From the N.O angle - that, by any standards was, and still is a disgrace. Any excuses for delay because of the scale, have passed a long time ago. The levy repairs/enhacements have made little progress, there are 1000's of mobile homes rotting in parking lots hundreds of miles from N.O. - it was a sad joke from the start and never will be any better. So much for civilization and the "worlds superpower" in action - there is no reason to believe they could manage the cashflow in a candystore, nevermind actually cover anyone's ass.

At least, but think about all the forensic work that had to be done during the clean up.

what the hell does forensic have to do with clean up??? what, did they stop everytime a body was recovered and try to identify the person before cleaning more up?? come onnnn.... :1orglaugh they do forensic shit at a lab...far away from ground zero.

Absolutely agree. A LOT more tonnage too I'd think, BUT still over a relatively small parcel of land in comparison to an entire city.

And when the dust settled, they said they didn't know it know it would be that bad.. With Bush saying he wasn't even aware of the problems...

Here's a video (If ya haven't seen it) of Brown briefing Bush on the seriousness.. and Bush saying they'd keep a close eye on things and be there if needed...

I guess Nagin is still waiting for that to happen..

You're right, but they were also very careful with their cleanup so that they could find as many body parts as possible. So they weren't moving at top speed.

I assumed that's what he meant at least.

edit-In fact, every time a body PART was found, the entire grounds stopped and had a tribute or something...if I'm not mistaken.

Forensics have nothing to do with site clearing. And... from your post above - there is nothing "pc" about pulling bodies out of rubble. It's easy - you pull the bodies out and get them off-site and continue clearing the rubble.

I dunno really what the situation is there today, but we had all those hurricanes here in Florida what was it two or three years ago? Well still to this day I still see houses with blue tarps on the the roofs.

Hell my grand parents had a manufactured home here in Florida that was destroyed and they have finally had it replaced by insurance this year. They had to get lawyers involved to get it took two years of fighting with the insurance companies.

So to expect him to have that kinda mess cleaned up in a year is a bit much IMO.

Do you measure devastation from a death-toll?

Do human lives attach a value, something tangible, to them after they pass on? Is a jewish stockbroker's lost life assessed at a higher value than a shrimp boat employee?

Do you think the loss of an oil rig compares to the loss of a human life? Is more or less valuable?

I am still amazed at the fact that they re-elected Nagin.

The government does not give two fucks about any of us.

Fact's are on the wall guys.

1: World Trade Center downed by two planes in the most populace city of our nation. They could have been stopped easily. I know you know it, everyone knows it.

2: New Orleans, Katrina Disaster, still sit's in complete rubble like it did the day Katrina hit.

Rest assured as fuck all that Uncle Sam is there to collect taxes taking nearly half your income on a yearly basis on time to the minute, while collecting exhorbant sum's on inheritance tax's daily by the thousands.
Death and taxes kid's.

If you are American and think our government really has it's best interest's on us as a people you are gravely mistaken.

:winkwink:
Sure Cory - devastation is measured from death-toll, tho, would add - ongoing suffering by both the death toll and other factors which may be a result of a disaster - eg, further death by disease, starvation etc.

All other trivia pales into insignificance in comparison - the trivia such as an oil rig, can be reconstructed/repaired. Mmmm.. where is the "higher value" when you are dead? Death is the great leveller :)

No but soon as they found a body part they couldnt use any big equipment. They would have to go through the rubble slowly and carefully in order to try and find as much evidence as to who the person was. Or maybe you think they just brought in backhoes and started shoveling dead people into big containers to ship to labs...

I'm really not sure where you're going with that.

How many people died in New Orleans from the hurricane? All I can see is 1800 or so died in the entire Hurricane (whatever it was, it was clearly a tragedy as well). But 9/11 was clearly the more dramatic of the two.

I don't value one life over another unless it's someone close to me obviously, and knowing that everyone that died in both tragedies would have had people that cared about them, I don't think you can take away the human toll in either scenario.

But 1 human life is worth more to ME than any piece of property...for that very same reason.

Note-I'm not a fan of Nagin by any stretch. If a white mayor had said he was gonna rid make his city more VANILLA, the outrage would have been such that he probably would have been forced to resign. However, in this particular case, I don't think it's fair to him or ANYONE when questioned why an entire city isn't rebuilt in less than a year.

The "PC" part came after the cleanup was over. The cleanup has been done for a long time. There was a huge long process on deciding what to build, and what would be ok with everyone with 5 million opinions.

He was the best person for the job.

Sure Sticky - well aware of that and the 5000000 opinions :) Let em waste their time on the niceties of architecture.

Meanwhile, a natural disaster like N.O. just needs the bodies removed and garbage cleared to allow reconstruction. It took long enough to do the former and the latter still has not been done.

I am not going anywhere, but the answers to those questions (or lack of) likely lead us to the reasoning behind some of our cultural philosophies.

hehe.. was thinking that was where you were going :winkwink:

Problem is, no one wants to admit it.

It is easier (culturally) to measure disaster in terms of loss of life (and attached / perceived value of those lives); However, the truth can often times be found below our culturally accepted beliefs.

Sadly, think you may be right there. This also seems to vary considerably between cultures.

The sanitised version is almost like a sense of disowning, tho talking the talk about how terrible it is blah, but my ass is OK. Hard to say, but maybe if the same folks were in a disaster area where lives were lost or at risk - they may have a rapid change of priorities.

Dunno... kinda smell that people who are used to problems of death, disaster, wars are more "real" - and practical. It's not even necessarily down to a cultural level - but more individual. Can think of a couple of people who lead fairly dangerous lives and are used to seeing death and pulling cadavers out of the sea blah. They have a *very* solid belief in what has "value" - it never did include a set of rims on a car :)

Even though he's an idiot, he has a point... Fucking media just likes to stir shit up (both sites) for their own ratings.. Idiots..

You live in a world ... that doesn't exist.

Why ????

After Bush re-election, why would you be AMAZED ?????

.. money is going for Iraq ....

I wish you would move to that world then. One that doesnt exist.

i thought it was funny and a fair analogy. an entire city and surrounding area was destroyed.

I agree.

Without politicizing it, to answer your question in a word, yes.

I think he articulates nearly everything poorly, but I do think he has a very valid point.