Why they stayed in NOLA

Status
Not open for further replies.
I have to say I did not expect to see so many gvt-handout-bleeding-heart-lefty supporters of an irresponsible and extraordinarily un-libertarian lack of any kind of self sufficiency, on a gun forum.
Seriously.

I have all kinds of folk here telling me that somehow it wasn't these people's fault and the government is somehow to blame.

This is a crock.

Forget the government and take control of your own life.

I can't get their hand out of my pocket but I sure as heck don't expect anything from them when I really need it.

And FWIW the GOVERNMENT of LA and NO are INCOMPETENT.
The governor and mayor are idiots.
The police are corrupt.

Why oh why would anybody expect anything from these monkeys?

Get off this "they had nowhere to go and no way to get their and their welfare check didn't show up yet so they couldn't leave their homes" crap.

I am not sure I can take this "HighRoad" any more. It's more like the High Road to Hell there are so many foolish and uninformed good intentions here.

G
 
It is what happens when you depend on others for your existence. Not responsible enough to be self-sufficient in good times - why would you be any more self-reliant in bad times?
 
For over 40 years now, liberal Democrats and their lap dogs in the Republican party have been developing and nurturing a dependent constituency. This is the result.
 
Denial? Get over it...

I was watching FOX the yesterday and they interviewed a guy, law student at Tulane IIRC who stayed. After Katrina had come and gone his neighbor started pounding on the door telling him the levee just broke. He looked up the street saw the water and he and his roommate jumped in their car and left. They had a car, so why didn't they pack their car and leave before Katrina hit? This is a smart guy -- law student, spoke well -- so why did he stick around? To protect his stuff from looters? Cause school was starting soon? Pets? He'd have a lot more of his stuff if he'd packed the car and left early than what he has now. Denial? I think so.

I'm convinced these guys stayed because they really didn't want to believe the levees would break. Lots of folks ride out hurricanes all the time and most get away with it, so it becomes habitual. Cat 3, 4, 5 -- just numbers. That guy didn't believe there was a problem until he saw the waves of water rolling down the street. Lots of folks didn't get that knock on the door...

I saw Senator Trent Lott walking through his yard in Mississippi. His 154 year old home had withstood many hurricanes in the past including Camille in 1969. All he has now is a foundation and an old Oak tree.

In countless ways what happened to NOLA is very sad, but the dead and all those being rescued off rooftops were warned. Their mayor pleaded with them to leave. Many paid for their decision with their lives. Many more watching this tragedy continue to unfold will realize that the government can warn you and might be able to rescue you (take your turn), but in between the warning and the rescue, you are on your own. Your decision to stay or go is on you.
 
The more I read this stuff on NO....the more I agree with GT. I dont blame the Govt response at all. Its "the people" of NO that are making it worse. I dont even blame the crimnals for being criminals.....they're criminals. I blame all the rest who do nothing when they see chaos around them, who sit and wait for the Govt, who did not prepare for self-protection, who dont take a stand for thier "community"......This is an american cultural failure. And the focus and blame on the Govt only proves me right. Where is the focus and blame on why their is no true american citizenship, being good moral adults, helping others to help yourself.....among the black americians in NO right now. Its the 400 pound Gorilla that is sitting in the room that nobody wants to address right now



I dont look at this and say "what can the govt do" I see this and think "what can the people do." Hey Libs a little JFK back at ya!!!!!!

RHlee I agree with you!!
 
riverdog -- I probably would have done the same as the law student you described. The point is, however, that he did get out when he needed to. He didn't hang around figuring that the .gov would take care of him. If he did not have a car, he could have started walking at the same time (after the hurricane) and be almost to Cincinnati by now.

I have ancestors who did it many times. They would build a flat boat and fill it with sacks of grain or flour. Float down the Little Miami to the Ohio to the Mississippi to NO. Sell the cargo and boat and then walk home. It would take about a week to 10 days walk it with few roads and no signs.

Point is, he got out and didn't contribute to the problem. Many still can, but would rather sit and starve and blame Bush or FEMA or anybody else.
 
Henry,
I agree with that 100%. The people who stayed to wait for someone else to move their sorry asses are to blame for the ongoing nightmare. How can the government be blamed for these guys not heeding the very clear warning? My point though was that many who could have driven out stayed, they had no excuse other than they didn't want to leave.

Many of those being rescued have been on the dole their entire lives. It's all they know. "The government wants us to leave? The guvmint needs to send us a bus." Welfare support of this segment of society needs to stop, all it does is continue the motivation for them to do nothing.

Another thing that bothers me is that we will be spending a lot of money ($illions) rebuilding a city below sea level. Why? I'm with Dennis Hastert on that. Find a new place and call it New Nawlins. But that's off topic to this thread so let's no go there ;)
 
To illustrate better the mental aspects, ask yourself why the able-bodied, childless people who first went to the Superdome just stayed there? Why they didn't start walking, three days ago? I'm not talking about the aged, the infirm, or those with small children.

Why would you stand around the Superdome for three days, just on the off chance that "They" would do something?

Rhetorical questions. The answers have already been posted...

Art
 
I would like to speak in defense of the stranded

Oh dear heavenly father! Pro tip, J says: Love your brother as you love yourself. I am disheartened by this thread. Look in the mirror and say "Thousands of people are dying and I am calling them lazy and stupid. What does that say about me?"

It seems many of you do not know what it is like in the ghetto, so consider this as instruction. There are a couple of things.

1. Grab a backpack and start walking with $10 in your pocket is not realistic. First, a hurricane is somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 miles wide. I guarantee that few of us could make that hump, no matter how bad your internet self is. 2 meals until the person is broke. Children can not hump 200 miles. Would your shoes be comfortable for 200 miles, or would your feet be a mess of blood and blisters?

2. You look as ghetto as you are. No one is going to let you use their bathroom. You are not going to be welcomed.

2. The busses went to the stadium, right?

3. People thought the levees would hold. (And if they had, we would be talking about a very expensive and unnecessary evacuation.)

4. Many people did not ascertain risks in the most logical way. You do it too periodically. Ever stand on the last rung of a ladder?

Show some :cuss: compassion you souless :evil: :cuss: . BTW I would love an exemption to Art's Grammaw for the previous sentence, so that I could clearly express my feelings.
 
I the words of the mighty Led Zeppelin (or was it Willie Dixon?):

"Now, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move."


Seriously though this is a terrible disaster and my prayers go out to all who have been caught up in it.


G
 
You, also, missed the point.

This is not 1905 with no forecasting and no warning system. This is 2005, doppler radar and all kinds of public address systems from radio to t.v. to patrol cars with loud speakers. There was a category 5 storm brewing in the gulf of mexico heading striaght for New Orleans. Busses left NO several days before, folks refused the ride. The superdome was opened as a disaster shelter, it is being turned into some kind of Mad Max arena by those who prey on their fellow man. NG troops are sent in only to be fired on by those they were sent to rescue. People are offered free food and then bitch because it's MRE's. I do have :cuss: compassion but prefer to be a soulless :evil: :cuss: to those who do not deserve it. You're entitled to give the shirt off your back to anyone you choose, I give mine to the truly unfortunate who find themselves in bad situations NOT of their own making and bad choices.
 
Hurricane fatigue -- decades of hyperbole from the weather forcasters to drum up ratings.

It's not an excuse, but it's part of the reason many people didn't take the dire warnings as seriously as they should have.

Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!
 
1. Grab a backpack and start walking with $10 in your pocket is not realistic. First, a hurricane is somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 miles wide. I guarantee that few of us could make that hump, no matter how bad your internet self is. 2 meals until the person is broke. Children can not hump 200 miles. Would your shoes be comfortable for 200 miles, or would your feet be a mess of blood and blisters?
Click to expand...
But sitting on your roof in ninety degree heat with no food or water and no one to use that $10 with is realistic? If you couldn't drive out of the city, for whatever reason, those were your options. Hump it as far as you can as fast as you can, or wind up on your rooftop dying of dehydration. Explain to me how much worse off you'd be with a backpack and $10, again? With a backpack and $10, maybe you can beg money, food, and water from people who aren't quite as out of luck as you. Sitting on your roof gives you zero chance.

2. You look as ghetto as you are. No one is going to let you use their bathroom. You are not going to be welcomed.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I see people turning away refugees left and right because they're not wearing Armani suits.

2. The busses went to the stadium, right?
Click to expand...
This is why, if you didn't have a car, you should have been hoofing it. Trusting the government to take care of you is only slightly smarter than winding up on your roof.

3. People thought the levees would hold. (And if they had, we would be talking about a very expensive and unnecessary evacuation.)
Click to expand...
People did think that, and they were wrong. Unfortunately, sometimes you just can't afford to be wrong. Sometimes the price of being wrong is your life, and the lives of others. It's a bit of a bummer, but that's what responsibility is all about.

4. Many people did not ascertain risks in the most logical way. You do it too periodically. Ever stand on the last rung of a ladder?
Click to expand...
And when you gamble, sometimes you lose. Gambling with your life and the life of your family is no different in this regard than gambling with the $10 in your pocket. People bet that it wouldn't be this bad, and they lost. The penalty for losing this bet is your life. If I stand on the last rung of a ladder, then I fall and shatter my leg, I don't expect the government to swoop in and make it all better.

Do I think we should do everything we possibly can to salvage the lives of all the people still trapped in NOLA? Yes, I do. That's part of what makes society better than the jungle. But that doesn't mean I don't assign blame to those who deserve it. I want to save the life of the guy who walks out onto the freeway to retrieve a golf ball, too, but that doesn't mean I don't think it's his own fault he gut run over.
 
My wife and I went to college later in life and when we graduated and started our careers we were extremely poor. We save up and bought a studio condo as our first home that we didn't rent. It was basically one room, and our friends, people our age who had been working for 10-15 years and were making good mone, would actually say, "I could never live in a place this small."

Bull????. I could tie them up with a box and pipe a slurry of water, sugar, and lard directly into their lower intestines and they'd live for months, until they finally died from the infected bed sores.

My point is people think they are far more delicate little flowers than they really are. You damned well better believe that they could hoof it out of NO in a few days with just $10 in their pocket. A person can live for weeks without food, provided he or she has potable water, and last time I checked the vast majority of drinking fountains are free. People could walk to Kentucky or Ohio with that $10 bill in their pocket and have change when they arrived. Hell, I've seen some of the fat asses on the people stranded in NO, and they have enough fat reserves to live for months without food. A good 200-300 mile walk is just what these lard asses need.

The problem is that people think they can't do this so they can't. My friends didn't think they could live in such a small apartment so they spent money on big houses. In other words the only thing preventing most of the stranded people in NO was the prison of their own minds.
 
Large brush strokes here...

I think many here are just taking a position out of the stubborn anger over some of the people we see on TV; which you have to take as a grain of salt. There are a large diversity of situations that can prevent people from not moving on. However I agree that there is a mentality of socialism among many we see on TV in N.O. that feel that the government is supposed to bail them out and rescue them. It is disgusting to see. You got to rescue yourself and be personally responsible.

Walk WHERE? To what shelter? And how were they supposed to out walk a hurricane? Being able to go 20 miles on foot in a day doesn't cut it when 140MPH winds are on your heels. The storm itself was moving 20 mile PER HOUR.
Click to expand...
This was a good point. Not everyone has the knowledge like most on this board on how to address a natural disaster like this.

There in lays the grey area some of you just seem to not want to understand. When I see the hundreds and hundreds of elderly, sick, handicapped, - all of them low income and all of them dependent on others, with those staying to watch over them - I see that you can't paint a broad brush and condemn all people who did not leave N.O., which btw - the flooding caught many suprised.
 
self help

Those unfortunate people need three things, food, water and shelter. Has anyone seen a picture of somebody building a shack out of the plentiful debris and a fire to boil the also plentiful water?
 
Isn't the water brackish and laced with Heaven-knows-what chemicals? Boiling will kill the microorganisms, sure, but it won't take the salt and other stuff out.

Distilling probably would, but you weren't suggesting that the average person could whip together a still . . .

I get your point, though.
 
I have an acquaintance who left New Orleans when the evacuation order was issued. It took her 6 hours to drive the first 12 miles. A lot of people gave up on driving out and returned home to ride it out.

This is a disaster and a national tragedy. The people there need our prayers and our monetary support -- not our Monday morning quarterbacking condemnation.

Sure I deplore the looting, shooting at helicopters, and anarchy. What percentage of the people remaining in NO are involved in that? The rest are stuck with no power, no water, no sewer, no sanitation, no food, and no or inadequate shelter.

It is not just New Orleans we are talking about. A substantial portion of Mississippi and Alabama are also devastated.

You smartasses who know better about what they all should have done need to realize that what is done is done. Now we need to help -- however we can.

Clemson
 
Saying that It is better to not eat for a week while trying to hoof it and hope that the hurricane does not follow you is better than dying is a bad way to describe thier choices. They thought their other choice was to ride it out. Very few who are there expected the kind of chaos that has occurred.

Imagine it is three am and a black guy in ratty clothing knocks on your door. He says he needs some food. Are you opening the door? I bet money that 49 out of 50 would not. Stop being obtuse. Armani has nothing to do with this.

I cannot afford to be wrong about my guess that 10.0 earthquake is coming. But that is OK. I suppose you want to look tough. BTW the possible penalty for standing on the last rung of a ladder is death. I think it is silly to take such low cost risks, but I would not speak ill of you, nor would I fail to aid your widow as much as she needed.

Lobotomy boy: To them the difficulty of riding out a storm was less difficult than walking 200 miles. Where they right? No. Can I understand their thinking? Yes.
 
Imagine it is three am and a black guy in ratty clothing knocks on your door. He says he needs some food. Are you opening the door? I bet money that 49 out of 50 would not. Stop being obtuse. Armani has nothing to do with this.
Click to expand...

I'm known for having little faith in humanity, but geez. In the aftermath of a disaster even a jerk like me would hand the guy some food.
 
Saying that It is better to not eat for a week while trying to hoof it and hope that the hurricane does not follow you is better than dying is a bad way to describe thier choices. They thought their other choice was to ride it out. Very few who are there expected the kind of chaos that has occurred.
Click to expand...
No, it's an accurate way to describe their choices. It may be unpleasant, but that's the choice they faced, whether they knew it or not. They assessed the situation incorrectly, and this is one of the instances where being wrong has dire consequences.

Imagine it is three am and a black guy in ratty clothing knocks on your door. He says he needs some food. Are you opening the door? I bet money that 49 out of 50 would not. Stop being obtuse. Armani has nothing to do with this.
Click to expand...
Under normal circumstances, no, I wouldn't. If I lived anywhere in that region right now, yes, I would. I'd answer the door armed, but I would.

I cannot afford to be wrong about my guess that 10.0 earthquake is coming. But that is OK. I suppose you want to look tough. BTW the possible penalty for standing on the last rung of a ladder is death. I think it is silly to take such low cost risks, but I would not speak ill of you, nor would I fail to aid your widow as much as she needed.
Click to expand...
It has nothing to do with looking tough, and everything to do with facing reality. It's not me who's saying that it's "OK" that people can't afford to be wrong about some things, it's just life. It's not fair. It never has been, and it never will be. When I get on a plane, I'm betting that the plane won't crash and kill everyone on board. I can't afford to be wrong about that - if I am, I die.

It's not fair.

This is just the way it is. Bad things happen, and if you're in the way, you're done. These people had more chances than most to do something about their fate; they had days of warning. A lot of the people still in the city made a bad bet at high stakes and lost.

As I said previously, I still think we should do everything we can to save as many lives as possible in NOLA, because that's part of what civilization means. That's why I've already donated blood and what money I can afford (which is, admittedly, not very much). But the fact that America as a whole is a compassionate and generous country doesn't change the fact that staying in NOLA with the hurrican bearing down on you was the worst available choice to many people.

According to a local radio news program this morning, when FEMA and the government of NOLA did a study on the worst-case hurrican scenario in the city, they conducted a survey of residents. They asked if, in the event a cat-5 storm was going to hit the city, they would evacuate. A third of them said no. That kind of thinking has been lethal to people for all of human history, and it's going to keep being so.
 
Watching FOX last night, they interviewed two people from the Superdome on their way to Houston. The woman actually complained about having to eat an MRE. She complained about it not being heated, complained about the crackers that were in it. 2000 calories of actual food, while others are still starving and she has the gall to complain!?!? She is typical of the entitlement generation that urban liberals just love. I guess FEMA is behind the curve in providing filet mignon or Maine lobster.....
 
DUDE--the food was COLD!

How can you be a reporter and not ask "Are you really complaining that your food was cold?"

Wow, I think this country needs a reboot.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

A
  • Locked
UK - Politicians hoist their own petards
Replies
0
Views
392
Airwolf
A
K
  • Locked
More bad JBT behavior in NOLA?
Replies
5
Views
569
Art Eatman
A
B
  • Locked
Another "View" of NOLA!
Replies
19
Views
1K
ctdonath
C
C
  • Locked
Hmmm, I've been thinking and I just may stay in MD
Replies
16
Views
583
Futo Inu
F
A
  • Locked
RKBA & Attention Getting: Republicans
Replies
13
Views
779
rick_reno
R
Back
Top