I was trying to learn about what was going on in the outside world today and no matter what site I checked the only thing that anybody could talk about was the flood in New Orleans and how hurricane Katrina is "the worst natural disaster of our time!". The only thing these stories ever say though is something along the lines of "holy crap there's a lot of devastation down here", or "there's still water everywhere" or "wow, these people are so screwed". Basically each story boils down to one of those three. Okay, the flooding is bad but I'm sick of hearing about it. I'm especially sick of hearing people in New Orleans complain about not getting government help. I heard of one man (I'll try not to go off into another rant about blacks getting over themselves) saying that the reason New Orleans (pronouced "Naw-lins) isn't getting aid is because "Nawlins" is mostly black and that Bush hates black people (this was echoed by idiot rapper 50 Cent if I remember correctly but does anybody care what he thinks anyways? The answer is of course no). It's not about race you moron! AAAAAUGH!!! MAKE IT STOP!!! MY HEAD IS GOING TO EXPLODE!! GET OVER YOURSELVES!! URGE TO KILL RISING!! (Sighs heavily) I'm okay now. Anyways I have little to no sympathy for the people in New Orleans because they knew this was coming and did little to jack squat about it. Don't believe me? They knew that the levees were in bad condition and used less than 1/10th of a percent of their 2 billion dollar construction budget on fixing the levees. Read all about it here if you don't believe me. The only sympathy I have for anyone is for the people that actually did get out of New Orleans when they had the chance. I'm still not sure why people in New Orleans still live there. I've drawn a diagram displaying why I think they still live their. One picture is of their fantasy world and the next one is reality.
As you can see, fantasy obviously is not what won out in this case. The sad part is that these people knew it was coming and many of them did nothing. If you saw any of the footage of the day or two before Katrina showed up, people are still walking down Bourbon Street completely wasted and not caring at all about the approaching hurricane. The hear that the "big one" is coming and instead of doing the smart thing and leaving, a lot of people decided "I'm staying in my home city of New Orleans, no matter what!" Well, that's good loyalty to your city (I feel the same about Memphis in a lot of ways) but when your city is about to be hit by one of the worst storms in recent history (I say recent because these things happen in cycles), that isn't the time to stick to your roots. GET OUT OF THERE! If you stay behind you are an idiot of great proportion! Understandably if the person were physically disabled and it was impossible to bail out due to physical limitations then fine, but if you could have gotten out and refused to then I don't want to hear you complaining about it.
Oh and the $2,000 cash cards for victims should only go to those who actually tried to get out or to the ones that physically were unable. The rest of you get to suffer for being stupid.
I'm sure by now people are pretty pissed off at me for being so hard on these people. Let me say this: any rage or hatred you have for me and what I'm saying is completely misplaced. If you want someone to be furious with, then look no further than the government of Louisiana. The anger you have towards me right now is the exact same kind of fury that the people of New Orleans should have at their local and state governments. Neither the governor of Louisiana nor the mayor of New Orleans did anything like they should have done to prepare people for this disaster especially not the mayor. Louisiana officials knew that the levees were in desperate need of repair and didn't spend near enough money on the repairs as they should have. Interestingly enough, rather than spend money that needed to be spent on levee repairs they decided that supreme court buildings and convention centers were more important than the safety of thousands of citizens. God forbid Mardis Gras be cut back on but the levees can rot for all they care. They also should have ordered a mandatory evacuation to ensure minimal casualties.
Listen Louisiana (you especially New Orleans), everybody knows your government is corrupt. You even seem to brag about it with bumper stickers like "vote for the crook: it's important". If you would keep your state and local governments responsible for protecting you instead of sitting back and letting them screw you over by not making sure you're safe in the event of a disaster, than stuff like this will happen again. It's not President Bush's fault, it's not Red Cross's fault or anybody elses fault that you weren't safe or didn't leave when you had the chance. It's your own fault and now you reap the consequences of letting a corrupt state government stay in place. Now deal with it. If you don't like it, then change your government and keep them responsible for doing their job: to protect their citizens.
Point of interest: In Virginia, their disaster plan involves having people who refuse to leave write their social security number on a body part so that if the city get's destroyed and they find the body they will be able to identify them quickly. No joke. It's morbid and yet it get's the point across so nicely. What point is that? When we tell you to leave the city because it's about to get destroyed, you should leave instead of being stupid and braving the storm because you'll lose worse than Christopher Reeve at a game of hop-scotch (which is pretty bad since he's rotting in the ground now).
