Hurricane Katrina

I kind of like what one comedian said last year. "Wilma. Rita. Katrina. Do those sound like things you should run for your life away from?"

I've been surfing around, reading the MSM pieces on Katrina. If you search keywords FEMA-Katrina-incompetence you get quite a lot of Bush bashing, and if you search FEMA-Katrina-corruption you get more criticism of the state and local Democrat governments. (You also get about a hundred fewer results from our fair, impartial news media with the latter search, but that's another post.)

The worst move in the whole mess, IMO, was this directive from FEMA to would-be rescuers around the country: "Do not self-dispatch". FEMA was supposed to be the responder of last resort, if the state and local governments were overwhelmed. They were overwhelmed, all right, in addition to being corrupt through and through. FEMA may well have been more of a sheet anchor than a life preserver in the best scenarios, but the complacent, corrupt local Dem political machines were not fit for any function of governance beyond rabble rousing. The aggregate goodwill of the American people--the oft-derided by liberals "thousand points of light"--would have been a huge boost to the rescue efforts had they been allowed into New Orleans. In fact they were a huge boost, elsewhere in the Gulf Coast, and in the cities where the evacuees rolled in.

As it was, Sean Penn and his rowboat rescued more people per hour, on average, than the government did. Not that I can be bothered to actually crunch the numbers or anything...

I haven't seen any evacuees in my area in a few months. Some were stereotypical underclass; over-barbered, under-educated people who were just sitting in residential inns, waiting for something to happen. Others were probably not much better off, but had more gumption; looking for work, trying to navigate the FEMA relief process, seeing about their homes back home--trying to land on their feet, in short. I was glad to do what little I did to help the former--"as you have done to the least of these..."--and proud to help the latter. If something like this happens again, and I'm in a position to leave my family, I'm packing my handtools and cooler, ignoring the government, and self-dispatching the livin' daylights out of myself.