Posted on 10/22/2009 6:07:17 AM PDT by rrstar96
As he returns to New Orleans today after a six-day junket in Cuba, Mayor Ray Nagin almost certainly will face questions about the latest addition to his collection of controversial comments.
Nagin told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he thinks Cuba's repressive regime does "a much better job" than U.S. officials of identifying citizen needs and deploying resources in the face of hurricanes, which routinely batter the Caribbean nation.
Though Hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma all struck the island last year, only seven Cubans were killed, in part because authorities use soldiers to close highways and enforce evacuations.
Harking back to the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, the mayor told the AP's Havana correspondent that "one of the biggest weaknesses we had . . . (was that) it wasn't clear who was the top authority."
There's no such problem in Cuba, where Raul Castro and his brother, Fidel, have been the unquestioned commanders since 1959.
In Katrina, "The president and the governor were going back and forth. . . . In Cuba you don't have that problem," Nagin said. "The government says, 'This is what we're doing, these are the resources we are going to deploy,' and it pretty much happens."
Nagin also praised Cuban officials for "knowing their citizens at a very, very detailed level, block by block."
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Move there.
Pelican State ping
I suppose Nagin would like to add some red to Chocolate City.
Nagan was one of those "officials".
Nagin also praised Cuban officials for “knowing their citizens at a very, very detailed level, block by block.”
In code speak:
1) When the left ‘monitors’ citizens it is for their own safety and security.
2) Government knows best.
3) Private Property is best managed by the state.
Two Problems with that.
1)The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction, with the intention (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) of substantially limiting the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States.
2) The Governor has to invite/ ask the President for assistance. That whole 10th ammendment thing.
Strikes me as a pretty stark indicator of how right Machiavelli was.
A free and independent people with common sense don't need a nanny state forcing their action.
The huge disaster in Katrina may be proof that the majority of people there are not capable of governing themselves.
If you suddenly awake in a strange place surrounded by idiots, first check to see if you've been checked into a mental institution.
I don't recognize this country, and it is being overrun by the fools.
Too bad he didn’t stay there. But New Orleans deserves him.
Granny,get on the school bus or be shot!
And this is from the SOB who moved to Dallas while N.O. suffered. It's readily apparent who wasn't in charge.
I remember that Nagin was the one who was vascillating.
He was hanging out at his home in Dallas and couldn’t be bothered to worry about New Orleans.
This is bizarre. We are reading this utter failure’s view of how to deal with hurricanes. A lot of people died because of this guy’s failure to order and implement an evacuation. He should have been replaced.
And it’s an incontrovertible historical fact that neither the Mayor nor the Governor got any of the blame for this disaster. They were ignored by our “real news networks”.
“If you suddenly awake in a strange place surrounded by idiots, first check to see if you’ve been checked into a mental institution.”
That cracked me up - but having been advised, I will do that on a daily basis.
Aww, c’mon. You gotta laugh at this!! WHO else would go to a communist dictatorship, stuck in the 50’s, and ADMIT that he can’t run a city as well as they do?!?
New Orleans is the northernmost Caribbean city and it looks to the squalor of Cuba for how to do things??
Gee, Ray-Ray, totalitarian control is what you need, right?
Move or we’ll shoot you, ultimate power over an unarmed populace. Gee, having the keys to those school busses didn’t get people evacuated because power is nothing if you’re too damned incompetent and uncaring to use it!
What a blatant shyster. He’s using his last months in office to milk the city of all he can get- trips all over the world, ludicrous face-time in the press, schmoozing dictators, seeking ‘business’ from a government that can’t feed it’s own people once they’ve totally subjugated them!
He’s blatant, shameless, building up his bank account and those of his relatives and friends- and the really sad thing is that the citizens of New Orleans barely protest. We just want him GONE so bad that seeing him in a communist country at our expense only makes us wish he would STAY there.
Well, Ray-Ray, move there. The HUGE difference between the two countries is if you move from here to Cuba, all you’ll see along the shoreline are people waving. If you’re trying to leave Cuba, IF you make it to the beach, they won’t be waving; they’ll be shooting.
Yeah, and Bush, who had FOUR TIMES advised then-Gov Blanco to accept federal assistance but was rebuffed, got the blame anyway.
How they trick me sometimes is they still go for the “surround me with idiots” part, but, they also move me to a new location set that has been built to look exactly like my normal home/work surroundings.
Very unsettling and hard to detect.
Nagin can negeotiate his travel to Cuba, but he couldn’t move hundreds of school busses 4 years ago.
Someday, he will NOT be in office. Where will he live then?
New Orleans had a population of about 440,000 when the hurricane hit.
Over 44,000 of those were REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS and OTHER FELONS.
How well would Mayor Nagin like to know his citizens in detail?
Well enough to protect the women and children and the rest of the community?
Hollw words—nothing but Hollow words from the “chocolate city” mayor.
I think he always a doooofus...the hurricane just put that info in front of the entire country.
I would not hire him to check my electric fences.
Little doubt that nnagin will turn up as some czar with nobama.
What few seem to be able to recognize, or more likely “admit”, is that the black politicians we have in our face have great sympathies with and lots in common with muslim radicals and communists. Their intent is to fleece “whitey” and if it means tearing down a free America for their own greedy benefit, then that's just the price America must pay. No different than how black policitians, shysters and "spokesmen" fleeze the black community for their own benefit.
“We” don't have to let them succeed. I have confidence America will prevail, but just like the Revolution against Brittan, it may not be easy.
When we overcome the current saboteurs, we must recognize what got us here and banish PC and liberalism.
and it is being overrun by the fools.
Nagin has been spouting goofy stuff ever since Katrina - I think he may have cracked then. But this latest stuff may be because he is trying to snuggle up to the Bambi administration for some cushy job after his mayorship is up - Moriel did it, why not Nagin. Both losers and users. The funny thing is that Nagin was running New Orleans Cox Cable in before he was Mayor - he had to have had a brain at some point.
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