One Thing So Unlike The Other

Yesterday: Trump's awkward photo op in Louisiana flood zone. Steve M. picks this up, from Guardian coverage: a local holds forth on Trump's visit and on, uhh, other subjects—

"This is his stomping grounds," said Greg Patterson, who was cleaning muck from his store called the Pit Stop. The idea that a billionaire from Manhattan could describe the working-class corner of Louisiana as "his stomping grounds" did not strike Patterson as contradictory.

"We've got 2,000 houses damaged just in this area alone," he said, stretching his arm out to the south. "These people are already back in their homes, working to repair them. It's not like down in the Ninth Ward."

...

"I mean that's a bunch of government-owned housing," Patterson said. "Nobody here is looking for handouts or waiting on the government. These are Trump's people."

As the Guardian's reporter adds, there have been over 60,000 applications for FEMA aid.

Steve notes—

Of course, people like Patterson might literally believe that they can accept aid from FEMA, or handouts from Trump, and still be "self-sufficient" -- unlike Those People in New Orleans -- because, well, y'know.

In Comments, Jon Gallagher adds—

"Those people" in the Ninth Ward were not coping with a flooded river (and just in case you live by a river and don't know this: RIVERS FLOOD, IT'S WHAT THEY DO!).

The Ninth Ward was coping with the failure of a canal built through their neighborhood by the US Army Corps of Engineers to carry shipping traffic between the Mississippi Rive and Lake Pontchartrain. In other words, they weren't building houses in a flood plain, then expecting the government to bail them out when the inevitable happens, like white folks do. The government brought the flood to them, and could barely lift a finger to help them.

So, hey hard working Mr Greg Patterson, consider taking responsibility for your own self, and move out of the flood plain. The Mississippi has a tendency to move whenever and wherever it it wants (see "The Control of Nature", John McPhee, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_Control_Act_of_1928, and http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/what-weve-done-to-the-mississippi-river-an-explainer/239058/) and we taxpayers have been on the hook for decades to keep you and yours dry. Now that Global Climate Change (that you probably don't believe in) is well past its tipping point, you need to move to higher ground.

Obama, who happened to be on vacation, postponed visiting the area—just as Governor Edwards had requested, to avoid the strain on services that would be caused by having to provide the necessary security. On that topic of media comparisons of Obama to a previous vacation from the White House, Steve notes—

... In the current flooding, 13 people are dead and 40,000 homes have been damaged. In Katrina, at least 986 people died and 1 million homes were damaged. The current flooding is horrible, but Bush was faced with a much worse disaster, and dealt with it inadequately. In the current crisis, the heads of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security have been to flood zone, 20 parishes have already been declared federal disaster areas, and quite a bit of assistance is already being provided. If the federal response turns out to be insufficient, that's a reason to grumble about the president. But that's not what we're hearing. We're hearing payback for the criticism of Bush's apparent indifference to Katrina.

Also, tengrain here, on what is and is not "Katrina."