I was hoping someone would collect all the stupid things people have said about the hurricane and its aftermath. Thank goodness for this site.
- “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”
- “What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) – this is working very well for them.”
- “It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that’s seven feet under sea level….It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed.”
- “We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do … The good news is — and it’s hard for some to see it now — that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.”
- “Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.”
- “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
- “I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don’t have food and water.”
- “Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, ‘New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.’ Because if you recall, the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse.”
- “I mean, you have people who don’t heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”
- “You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals…many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold.”
- “What didn’t go right?”
- “Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?”
- “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”
- “Louisiana is a city that is largely under water.”
- “I also want to encourage anybody who was affected by Hurricane Corina to make sure their children are in school.”
- “It’s totally wiped out. … It’s devastating, it’s got to be doubly devastating on the ground.”
- “I believe the town where I used to come – from Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself, occasionally too much – will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to.”
- “Last night, we showed you the full force of a superpower government going to the rescue.”
- “You know I talked to Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi yesterday because some people were saying, ‘Well, if you hadn’t sent your National Guard to Iraq, we here in Mississippi would be better off.’ He told me ‘I’ve been out in the field every single day, hour, for four days and no one, not one single mention of the word Iraq.’ Now where does that come from? Where does that story come from if the governor is not picking up one word about it? I don’t know. I can use my imagination.”
- “We just learned of the convention center – we being the federal government – today.”
- “I don’t want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That’s just not happening.”
- “FEMA is not going to hesitate at all in this storm. We are not going to sit back and make this a bureaucratic process. We are going to move fast, we are going to move quick, and we are going to do whatever it takes to help disaster victims.”
- “I don’t make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans.”
- “I understand there are 10,000 people dead. It’s terrible. It’s tragic. But in a democracy of 300 million people, over years and years and years, these things happen.”
- “Thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi and Alabama to our help and rescue. We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reid for their extraordinary efforts. Anderson, tonight, I don’t know if you’ve heard – maybe you all have announced it — but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating.” –Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Aug. 31, 2005, to which Cooper responded:
“I haven’t heard that, because, for the last four days, I’ve been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians slap – you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there’s not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?”
