I have thus far this week neglected the responsibilities I took on with the Rant of the Week. To try to make amends for my tardiness, and in honor of the many objects of potential rant embodied in the events of this past week, the topic for this week will be New Orleans and the aftermath of Katrina.

And upon reflection, I have decided to make a joint award, one for Best Rant in a Post, the other for Best Rant in a Comment.

Best Rant in a Post

This week’s best rant in a post goes to RightWingProf at RightWingNation, and his My Letter to the UN. Here’s the rant in its entirety:

Dear Kofi Annan, Hans Blix, and other UN bureaucrats:

I suppose you’ve been so busy counting your illegally gained bribe money and trying to cover it up, printing up pro-terrorist T-shirts and posters, and trying to push through socialist bullshit “treaties” that you haven’t heard about Katrina, the hurricane that has done so much damage here.

You know. Hurricane. Like a tsunami, sort of. You remember tsunamis, right?

I’ll spare you a list of the damage done, or the count of our dead, and just get to the point.

Where is our UN foreign aid?

Considering that we pay a third of your budget, and considering that the only times the UN has ever decided to do anything but pass pointless resolutions the United States has provided most of the firepower, and considering all the damage you have done taking bribes, diverting funds, and encouraging terrorists and ruthless dictators (how’s Syria doing on that human rights commission, Hans?), the very least you can do is get up in front of television cameras, go on about how awful the hurricane was, wring your hands, and call for aid from the thugs and dictators that make up your ranks. Especially considering the “treaty” you tried to push through that would force us to pour 0.7% of our GDP into Africa (never mind that Africa has only gotten worse the more money they’ve gotten), and especially considering the insulting remarks you made about Ambassador Bolton, UN aid to the United States is more than called for.

So where’s the bucks?

Thanks for your time. You may now get back to printing up those Hezbollah T-shirts and laundering that dirty money.

Best Rant in a Comment

The best rants aren’t always in posts, sometimes a post can provoke a really strong rant in comments in response. ColdWarrior415 posted just such a comment to an entry at Captain’s Quarters:

Yes, it does ALL start locally...and in this case it was local politics that made the disaster in New Orleans much worse than it should have been.

When a week after the hurricane and flooding one finds in overhead images hundreds and hundreds of city of New Orleans school buses and municipal vehicles still parked inundated in neat rows in city motor pools [pun intended] one has to ask why the city administration did not immediately move these vehicles to higher ground.

Doesn't take a genius to figure this one out...marshal resources, protect those resources, use them as necessary....but to leave hundreds and hundreds of usable city vehicles parked under lock and key in far off reaches of the city when it was apparent that the city had precious little time to move them to higher ground or lose them?

Or ordering thousands of citizens to gather at "shelters of last resort" and provide NOTHING, to include professional security and medical staff, and then walk away....blaming everybody and anybody outside the state of Louisiana....?

The city administration KNEW completely that there was a significant [25%+] of the population without personal transportation long before the hurricane hit and the newly built section of levee failed....and did nothing to provide for these citizens. And this is Bush's fault?

Instead of railing on every media outlet he could find, Mayor Nagin would have best served his city by using that time to issue orders, direct his safety service director to marshall the assets, and get people out...starting in the poorest neighborhoods first. But did he? No. And this is Bush's fault?

My dad told me years and years ago that the people who complain the loudest when trouble hits are usually the ones who did the least before the trouble hit.

I can only suggest that those who complain the loudest now about those who actually got up and helped are the ones who should shoulder the lion's share of the blame. Just because one owns a hockey team and was a successful hustler in business does not make one a good or even decent mayor. I think the people of New Orleans have learned this first hand.

Leadership does not come from having a large personal checkbook and a nice house and cushy job. It comes from a place Mayor Nagin seems to have never glimpsed.

Honorable Mentions:

JunkYardBlog achieves a very strong near win with his rant that starts with the Mayor of New Orleans, but sweeps up RFK, Jr., and wonders what drives the left mad about George W. Bush:

I will say this. I think it's tremendous that some bloggers have chosen to hold their fire on Nagin et al until the city's stranded have been evacuated. I don't begrudge those bloggers their decision not to push back against the left at all. But I'm more than a little tired of several major right of center bloggers positioning themselves as though they're above the fray and that they will always have time to address the left's insanities later.

That may not be true. There may not be time to address the left's lies later. Led by Jesse Jackson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr and a slew of other major leftists who can't win political power the legal way, a larger than reasonable number of Americans have been sniffing revolutionary airs since the crisis started. They have tried to turn hurricane Katrina into a race war. They have blamed the crisis on everything from Bush hating blacks to the Iraq war to irrelevant budget cuts to whatever canard they could dream up. We should ask ourselves, to what end? Bush isn't running for re-election in 2008. He'll leave office soon enough. So why stir up so much animosity in the midst of crisis? What is their end game, or are they just driven by pure hate?

I don't know what drives these leftists, but I do know that mob mentality has pretty much taken over their thoughts and actions. When that happens, someone has to push back. That's what we've been doing on this blog, providing hard facts to show that the crisis isn't Bush's fault.

(Via instapundit)

PunditGuy earns an honorable mention for most rantilicious single paragraph. The winning paragraph starts right after “Refugees deserve an explanation” in the excerpt below:

The anger burning in New Orleans over the past few days is justifiable. Refugees deserve an explanation.

But, their anger should not be directed at George W. Bush. Their anger should be directed at the criminals in their city, the drug addicts who held up their neighbors at gunpoint, the looters who stole from their neighborhood businesses, and the bad decisions, the bad calls, the inaction, and the ineffectiveness of their disconnected and dysfunctional local government.

JP at Americans For Freedom wins an honorable mention for this post, based on content rather than rantability, but rates mention since this week’s cover New Orleans and Katrina. (Besides, these are my picks, you can feel free to post your own!)

JP makes 4 major points, each with supporting links:
1. President called for evacuation when Mayor and Governor would not.
2. Pr-evacuation plans for NO were in place, but not known by authorities nor implemented.
3. Plan called for and resources were available to evacuate all persons threatened ion NO in one trip Buses were left to languish, then be flooded, and now to leak fueld and oil into already polluted flood waters.
4. Levees that gave way were of newer construction, part of renovation efforts that had already been completed, not those not upgraded.

JP concludes:

In light of just the above evidence, no reasonable person can blame a poor response, nor re fault of the people left for days on the President. The fact is, he acted quickly to salvage the situation with the military when it had spiraled out of control because of the failures of local and state authorities.

(Via Polipundit)

Congratulations to all and a hearty thanks for a rant well done!

Links: Outside the Beltway, Wizbang, Blackfive