In our everyday lives, it can be difficult to address problems creatively. We slip lazily into the routine of business as usual. Nothing offers greater opportunity for wholesale innovation and creative problem solving than tragedy.

I’ve heard that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. But in order to gain strength from a tragedy such as Katrina, we have to look back and learn. The following quotes illustrate, I’m afraid, that while many of us pitched in with creative helping hands, too many responded with some of our history’s worst examples of denial, selfishness, passing the buck, and racism.

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.
—House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Aug. 31, 2005

I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don’t have food and water.
—Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on NPR’s "All Things Considered," Sept. 1, 2005

I would say play it down and pray it up.
—Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life CITATION

I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.
—George W. Bush on "Good Morning America," Sept. 1, 2005, six days after repeated warnings from experts about the scope of damage expected from Hurricane Katrina

Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans—virtually a city that has been destroyed—things are going relatively well.
—FEMA Director Michael Brown, Sept. 1, 2005

Pray for more dead bodies floating on the fag-semen-rancid waters of New Orleans.
—Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptist Chruch, God Hates Fags CITATION

Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.
—George W. Bush to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring Hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005

Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?
—Senator Tom DeLay to a group of evacuees in a Houston shelter

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. (Laughter)
—George W. Bush, touring hurricane damage, Mobile, Alabama., Sept. 2, 2005

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They know they’re going to flood. And when these things happen, they want the taxpayers all over the country to pay, and they do.
—Fred Barnes, Fox News CITATION

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.
—Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, blaming media coverage for his failings, "Meet the Press," Sept. 4, 2005

New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion. It’s free of all of those things now. God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there and now we’re going to start over again.
—Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans

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.
—Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the Hurricane flood evacuees in the Houston Astrodome, Sept. 5, 2005

It’s a bit unseemly to talk about cutting off aid to these people while the hurricane is still roaring through Mississippi. But let’s give it a try.
—Charles Krauthammer CITATION

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.
—Senator Rick Santorum, Sept. 6, 2005

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