textonly.com

Katrina

The Katrina thing really got to me. We were in the middle of relocating to Italy, so while I did keep up with the news, I haven't time to comment on it, and frankly couldn't see what my words would add at the moment. Now with some time to reflect I do see it as a total failure of the federal government, and you can bet I lay the blame squarely on Bush - but not just him. He doesn't have a clue obviously as to what goes on in this country or the world - that is what sane people were worrying about when he became President. And as for Rove and all his evils - well - you have to be naive not to know how modern politics work in the USA. Those who share the most in the blame are the 51% of the people who bothered to go out and vote, and then voted for this administration. You get the government you deserve someone once said, and this is what those ill informed, god fearing, morons got. Any person who makes less the 200k a year, any person of any color, and any woman that voted for George Bush is a clueless patsy to me - there is no other way to look at it. People, you need to educate yourself and do the right thing for yourself in the future, before this country disappears before our eyes.

From the NY Times:

"In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across from a parking garage offering "early bird" rates: a corpse. Its feet jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis. Six National Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New Orleans, September 2005. Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time. Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City. That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable."

Here is a great piece from Tom Engelhardt.

And for anyone who wants to believe that President Vacation didn't know what was coming:

On Saturday night, Mayfield was so worried about Hurricane Katrina that he called the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi and the mayor of New Orleans. On Sunday, he even talked about the force of Katrina during a video conference call to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

"I just wanted to be able to go to sleep that night knowing that I did all I could do," Mayfield said.

A video conference call with the head of the National Hurricane Center - before the storm hit. What more do you want? And yet he vacationed, partied, cut cake and played the guitar for 2 more days!

Comments

Post a comment