!!@#@$!#$%^*)(!@#$

[mdlbear]

Katrina images echo developing world disasters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Images of desperate people clamoring for food dropped from military helicopters, armed soldiers in the streets and bodies floating in fetid water are usually associated with the world's poorest countries.

FEMA chief: Victims bear some responsibility

Brown pleased with effort: 'Things are going relatively well'

(CNN) -- The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.

This was yesterday; I believe he may since have "recanted" (an archaic word for what is now called spin control). It doesn't change the fact that FEMA is being systematically dismantled now that it's part of Homeland Security, a massive bureaucracy whose mission does not include dealing with natural disasters.

What we are seeing in New Orleans, and to a lesser extent elsewhere on the Gulf Coast, is the inevitable result of a generation's worth of conservative Republicans' systematic dismantling of our government. They cut taxes, then cut services because there isn't any money, then as soon as revenues increase they cut taxes again. They run the country for the benefit of their billionaire backers, while staying in office by pitching their message the bigoted, the ignorant, and the frightened.

Their way of preparing for the inevitable fate of a city mostly below sea level is to cut off funding for repairs on the levees. Their way of evacuating that city when a hurricane threatens is to tell everybody to leave -- it doesn't matter where -- and leaving anyone too poor to own a car to fend for themselves in the flood. Their way of dealing with the people left behind is to tell them to go to the Superdome and the Convention Center to wait for days with no food, water, or leadership. We've seen this kind of "planning" in Iraq.

Now we're facing nearly half a million people homeless and -- at least for the moment, and possibly for months or years -- jobless. Most will have medical problems; our public health system, like FEMA, is being systematically dismantled. Any welfare they get will be cut off in a few years whether they have jobs or not.

THIS IS NOT MY GOVERNMENT! THOSE BASTARDS IN WASHINGTON DO NOT REPRESENT ME! A CURSE ON THEM!

Not that anybody is listening. One of the disadvantages of being an agnostic is that it's really hard to call down the wrath of God on somebody. Maybe just as well.

Comments

[lapislaz.livejournal.com]

Well, I am not God, or even god. But you're welcome to borrow the icon. Use it freely. Encourage others.

[mdlbear]

Thanks!

[mdlbear]

(guess I spoke too soon!)

[mithriltabby]

[madfilkentist]

I've been reading my friends list from top to bottom, and assumed that your quote about the "Bush plan" above had to be irony. But this goes beyond belief:

What we are seeing in New Orleans, and to a lesser extent elsewhere on the Gulf Coast, is the inevitable result of a generation's worth of conservative Republicans' systematic dismantling of our government. They cut taxes, then cut services because there isn't any money, then as soon as revenues increase they cut taxes again.

Please take a look at something besides lunatic leftist propaganda. Under Bush, everything about the government has grown by leaps and bounds, except for taxes (and those will come, or else we'll pay it in the form of massive inflation). ... Oh, hell, there is NOTHING I think of that could convince someone who thinks that Bush is a libertarian run amok.

[mdlbear]

OK, I should have used a phrase that referred to the social-services component of government -- everything except the military and the other functions needed by a theocratic/capitalist police state.

And I'm referring here not only to the Federal government but to California, where I've seen the process in operation over the last 30 years.

Bush is not a libertarian run amok, he's a sock puppet for the unholy alliance of big business and big religion.