Friday, September 02, 2005

DAMN THEM ALL



I know that most of you are very aware of what is going on, or not really going on, in New Orleans and the gulf states. I won't recite the details. A few verbal pictures will suffice.

An Arkansas man, an airboat operator, brought his rig down to New Orleans, to volunteer to ferry people out of the city with his swamp boat, capable of operating in very shallow water. FEMA said they would let the man do it but that he would have to purchase his own gas. Airboats, propelled by an airplane engine, can burn a hundred dollars an hour, or more, in aviation fuel. So the man had to pull his boat back to Arkansas.

Seriously ill medical evacuees stranded on the roof of a hospital, one with a helicopter pad. Stranded for a day, so far. No helicopters to lift them off the roof. The two local airports are flooded but one has to wonder, where are the National Guard helicopters? Where are their many high water vehicles and the people to operate them? That has always been the job of the National Guard, to respond in force, to just such a disaster.

Like the money that wasn't used, on urgently needed repairs and upgrades to the flood control system in New Orleans, half of the Louisiana Guards men, and virtually all of their equipment, is being squandered in Iraq.

The director of FEMA, learned that thousands of people were stranded at the city convention center. He learned it while being interviewed at a television station. He was totally surprised to learn of it, yet it was one of the places people were told to go to, were supposed to go to, in case of such an emergency.

But, of course, the head of FEMA is a Bush political appointee with no experience in disaster management. Just lots of experience with playing political favors.

Every American, watching the fatal magnitude of the detachment of Bush and his administration and their bumbling incompetent response to this terrible, predictable, event, should understand that this is what America has become. Do not believe that the government is going to be more responsive to your needs, your survival, when disaster, natural or otherwise, visits your neighbourhood.

Please do not hesitate to write and or call your representatives and senators, let them know this will not be forgiven or forgotten. Let them know that this gigantic betrayal of public trust is just that, a betrayal of the highest magnitude.

A point of information for those wishing to donate funds to help with the relief efforts. Any money sent to FEMA or any government agency, is being sent to a list of ten organizations. Number one on the list, as you might expect, is the American Red Cross, number two on that list, number two, is a Christian organization owned, operated, and presided over, by none other than Pat Robertson. Pat 'It's valuable to have a friend at the White House' Robertson.

Update, Operation Blessing, is the name of Robertson's organization, it has been moved to number three on the list. It is one of the organizations that is wanting money only, no volunteers. Fits, eh?

I think it would be a much better idea to send money directly to the organization you most trust rather than any fund that is going to be doling out money to organizations operated by slimy evangelists and politically favored con men. New Orleans doesn't need bibles.

Mean while, the government is refusing to allow international aid and rescue organizations into the US to help. Hell, the UN would have figured out how to air drop supplies from Europe by now. But America the mighty, is without leadership and it's bumbling, overstuffed bureaucracy, headed by know nothing political appointees is paralyzed .

I am full of anger and sorrow. My imagination blurred with the images of all those people, in all that chaos, many dying by the hour.

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the media that those poor, sick, old people, black babies, and mothers and children, anyone who could not get out of the city, have themselves to blame.

We, as a country, must not forgive, and dare not forget what this little cabal of political freaks and rich thieves have done to America . With their lies, their greed, and their genuine distain for ordinary Americans.

Truly, George Bush is a very little man and a very little president. I weep for America.

Link to a journal with first person reports from New Orleans, including a cell phone conversation with a man stranded, with thousands of others, in the city's convention center.
LINK HERE

The Mayor of New Orleans pleading with the president and federal government to save the people of his city. This is heart breaking but you should listen.
Be patient, it takes a minute or so to load, worth the wait if you want a first hand feel for just how bad it is.

You can also hear this interview at Air America, under the Mayor's picture on the left side of the page. Click Here

8 Comments:

At 8:05 AM, Blogger T said...

"They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said of 300 National Guard troops who landed in New Orleans fresh from duty in Iraq. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."

I think that pretty much sums up what the authorities are thinking.

In this guy's journal, http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/ he knows one of the people stranded and talks to him on his cell phone and what the guy says is pretty interesting. Aid being dropped off a bridge and smashing to pieces, cops/military waving guns at everyone, busses for evacuation not showing up.

 
At 8:26 AM, Blogger ThomasMcCay said...

Thanks IOTM, I've put that link at the bottom of the article.

 
At 11:06 AM, Blogger UCWIC said...

Giving money to Pat Robertson makes a lot of sense...that will be a big help...I just gave a donation to a weasel...I'm into direct action.

 
At 11:16 AM, Blogger ThomasMcCay said...

Most people don't know this but Bob, above, keeps a family of weasels in the back of his truck to deliver news papers.

Bob knows his weasels.

 
At 6:44 PM, Blogger Jet said...

Perhaps this whole terrible event is God's way of saying to the whole moral mandate line of crap:

"Uh, uh. I don't think so."

We'd all like a front row seat to a Bush smackdown, but in my opinion, God's more of a details kind of guy. No smiting of Rah, just systemic destruction.

OK, now I'm freaking myself out. Brrrr.

 
At 5:12 AM, Blogger ThomasMcCay said...

Personally, I do not see the hand of 'god' in this event. I see natural forces exacerbated by the heat energy we are producing and the damage to the atmosphere. I see human incompetence and human indifference in the faces of criminal politicians and their criminal appointees.

All of this was predictable. It wasn't god who decided to put the nation's resources in Iraq, it wasn't god who trusted to dumb luck that such a natural event wouldn't occur on his watch. It wasn't god that withheld the money from the levee and flood control programs for three years.

God didn't ruin the economy and ignore the infrastructure of this country while turning over the treasury to corporations with share holders in the oval office.

If you want to put god in the driver's seat, why not go for the obvious? God is punishing all those low moral, no money, black people for being denizens of the Big Easy, why not blame it on the fags and Mardi Gra.

I know you aren't saying such things and don't believe such things, but I see serious errors that grow from attempting to turn natural events into manifestations of divine will.

Pat Robertson, who believe his prayers saved his money centre, in Florida, from two hurricanes. is probably pretty sure he sees the hand of god in this event, as well.

Once again, it skipped him and hit folks he doesn't like. Obviously the will of god made manifest, eh?

I want Bush and his whole crew to end up swamped under the weight of their own irresponsibility, I'm not giving the bastards any divine out.

 
At 6:23 AM, Blogger Jet said...

I meant that a bit more lightly than it was taken, apparently. That'll teach me to blog with a glass of red riding shotgun.
;-D

 
At 6:51 AM, Blogger ThomasMcCay said...

Well Jet, I knew you weren't taking the fundy position on this, but you hit one of my 'touchy buttons.'

I've already heard a couple of Robertson followers talking about "god's plan" in all this and they put the blame for all of it, square upon the dying shoulders of the victims.

I don't see god in the the details, I see human finger prints all over the thing.

I feel that bringing in one aspect of the irrational, invites the rest of it. I keep waiting for Bush to say he isn't responsible for the hand of god.

But, he can't say that because, by the normal rhetoric of these people, when a tsunami or other natural disasters hit in other places, someone is being punished.

They won't be quite so eager to bring god into it now because it begs the obvious questions. Like just who's side is god on anyway?

You can imagine how this plays in the fundamentalist end of Islam.

"God is punishing the great Satan."

Jet is not a fundy idiot, I know that. I just don't see any divine hands in any of this.

I too have learned the possible pitfalls of writing on line with a six pack as my co-pilot.:)

Poetic musings sometimes get misplaced and taken more seriously than they were intended to be.

Besides, I admit to being in real turmoil about this thing, my sense of humor is hiding right now.

 

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