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Thursday, September 01, 2005

Too Horrible for Words

I last wrote Saturday night after a day on the beach, totally oblivious to Katrina and the looming catastrophe in New Orleans. Wasn't until Sunday night that I saw - or read, I suppose - the news. Typical Californian, huh?

My favorite US city. Took us six years, but we finally honeymooned there last June: I had visited before, and long promised my wife that one day I'd take her. Place had soul, you know? Like no other city I'd ever known. Music, every kind of music, pouring out of every window and door. But step out the 'Quarter, cross Rampart, another world entirely; world of slums and Projects and mean-staring cops. "The f**k 'you doin' ovah heah?"

I can't speak of what has happened, of what is happening, still. Or rather, what is not. Read a report on The Interdictor nearly broke my heart:
"The people are so desperate that they're doing anything they can think of to impress the authorities enough to bring some buses. These things include standing in single file lines with the eldery in front, women and children next; sweeping up the area and cleaning the windows and anything else that would show the people are not barbarians."


They're throwing crates of food at them, off a bridge.

I have felt such anger today, too, as I've poured over this report or that. How much do we pay in taxes, collectively? For this? We've been sold down a river, America; taken to the cleaners. Shameful.

5 Comments:

Blogger Whisky Prajer said...

Shameful. Heartbreaking. The reports are indeed very hard to take in. It wasn't much of a forewarning, but there was certainly some indication this was going to be bad. Did the administration not get at least one ball rolling in preparation for this disaster? Or was getting the president to end his vacation early the best they could do? Ugh.

4:09 AM  
Blogger DarkoV said...

We have relatives living, (actually not living there any longer) just outside of New Orleans. It sounds horrific; it doesn't sound like they're in the same country as we are. The mayor of NOLA quipped that maybe if New Orleans declared itself a seperate country, the speed of foreign aid arrival would be the succor they need, since domestic aid is a "tad slowish".

Just supposing here. In the back of his and his White House buddies' small and closed minds, do you think there's any possibility that they're thinking that God had smoth the sinners of that hell 'n damnation city New Orleans justly? That Federal Aid is not coming in as quickly as, oh, say to Florida where Jeb Bush is governor, since God (in their minds) had justly punished Sodom & Gomorrah? Just a thought.

Well,
At least we found out what it would take for our dear clueless Prez to take a break from vacation.
However,
I'll bet this is only a rain cehck from his vacation. He'll be cashing this in later for another extended stay in the Land of Scrub.

6:13 AM  
Blogger Xenoverse said...

The sooner he goes back on vacation the better. Kick the gormless prat to the curb and bring in a real President.

It isn't just that there was no plan and fewer resources: it's that there used to be. There used to be professionals in FEMA who were prepared with some response. But he sacked them and replaced them with Texas cronies, and plundered the budgets. It isn't just negligence, it's willful negligence to my mind.

And he's worried about price-gouging, he says? Like he and his pals didn't write the feching book on that and sell us all the feching T-shirts, $10-billion each?

7:29 AM  
Blogger DarkoV said...

I realize that there's going to be a pilng-on of "I told you so's" of astronomic proportions in the coming months. What I hope doesn't happen is a heaping of blame onto the Army Corps of Engineers.
Give these poor guys/gals a F***ing break!

Even the NOLA papers are laying off of them.
Please refer to this article from the Times-Picayune.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

8:25 AM  
Blogger Xenoverse said...

You just know they're going to be blaming someone, because that's what they do: the way the CIA was blamed for "intelligence failures" after being instructed on what intelligence they had to deliver.

It'll be Everyone's fault but theirs, as it always is. Heck, they're already trying to shift your attention to gas station gougers.

8:38 AM  

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