Friday, September 02, 2005
Hurricane Musings
It seems that President Bush woke up this morning and discovered that recovery efforts on the Gulf coast are not going well. It is about time somebody takes a dose of reality.
Bush went to pains to describe the personal loss suffered by United States Senator Trent Lott, a fellow-Republican from Mississippi. The president went a great distance to observe that Lott would rebuild and his new home would be bigger and better. Well. Duh. Trent Lott is a United States Senator. He has the best medical insurance coverage available and his retirement will pay him more after he leaves office than he makes today. He and his ilk don’t know the first damned thing about what working people go through and it has never bee clearer.
The only reason President George W. Bush has had an apparent moment of clarity is to maintain his political viability so that the financial interests of Halliburton and other right wing special interests can continue to be served.
FOX News is a mixed bag. God bless Bill O’Riley for holding the greedy oil companies accountable for un-American activities in the face of national disaster. It would be nice if fair-haired undereducated and very young anchors would use more caution with such language as “thugs” to describe some people who are having trouble in New Orleans. I do not intend to endorse unnecessary looting of any violence, but that is limited to s small number of professional criminals. Many of these troublemakers have lost their drug connections and are out of their minds. It is sadly necessary that military force has arrived to protect the weak. Had they arrived earlier, some of this loss might have been averted.
You know by now that college professors and professional engineers have predicted these enormous losses for decades. Congress and various administrations have consistently under funded essential infrastructure needs, including the levy system on the Mississippi River. There was supposed to be a FEMA study of evacuation scenarios from New Orleans conducted in 1999. It is time for accountability.
Putting the gang members and professional criminals aside, it is perhaps a good thing to remember that none of us know how we might react if we lost every item of personal property, homes, clothing, and every remembrance of better times. How would you do if there were little food and drinking water, no decent toilet, no comfortable bed and no privacy. Judge not.
Bush went to pains to describe the personal loss suffered by United States Senator Trent Lott, a fellow-Republican from Mississippi. The president went a great distance to observe that Lott would rebuild and his new home would be bigger and better. Well. Duh. Trent Lott is a United States Senator. He has the best medical insurance coverage available and his retirement will pay him more after he leaves office than he makes today. He and his ilk don’t know the first damned thing about what working people go through and it has never bee clearer.
The only reason President George W. Bush has had an apparent moment of clarity is to maintain his political viability so that the financial interests of Halliburton and other right wing special interests can continue to be served.
FOX News is a mixed bag. God bless Bill O’Riley for holding the greedy oil companies accountable for un-American activities in the face of national disaster. It would be nice if fair-haired undereducated and very young anchors would use more caution with such language as “thugs” to describe some people who are having trouble in New Orleans. I do not intend to endorse unnecessary looting of any violence, but that is limited to s small number of professional criminals. Many of these troublemakers have lost their drug connections and are out of their minds. It is sadly necessary that military force has arrived to protect the weak. Had they arrived earlier, some of this loss might have been averted.
You know by now that college professors and professional engineers have predicted these enormous losses for decades. Congress and various administrations have consistently under funded essential infrastructure needs, including the levy system on the Mississippi River. There was supposed to be a FEMA study of evacuation scenarios from New Orleans conducted in 1999. It is time for accountability.
Putting the gang members and professional criminals aside, it is perhaps a good thing to remember that none of us know how we might react if we lost every item of personal property, homes, clothing, and every remembrance of better times. How would you do if there were little food and drinking water, no decent toilet, no comfortable bed and no privacy. Judge not.
