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In my surfing around looking for different thoughts on the whole Katrina distaster, I ran across this great blog entry. I totally love it. More that that, I agree with the main points of it. Read at your own risk, however. Although there is some offensive language, I'm sure it's the ideas that are in it that some will find the most offensive.
Quotes from it:
Who can not see the way the country has changed, not since 9/11, but before that – since the 2000 election? Who cannot feel the split, the division, that rips like a shredding sail on a broken mast, canvas tearing like the sound of musketry, as the rigging falls to the deck?
Race has nothing to do with this – precisely nothing. The mobs of murdering Hutus and swarms of slaughtering Serbs are as different racially as it is possible to be, and they are cut from precisely the same cloth.
That’s because the people I associate with – my Tribe – consists not of blacks and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal
In New Orleans we have a mayor who left some 400-500 buses sitting fueled and underwater in the Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool saying that evil white conservative America was selling out his people within 24 hours of the catastrophe, from a safe and dry and adequately toileted location, while four years ago we had a Mayor who ran to the site of the disaster so quickly it is a full-blown miracle he was not killed when a building collapsed literally on top of his magnificent, combed-over head.
Sometimes, Bad Things Happen. Some things are beyond my control, beyond the control of the smartest and best people we have, even beyond the awesome, subtle and unlimited control of the simpering, sub-human village idiot from Texas.
Hurricanes come. They have come for all of human history, and more are coming. Barbarians also come to steal or destroy what they cannot make themselves, and they, like human tempests, have swept a path of destruction through civilization since before history was written on clay tablets on the banks of the Euphrates.
My favorite, because I often think it:
George Bush did not take over the White House with a six-shooter; people voted him into office with the biggest number of votes in American history. I’m one of those people, and [...] I demand my equal time.
Quotes from it:
Who can not see the way the country has changed, not since 9/11, but before that – since the 2000 election? Who cannot feel the split, the division, that rips like a shredding sail on a broken mast, canvas tearing like the sound of musketry, as the rigging falls to the deck?
Race has nothing to do with this – precisely nothing. The mobs of murdering Hutus and swarms of slaughtering Serbs are as different racially as it is possible to be, and they are cut from precisely the same cloth.
That’s because the people I associate with – my Tribe – consists not of blacks and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal
In New Orleans we have a mayor who left some 400-500 buses sitting fueled and underwater in the Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool saying that evil white conservative America was selling out his people within 24 hours of the catastrophe, from a safe and dry and adequately toileted location, while four years ago we had a Mayor who ran to the site of the disaster so quickly it is a full-blown miracle he was not killed when a building collapsed literally on top of his magnificent, combed-over head.
Sometimes, Bad Things Happen. Some things are beyond my control, beyond the control of the smartest and best people we have, even beyond the awesome, subtle and unlimited control of the simpering, sub-human village idiot from Texas.
Hurricanes come. They have come for all of human history, and more are coming. Barbarians also come to steal or destroy what they cannot make themselves, and they, like human tempests, have swept a path of destruction through civilization since before history was written on clay tablets on the banks of the Euphrates.
My favorite, because I often think it:
George Bush did not take over the White House with a six-shooter; people voted him into office with the biggest number of votes in American history. I’m one of those people, and [...] I demand my equal time.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 12:56 pm (UTC)From:http://www.snopes.com/photos/katrina/buses.asp
That is a straw man agument. A tidbit of information and a picture, with little or no facts to support the assumption made.
btw, if you think Bush won because he got the most votes in history, I would like to ask you who got the second most votes in history. then ask me how a person in 2000 can win the popular vote and still lose.
When people are so poor the only choice for them is to go to a shelter or hunker down at home. THen it takes 5 days before any relief to show up, the simple matter is.... AMERICA let them down, no matter who's fault it is
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 06:46 pm (UTC)From:Actually, it as an example of the multitudes of failure that happened days before the hurricane struck and, like the finger pointing that is going on now, it's all political. The snopes article puts it best: many taxpayers might not have been left feeling so enthusiastic about footing the bill for an unnecessary evacuation had Hurricane Katrina not proved so damaging.. In July when Aaron Broussard requested evacuations for an approaching hurricane a little too early, he was referred to on local radio as having "premature evacuation" syndrome. Far better (politically) to wait, hope the hurricane passes you by.
Snopes is right: the busses alone would not ensure the evacuation. There needs to be a plan with places to go, people assist and necessities for the trip and stay. I'd find it appalling if New Orleans -- a city mostly below sea level, in prime hurricane country and with largest seaport in the nation -- didn't have plans for this. More likely, political expedience nixed such an expensive and politically risky move in implementing the plan. In fact, before Katrina, the mayor stated that it was a legal issue that prevented him from declaring mandatory evacuation from New Orleans. If he did so he'd have to provide a place for people who could not find a way to leave. Again, It was better odds to let everyone sit and hope the hurricane didn't hit too hard.
I hate that the mayor, after all that, whined about the federal response. I can't even get into the hypocrisy of saying that the president screwed the pooch when the pooch had been screwed long before it was abandoned on the White House lawn.
Politics demands inaction until the right course is guaranteed. The city didn't need politicians, they needed leaders.
btw, if you think Bush won because he got the most votes in history, I would like to ask you who got the second most votes in history. then ask me how a person in 2000 can win the popular vote and still lose.
In our representative democracy, electoral votes determine the presidential winner -- I know that. The main point behind what I said (well, actually quoted) is that people did -- and continue -- to support the President. Four years after the 2000 election, the man who won that electoral vote but lost the popular vote by .51%, won the 2004 electoral vote and won the popular vote by 2.4%. If that fist half percent of difference of popular vote is noteworthy and important (and it is), the two and a half percent deserves an equal amount of emphasis.
When people are so poor the only choice for them is to go to a shelter or hunker down at home. Then it takes 5 days before any relief to show up, the simple matter is.
Five days is not long at all, not after a natural disaster. After tornadoes or storms, people around here are often without power/support for that long. Disaster relief is never quick, federal support even slower. This is especially true with a disaster of this size. It was more than that, too. All the tough choices people didn't make before the disaster, all the preparations that weren't prepared, and all the support people (police/fire/civil servants) that stopped doing their job just when they were need most -- just made it worse. It's miracle that the aid that was sent out (local, state, and federal) got there at all.
... AMERICA let them down, no matter who's fault it is
I so don't think so. America is shelling out millions and millions of dollars to help the people affected by Katrina. People are opening their homes, sharing what they have and giving (literally, in some cases) the clothes off their backs. This is not an American failure. This is when America stands up and pulls together and lifts those less fortunate out of the misery they are in. Unfortunately, there are too many people tying to make political hay out of other's pain in some sort of twisted moral vengeance over an election that happened five years ago.