The topic will be Katrina and the incompetence the federal government showed with the hurricane.
What happens when you invade and occupy another country, avoid a draft and send the National Guard overseas?
There isn't anyone in the U.S. to protect the homeland.
And only today -- days after the flood -- does the National Guard finally reach New Orleans.
And, of course, when we spend hundreds of billions in Iraq, there isn't money left for levees and other infrastructure in the U.S.
So sad.
9 comments:
President Bush and the Republicans are going to learn a very hard lession in the coming elections. It leaves one pondering which task might be the more difficult; trying to dry out New Orleans with a kitchen sponge or being the campaign manager for the 2008 Republican Presidential nominee?
RANDALL SHERMAN
Secretary/Treasurer, Illinois Committee for Honest Government
Chicago
Will they? See, the vast majority of poor people don't vote, and when they do, it isn't always in a manner consistent with their self-interest, because when the uneducated actually head to the polls they tend to do so based on single issue propaganda, often of the religious sort, but also of the union or racial sort.
Or is it that you think we didn't know until now that Bush is incompetent and that Republicans desipe the poor and domestic spending (unless it is for the military industrial complex) and welfare and minimum wage laws. A little education and disposable income might have gone a long way at helping these people save their own lives.
Because surely you can't have expected the government to have done something, right? People have to fend for themselves in our "free' society, right? You'd be called a communist like me if you expect the federal government to provide the means of free public evacuations pre-storm? And you'd be a commie like me if you would expect the federal government to have adequate plans for anticipated urban disaters rather than invading countries based on false pretext.
This is the shame of our country, our marketplace and the abject poverty and severe class society and distribution of wealth we tolerate here. Our country should be ashamed of itself and how it has allowed urban poverty to fourish more than in any other developed country, and to have allowed so much of our riches, our hard earned tax dollars to go to building guns and bombs and killing people and enriching the few. For shame. We could create just as much weatlth in our country without exploiting the poor.
And Dan, if you can get it in (are you on Beyond the Beltway every week?) , you might point out the role of guns in preventing aid from reaching people, and how ridiculous it is we allow our citizens to bear arms 250 years later, as ifit is some sort of important civic right becasue it happend to be relevant in the American Revolution. For fucks sake. I thought guns were supposed to prevent crime!
Lots of guns were looted. Gun retailers need better procedures for disasters and evacuations.
New Orleans suffered major adverse selection - some people that did not evacuate were waiting to loot. Others did not have resources to evacuate, or were old and not very mobil. This mix of people of people left in New Orleans was not good. It did not help when retailers abandoned stores and let looters have guns.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/083105JKG.html
I am not saying I agree with the article above. Glassman wrote a book called Dow 36,000, which at the moment does not look too bright.
Is there a plan to evacuate Chicago if a suitcase nuclear bomb goes off?
If so, do you think it will be the federal government that develops such a plan...
Or might it be the job of Chicago and State of Illinois officials.
Might be some parallels with the problems evident in New Orleans.
it is the local, state and federal responsibility.
this is why nearby airports other than o'hare are important (to handle overflow, or to substitute). if no peotone, then efforts need to be made to ensure capacity is maintained or increased at other nearby airports.
What's the role of guns Lou?
This is a national disgrace. The Republicans in Washington are absolutely incompetent.
In the first couple of days no relief got to certain neighborhoods in NO becasue of all the random shooting. Police and helicopters wouldnt go into certain neighborhoods due to snipers and robbers.
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