| |
|
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
|
|
Infinitely pessimistic reading of chances for post-Nola change (CPunch-Floyd)
Let's be clear about one thing. Nothing that has happened in the past week -- the mass destruction in the Mississippi Delta, the obliteration of the city of New Orleans, the murderous abandonment of thousands of people to death, chaos and disease will change the Bush Administration or American politics at all. Not one whit. The Bush Administration will not reverse its brutal policies; its Congressional rubber-stamps will not revolt against the White House; the national Democrats will not suddenly grow a spine. There will be no real change, and the bitter corrosion of injustice, indifference and inhumanity that is consuming American society will go on as before.
(Via robot wisdom weblog.)
10:14:07 AM 
|
|
I've been uploading some photos to Flickr, here. Mostly taken from my cell phone, and mostly of my most recent brew, though there's the obligatory cat picture, a piece of scenery and some treasures from the garden.
10:10:34 AM
|
|
You could have smelled this one a mile away.
House cancels hearings on Katrina response
The House majority leader [Tom DeLay] late Tuesday tried to deflect criticism of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina by saying “the emergency response system was set up to work from the bottom up,” then announced a short time later that House hearings examining that response had been canceled.
U.S. agency blocks photos of New Orleans dead
The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims.
People have died and suffered because of the dithering of a Republican president, and they’ll do anything in their power to hide and cover that up.
Scum.
(Via Oliver Willis - Like Kryptonite To Stupid.)
9:32:14 AM
|
|
This Josh Marshall post is so disturbing and indicative of a larger problem that I want to reproduce it in full:
On the Al Franken show this afternoon I mentioned this article from today's Salt Lake Tribune which tells the story of about a thousand firefighters from around the country who volunteered to serve in the Katrina devastation areas. But when they arrived in Atlanta to be shipped out to various disaster zones in the region, they found out that they were going to be used as FEMA community relations specialists. And they were to spend a day in Atlanta getting training on community relations, sexual harassment awareness, et al. This of course while life and death situations were still the order of the day along a whole stretch of the Gulf Coast.
It's an article you've really got a to read to appreciate the full measure of folly and surreality.
But the graf at the end of the piece really puts everything in perspective, and gives some sense what the Bush administration really has in mind when it talks about a crisis. The paper reports that one team finally was sent to the region ...
As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.
You can't make this stuff up.
The part of government that actually governs can't figure out how to use 1,000 highly skilled firefighters, but the spin machine will put them right to work!
(Via Brendan Nyhan.)
8:59:15 AM
|
|
Everyone must read these two tales of the horror inside New Orleans:
These stories describe an environment that was even worse than I had imagined. I can't see any reason not to accept them as true. They are very upsetting.
That being said, it is important that we familiarize ourselves with what happened. The only way we can fix these things as a society is to learn from our mistakes so that the next time something like this happens we will know what not to do.
These are dark times.
[via Shrill Gilliard]
(Via The Liberal Reality-Based Avenger.)
8:56:03 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 10/1/2005; 12:08:18 AM.
|
|
|
