I know I haven’t really posted on the New Orleans situation, and I shouldn’t now – I have nothing to add to the dozens of commentators who have already thrown in their two cents. I have no special insights, and I have no right to talk about a story that I’m not personally involved in, that everyone in America has followed every day for a week.
But I am going to take moment for a primal scream, if you will, because it is pretty fucking frustrating.
(Rather than hunt for links all morning, I’m just going to point you to the huge link dump at Sisyphus Shrugged, and we’ll assume it backs up all of the Katrina-bitching I’m about to do).
I am pissed off because:
-The President of the United States is a liar. He looked the American people in the eye and lied to our goddamn faces that nobody anticipated the levee breach, when people have been anticipating that for between 2-175 years.
-He appointed a goddman horse breeding exec to lead FEMA. Which is paying dividends now, i’n’t it? That’s the problem with symbolic figurehead positions – they can become real work pretty fucking quick.
-To protect Fearless Leader, Republican flaks are pulling out all of their typical rhetorical stops: the local government is not dealing with the situation, so why should the federal government have to hold their hands (um, because the local government is UNDER FUCKING WATER); nobody really liked New Orleans anyway; those poor people should have known better than to be in the path of a hurricane.
-Following up on that last point, as recently as Sunday I was arguing that the failure to respond to New Orleans, and the failure to do anything prior to the crisis was primarily a class issue, not a race issue. But there’s a sickening “blame the darkies” vibe to so much of what I’ve read in the last 36 hours from The Right that I think I’m going to have to change my mind about that one.
Non-Katrina bitching:
-Rehnquist’s body hadn’t even stopped twitching before Bush nominated the yet-unconfirmed John Roberts to the postion of Chief Justice. This would piss me off more if it wasn’t so outlandishly stupid. What does piss me off more is that he’ll probably be confirmed. (What Scalia must be thinking, I wonder?)
-Oh, and people are still dying in Iraq.
I was going to end this by mentioning the silver lining, and then I realized there isn’t one. New Orleans is gone. The government doesn’t care. Three more years. Fuck.
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