Monthly Archives: September 2005

America

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Us:

Having filled up the wife’s Suburban with gas days before, and gotten the house ready as can be, we headed off with 2 kids, 2 dogs and 3 fish that the 2 kids would not leave behind. When we left at 4:20 a.m. yesterday morning we knew things would be bad as far as traffic. Rather than joining the parking lot on I-45, which took 8 hours to drive from our location to before the North beltway on 45 (still in Houston!), we decided to use my new Microsoft GPS software and hardware and hit the back roads. Almost exactly 12 hours later, we arrived at my sister’s house in Dallas, where I’m e-mailing you from.

 

Them:

No Way Out: Tears, Anger As Some Try to Flee and Many Poor Are Stuck in Houston

Judie Anderson of La Porte, Texas, covered just 45 miles in 12 hours. She had been on the road since 10 p.m. Wednesday, headed toward Oklahoma, which by Thursday was still very far away.

“This is the worst planning I’ve ever seen,” she said. “They say, ‘We’ve learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina.’ Well, you couldn’t prove it by me.”

On Bellaire Boulevard in southwest Houston, a weeping woman and her young daughter stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by plastic bags full of clothes and blankets. “I’d like to go, but nobody come get me,” the woman said in broken English. When asked her name, she looked frightened. “No se, no se,” she said: Spanish for “I don’t know.”


Miles of Traffic as Texans Heed Order to Leave

as many as 2.5 million people jammed evacuation routes on Thursday, creating colossal 100-mile-long traffic jams that left many people stranded and out of gas as the huge storm bore down on the Texas coast.

Acknowledging that “being on the highway is a deathtrap,” Mayor Bill White asked for military help in rushing scarce fuel to stranded drivers.


Up to 24 Dead in Texas Bus-Fire Tragedy

A bus carrying nursing home residents fleeing from Hurricane Rita caught fire and was rocked by explosions Friday on a gridlocked highway near Dallas, killing as many as 24 people, authorities said.

Complete Disaster

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Yesterday, Josh Marshall regarding the proposed $260 billion aid package to the Gulf:

This will be Iraq all over again, with the same fetid mix of graft, zeal and hubris. Cronyism like you wouldn’t believe. Money blown on ideological fantasies and half-baked test-cases.

You could come up with a hundred reasons why that’s true. But at root intentions drive all. You’ll never separate this operation or its results from the fact that the people in charge see it as a political operation. The use of this money for political purposes, for what amounts to a political campaign, tells you everything you need to know about what’s coming.

Today, in the New York Times:

Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush’s chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government…

After four and a half years of this shit, the only constant seems to be that it can always get worse.

Ill Wind

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Aside from spending the day worrying about New Orleans, August 29 was a pleasant day in Los Angeles. And yet something in the very air seemed wrong, an inexplicable soul-sucking malaise of negative energy…

Well, looking at the TPM Katrina Timeline, I just realized that Bush made a stop about 30 minutes from Los Angeles on Monday afternoon. Just so we’re clear, the National Weather Service had issued a flash flood warning at 8:14 AM Monday morning announcing a breach in the Industrial Canal levee. By the time of Bush’s 2:40 P.M. speech in Racho Cucamonga, there had been public confirmation of the 17th Street Canal levee breech.

The speech was largely about eliminating the social safety net for poor Americans.

I know that you wept, like many of us wept when we heard stories about people having to choose between food or medicine. Those days are gone because of this Medicare legislation. (Applause.)

You gotta admit, the boy has timing.

Here’s the bulk of his remarks from that speech about the worst disaster in American history.

This was a terrible storm. It’s a storm that hit with a lot of ferocity. It’s a storm now that is moving through, and now it’s the time for governments to help people get their feet on the ground.

For those of you who prayed for the folks in that area, I want to thank you for your prayers. For those of you who are concerned about whether or not we’re prepared to help, don’t be. We are. We’re in place. We’ve got equipment in place, supplies in place. And once the — once we’re able to assess the damage, we’ll be able to move in and help those good folks in the affected areas. (Applause.)

David also mentioned that we’re making progress overseas. And we are making progress overseas. Recently, the Iraqis came together and wrote a constitution. It’s not easy to write a constitution. Look at our own history. I was reminded that several of the delegates to our own Constitutional Convention stormed out and wouldn’t sign the document. (Applause.)

No Fatties

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Continuing to update the horror show of hurricane exploitation quotes. This one from Glenn Reynolds deserves a little extra mention since it such a clear demonstration of how rich conservatives think, which is essentially that the dumb lazy bitch deserved what she got:

Most poor people in America can afford food (that’s why so many poor people are fat). They do have other problems that make preparation less likely, though (if you’re the kind of person who thinks ahead and prepares for emergencies, you’re much less likely to be poor to begin with)

So according to Glenn Reynolds, if you’re poor, you’re probably also a stupid fatty. And stupid fatties are too stupid and fat to waddle their big fat stupid ass out of town . But obviously — because they’re so damn fat — they can afford to buy a few extra fifty cent hamburgers and keep them in storage until disaster strikes. It’s just that they’re too stupid to do that!

Stupid fatty!

(And because Bush is neither poor nor fat, he is clearly not responsible for his own administration? Hmmmm…)

I have to say that the stupid fatty defense is a fairly original entry in the list of disgusting conservative disaster responses…

According to Plan

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Life-long Republican mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin delivered a very moving, anger-filled outburst on the radio, which has made him something of a spokesperson for all the outrage at America’s failure in the Gulf.

But it turns out he had no reason to be shocked by the abandonment of more than 120,000 of his city’s poorest and most helpless residents. Because not only was their abandonment part of his overt plan, he was in the process of distributing DVDs to poor neighborhoods which spelled out this fact.

As I write that, I still can’t believe it.

They made a DVD to give to the poor telling them that in the event of a major hurricane, their only hope for escape was to stick the DVD up their ass, spin around like a motor boat, and make a beeline for fucking Cancun.

Continue reading →

Hurricane exploitation – the quotes

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Writing from the hurricane ravaged front-lines of Australia, a right-wing blogger digs up up some quotes which he offers as evidence of leftist hurricane exploitation. I know it’s “Hard Work” to search for quotes, and clearly the extremist right is making “Good Progress” — which leaves them little time to dig up evidence of their own fetid verbal vomit. So I’ll help out by finding a selection of some of the choicest hurricane commentary by Republicans and Republican collaborators.

Continue reading →

Timing is Everything

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Six days after the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was on the scene, running 90 helicopter rescue and relief missions a day to the devastated region. “How’s that for stingy?” asks batshit crazy racist Michelle Malkin, pointing out all the nuclear-powered water and freshly-baked loaves of bread. High five! Mission Accomplished!

As of Friday, six days after the hurricane, four days after the total destruction of New Orleans, the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman just left port in Virginia . It just left. It just pulled sllooowllly out of the fucking port. It. Just. Left. Maybe it’ll get there in a few. Hey, whatever.

Speaking of Harry S. Truman, funny thing — when the Soviets closed all ground travel to Berlin in 1948, it took less than three days for Truman to get loaded cargo planes from Alaska and Hawaii to FUCKING GERMANY. How long a flight is it from Crawford to Baton Rouge? Half a fucking hour? Make it 45 minutes if you stop for cake?

Just asking.

America

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Us:

We walk half a block down Royal Street from the Eighth District headquarters and come upon Brennan’s Restaurant, one of New Orleans’ most venerable dining institutions. The Brennans are a high-profile family of restaurateurs and run several of the highest-end eateries in town. Jimmy Brennan and a crew of his relatives are holing up in the restaurant along with the chef, Lazone Randolph. They are sleeping on air mattresses, drinking Cheval Blanc, and feasting on the restaurant’s reserves of haute Creole food.

The atmosphere in the French Quarter, while relatively quiet, is decidedly tense, but Brennan isn’t worried. “We’re not too concerned. The police let us go over to the Royal Omni, to take a shower, freshen up, and we cooked them some prime rib. We take care of them, they take care of us,” says Randolph. Two Brennan emissaries whisk past, bearing multilayer chocolate cakes, headed toward the precinct. “This has been working out real well for us,” says Jimmy Brennan.

Them:

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

“I don’t treat my dog like that,” Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. “You can do everything for other countries, but you can’t do nothing for your own people.”

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA just learned about the situation at the convention center Thursday….

I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.

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No one anticipated the breach of the levees?

No one anticipated the fucking breach of the fucking levees???

The lake is now level with the city and the heavy lifting helicopters needed to fill the breach have not even arrived? Four days later?

The director of FEMA is an estate planning lawyer?

As of today, in the middle of the worst natural disaster in American history, Condolezza Rice is on vacation in New York, shopping for fucking shoes on fucking 5th Avenue?

What else is there to say…

MORE
Yeah. He actually said it. No one anticipated the breech of the fucking leeves. “No one” apparently doesn’t include FEMA, who named it one of the most critical potential disasters in America, according to the nobodies at the New York Times, in 2001.

We are all at dire risk from the self- proclaimed incompetence of these monsters.