Katrina

Back again!

Sorry for the delay, I had a long weekend (4 days!) and I was spending time hangin' with the family. Spent a lot of time watching CNN and the details of what was happening along the Gulf. Christ, what a fuckin' mess! I do try to keep this blog focused on my writing but I don't think anyone can let something the size of the Katrina disaster go without at least some comment to show we're still human and can empathize with the suffering going on throughout the south. So, to throw my own $0.02 nto the mix (and no doubt piss some folks off) here are my top ten thoughts about Katrina:

10. Kanye West is a fucking moron. (I'm no supporter of Bush, but West's statements Friday night were assinine. Have to admit though, it was pretty damn funny watching Mike Myer's face - he was completely lost!)

9. To all the people who claim the victims: "deserve what they got because they didn't get out when told" . . . you make Kanye West seem like Albert Einstein. (How the hell do you get out when you're too damn poor to afford a bus pass -if there had been buses to take -much less a car?)

8. The response was slow because the Guard were in Iraq. (Sorry, but I agree with this. The three states hit have the highest percentage of deployed guard units in the country, and I saw a report that claimed nearly 60% of their equipment was in Iraq. Throw onto that the large number of poor and minority people who join the military and it doesn't seem an extreme leap of logic to realize a good portion of the Guard not deployed overseas were actually people trapped by the floods.)

7. FEMA didn't know about what was happening in New Orleans until Thursday. (Are you fuckin' kidding me? The director had the balls to actually say this. What, don't they have CNN or MSNBCin D.C.? Everyone else in this country knew, but this idiot didn't?)

6. The Governor of Louisiana is to blame for the delays in getting aid to the victims, not the President. (This is a battle of the Titanic Morons. Both are so busy covering their political asses that I can't tell who did a worse job. Let's just call it a tie and have them both shot.)

5. The Mayor of NO screwed up by not using transit and school buses to get people out of the city. (This seems like 20-20 hindsight. Don't lose track of the fact that they originally got people to the Superdome because of the hurricane. The flood came afterward and nobody was prepared for that. By the time he needed those buses, they were already underwater.)

4. The Mayor of NO shouldn't have blamed the President for not helping the city on public radio. (Why the hell not? He'd spoken with the President, told him what he needed, and was ignored for two days because of "legal" issues. Bullshit. GW takes the full load on that and deserves it.)

3. The Bush administration failed to provide funding to upgrade the levees, even though they knew they couldn't hold past a category-3 hurricane. (While this may be true, the fact is: so did Clinton and every other president for the last half-century! To be fair, one of the biggest problems came from environmentalists who protested the "impact" of the projects. Of course, they're the same idiots claiming global warming is the cause of the hurricanes.)

2. The media misrepresented the black community, portraying them as criminals and looters. (Bull. The media showed what was happening, nothing more. I've watched the cable news coverage closely and most of what I saw were decent people trying to survive a horrible situation and doing an admirable job of it. Were most of them black? Yup. That's who lives there. Were most of them poor? Yup. That's WHY they were there. Were most of them looting and shooting at helicopters? Hell no! There were a few assholes -there always are- but most of the people were victims trying to help each other and get out. This is nothing but politicians getting air time and its sad thet they're willing to use this horror to do it.)

1. The government should have shot looters earlier -or- the government is shooting looters because they're black. (I lean towards the first statement and think the second is ridiculous. Looters are the assholes running out of Wal-Mart with wide screen TV's. Kill them. They're vile specimens polluting the human gene pool. People taking food, water, blankets, and any other damn thing they need to survive: give them a medal because they almost always shared what they took with others who needed it. As for the black/white thing . . . it's Grade-A crap! Looters should be shot because they're a danger to victim and resuer alike. They disrupt order and endanger innocent lives for their own greed. Kill the bastards, no matter what the color of their skin is.)

There you go, that's my thoughts on the disaster . . . except for this:

Stupid bureaucracy aside, I was proud of the way the people of this country responded. Regardless of race/creed/color/beliefs we saw people in need and are digging deep and doing what has to be done to help. I also want to say thank you to all the Red Rross, National Guard, and all the other volunteers who have risked their lives to help those who need it. Piss on what you may hear on radio or TV from morons with an axe to grind: the people of this nation know who you are, and what you do, and we're grateful.

And damn proud of you.

Later!