Entries in Life

He’s my new hero. Everyone is pulling a Beavis (“Heh, Heh. He said ‘ass’!”) and ignoring the more substantive parts of this interview:

… we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.

Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up -- you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.

CNN: The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.

Surely there’s more to the story than that, right? Please tell me he doesn’t mean that we should blame the poor who have no resources, no contacts outside the city. Please tell me he isn’t blaming the hospital staff who had to stay and care for immobile patients. Please tell me he isn’t blaming the elderly in Nursing Homes?

Asked later on CNN how he could blame the victims, … Brown said he was not blaming anyone. “Now is not the time to be blaming,” Brown said.

Right. Now it is time to shut up. In fact that time has come and gone. Too bad you didn’t recognize it earlier before you made yourself look like such an idiot.

Why didn’t New Orleans deserve the response that Florida got when Andrew hit?

I am beginning to believe that race was a big part of it. People sat in their living rooms and watched black people being rescued. They saw pictures of black people looting. They heard about black people shooting each other.

And they didn’t see themselves, so they didn’t help.

Actually, I should just point you to what Anne Rice has written about New Orleans and the resopnse to Katrina:

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City,"