A Very Angry Post
I have seen two common responses to Katrina over the past few days. Here's what they are, and why they and the people espousing them suck:
This is all W's fault for sending the National Guard to Iraq/not funding FEMA/referring to the situation as "unacceptable"
Fer pete's sake get over yourselves. Some of the current mess (looting, rapes, general lawlessness, etc) would probably be mitigated somewhat by the presence of National Guard to help in the stricken area. And certainly sending so much of the National Guard someplace thousands of miles away from...well...the nation they are to guard was a questionable move. On the other hand, the National Guard is not historically known for it's crowd control abilities, and it certainly couldn't have stopped the levee from busting in the first place. Now that the first troops of the Guard have made it down there, I hope it gets safer. I hope they can get people out of the city and away from the flood zone. Complaining about them now helps nobody - hold that thought for the next election.
Second, W is hardly the first president to underfund FEMA. Pick a president - pretty much any president - and you will find that FEMA has been underfunded during his administration. Not saying it's right - just that nobody gets to claim the moral high ground.
As for Bush's boneheaded remarks, unless you have been living in a cave the last several years, this should hardly come as a surprise to you. Yeah, it's annoying that the man is incapable of expressing himself with any sense of gravitas, and that he doesn't know when to stop with the folksy. He referred to Cindy Sheehan as "mom" and the 9/11 terrorists as "the folks who did this." We all know this. He should have fired his speechwriters (or, alternately, started letting them do their jobs) years ago. However, his inability to speak articulately should not be taken as some sort of indication of callous evil. Y'know that person who, no matter what the occasion, can always find some way to put his foot in his mouth? Everybody knows someone like this, and nine times out of ten the proper response is to roll your eyes and ignore the dolt. This is one of those times. Never ascribe to malice what can easily be put down to ignorance.
This is a natural disaster, not a referendum on the Bush presidency. All y'all are making this a story about Bush. It isn't, and it shouldn't be, so either go do something productive with all that energy or shut the fuck up.
Oh My God - gas is up to $3.19/gallon - it's price gouging!
I've gotten a few emails concerning this. Seriously? This is why people hate us. This morning a commentator on BBC news said that it seemed that the two basic human rights Americans really care about are the right to bear arms and the right to buy gasoline for under $2/gallon. He wasn't wrong. Between Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, there are thousands dead, and hundreds of thousands without homes or clean water or food or insulin, and yet the number one concern of Americans, after the Iraq war, is the cost to fill up the Suburu. Nice priorities.
Just so we are clear: jacking up the price of gas 10-15% when 10-15% of the available oil has just been made unavailable is not price gouging. Doubling the price of a hotel room after a day and evicting the mother, daughter, and two-day-old grandson already staying in it when they can't come up with the money (as actually happened in Baton Rouge) - THAT is gouging. That hotel owner/manager should go straight to hell, where he should burn for eternity. Slowly. That family should be given a place to sleep and as much food and medical attention as they need. The folks bitching about gas prices should suck it up and remember that we still pay only about half of what they do in Britain on a good day.
Oh, and also they should be thankful they live somewhere that the price of their morning commute is their biggest worry.
posted by Alison @ 5:11 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
-
At 8:31 PM,
TeacherRefPoet held forth...
- Yes. Correct. On all points. I could have written this, but I'm glad I didn't, since you did a better job than my poor attempt last night.
-
At 12:43 PM,
lemming held forth...
- The gas price complainers also need to trade in their SUVs, Hummers and other fuel inefficient vehicles. Remember the days when we begged Detroit to make vehicles that got more than 10 m.p.g?
The price of gasoline isn't going to go down all that much. We're now competing for oil with the developing nations. -
At 1:48 PM,
tommyspoon held forth...
- FEMA, under President Clinton, went 180 degrees from one of the worst governmental agencies to one of the best. Funding was important, but so was the competent leadership of James Lee Witt.
I miss Witt.
I miss Clinton even more. -
At 11:09 PM,
Alison held forth...
- I miss him too, tommyspoon, although it's worth noting that some of the early calls for funding to bolster those levees went out in 1998. That was under Clinton's watch, and they were denied.