Today the Rachel Maddow show did a piece on Katrina. Like recaps of the Iraq war, you find yourself screaming at the TV, “How can anyone in this country want a repeat of this!?” Fantastic academics and journalists have described in grating detail the horrible little nitwits that were given jobs in Iraq that affected the lives of millions on no other basis than that they were Christian Fundamentalists, the worst kind of cronyism; at least with cronies in it for the money, there is a rational basis for the relationship, but when it’s religious, you are totally at sea.
But the exemplar of the disaster that was the Bush administration’s reliance on cronies was good ol’ Brownie. Michael Brown had NO experience except sipping drinks at the country club with the Bushes. Rachel showed a clip from a campaign film by the Jeb Bush people and by god there was good ol’ Brownie standing right next to Jeb. NO SHAME! W is supposed to go to N.O. tomorrow. Yes, it would be ugly if someone were to throw that sob off a roof, but would it not be a justifiable act? The haughtiness, the elitism, the arrogance of all the Bushes is on show when W has the nerve to show his face in N.O.
These are the people who denigrate government. You don’t like government? Then please, do all of us a favor and stay out of it. They never will b/c that’s where they get their fortunes, by ripping off the American taxpayer. What genius decided to use contractors to guard our embassies? Could it be someone whose brother or cousin or wife owned the company contracted with? But most Americans will ignore that as long as someone shows up with brass on or a weapon or just tough talk. I saw again W standing beside Brownie with his arms akimbo as if he had six-guns on his hips. What a phony piece of crap W is. His father at least was an airman in combat and functioned in government roles, but how could H.W. have served in government under a president who said government is not the solution but the problem itself. If you don’t like government, stay out of it.
New Orleans was the cultural heart of America. I know New York or San Francisco is supposed to be, but what those cities have cities all over the world have. What N.O. has is and here I must insist on the original meaning of this word unique. Nowhere else in the country or in the world was a culture like that of N.O. created. People who were reduced to being whores and pimps and preachers and street musicians created not just a music but a culture that has come to dominate the world. That takes nothing away from the arts of India or Europe or Japan or even of Africa itself, but what happened in N.O. was like a fine wine or a scrumptious stew rather jambalaya that is unrepeatable. Ned Sublette has written beautifully and factually about the origins of N.O. culture (The World That Made New Orleans, The Year Before the Flood, and others). N.O. was left to rot for one reason: its dominant population was Black.
Obama said today that what happened in N.O. was not supposed to happen in the U.S. Maybe Indonesia, the Philippines, probably Bangladesh, but not the U.S. Well, it happened in the Bangladesh part of the U.S. Good ol’ Brownie said on the 10th anniversary that people should not rely on the government when disaster strikes. Bill O’Reilly said people should stay in school so they don’t wind up on a roof waving HELP signs. It is not possible for me to generate the words to express how I despise these people. Trump may want illegal aliens out of the country, but I want those people out of the country (thus my call for a resurrected Confederate States of America). To test their IQ let’s have a quiz…………
If you are an independent person and you live in an area with other independent persons and a big storm comes and wreaks havoc, what do you do? You band together and aid each other and do reconstruction and then planning to avert as much damage as possible in the next storm. THAT IS GOVERNMENT!!