Tag: Katrina

I’m not trying to say that the spill is George Bush’s fault, just like the hurricane itself was not George Bush’s fault. But the mentality that government not only can’t successfully regulate business but has no place attempting to do so, that corporate insiders know better than experts, and that people can deal with disasters on their own is a conservative one.

The problem is that conservative failures spawn more conservatives: When conservatives cripple government, and then government fails, people believe government is incapable.

Ali Frick (who is subbing for Matt Yglesias). I’d add: Which is exactly what the conservatives actively wrecking the government want to happen.

Not a Mistake

southpol:

“Tell you what, motherfuckers, when dead people are left to rot in the sun because of the incompetence of the federal government, when corpses are floating in the streets, when the President passively ignores the pleas of the governors of Gulf Coast states, when entire neighborhoods have been physically destroyed, when the federal government strands tens of thousands of people without food or water, when the federal government starts to blame the local governments, when the President praises the work of a failed, incompetent bureaucrat while a major city rots, then you can say that this is Barack Obama’s “Katrina.” But until this happens, good, sweet conservative bags of fuck who need so desperately to drag this president down, the Gulf of Mexico oil leak is a corporate-created disaster..”

The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Will Wreck Your Pathetic Ideology

(via ryking)

Also worth noting that the debacle of a Katrina “response” detailed in this quote was not a mistake. It was the logical extension of “Go Die in the Streets,” the mantra by which all GOP decisions were (and are) currently made.
It was only the palpable and forceful public revulsion at this reasoned choice that both mandated and resulted in the spasmodic, utterly demeaning to US self-image non-response that came after (heckuva job, Brownie). And it was only the torrent of fury to that response that finally, finally elicited something approaching competence and problem-solving from the administration.

On looting

Is there something fundamentally wrong with the brains of those working in the national media? How else can you explain these very highly paid individuals discussing, often in the same sentence, that people in Haiti have been without food or water for days, and then expressing shock and horror that there is “looting” going on.

Listen very carefully. I’ll take it slowly so even a Grade-A fucktard (or idiot man-child) can follow along: when you take food and water from a collapsed store, food and water that you need to survive, it’s not looting. It’s survival.
By this the media model, everyone should just die quietly right next to palette after palette of water and potted meat product. After all, that stuff doesn’t belong to me. I’ll just sit here and quietly dehydrate, thanks.

Looting, in the traditional sense, applies to a riot or, perhaps, a war. Amidst mayhem, you spot a Best Buy and say “fuck it, at least I’m getting a TV out of this” and you break in there and take it. That’s looting. Strangely enough, that sort of thing doesn’t appear to be high on the list of things happening in Haiti. Where there’s no electricity.

Let’s review:

  1. 50" flat screen TVs: looting
  2. Food and/or water: not so much. That’s called survival.

Fucking imbeciles.