This Is Not America

There aren't really words to describe the situation in New Orleans. "Rapidy Deteriorating" has been used for two days now, and still, where the hell is the navy? Desperate has been used countless times, and still people wait for hours for a bottle of water, line up for busses to deliver them from hell, and no one seems to be in charge. Where are the resources of the most powerful nation on earth when its own citizens are facing death, disease, and dehydration?

There are unconfirmed rumors going around DC that there are hundreds of dead bodies in the Superdome, some of them babies. When you appoint large campaign donors to positions of responsibility in government, maybe it's best to put them in charge of steroids in baseball, or flag burning issues, and leave emergency management to people who actually have experience.

This is from the NY Times:

Martha A. Madden, former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, said she believes a critical systemic breakdown occurred the moment the levee broke. She said contingency plans have been in place for decades but were either ignored or improperly executed. Madden, now a national security and environmental consultant, said the lack of immediate federal help, specifically in the form of military assistance, was "incomprehensible." "How many people are going to die, per hour, before you get 40,000 troops in there?" Madden asked yesterday. "I think it has cost lives. . . . They can go into Iraq and do this and do that, but they can't drop some food on Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now? It's just mind-boggling."

The word that has not been used yet to describe the situation in New Orleans is ClusterF--K.

And you have to wonder, if this were happening elsewhere, say someplace like the Hamptons, would the response be different? On CNN, have you seen any white people wading through waist deep water carrying babies through streets contaminated with the bloated bodies of the dead? I think I saw one. The people who could afford to own a car got out, the ones taking public transportation did not.

This is not America. Or maybe it is. Maybe this is the place where the poor and disenfranchised are condemned to drown in a hell that we have created for them because they weren't smart enough or ambitious enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. As a nation, we have the capability to put people in space, we can send troops all over the world. We can send swift boats up the river in far away places, but here at home, we can't save our selves, our own citizens.

In Washington there are meetings happening, meetings about how we will deliver oil to the country, meetings with Greenspan about emergency economic measures, oil stocks rise through the roof and people worry how they will drive to work on 12 miles per gallon. Meanwhile our fellow Americans are waist high in danger, children, and old people, regular folks who are waiting for us to drop some bottled water, or give them a lift out of this hell that they live in.

This is not America. This is someplace else.

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