Saturday, September 3, 2005
Fire Brown, Fire Chertoff. Now.We need leadership and we have none. FEMA director Mike Brown and Homeland
Security director Mike Chertoff have failed. They should be fired. 12:38:54 PM | Please join me in sending emails and letters to your senators and representatives to ask them to call for the replacement of these two bozos. They should be held responsible for their lack of action. This is the letter I sent today: Dear Senator Dick Durbin, I was born and raised in Chicago. Until a few months ago, I lived in New Orleans with my husband who was a graduate student there. When he was called up for active duty with the National Guard and sent to Afghanistan, I moved back here to Illinois to be close to my family. I am sickened and appalled by how little regard our federal government has for my former neighbors, my friends, in New Orleans. It is a disgrace. FEMA director Mike Brown and Homeland Security director Mike Chertoff should be fired. Immediately. They are clearly incompetent and they have failed us. There are Americans dying in the streets in the same manner as refugees in Darfur. We have become the third world. I have been saddened and discouraged by the response of the Democratic Party these past months, but I am even more so now. We need leadership. Bush is clearly not capable of giving it. We need you and your brothers and sisters to step up and take control. We need you to demand answers. We need you to demand change now so that things do not get worse. There are hundreds of thousands of displaced people who need to be fed, housed, given medical care, etc. This administration is not up to the task. That's been proven this past week, as we've all cried while watching people die right in front of us on CNN. I am ashamed of this country. It has been bad enough to see my husband suffer with inadequate support in Afghanistan and to worry for his safety. Now I have to see our former neighbors suffering too, from the same sort of lack of planning and support this administration has become infamous for. They are ruining this country. They are dragging us down from the first world to the third. Please don't let it happen!! 
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A not-so-calm response to commentsI guess in some perfect world where there are no drug addicts, thieves,
rapists, or murderers, there would be no violence any time, let alone
after a tragedy. Prisoners were let out of the parish jails. There were
already criminals in New Orleans, just as there are in Chicago, Ft.
Lauderdale, Baghdad, Paris. Hell, there are criminals in Palm Springs and Malibu. It is government's job to give security to
our people. Even Bush finds this unacceptable. 12:07:44 PM | The sad truth is as soon as the troops moved in there was calm. No more shooting, no more assaults. All it took was a little authority. If they had been brought in on Tuesday, lives would have been saved. And I don't want to hear anyone say this is only the fault of the city of New Orleans. Yes, it is their fault, mostly the fault of the wealthy who have refused to pay property taxes over the years and as a result have left the city's budget gutted, but it is also the fault of our federal and state governments. It was no secret that the NOPD was understaffed and undersupported. And guess what? Those men and women lost their own homes, are worried for their own families. They needed our help sooner. Period end. And our government failed them, just as they are continuing to fail us right now. The yahoo Mike "Brownie" Brown running FEMA was fired from his last civilian job (and that had to do with show horses, believe it or not), but in Bush World, that is reason for him to be given a directorship of one of our most important federal agencies. The man is incompetent. He should be FIRED IMMEDIATELY and replaced with someone who has a clue. There are professional relief workers all over this country who know what they're doing and could run FEMA without a hitch. Instead, we have another one of Bush's buddies, another complete and utter moron, in charge and thousands have died as a result. I can't believe people are tolerating this, even in the comments on my blog. This is a disgrace. It is an outrage. Our government is behaving like one with limited resources when their resources are limitless. All of you who love "small government" or don't think government should have to do "everything" (whatever the hell that's about -- I'm sorry, but getting water and food and security to a disaster-ridden city is EVERYTHING at this moment, and hell yeah government should do it) are soon going to be living in a country you deserve, at the horrible cost of so many who wanted more and expected better from their government. We are slipping down into the third world. You all should be ashamed of your government and your country right now. It is pitiful. It is sick. And it is no fucking different than Angola, Sierra Leone, or Congo. We have people dying the same way people are dying in Darfur. And you will defend this? You think this is okay?! When you're scrambling around trying to make ends meet because this government has run our country even further into the ground, you will look up and see what has happened and ask "Why?" Foolish still, I guess, because you had the chance to acknowledge it and stop it and instead you chose to do nothing and defend the status quo. Pathetic.
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Thank you Kanye West, for speaking the truth"George Bush does not care about black people." 11:44:05 AM | You're right, Kanye. And sadly, neither do a hell of a lot of other Americans. Shame on us.
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From Musings and Migraines: The view from HoustonHow long will it be before the Astrodome becomes the Superdome? 10:32:57 AM | Apparently Lenora's sister has seen what is actually going on in Houston, and it's not good. This jives with what Rebecca told me yesterday -- no FEMA representative, no security, sick and desperate people. Now think this same scene is going to be played out across the country, as more and more of these shelters are opened without government assistance. And still, always, there are thousands stranded in floodwater-rattled Louisiana. I suppose this should come as no surprise, as the federal government has failed and continues to fail over and over again. NGOs and volunteers cannot do it all. They cannot do security. It's impossible. Government must do its job!! It does not have to be this way. This is what you get when you starve government services while simultaneously privatizing the hell out of government and therefore burdening it with a massive deficit. These crooks are dead-set on dragging us down from the first world to the third. Thanks a lot, assholes.
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What do you knowFrom the LA Times: 9:41:25 AM | The
troops, members of an elite Special Response Team from the Louisiana
Army National Guard, were the first convoy out of what was rapidly
becoming a massive military staging ground.
Their mission, simply, is to turn New Orleans into a police state -- to "regain the city," 1st Sgt. John Jewell said. [...] But when they arrived, they did not find marauding mobs. They did not come under fire. They found people who had lost everything in the storm and, since then, their dignity. Why the hell weren't they brought in on Tuesday? Even Wednesday? I'm disgusted. I want to go back to the days just a week ago when I was only worried about my husband's safety. Imagine! How stress-free that was! Today it is worry for thousands who are still stranded and suffering.
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Update New OrleansEven Fox News' Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera
know the truth and are speaking the truth, that thousands of people
have been, and continue to be, abandoned. They insist that people have
been locked into the convention center, not allowed to walk themselves
out to safety. 8:33:20 AM | The broken record is still skipping and skipping, as our government's assistance is still too slow, still too little, still too late. Food and water are good, but really they need to get people out of New Orleans, out of the surrounding parishes. What the hell is the delay?! No one can deny that class has been, and is, playing a part in this effort: At
one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school
buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel
could move to the head of the evacuation line -- much to the amazement
of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday. "How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage. I saw a group of tourists on CNN who were being rescued by private contractors. Security contractors? I don't know. Perhaps our war profiteers have become disaster profiteers, as our government continues to fail to do what they are supposed to: care for and protect our citizens. Journalists are talking about how angry people are from other parishes as all the supposed aid goes to New Orleans. It's pathetic, really, since the aid is so paultry and slow-coming to New Orleans. It's outrageous and it's criminal. (The video up top is from crooksandliars and Seriously Ill pointed me there in a comment.)
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A sliver of hope for some, not even a glance for othersA deluge of troops and water and food came into the city today,
and now the streets around the Superdome and the convention center are
calm. Much of the city is still in chaos, but at least there are
slivers of security, places where there is an authority to administer
food and water and to keep the rif-raf from the masses. 12:37:57 AM | Imagine how many lives would not have been lost if those troops had arrived Tuesday, or Wednesday, or even yesterday. It's heartbreaking. Not all New Orleanians are murderers, rapists, thieves. The vast majority are like the rest of us, wobbling along on the birth-life-death trajectory by helping each other, loving each other. It is true even in the middle of our city-turned-black hole: Leroy
Fouchea, 42, waited in the sweltering heat for an hour to get his
ration -- his first proper food since Monday -- and immediately handed
it over to a sickly friend.
He then offered to show reporters the dead bodies of a man in a wheelchair, a young man who he said he dragged inside just hours earlier, and the limp forms of two infants, one just four months old, the other six months old. "They died right here, in America, waiting for food," Fouchea said as he walked toward Hall D, where the bodies were put to get them out of the searing heat. There are reports of thousands still stranded on rooftops in Lakeview, Mid-City, and elsewhere, and thousands more huddled around concrete underpasses and along interstate 10. The military says it will start to evacuate the convention center tomorrow, but that it may take days to get everyone out. Meanwhile, though, there is water, there is food, for some at least. Finally. And if anyone is still wondering why people stayed, Reuters hammers in the thunderclap truth, again: Most
of the victims were poor and black, largely because they have no cars
and were unable to flee the city before Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast.
The disaster has highlighted the racial and class divides in a city and
a country where the gap between rich and poor is vast.
Perhaps that will be the story in the end, finally. A hell of a long time coming. According to CNN's Dr. Gupta, haggard and flattened on the air tonight, there are still patients waiting to be evacuated from Charity Hospital. I've not heard any mention of Tenet or Touro or St. Charles in the reports. Has anyone? Beside the patients and staff who may still be stranded at these hospitals, there are thousands more people stranded and on the verge of death in St. Bernard, Plaquemines, and Jefferson parishes who need to be rescued. So many have slipped through the cracks; I shutter to think how many are still overlooked, how many have not even been glanced at yet.
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Last update: 10/2/05; 7:47:23 PM .
