A cretin speaks
I quote:
Let me see if I understand this. After four days, people have decided to eat other people. This is somehow the fault of those who have not come to help them.It is reported that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive. Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying like dogs. No-one has come to help them.
Oh, wait...nobody has come to help them?
Funny, but the Red Cross and countless other charities have been funnelling money, food, blankets, and other supplies into Louisiana and the other impacted areas as fast as they can. There are huge land trains of trucks, buses, and vans that are bringing supplies and help. Canada sent emergency management personnel, who promptly left because they were being shot at by the looters!
Further - this man's concern is not for the people in New Orleans. It's for the blacks. I'm worried about the babies and little kids stuck there. I'm not worried about any particular race of kids or babies...I'm just worried about kids and babies. I'm worried about people being shot for the food they legally acquired. I'm worried about cholera. I'm worried about death. I'm worried about hunger.
What I'm not worried about is race. From what I can see about this man's (I use the term loosely - real men don't act like this...child) perspective, all he sees is race. The book he mentions on his blog is entitled: The Debt –What America Owes to Blacks. While I disagree that America owes anything to blacks, I'm astounded that this guy somehow found merit in an idea that the disaster that is New Orleans is about racism!
Here's another interesting point:
Who is it that the people blame about New Orleans (and the other stricken areas)?
Do they blame the french (I refuse to capitalize that word), for building a coastal city that is 20' below sea level? Do they blame the local government, for not utilizing the school buses that were freely available to transport these people out of the city? Do they blame the state government, for not properly planning ahead and leaving their own backyard exposed? No, they blame George Bush. Bush, who does not sit around studying the individual needs of every city in the USA, but rather evaluates the needs of the entire country.
A message to liberals:
THE PRESIDENT DOES NOT EXIST TO MICRO-MANAGE THE ENTIRE COUNTRY! HE IS HERE TO EVALUATE AND RESPOND TO GENERAL THREATS TO THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE AND NOT TO INDIVIDUAL CITIES! IT IS THE *STATES* THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO DO THAT!
I am not uncompassionate. I've sent what money I can, but cannot go and help them myself. I do what I can, where I can, when I can. What I don't do is attach race to everything I see in life. I wish to hades others would stop doing so as well. Sometimes...usually...a disaster is just as disaster, and it's not about race.
Bartleby
posted by Bartleby at 4:33 PM
9 Comments:
Although most of the affected survivors stuck in the city are black, I understand what you mean. In all fairness to the aforementioned blogger, Bush's staff directly cut from the NATIONAL budget for preventing hurricane catastrophe in New Orleans by erecting better levees, dikes, pumps, and backup generators. If you want to claim that Bush doesn't even read the budgets
he writes, fine, but his staff isn't innocent and FEMA didn't have any expertise with managing disaster because it was stocked with privatization contracts experts instead of disaster management expertise. I know you mean well and want to help people, so how about we ask for a FEMA that works in anticipation of problems instead of one that reacts slowly.
Sorry, misclicked submit too quickly. This is Colin from Bruce Bethke's blog.
Hi Colin!
My thoughts are that Bush's decisions should not pertain to invididual cities but to national level agenda. Protection of an individual city is the responsibility of local and state authorities. Protection and restoration of (several) states is the responsibility of the national authority.
In this case, he has a national agendum to deal with disasters of this type and scale. It is not his responsibility to plan for every single potential disaster for every single city (large or small). The governors and mayors are supposed to deal with that.
Bartleby
It's one thing to put city tasks in the hands of cities and another entirely to cut the Army Corps of Engineers budget down to 20% specifically for building these levees when the city requested them. FEMA had identified a hurricane in New Orleans as one of the top three worst disasters likely to happen this decade. The whole country suffers with New Orleans thanks to our global economy. I don't pin this on Bush nearly so much as the whole anti-government, pro-privatization crowd he and his ilk have brought into power.
Oh yeah, not trying to ruin your thread, by the way. I just love a good political debate. Bruce and I don't always agree either, as he's a card-carrying Republican and I'm a card-carrying Green.
*grin* Actually, this kind of thing is what I hope for. I'd reply sooner, but I'm working AND on call AND doing consulting work AND have a kid that's...well...a bit tense.
The money is good, but this week is busy busy busy.
Bart
There are certain basic assumptions you're making that I find to be flawed Colin. I'm going to make a separate post about this I think, because it bears clarification on a grander scale.
There ya go. Whut I believe 'uz spoke up on dat dere blog-thang. :)
Bart
Well of course people started eating corpses after only four days.
If you wait much longer, there's not enough Louisiana hot sauce in the world to make those corpses taste good.
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