A Little Rant

There have been 2 tragedies. The hurricane and flooding itself and the criminally negligent response thereto. None of it has been intentional, I know, but I'm ashamed and embarassed and frightened that we didn't or couldn't do more for those people. It IS a nightmare, and the people in charge should be ashamed. People are dying needlessly.

I don't mean to go off on a rant here, but if we don't have a unified, central federal government for events like this, why do we have it? MS and LA might as well secede again if we're gonna have to rely on ourselves anyway. And I will make it my personal mission to destroy, discredit, humiliate, unseat anyone who says/hints/intimates that anyone in New Orleans/MS Gulf Coast deserves any of this because they didn't evacuate or they looted a store. Let some of these falsely self-righteous sanctimonius bastards live like these people have had to live for a couple of days and see how they do, see how they react. These are human beings, Americans, most of them poor who simply did not have the resources to get out (government checks are issued the first of the month, this happened on the 29th). Many had no way to get out. And even those who were just stubborn and chose not to leave, do they deserve to be abandoned and betrayed like this because of one stupid decision?

I still can't fully comprehend that New Orleans is gone.

Randy Newman "Louisiana 1927"

What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

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And before you start screaming that this is a Rep./Dem. issue or some sort of partisan opportunism, see the comments of Sen. David Vitter (R-LA):

3:07 P.M. - BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- U.S. Sen. David Vitter said FEMA's efforts to deal with the hurricane have been completely ineffective, and he called the federal government's response a failure.

"I think FEMA has been completely dysfunctional and is completely overwhelmed, and I don't know why. This situation was utterly predictable," said Vitter, R-Metairie. "It seems like there was no coherent plan, which I don't understand because this precise scenario has been predicted for 20 years," he said.