I've tried to keep away from all this, because that's not hte kind of blog I have, but at a certain point you just so frustrated and angry and annoyed that you have to call these things out. I don't know who is in charge anymore, but it's getting pretty clear that unless it's somehow related to tax cuts for the wealthy or letting misguided evangelicals turn our schools to modern day madrasses, nobody's really in charge anymore. The morons who place the blame of the disaster squarely at the foot of the current administration are, as usual, idiots. Not because they're wrong, they are, but because they focus on what they're wrong about and not what they are actually right. Or, less opaquely, To blame Bush for the flooding is idiotic. The best levees will fail. No matter how well maintained or how much money we throw at them, flood control will fail. And it'll fail at the worst possible moment. No matter how much you over-engineer a problem, nature WILL find a way to defeat them in new and unique manner, although usually the old well known ways work just as well too. Several breeches took place in newly rennovated and upgraded levees, the strongest point failed. This is not Bush's fault, anymore so then it is everybody's fault. I would go far as to say that this is nobody's fault, because to count on one single line of defense that you know will fail when you need it the most is sheer insanity. Blaming Bush only distracts from the real failure (the one Bush & Co. IS responsible for): The piss poor response. So the hurricane hits, the city barely survives, and the real killer arrives (the flooding). EVERYBODY knows that the flooding kills. The public doesn't, because it doesn't make for good TV, but everybody who's anybody in disaster recovery knows that the flooding is what kills. So one would expect vast reserves of troops, supplies, and a battle plan in place to sweep in after the storm to alleviate the death toll and misery from the flooding, right? Of course not. And that seems to be the hallmark of this administration. Underestimate the true nature of the calamity, underplan the response, place blame on anyone BUT themselves, and then use the tragedy as a nice distracting cover to do something that most if not all people oppose. Tax cuts of the rich, cutting out the legs of the social safety net, awarding monopoly laws to the giant corporations, fucking up the war on terror, loss of liberties at home, making it easier for credit card companies and banks to screw us all over, loosening regulation on EVERYTHING, giving misguided evangelicals free reign. It's almost like every time a calamity arises on the horizon, the White House runs to greet it with a broad and extensive plan to pass rewards on to their wealthy political supporters And this pisses me off for two reasons. One, I supported this administration because I thought they were going to do the right thing most of the time. I thought that with the political character and morality of Bush Sr. and the Silver Fox might have had an effect on W. I was clearly wrong. The only morality at home is the commandment: Thou Shalt Sell Out HARD. Secondly, as a New Yorker, it angers me greatly to realize that the plan of action should a nuclear event occur in my beloved hometown, is that the Capital Gains Tax will be cut to effectily zero. Perhaps there's a plan in place to repeal any background check when you buy a gun. I'm sure that there's a well crafted bill that will make the estate tax cut permenant sitting in a shelf somewhere marked "In Case New York City Gets Nuked". Maybe there's a provision allowing for a 1,000 year copyright extension, making owning a bootleg anything a felony, and a constitutional Amendment removing the Public Good clause from Eminant Domain. Oh, and inbetween planning to reduce the top tax bracket to 15%, eliminating the SEC, and authorizing more Alaskan oil drilling; there might be a paragraph or two about maybe sending some bottled water to NYC for the residents to drink. Note to feds: Get off your damn asses already and send someone, someTHING, down to New Orleans. Unlike DC, NO serves a vital role in this country (It's the goddamn port city for the Mighty Miss.)!