The Guardian - Why did President Bush do so little in response?

Thursday September 1, 2005 - The Guardian
'I'm just glad I saw it' - New Orleans was the city of jazz, Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, the place where the US Bible Belt came unbuckled. Former New York Times editor Howell Raines laments the destruction of the Big Easy, and asks: why did President Bush do so little in response?

Unlike thousands of American families, my kin and I received at least one precious splash of good news from New Orleans. My daughter-in-law Eva Hughes Raines loaded her three-year-old daughter Sasha and the family pets into an SUV and fled town a full day ahead of the evacuation order. My son Jeffrey and his mates in Galactic, one of the city's better known funk bands, were performing in Seattle, watching from afar as Katrina inundated their homes in the US's most distinctive city. Soon the little family will arrive here in the Pocono mountains in Pennsylvania where we will wait, for weeks or months, to see if their antique neighbourhood of distinctive "shotgun houses" can be made habitable again.

In the personal realm, there is no relief like the relief arising from the safety of loved ones. In the civic realm, there is no communal grief quite like that kind so well known to Londoners and New Yorkers from past disasters, the sorrow of watching as a beloved city is hammered by an unstoppable malice. Millions around the world now know about the inundation of the famous "bowl" formed by the city's levees. What may need a little explaining is why New Orleans has been for generations of Americans a golden bowl of memories, both sacred and profane.
In colonial times, it was the one American city where Afro-Caribbean and Creole culture enjoyed at least a measure of tolerance under a succession of masters - Spanish, French, British and American. In 1814, it was the site of the United States' most complete victory over the Redcoats, a victory all the sweeter because it was crafted by the raw Celtic cunning of our most quintessentially American president, Andrew Jackson, and the Gallic conniving of his pirate ally, Jean Lafitte. Even the handful of Americans who died at the battle of New Orleans did so in Mardi Gras style, dancing atop the barricades before the last of the British snipers had skulked away.

For millions of Americans who grew up in strait-laced towns, the Big Easy has always been the city to dance, the one Southern place where the Bible Belt came unbuckled. A hundred years ago, the Storyville section was America's best place for the world's oldest profession and the birthplace of America's best contribution to world music, jazz. Like millions of other young people in the preacher-haunted Southland, I bought my first legal drink in the French Quarter. We went for the booze, and in that world of cobbled streets and hidden gardens, some of us glimpsed the glory and costs of pursuing art or individualism.

Article continues -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1560149,00.html

he never has and never will.

he is one of those people completely devoid of empathy and compassion.

.

Four days post-disaster, and the Navy has only been authorized to dispatch ONE hospital ship (The "USS Comfort"). There are still not enough life rafts to even help 1% of the victims. FEMA would be on the case except when they opened the doors to the supply closet, they found it had been raided for Bush's recreational war. And there has been NO significant leadership response from Bush except to tell the victims to "be patient".

Patience, my ass. Let's see how patient the Boy-King is when he receives the Articles of Impeachment.

--p!

but when, oh when

I'd say about 4 years TOO LATE.

but when, oh when

time to get a bit of revenge

A few years ago I read in a conspiracy theory magazine that part of the agenda of the "New World Order" was to reduce the world's population.

It seems far-fetched but when you look at policies like
discouraging condoms from being used in HIV/AIDS prevention, ignoring global warming, virtually no planning for disaster prevention and only a lukewarm response after they've happened, starting wars etc etc...it starts to make you wonder...