Federal response to storm shakes view of U.S. power

World used to American might now sits shocked at national impotence
By Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post

LONDON — People around the world cannot believe what they're seeing.
From Argentina to Zimbabwe, front page photos of the dead and desperate in New Orleans, almost all of them poor and black, have sickened them and shaken assumptions about American might. How can this be happening, they ask, in a nation whose wealth and power seem almost supernatural in so many struggling corners of the world? <snip>

International reaction has shifted in many cases from shock, sympathy and generosity, to a growing criticism of the Bush administration's response to the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina. In nations often divided by dueling sentiments of admiration and distaste for the United States, many people see at best incompetence and at worst racism in the chaos gripping much of the Gulf Coast. Many analysts said President Bush's focus on Iraq has left the United States without resources to handle natural disasters, and many said Hurricane Katrina's fury mocks Bush's opposition to international efforts to confront global warming, which some experts say contributes to the severity of such storms. <snip>

In a remarkable reversal of roles, some of the world's poorest developing nations are offering help. El Salvador has offered to send soldiers to help restore order, and offers of aid have come from Bosnia, Kosovo and Belarus. The former Soviet republic of Georgia has donated $50,000 to the Red Cross, and beleaguered Sri Lanka, which has received $133 million in tsunami relief from the United States, has donated $25,000 to the Red Cross. In Beijing, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, just back from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, said officials there went out of their way to express their sympathy. <snip>

The Independent newspaper in London carried front-page headlines on Saturday that read, "Where was the President in his country's hour of need? And why has it taken him five days to go to New Orleans?" The paper also asked, "How can the US take Iraq, a country of 25 million people, in three weeks but fail to rescue 25,000 of its own citizens from a sports arena in a big American city?" <snip>

http://www.insidebayarea.com/argus/news/ci_3000739

The way the gov't treats its CITIZENS! :grr: :grr:

Not all of us are millionaires and many of us without or that have done without (and YES I AM ONE OF 'THEM'!) know what very little the gov't does to help us when we need it.

Let these other countries continue to do a LOOKY and see the REALITY. This is nothing really that damn new! The poor are hated in America as are the sick, elderly and disabled. Throw in the word black and you have the recipe for a disaster. We have seen one now, which part of the USA in next. We are everywhere!

Damn these bastards, damn them all; throw them in the new Superdome prison from hell. May they rot there and die, die die!

:kick:

.. has dealt a damaging and lasting blow to our credibility abroad ...

What has he not fucked up?

Edit: This is just a dumptruck full of icing on the cake. Remember "Shock and Awe"? That was going to cower the rest of the world into obedience? And that has turned into a textbook demonstration of how to permamently tie down and hamstring the US military? But the list goes on and on.
:banghead::banghead:

.. is unimportant.

A closely-divided country allowed the Bushistas to steal two elections -- then mostly sat on its hands through one disaster after another.

This will convince people around the world that this country is collapsing irrationally under the influence of social and economic forces nobody here really understands.

Unless we can make changes quickly and decisively, this collapse in our credibility will have terrible consequences ...

I'm pointing out that the Bushites have worked actively, if unintentionally, to accelerate the decline. Foreign nations, of course, do see that acceleration of decline and will act accordingly.

While the propaganda machine sold the "world's only superpower" nonsense, our productive capacity and capital have been shipped off to asia by corporate fast buck artists who pander ridiculous ideological panacea's such as "free trade."

As Kevin Phillip's has documented so well in his book "Wealth and Democracy" we've been in decline for thirty years with all the tell tale signs that go along with the decline of a pre-eminent world power. Primary among those signs are the vast inequities in the distribution of wealth, taxes, and income in this country which now exceed pre-depression levels of the late twenties. Improvident war making has accelerated that decline. Undermining the social contract in favor of the corporate rich has created a hollowed out society and economic system in crisis. The productive power of the nation has been delivered to Asia and replaced with a financial sector that coasts on capital accumulation financed principally by foreign lenders and an almost feudally oppressed middle class.

the imperialist boondoggle in VietNam, and started gutting the
engines of imperial power for domestic political reasons
(punishing the diobedient and enhancing their hold on the
reins of power). It's ironic, and fitting, that they are
bringing about their own demise. But not so good for the rest
of us in the meantime, and a dangerous situation to be in.

The restoration of American power requires a political
revolution (peaceful or not) to remove these parasites.

like a big hole in the story of the nation, the jfk murder remains the sinkhole which destroys all legitimate efforts to move the country ahead (notice even the man on the moon program basically added up to nothing)...the incomprehensible quality of both the reagan and now the dubia bush administrations cannot be understood w/out conceding that the jfk murder was done by the men who foisted a preposterous figurehead as reagan on the US, and now junior bush....
the repukes believe that TIME is the solution to all problems, but that's a criminal's thinking because the US is running out of time. katrina has made obvious the need to get some linkage between the government and the governed, the news media and the democratic forces that shape a nation and so on..george bush senior was part of the jfk murder plot and his ghastly kid has finished off any illusions about trying to maintain the fictions that americans pretend are real....the jfk murder was set up in NOLA, and the old bushgoat (a paid government cia agent) was there making it happen ...why anyone finds that hard to believe says they have no idea about how cheap criminals operate...taking candy from a baby was too easy in 1963, and it's too easy now