Left Behind

New Orleans is a city that is 67 percent black. It is also a very poor city. The slow, meandering, inept and deadly reaction of the state and federal governments to the unfolding crisis speaks eloquently about this country's relationship with its poor, its black.

It was like watching pictures from Mogadishu, Ethiopia, Niger, Sudan. Black people begging for food. Black kids with distended bellies and eyes bulging from dehydration. Black people living in squalid refugee camps with inadequate sanitation, food, water. I've seen it before. 5,000 miles away. How utterly shameful.

FEMA lied, dissembled, spun what they didn't do. The conservatives didn't say shit about the inept administration response to the disaster, resulting in dying kids and elderly. Again, mostly black ones. When that one brain dead white woman was going to be taken off life support, they almost rewrote the fucking constitution to stop it. All Dennis Hastert could bring himself to do was to say no one should bother rebuilding New Orleans. Oh, and let's repeal the estate tax. The liberals aren't doing shit either really, but they weren't the ones claiming a direct line to God and righteousness for the last decade.

Our president will go down in history as a world class mediocrity. What he lacks any gravitas and leadership ability, he replaces with a clumsy and misguided sense of entitlement. As New Orleans drowned and died, I saw him eating cake. He was supposed to let us eat the goddam cake. Clinton would have been there immediately, comforting with grace and sympathy. Five days after the disaster, W showed up in Biloxi and New Orleans as if he was doing the survivors a favor, saving them. Apparently that involved spewing non sequiturs and kissing or pawing victims excessively. The following exchange from daily kos says it all:

Bush to women: "There's a Salvation Army center that I want to, that I'll tell you where it is, and they'll get you some help. I'm sorry.... They'll help you....."
Woman 1: "I came here looking for clothes..."
Bush: "They'll get you some clothes, at the Salvation Army center..."
Woman 1: "We don't have anything..."
Bush: "I understand.... Do you know where the center is, that I'm talking to you about?"
Guy with shades: "There's no center there, sir, it's a truck."
Bush: "There's trucks?"
Guy: "There's a school, a school about two miles away....."
Bush: "But isn't there a Salvation center down there?"
Guy: "No that's wiped out...."
Bush: "A temporary center? "
Guy: "No sir they've got a truck there, for food."
Bush: "That's what I'm saying, for food and water."
Bush turns to the sister who's been saying how she needs clothes.
Bush to sister: "You need food and water."

You gotta be fucking kidding me.