Friday, September 02, 2005

9-11 Changed Everything

Can anyone honestly say that we have learned anything from 9/11? I can't believe the utter band of fuckups that is our federal government. This is just sickening, and now Bush is out there shifting blame for the response as "not acceptable." No shit, YOUR response was not acceptaple! But Rove sees that Bush owns this, and is probably already making the commercials putting Governor Blanco's face next to Osama Bin Laden's, anything to protect Dear Leader from what everyone can see is his total lack of leadership. I live in San Francisco and can't imagine if there was a major quake right now. Maybe we'd get water by Thanksgiving. Also, if these terrrrrists are as smart as these scaremongering liars paint them to be, what if they attack right now? We are clearly not prepared, and the whole world knows it. We can rebuild Iraq, but the people in the Superdome are dying of thirst? People in the south, do you really feel that gay marriage is more important than homeland security now? This man has failed us repeatedly and should be impeached. I don't care if aborted fetuses run under the Democratic ticket for Congress, we need to vote them in to get this maniac out of office.
Read this, and this and tell me how safe you feel.

Update:
Krugman:
Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.
...
Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."
In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.

...
- Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.
Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.
At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.
Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.
So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.


We need to get this sick sociopaths out of office.