Katrina's POLITICAL aftermath (keep the political discussions HERE)

Randi Rhodes is on a tear. She just said that the White House should call CNN and MSNBC's producers because clearly they're able to get there, so maybe Bush should ask them how to do it.

CLASS CARDS & DISASTER [Jonah Goldberg]

Several readers complain that it's in fact true that the hurricane will disproportionately affect poor people. I don't really dispute that in the sense most mean it. Yes, the poor will have special hardships. Obviously so. But what I objected to, and still object to, is the reflexive playing of the class card. Is it really true that some middle class retirees who heeded the advice of the government to leave town, only to watch their homes be looted after a lifetime of hardwork for a better life are suffering less than a poor person who lost his rented apartment? What's the metric for measuring this sort of suffering? What about the small businessman who worked his entire life to build something he's proud of? What about the families who lost loved ones, but had the poor taste to make more money than the poverty line?

Whatever happened to the idea that unity in the face of a calamity is an important value? We're all in it together, I guess, except for the poor who are extra-special.

this is something:

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/front2453615.183333333.html

9/1/2005
The Empty Vessel as President:
Here's the Rude Pundit's fuckin' amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Fuck all yer anti-choice, save the flag bullshit amendments. Here it goes: No motherfucker who became wealthy due to inheritance is allowed to be President. No pampered pukes who get their hands dirty only as a lark. No asshole socially-connected cocksuckers who own three, four homes, fuck, no one who owns a huge fuckin' house they call a "vacation home." Sure, sure, we may have to sacrifice a Kennedy or two along the way, but, shit, and c'mon, between George Bush I's golfing during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 (which was a double fuck-up because not only was he allegedly the President, but he was in the middle of a campaign to do it again) and now George Bush II's, well, fuck, golfing and goofin' on the guitar when a million of his citizens are displaced and over half of them are fucked for good, we can sacrifice a potential liberal or two to ensure that there's never a President Jenna.

For there he was, our goddamned President, standing there in the picturesque Rose Garden, surrounded, like Al Capone with his capos, by his cabinet, as if to say, "Don't worry - you won't have to rely on me." Having been pried away from his "working vacation" like a meth addict from an iodine factory, Bush appeared irritated that he had to talk to us last night. He smirked, he gave a campaign-like laundry list of shit heading to New Orleans and elsewhere, he told us what we already fuckin' knew from CNNMSNBCFox: that Hurricane Katrina was major, that his "folks" around him were ready to do their jobs, but, hell, at least he didn't mention how jim-fuckin-dandy Iraq is...

and he goes on for about 600+ more words. Fun vitriol.

I don't know about a lot. there's Arkansas (for obvious reasons, though they probably apply in LA as well), Tennessee (perhaps for same), Kentucky (Tennessee may apply here), and West Virginia (which went for Dukakis).

I was thinking that thread would be for more macro-level discussions about disasters, climate change, etc. More long-term stuff than Katrina politics.

maybe people really are just taking food and water, and the whole thing is another right-wing straw man. This whole "spectacle" is racist in its conception. You know when they are talking about "poor", they really mean "black" etc.

Living in Chicago, we don't see as much of this racial pornography on the news anymore, but I'm really having a flashback to the eighties with all this talk of poor black people walking around with plasma tvs or whatever (as if those are even useful when everything is covered with water and there's no electricity). Then there are always paid provocateurs (oh never mind...)

Let's see some pictures and specifics. Otherwise, I'll have to assume this is another right-wing fiction (isn't this trick getting a little old)?

for the hard of thinking UK readers, like me: it's an area the size of britain that's been devastated.

Or was the whole thing just a photo op?

i'm kinda reminded of the ep of Reno 911 where Junior drives the jewish kid to his first asian whorehouse

I wouldn't be so pessimistic about that - most people don't know that stuff because they don't need to. When the need arises, people can be amazingly adaptive.

Let's see some pictures and specifics. Otherwise, I'll have to assume this is another right-wing fiction (isn't this trick getting a little old)?

i'm not right-wing by any means, and i'm disgusted by the way things are being handled at the moment, but i did see a few news clips and hear a few confirmed reports of looters taking expensive, non-essential goods. maybe that's just the typical alarmism of cable news making mountains out of molehills, but i'm not making it up.

Like I said on the other thread, these are the people whose ideological role model, Grover Norquist has been quoted as saying that he wants to shrink the federal government down until it can be drowned in a bathtub. The administration's lack of action is not an accident or the result of poor planning or organization. The lack of a response is an accurate reflection of how Republicans view the role of the federal government.

yeah, i thought about putting it in the not-quite category with missouri, but politically it really aligns these days with other middle and southern appalachian states, coal country notwithstanding. what makes kentucky southern (if it is) and wv not?

(sorry to be off-topic)

http://corner.nationalreview.com

I read it daily because, generally speaking, it is so fucked in the head AND YET these are people who defend, are read by, talk with etc. White House folks. Ergo it's important to track these fools.

(Goldberg is in fact Jewish BTW.)

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And a quick addition to say that over there Dreher just posted this:

GUY HAS A POINT [Rod Dreher]
From an Associated Press dispatch, bad news for the president from a grassroots political analysis:

An old man in a chaise longue lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."

Its my understanding that even prior to this disaster NO had the most corrupt police force in the country, so I think you can take it for granted that "helping themselves" was par for the course for the NOPD. Footage I saw was also accompanied by a newscaster saying the cops had publicly stated they had given up trying to stop looting.

otm. the cops ARE the poor people.

as for looting, it strieks me that the looting per se isnt really a pressing issue, so much as the reported violence that is accompanying it.

wv seceded from va whereas we were just wishy-washy.

xpost guys my stepmom's niece's husband is a nola cop. but he'd probably agree with y'all about the corruption on the force.