President Bush agrees with me

[shalanna]

President Bush came out and said today that the federal government's response was inadequate. ("Woefully slow and lacking" was more like it, but okay.) So I'm not the only one. I'm not a crazy alarmist. The CNN reporters and the MSNBC pool photographers and I were right.

This fellow advises that if you wish to dump vitriol about how "they should have known better," don't.

bookshop writes: "Why does it feel so awful? Why did it have to come to this? To Geraldo Rivera sobbing and holding dying children? To the mayor of New Orleans all but screaming for help? Should I be relieved that the country is united in its outrage? I don't feel relieved. I just feel tired. And broken. And wrong."

Writing books and sending stuff to agents seems so pointless and shallow at the moment. I'm glad I have the obligation to go down and man the phones at the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon later this weekend. And I'm packing up some Health Kits for a local church to take down to the Astrodome. It's very little to do, but it's what I can currently handle.

Oh, and I'm not African-American--I'm German on Daddy's side and Irish-English with a smidgen of Dutch and a tinier smidgen of Choctaw on Mama's. I'm sure the "soul" comes from *somewhere*, but it's hidden further back in the family tree. Thanks for asking.

Comments

[buddhamike.livejournal.com]

You going down to the KXAS studios, or will you be doing it from somewhere else?

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

I thought we were going to Lone Star Park to answer phones. But I haven't gotten in touch with the proper people yet. I really REALLY need to DO that.

KXAS is so far away (in Ft. Worth), but that would probably be much more fun. Will you be there?

What always bugs me is that we don't get to see the opening ceremonies. We always join the telethon in progress. (If you're watching from home.) I find that the Chicago superstation WGN is pretty good about showing more of the acts. It's odd.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nymphette_/]

I work in transportation...

and woefully slow it may be, but I am not sue it WAS humanly possible to be faster... yet. There will be an investigation, and I do believe that the necessary heads with roll right out the oval office door... but honestly?

I know the geography there. Even pre-disater estimates were it'd take about 3 days to get relief there... before the levees went. Even the lakes have changed shape. There's nothing for hundreds of miles except swamp and ocean in every direction. From the inital arial shots... I said on another blog too.

Even if EVERY souther guard unit was deploy instantly following the hurricane(not activated, deployed in the area with a magic wand)... there ain't no landing strips yet. There ain't even roads and freeways. Air drop and rescue is FAR more time consuming and slow than most ever consider...

I think we'll find plenty of .. well, fuck ups. I believe there always are - and in this case they were deadly. But I also think that the media... and by exposure, many of us too... have maybe missed the biggest factor in all of this.

There just aint - or weren't when the first outrage began - no roads. : ( Those semi's and buses full of relief, men workers rood medicine... they all had come thru a swamp with NO ROADS! IF the Mayor had his 500 buses, until literally hours ago, they couldn't leave.

But too... we need to understand this...

Those levees that went were the NEW ones. Our BEST efforts god destroyed by a cat 4/5. All the money in the world thrown into the mix in the last 15 years would not have changed a damn thing.

We are at the mercy of this plant somedays... and it grieves me even more deply that instead of standing in horrified awe at the storms power, we're already blaming each other.