[From the diaries by susanhu. Essential information.] Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” (NPR) interviewed Douglas Brinkley, a history professor from Tulane University who was in New Orleans during Katrina. He said that he watched FEMA officials stop people from going back to rescue other people in New Orleans, because the officials were angry that those people had ignored orders to evacuate the city.
MORE BELOW:
The people who did not evacuate were mostly elderly, poor, and sick people who needed help and didn’t have anyone to give it to them. These are the people for whom government is the most important.
But they hadn’t “followed orders” and evacuated, so the FEMA officials resented them. Since they hadn’t followed orders and evacuated, they didn’t deserve to be rescued. Besides, most of them are Black.
The FEMA officials are conservatives or have been infected by the sick conservative attitudes. To them there are no ill, elderly, or mentally ill people who need help. Everyone is responsible for themselves. We are each on our own, and if we fall off the sleigh because we can no longer hold on, well, the wolves need to eat too. Compassion? Forget it. Only the strong and the wealthy are worthy of life in America.
If this is the kind of selfish, self-centered government the conservatives have brought to this country, then we don’t need the conservatives.
Let the truth come out. Brinkley is doing a great service.
This arises from the same sort of sick minds that want to do away with the social safety net. If you can’t make it on your own, too f*cking bad. It’s all your own fault. These individuals would prefer to take us back to the 1870’s, the good old days, before that meddling FDR and his kind. I mean, we wouldn’t want to offer assistance to people in need, ’cause that would be so many less dollars that could have been used in Bush’s quest to take over the world.
I simply can not tell any of you out there how contemptable I feel towards this administration. Their deeds sure do tell the whole story…..
I would love to hear those stories told out in the open to the whole world. Most of us have known how crazy and dark these ppl are and have always been. I don’t think I could even spare the spit for their faces now. Like I have always said, I want to be at the door of heaven when these ppl try to explain to the God of their belief, how they have acted here on earth. I want to see the look on their faces when they are denied entrance to Heaven for this reason. I know I am a dreamer..but that is how I feel…
Brinkley is already back in New Orleans and is collecting personal stories. His book should be out by January, he said.
He doesn’t want the incompetence and whatever it was to be covered up.
I will certainly buy this mans book for sure. I was tellimg my friends today about this book coming out and I also listened to air america this afternoon as ppl called in telling theri stories. This will be the testament that brings the bushies down I hope.
I think the adjective you want is “contemptuous”. The one you used implies that somebody should feel contempt for you. This one says that you feel contempt for another.
Someday I will get started on commas, and then nobody will be able to stand me.
Then there’s their, there and they’re.
[Sorry – but isn’t that a GREAT sentence?]
And I detest the superfluous “at” in “Where are you at?” Arrgghh!
The entire idea is carried in “Where are you?”
[This is a stale, two-day old thread so I can go OT like this, right?]
I knew I shouldn’t have stopped at the grocery store! I was listening to this interview and chose physical well-being first!
I also just read this:
Sept. 16 – “President Bush ruled out tax increases to pay for hurricane and flood recovery today, saying instead that federal spending would have to be cut to help the Gulf Coast recover.”
So who’s levee or dam or first responders or health care or wages or housing has to go next? Ain’t this where we came in?
Oh good heavens, this means that we really are all doomed. The rich keep getting richer and we all keep getting poorer as the days go by.
“The bad news is y’all are goin’ get a heck of a lot poorer.”
What’s the good news?
“Y’all aren’t gonna live long enough to worry about it.”
Of course, yesterday Tom DeLay stated that all the excess had been already trimmed from the federal budget and there was no more to trim out. It is now operating “efficiently” even by his warped measure.
Yes, I remember being bewildered by early statements by Brown to the effect that the problem was caused by people who wouldn’t evacuate…which he later changed and often repeated “couldn’t or wouldn’t evacuate.” It seemed there was a bitter, accusatory tone in his voice when he said it.
Then, one of Bush’s early statements went on about “personal responsibility” which was pretty out of sync with the pictures and reports of elderly & sick & small children dying in the days after the flood without food or water or federal aid.
This is more than callous. There is a kind of sociopathic strain to all of this, almost a will to kill or destroy the weak.
I know what you mean. it seemed as if they wanted them to die…they are all a bag of shit….for the loss of other words to say my feelings.
OK. OK. I know it is bad form, but I have to ask if the image was as powerful as I thought it was. My 38 year-old child who read this didn’t notice!
I claim it was the center of the composition, and Syniel claims he didn’t notice it!
Is there a used-kid market that I can drop him off at? I’ll let him/her whatever go cheap. ~Real~ cheap.
Susanhu, thanks for the front page. I appreciate that.
Right, mentally ill!! And I’d think the cure would be to get these lunatics out of their AC offices and assigned to those crews currently reclaiming “results” of this FEMA insanity.