Re: (off topic) United States of Shame


"Vagabond" <retoricus2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1125756455.719322.166300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> September 3, 2005
> New York Times
>
>
> United States of Shame
> By MAUREEN DOWD
>
>
> Stuff happens.
>
> And when you combine limited government with incompetent government,
> lethal stuff happens.
>
> America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death,
> looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered
> infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and
> criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening
> in America.
>
> W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye,
> bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of
> the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.
>
> Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and
> chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins.
> He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a
> minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International
> Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've
> seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of
> thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or
> dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the
> terminal.
>
> Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such
> lame "who could have known?" excuses.
>
> Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us
> by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the
> trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
>
> Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would
> spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil
> war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.
>
> Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at
> risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless
> warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.
>
> In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson
> Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that
> the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland
> security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay.
> Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are
> doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue
> for us."
>
> Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent
> of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.
>
> Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of
> Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in
> New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million.
> But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled
> highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge
> for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.
>
> Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced
> how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and
> stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to
> Katrina if they had not prepared.
>
> Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he
> trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse
> Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were
> 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina
> in the New Orleans Convention Center.
>
> Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in
> Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
>
> It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - ***
> Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at
> Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers
> chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked
> empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of
> empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make
> this administration implode.
>
> When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and
> our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when
> they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American
> ideals.
>
> When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for
> help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like
> those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700
> guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they
> shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us
> ashamed.
>
> Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

We are a country of people looking for someone ELSE to take care of us,
that's who!
That is what modern US liberalism is all about, stupid !
Who is this Maureen Dowd?
Doesn't she even know about liberalism and the changes it has wrought in the
US ?

Why does she seem suprised that the government now acts in liberal fashion?
Doesn't she know that we have a government OF the people?
Doesn't she know what kind of people liberalism creates?

Liberalism teaches us to cry until mommy and daddy give in to what we want ,
even if it is not good for us in the long run, to avoid responsibility as
much as possible, and to blame mommy and daddy for everything. Sure they
are to blame... for giving in to their children which prevented them from
being able to take care of themselves. I am not talking about individual
citizens but political representatives who did nothing to prepare, only
avoided taking responsibility, and now cry and cry for someone ELSE to take
responsibility.

Just like modern families in which the parents are children and rely on
their parents responsibility, state and local politicians are children and
rely on the federal government to supply them with the means to live and so
are dependant on the FED instead of taking fiscal responsibility , they
accept money from the FED .. and sacrifice the liberty of an adult for the
security of a child. Now the FED is like that parent still taking care of
their adult child and grandchildren.

It is such a simple and well-fitting analogy in so many cases. Parent
/child/ responsibilty / freedom.
Maureen Dowd writes for a big paper but doesn't get it?
Well, it seems a LOT of people don't get it.
It isn't that complex, it is just hard.

--Phil C

> ---
> Source: http://www.nytimes.com
>


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