An obviously angry Jack Cafferty on CNN:
I’m 62, I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things — I have never, ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be dropped to those people in that Superdome down there? This is Thursday! This is Thursday! This storm happened five days ago. It’s a disgrace, and don’t think the world isn’t watching. This is the government the taxpayers are paying for and it’s fallen right flat on its face, in the way its handled this thing.
CNN is also reporting that Charity Hospital in New Orleans has no security, no Guardsmen, no military or police at all.
But don’t worry — we’ve got all the troops we need to handle things.
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.
People are dying, right now, as a result of the Bush administration’s utter fucking incompetence.
…Cafferty’s not the only one who’s angry. I just can’t believe what I’m seeing on the tv. For the past couple years, critics of the administration have been trying to point out a couple of things: (1) Iraq is diverting resources from actual homeland security and (2) the situation in Iraq is almost certainly a complete cock-up. Well, the first point has been proven at far too high a price, and as for the second — they can lie about Iraq and plenty of people will believe them. Iraq’s a long ways away. But this is New Orleans, Louisianna, and we’re all watching the biggest fuckup in history play out in real time.
Just think about this: we’ve all made a lot of jokes about the Department of Homeland Security over the past four years. But apparently, the Department of Homeland Security has absolutely no plan for dealing with devastation on this scale, which is supposedly the thing we’ve all been worried about for four years.
Neither do they seem to have given much thought to the transportation of refugees after a catastrophic event. In this case, we had 24 hours notice and the vast majority of the population got out on their own. If a terrorist attack of this magnitude were to occur, it would occur without warning, and the refugee problem would be exponentially greater. But right now, they can’t even get in enough busses to get those people out of the Superdome.
It may turn out that that stupid color coded chart really is Homeland Security’s proudest achievement.
* * *
I guess this is what you get when you elect leaders ideologically committed to the notion that government isn’t good for anything.