That was no undisclosed location. That was Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

–
Forwarded Message:
Subj: Sadly, No
Date: 09/02/2005 6:46:22 P.M. Pacific Standard Time
From: timmah420@hotmail.com
To: MarieMarie22@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)

My reply on sadly, no in case you missed it

Oh and marie… this isn’t something I say often, How dare you!

I thought your post was a joke, and then I realized the only joke here is the shriveled, blackened, pathetically poor and wizened excuse for hotdog filler you must call a heart.

Seriously… How fucking dare you spew that vile shit from your diseased mind while poeple die at this very moment. If I was a lesser person I would wish such hardship on you, but I’m a mature adult and realize that *no one* should be in the position of not knowing if anyone’s coming or if anyone cares or if you’ll starve to death while outside a gang of thugs are stealing guns and raping your friends and family in the street because Bush was on vacation a couple days too long.

Even if they are poor and black they’re still human beings you stone cold bitch.

I can see the headlines now “Small nuke detonated in middle america: Martial law declared across the country, Bush and cheyney whisked to seperate bunkers, old and infirm left to fend for themselves. Mob rule, shadow government who knows what else is possible given the way they’ve dealt with this so far.

Contracts have been handed out to corporate buddies of folks in power, not to the people who can actually do the job correctly.

Money that was previously spent on making govt agencies run efficiently was re-directed to “privatizing” efforts, because in theory, “the free market will do it better” than the govt. But when you privatize just to get contracts for your buddies rather than for efficiency, you get crap.

The guy currently in charge of FEMA has ZERO emergency management experience. He was picked for the job because he was a loyal Bushite, not ecause he had anything remotely resembling a single qualification. (Dude, you can’t say “I couldn’t have imagined it would be this bad”–Disaster planning is ALWAYS done based on the WORST CASE SCENARIO! It’s your JOB to IMAGINE shit like that.)

The different agencies are bickering and playing CYA games instead of concentrating on getting the job done. When you put incompetant people into positions they aren’t suited for, this is the shit you end up with.

Regardless of ideology or policy or politics, this level of incompetance is completely and totally inexcusable.

Which means, in this administration, that Mr. Brown is due for a Medal of Freedom…

Agreed. It’s a matter of self-preservation.

I stand corrected. But none the less apalled.

Don’t get me wrong, I love America, some of my best friends are Yanks, and I have spent quite of time there.

But the way this disaster is being handled (or rather not) just beggars belief. I saw at first hand how Sri Lanka handled the aftermath of the 26/12/04 tsunami and thatlittle third world country was a model of efficiency and basic humanity compared to what’s going on in the deep and very damp south now.

I was thinking in terms of campaign advertisements this morning. Picture this: two women having coffee. One says, “The administration has done what it could to deal with the hand it was dealt, to keep the nation safe.” (I hear this all the time from my more wingnutty pals).

The other woman says “Well, I don’t want to tell you how to vote, Susan, but the Department of Homeland Security and the Bush admninistration couldn’t deal with the hurricane in Louisiana. How do you think they would deal with another terrorist attack? I for one am going to vote for a change in the White House.”

I know it is crass to be thinking in these terms now, but Jesus, if we don’t make some big changes in 06, we’re fucked.

Of course that’s not true.

As we’re seeing, there is no national emergency/FEMA/DHS apparatus.

Last night, I saw Paula Zahn school a FEMA offical something fierce, live on air. When she finished interviewing him, she asked her next interview subject, a senator from New Orleans, if the senator had found any of the responses the FEMA guy gave even vaguely acceptable.

This morning, I just watched Soledad O’Brien ask Sanjay Gupta – who is at the hospital that keeps getting attacked by snipers – how come *he* can get into that area, but the national guard can’t.

The media may be our last hope of reviving a completely stultified, apathetic public. And it sure seems like they’re trying.

We’ve just had a meeting called for Monday morning and the email subject line was “No New Orleans here”.

So, in less than a week, NOLA has now become a worse case study for other Governments around the world.

Say what you like, it takes real talent to achieve that if you’re the world’s richest nation who’s regime has supposedly been rejigging their operations to deal with such shit for four years now.

If terrorists struck in a big way right now -like cracking a reactor containment vessel – the US’s whole national emergency/FEMA/DHS apparatus would just pop like a soap bubble wouldn’t it?

Our State Government offered on Wednesday, the same trained people-sniffer dogs and the cheap, fast, assembled-in-minutes emergency housing and water purification systems that we have pioneered, and rushed to our neighbours after last year’s tsunami. It’s been 72 hours now and the US Department of State hasn’t even acknowledged the offer, let alone said “yes please” or “no thanks, we’re right” or even “”can we get back to you?” . We could have had stuff onsite and working by now – as we did in places as far from us as Sri Lanka .

But I guess they have it all under control and so can take some time to do a little shopping as well.

However I hear the French Quarter missed the worst. I was contemplating another jaunt to the lower 48 next year and that does it. I’m be there next May injecting money into the local economy.