Molly Ivins about New Orleans

[cornermouse]

http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=miv

To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.

This is not "just politics" or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.

This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics," or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or, "Eh, they're all crooks anyway."

Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the NRA would argue, "Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people." Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people.

[xchrom]

1. {un}caring government kills people all the time.

isn't that the great lesson of the depression and fdr?

what is it about the 21st century that has created so many barbarians in our civilization and what sort of dark hearted citizenry allowed them to take control?

[cornermouse]

2. I don't know.

I really don't.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Even David Brooks makes this connection. Bursting Point.

David Brooks, conservative, is very angry at Bush and calls this a bursting point like the New Orleans flood of 1927 that lead to government assistance for victims of natural disasters and partly to the New Deal:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4595766

[leveymg]

5. It took the Depression to complete the swing.

The American electorate during the 1920s was an extremely reactionary lot. It took widespread suffering for them to abandon their faith in the goodness of monopoly capitalism.

[rodeodance]

6. gov. policies have real (dead) policies!! More people need to get it!

[leveymg]

4. The Bushbots have been programmed to be mean-spirited

Since birth, they've been conditioned by parents, schools and the media that to think critically and to act independently is dangerous and is usually punished.

There's still a human side to most of them, but it is repressed.

As a result, they suffer "frustration-aggression", in the parlance of the social psychologists, and this neurosis is channeled and manipulated by savvy political advisors like Rove into the politics of nationionalism and neo-Fascism. In short, Republicans are made, not born. They are just post-modern primatives, and they are scared now, as their temples fall apart and their priests are revealed as mere mortals.

[rodeodance]

7. Bush signed the $ bill to "clean up this mess"--The imagages are

killing him!! And the images of trapped people, dead people in Wheelchairs or wrapped in a sheet to be set aside along side of a building, people wading through toxic water--these images will be engrained for a long time in peoples minds-around the world!

[izzie]

9. You are talking about the NEW GOP I am sure.

Or mayne I should say one part of that party. In a society like ours even they know one has to fund and care for what makes the society. I am not sure why they only look at aid to corp. as being all important as they seem to do. They do seem to think the plane is more important than the people who will fly on the thing. The plane came after the people who need to fly on it. why are they so mixed up on these things? Only Bush would tell people who do not have cars to not buy gas. It is like living in a mad house. :crazy:

[rodeodance]

8. recommended

[Boo Boo]

10. God forbid somebody might think one "tacky."

I'm not interested in games, blame or otherwise. Bush's actions speak for themselves. Pretending not to notice so as not to appear "tacky" is an impulse with no redeeming value---one that the Bush crew will gladly exploit.

[NMMNG]

11. Ivins rocks, as usual n/t

[NMMNG]

12. Ivins rocks, as usual n/t