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Breach of the levees surrounding New Orleans is one of the three most anticipated, studied, and predicted disasters the United States could ever face. It, along with a terror attack on New York, and an earthquake in San Francisco, make up the "trifecta" of disasters that people have most feared could occur.
Bush is now two for three.
His incompetence in failing to prevent the terror attack on New York, despite warnings going back years, Pentagon drills surrounding hijackers using planes as missiles, the Hart-Rudman Report, the Gore Report, Able Danger identifying Atta in 2000, sleeping on a navy ship during the G8 meeting in Italy because of the threat of suicide hijackers, and a PDB memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," was excused mainly because people mistook his war hard-on as something akin to leadership, and he and his demon corporatist spawn fanned the flames of ethnic and religious hatred to get people frothed up into a mob mentality over "whippin' Islam."
The question, then, is not whether or not there is a way to pin the blame on Democratic Mayor Nagin, promised a helicopter that never came that could have bolstered the levee before it foundered, or upon Democratic Governor Blanco, trying to cope without thirty-five percent of her state's National Guard that had been "federalized" and shipped to Iraq along with all the equipment necessary to move in high water.
The question is whether the Fortunate Son dry drunk who has never had a business success, and who destroyed the legacy of James Lee Witt at FEMA first by appointing in pure patronage Joe Albaugh, campaign manager woefully unqualified to lead that agency, then by folding it into his boondoggle "Homeland" Security bureaucracy, who doomed SELA by underfunding it to divert money to his PNAC invasion disaster (at $5.6 billion/month, the "massive" bailout authorized in special session is still less than two months in Iraq), and who let Michael Brown take over who had been fired from his last job for incompetence (and THAT was just about judging horses, for Pete's sake), will skate free yet again from responsibility for destroying our government, our democracy, our heritage, and our future because people don't have the sense they were born with to realize when they're getting completely tazered by corporatist Machiavellians bent on completely implementing a damnable version of capitalism free of all restraints, lawless by executive order, based on the moat and pillory version of feudalism dancing in their fevered minds.
Bush's "can't do" government is, by plan, yanking the rug out from under all of us while his perfumed-hanky plutocracy and his stuffed pork military-industrial complex fattens themselves on the larder built up by generations of sacrifice by my parents and grandparents, and the ordinary, TV-numbed, WWF-stunned, Fear-Factor-disgusted, reality-show-voyeuristic-handjobbing public doesn't do a damn thing about it.
Of the three disasters facing the United States, only one was truly preventable through adequate preparation.
Bush offered only 20% of what the Army Corps of Engineers said was needed for SELA in 2004. After the worst hurricane season in history, he cut that to one-sixth what local officials said they needed in 2005. For the first time in 37 years, work on the levees stopped. Stopped. The Metairie levee sank four feet. Didn't matter to the plutocracy. No money for fixin' stuff fo' po' folks.
There is enough of my child's tax money to spend $5,600,000,000.00 EVERY MONTH in Iraq. There is enough to build bridges to nowhere in Alaska.
But there's no money to fix the levee so poor people don't die horrible deaths abandoned for days by their government to drown in fecal-sludge infested water, their last moments on earth spent in frantic clawing at the inside boards of their attic, trying to once again breathe the bright air of southern Louisiana before going to meet their maker.
No money to care for the least among us.
These are the most callous and ugly people on earth, and by virtue of the power they have captured and are wielding, maybe of all time.
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