(no subject) [jwaneeta]

My blundering, inarticulate attempt to muse about God's nature and mystery re the New Orleans catastrophe enraged some people I really like and respect, and I feel like shit about it. Everyone is feeling horrible about the disaster, and I deeply regret adding in any way to the negativity.

I honestly thought it was a optimistic thought, which shows how utterly clueless I am, and ... never mind, I'll just make it worse. There's no sense in trying to clarify what I think, because I clearly suck at that. The infuriating opinion has been deleted and replaced with an apology, and this is another. Things are bad enough.

On the disaster front, I'm now at the stage where I'm forced to wonder if the administration wants those people to die. That's how furious and paranoid I've become. Does FEMA consider them expendable? Or is the government sort of willing to save them, as long as it doesn't cost too much? Why else the atrocious delay? Was FEMA shopping around for the best deal on buses? The cheapest contractor? It's not like the victims are on the other side of the world, they're in freaking Louisiana, and we have a lot of motherfucking buses in this country. Something stinks, and FEMA heads should roll.

Oh, God. I'm going to take a sedative and watch Spiderman. I promise that if I ever rise on the stepping stones of my dead, mortified, crimson-faced LJ self, I'll post something positive. Pinky swear.

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Oh, honey, please don't feel bad about anything you've done. You donated blood, and you've worried and thought. You're trying to cope, just like everyone else.

I don't think the administration wants people to die, I think it's just their culture, where making decisions don't come quickly or easily, and they aren't comfortable acting spontaneously and trying Plan B when Plan A doesn't work. The non-governmental people, like the staff of the hospitals and the hotel management, are making do and finding some way to cope. But that's foreign to government philosphy, where things have to be signed off on and vetted.

Of course, the fact that even gov't people in an emergency service think this way is incredible, but the head of FEMA's been on every talk show in creation today, and it's clear he does. It's also clear he thinks his job is public relations, since he's apparently done nothing but give interviews.

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It's also clear he thinks his job is public relations, since he's apparently done nothing but give interviews.

I am normally a very even-tempered person, but I nearly hit Hulk Smash! levels earlier when he was on CNN snarking about how maybe next time people should listen when they're told to evacuate. As the network is showing video footage of elderly people in wheelchairs and impoverished mothers with newborns. That really didn't do much to raise my opinion of his competence or his compassion.

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The government seems to be moving into full scale blame-the-victim mode because its unwilling to admit its own incompetence. Expected, but still infuriating.

I don't think I saw that particular interview, or not all of it, but it seemed like every time I flipped a channel this evening, he was there, and every time I checked a blog during the day, he was being quoted.

I wouldn't mind if he had a competent subordinate running things, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

(deleted comment)

Hanging is too good for him.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.fema.brown/index.html

Fucker.

"I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans," he said.

See, this is what makes me think the black-hearted bastard might also be a little crazy. How can he feign to not know that a lot of people had no means? How? The instant the evac order went out, every story noted that the aged, the infirm and the very poor had no means to leave, and even then people were asking: why not send in trucks, buses, ferries? How can he pretend he didn't hear what every viewer in the US heard? He has to be defective in the head.

Brown was upbeat in his assessment of the relief effort so far, ticking off a list of accomplishments: more than 30,000 National Guard troops will be in the city within three days

*emits first blue cussing streak of the day* That shit. Everybody knows the Guard is there -- but they're NOT HANDING OUT SUPPLIES or EVACUATING WITH ANY KIND OF DISPATCH. They seem to have orders to stop looting and maintain order, no more -- the victims need food, water, and a ride the hell out there. Troops simply being there doesn't mean squat -- but he repeats it, like a god damned parrot, every time he gets his smug, facile, odious self onscreen, which seems to be every five minutes.

I'm writing to my congressman. It may be wasted effort (I don't think much of my congressman) but somebody needs to start clamoring for an investigation and accountability.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-praises-fema-director.html

I still have no words. And that's probably good, because they wouldn't be ones my mother would approve of.

He was interviewed by Koppel on Nightline and it was surreal. He's either deliberatly lying or mad. Or the stupidest man on earth.

FEMA BOOBY: The plan is in effect and rescue operations are going forward. We have provided food and water to everyone at the Convention Center.

KOPPEL: With respect, sir, you have not.

FEMA BOOBY: We have.

KOPPEL *heatedly* Sir, the surviors at the Convention Center -- our reporters --

FEMA BOOBY: Uh, I meant the Astrodome. We've given people at the Astrodome food and water.

KOPPEL *incredulous* Sir, you told people to go to the Convention Center. They gathered there in the expectation that supplies would be waiting.

FEMA BOOBY: Now, really -- I -- I don't know that promise was made.

KOPPEL, overwhelmed by such obdurate stupidity, declines to ask why the fuck FEMA would direct survivors to a location FEMA never intended to supply with the barest means for the preservation of life. I, for my part, shriek into my couch pillow and heartily wish the FEMA BOOBY dead. By public hanging.

You needn't apologise for your faith. People are upset and fuses are short.

::hugs you::

Yeah, but that was the stupid of it. If I had any brains, I would never have started talking about God and Suffering in such a charged atmosphere. It's one of the toughest subjects in the world, even when life is normal. Dumb.

(sigh) Don't beat yourself up because I lost my temper. That's my problem, not yours.

Well, for my part I'm sincerely sorry that I added to your distress. We all feel rotten; nobody needs to feel more rotten because of lame, ill-timed and badly-expressed philosophy. Sorry.

On the disaster front, I'm now at the stage where I'm forced to wonder if the administration wants those people to die. That's how furious and paranoid I've become. Does FEMA consider them expendable? Or is the government sort of willing to save them, as long as it doesn't cost too much? Why else the atrocious delay? Was FEMA shopping around for the best deal on buses? The cheapest contractor? It's not like the victims are on the other side of the world, they're in freaking Louisana, and we have a lot of motherfucking buses in this country. Something stinks, and FEMA heads should roll.

And not just FEMA.

Sunday night I watched the Weather Channel. They spelled out, in excruiating detail, in clear, simple language, with bullets, the damage Katrina was going to do, as a category 5 hurricane about to slam into New Orleans. They stated that every levy would breached (not just the two that were actually breached after Katrina shifted slightly East), the entire city under water, thousands of homes and buildings destroyed, millions homeless, and of course, everything we're seeing now. So, it's not as if the catastrophic damage came without warning. This was no Tsunami that we couldn't see coming in time to prepare for.

Why didn't the Federal goverernment have the National Guard and US Army standing by and ready to move in to the stricken areas as soon as the storm passed? Why wasn't a relief strategy organized before hand and ready for immediate implementation? I know that it does no good at this point to hurl accusations and cast blame (although I understand the head of FEMA was blaming the folks that "chose" not to evacuate), but it's hard not to, watching that footage and hearing the reports, and being unable to do anything to help other that send a few dollars. This tragedy is so big that I can't quite wrap my head around it.

Sunday night I watched the Weather Channel. They spelled out, in excruiating detail, in clear, simple language, with bullets, the damage Katrina was going to do, as a category 5 hurricane about to slam into New Orleans.

For real. I'm a weather freak, and TWC has been running animated simulations of the New Orleans doomsday scenario for years.

Why didn't the Federal goverernment have the National Guard and US Army standing by and ready to move in to the stricken areas as soon as the storm passed? Why wasn't a relief strategy organized before hand and ready for immediate implementation?

Exactly. For the love of God, why? And it still begs the question of why it's been three days, and trucks have come and trucks have gone, and still nobody in authority knows his ass from a hole in the ground. At one hospital they took the most critical patients to the roof, having been told evac helicopters were on the way, and waited there all day and all night and into the morning. Patients began to die. "We thought they were coming," a angry, exhausted doctor told a reporter. "They said they were coming, but then the fed pulled the plug." And neglected to inform the hospital they weren't coming.

This is beyond ... it's negligent homicide, practically. Somebody needs to answer for this.

Excerpts from an article in today's NYTs; government officials from the President on down all claiming "no one" expected the levies to be breached. What a load of crap. The Weather Channel expected and announced it. Anyone tuning into TWC for news of the iminent hurricane heard and saw their dire announcements that all seven levies (as was believed as of Sun evening)would be breached. I wish the NYT article had countered the government's "no one expected" defense with this information. Still, the article is plenty damning as it stands.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/national/nationalspecial/02response.html?th&emc=th

Disaster officials, who had drawn up dozens of plans and conducted preparedness drills for years, had long known that the low-lying city was especially vulnerable. But despite all the warnings, Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed the very government agencies that had rehearsed for such a calamity. On Thursday, as the flooded city descended into near-anarchy, frantic local officials blasted the federal and state emergency response as woefully sluggish and confused.

In 2000, they studied the impact of a fictional "Hurricane Zebra"; last year they drilled with "Hurricane Pam."

Neither exercise expected the levees to fail. In an interview Thursday on "Good Morning America," President Bush said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." He added, "Now we're having to deal with it, and will."

Sweetheart, I didn't read the post you've now deleted, but apologists for Divinity tend to come to sticky ends, you know that. Horrible things happen and the survivors are left to grieve. This is not news. We have Job as an exemplar, and 'curse God and die' just isn't an option for either of us.

I'm sorry you were hurt; I'm sorry the people in New Orleans were hurt and are now desperate (at least some of them). I can't speak to them individually, as I can you. Be at peace. Things are totally screwed up but all will be well, and well, and very well in ways now inexplicable. Or so I believe....

{{{hugs}}} for you.

Be at peace.

Thanks. I completely understand the anger and I wish I'd kept my mouth shut... but you can't unring the bell. Maybe it'll teach me to be wiser.

I really hope whoever's responsible for the New Orleans debacle swings. They need to lose their jobs, lose rank if they're in the military, never work in public service again. Justice would dictate they be stranded in a stinking swamp of effluvia and left to perish of thirst, but I'd settle for very public ruin. There needs to be an investigation, and the decision-makers need to be broken.

I'm feeling both incredibly sad and incredibly disgusted by the New O. refugees. You telling me there's not ONE helicopter with Evian able to fly over the freakin' Superdome?? Just horrible. Meanwhile I'm mulling my anger by donating clothes.

oops make that disgusted by the refugees' situation, not the people.

As long as I live, I'm going to remember the image of Air Force One flying high, untouched and untouchable, over the drowning city. In a trice it was back in Washington, and Bush was telling the cameras everything was shipshape and operations were running. A day later, two days after that godlike flyover and sunny report, conditions continued to deteriorate. Do they even have a TV in the White House?

But you're absolutely right. Doing is better than fuming. :}

Don't even get me started on the level of loathing I have towards our current shameful administration. Bush makes me ill, from the day he stole the first election. Just our rotten luck that the worst foreign attack and natural disaster in 200 years to hit home happened during his "reign." Just fucking awful.

Bush makes me ill, from the day he stole the first election

What an experience that was. I'd never been political before that, but I felt sick, actually sick, for two days. The sense of absolute disaster -- the presentiment of continuing disaster for our country, for civil liberty, speech, rights, peace, us. The blinding, unavoidable conviction, when I read the headlines about the Supreme Court's decision, that we had all been sold and Democracy was a lie.

The presentiment seems to have been fairly on.

Wait, I don't want to get started either. Not just tonight, can't deal. :} I did write some more emails and letters to Congressmen/Reps today, in the line of doing rather than fuming.