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For some reason unbeknown to us and over which we have no control, the web site www.katrinadata.com is being redirected to this page.
To that end, we have added a list of links to the right that will hopefully prove helpful to anyone impacted by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. While the letter below is an expression of anger over the inadequate response, we would imagine that people looking for loved ones have more important issues to deal with right now. If you’re one of those people, we wish you everything of the best and hope you find who you’re looking for.
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 Dear George:
It’s me again. As I write this to you, children, parents, mothers, fathers, brothers, lovers and their faithful pets are struggling to survive in New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile and the surrounding areas.
Everyone keeps saying that it's too early to place blame. Cable news networks whores, like the pigs at MSNBC are already capitalizing on the tragedy by showing cheesy graphics accompanying solemn, September 11th-like dirges saluting the extraordinary heroes.
But guess what? There is plenty of blame to go around immediately. Right now, if America hadn’t exhausted its resources in the Persian Gulf, people here in the Gulf of Mexico might have stood a better chance.
Inevitably, as mosquitoes breed in the toxic floodwaters, and rats and other animals spread disease, while dialysis patients are dying for water and power, and the temptation of desperate humans to risk drinking the toxic sludge through which they cannot escape, more and more people will die.
There is plenty of blame to go around immediately. Right now, if America hadn’t exhausted its resources in the Persian Gulf, people here in the Gulf of Mexico might have stood a better chance.
Just think, only ten C-130’s could evacuate as many as 20,000 people a day, instead of us having to watch the same dangling woman being rescued for almost eight hours on three news networks because the evacuations are so few and far between.
Michael Brown, your Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response, should be fired immediately, as should James L. Connaughton, your Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality. While FEMA can’t be expected to have anticipated everything, the lack of preparedness for this disaster, which has been the subject of numerous documentaries and offered in dire warnings from scientists, reflects an ineptitude that will result in hundreds if not thousands of lives.
The billions and billions of dollars spent on misadventures in Iraq that have made greedy pigs like Dick Cheney richer than he ever was seem like a fantastic investment rather than researching and executing technologies that strengthen levies that would mitigate disasters. For fiscal year 2006, your budget proposed a pathetic $20 million for enhanced catastrophic disaster planning. And a whopping $2.1 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund, which provides funding to declared disasters and emergencies. Are you on fucking drugs, you goddamn idiot?
Of course, you and your administration ignore science. The massive death rate in Africa in large part owing to your retarded AIDS policy to the resignation of Susan Wood
Of course, you and your administration ignore science. The massive death rate in Africa in large part owing to your retarded AIDS policy to the resignation of Susan Wood, your director of the Food and Drug Administration's office of women's health yesterday to protest the FDA’s decision to further delay approving over-the-counter sales of a morning-after pill that would prevent unwanted pregnancies and prevent abortions. But you care as much about women in the United States as Iraqi men power-drunk on the advent of Sharia law in Iraq care about women there. (By the way, if FDA’s crooked, corrupt Lester Crawford is Plan A, America desperately needs a Plan B.)
If we weren’t over-extended fighting your war in Iraq, waged for weapons of mass destruction never found, we would be in a far better position to respond to the actual mass destruction caused by the forces of nature, and against whom we might have stood a fighting chance had we heeded the warnings and taken the necessary precautions.
The National Guard would have been deployed on the borders of Arkansas and Texas on Sunday evening, ready to assist with search and rescue in the event things went the way scientists said they would in the event of a hurricane hitting New Orleans. Instead, law enforcement officers were forced to abandon their roles in enforcing law and order, acting as first responders, causing a looting situation that rapidly and dangerously spiraled out of control.
Rich white commentators like CNN’s Nancy Grace waxed repulsion at looters who weren’t simply grabbing essentials like food, water and diapers, but TVs, electronics and shoes, -- before reverting back to the missing white teen in Aruba -- while hundreds of people in New Orleans have no idea where their entire families are, or if they’re even alive.
As if there are any homes with electricity in which looters can plug the TVs or patches of dry ground to show off sexy new shoes. Desperate people do desperate things, and in the absence of leadership, planning or resources, cannot be expected to behave in ways that might appeal to white trash TV talk hosts, who have made it big in spite of face slapping haircuts.
Bill O’ Reilly sat sanctimoniously condemning the looters, who may have stolen toiletries, but weren’t abusing loofahs in phone sex conversations with their employees while their wives waited at home. The horror of this asshole sputtering "these things will get better," -- only because they can’t get worse -- is as promising and comforting as your "help is on the way" message to those dying of thirst and lack of information at the New Orleans convention center.
Wal Mart, the gun selling retailer that abandoned its stores and allowed looters to clean them out of guns and ammunition should be forced to pay for the costs of protecting residents from gun-toting thugs as a punishment, not as a PR coup.
So while the sycophantic scum at Fox commend you for cutting your five week vacation short buy a whole two days so that you could cheerily strum on Mark Wills’ guitar at Coronado Naval Base, and then pretend you gave a shit while you flew over the devastation on an air conditioned Air Force One, probably with a Jimmy Bean in your blood stained hand, many of us see you as the lousy fuck with whom stops the buck.
With your lack of leadership and failure to protect the Americans who foolishly elected you to serve and protect them, the blood dripping from your murderous hands has breached not just the public trust, but also the levy and is flooding New Orleans, almost 20 foot deep.
Your stale line of bullshit that somehow your lying, traitorous, oil industry enriching adventures in the Middle East are making us safer here at home must be especially comforting to drowning mothers and lifeless, floating babies. Or the elderly and infirm, wandering around aimlessly with the few possessions they have left in the world with no direction and no plan. Kind of like your post-war Iraq.
You, sir, were typically a day late, and a few billion dollars short. Congratulations. Under your leadership, you’ve created a third world right here in the United States. You call the hurricane one of the worst disasters in American history. You, sure as hell, would know.
With your lack of leadership and failure to protect the Americans who foolishly elected you to serve and protect them, the blood dripping from your murderous hands has breached not just the public trust, but also the levee and is flooding New Orleans, almost 20 foot deep.
Hope you had a happy holiday, you selfish, smug fuck.
Clinton
Clinton Fein can be reached at clinton@annoy.com
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