Balls 2
The Democratic Party seems to have found some as well
Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) gave the following speech today on the House floor during a special session to provide relief money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina:
“This amount of money is only a fraction of what is needed and everyone here knows it. Let it go forward quickly with heart-felt thanks to those who are helping to save lives with necessary food, water, shelter, medical care and security. Congress must also demand accountability with the appropriations. Because until there are basic changes in the direction of this government, this tragedy will multiply to apocalyptic proportions.
“The Administration yesterday said that no one anticipated the breach of the levees. Did the Administration not see or care about the 2001 FEMA warning about the risk of a devastating hurricane hitting the people of New Orleans? Did it not know or care that civil and army engineers were warning for years about the consequences of failure to strengthen the flood control system? Was it aware or did it care that the very same Administration which decries the plight of the people today, cut from the budget tens of millions needed for Gulf-area flood control projects?
“Countless lives have been lost throughout the South with a cost of hundreds of billions in ruined homes, businesses, and the destruction of an entire physical and social infrastructure.
“The President said an hour ago that the Gulf Coast looks like it has been obliterated by a weapon. It has. Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction.
“Our indifferent government is in a crisis of legitimacy. If it continues to ignore its basic responsibility for the health and welfare of the American people, will there ever be enough money to clean up after their indifference?
“As our government continues to squander human and monetary resources of this country on the war, people are beginning to ask, “Isn’t it time we began to take care of our own people here at home? Isn’t it time we rescued our own citizens? Isn’t it time we fed our own people? Isn’t it time we sheltered our own people? Isn’t it time we provided physical and economic security for our own people?” And isn’t it time we stopped the oil companies from profiting from this tragedy?
“We have plenty of work to do here at home. It is time for America to come home and take care of its own people who are drowning in the streets, suffocating in attics, dying from exposure to the elements, oppressed by poverty and illness, wracked with despair and hunger and thirst.
“The time is NOW to bring back to the United States the 78,000 National Guard troops currently deployed overseas into the Gulf Coast region.
“The time is NOW to bring back to the US the equipment which will be needed for search and rescue, for clean up and reclamation.
“The time is NOW for federal resources, including closed Army bases, to be used for temporary shelter for those who have been displaced by the hurricane.
“The time is NOW to plan massive public works, with jobs going to the people of the Gulf Coast states, to build new levees, new roads, bridges, libraries, schools, colleges and universities and to rebuild all public institutions, including hospitals. Medicare ought to be extended to everyone, so every person can get the physical and mental health care they might need as a result of the disaster.
“The time is NOW for the federal government to take seriously the research of scientists who have warned for years about the dangers of changes in the global climate, and to prepare other regions of the country for other possible weather disasters until we change our disastrous energy policies.
“The time is NOW for changes in our energy policy, to end the domination of oil and fossil fuel and to invest heavily in alternative energy, including wind and solar, geothermal and biofuels.
“As bad as this catastrophe will prove to be, it is in fact only a warning. Our government must change its direction, it must become involved in making America a better place to live, a place where all may survive and thrive. It must get off the path of war and seek the path of peace, peace with the natural environment, peace with other nations, peace with a just economic system.”
Full text
Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) gave the following speech today on the House floor during a special session to provide relief money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina:
“This amount of money is only a fraction of what is needed and everyone here knows it. Let it go forward quickly with heart-felt thanks to those who are helping to save lives with necessary food, water, shelter, medical care and security. Congress must also demand accountability with the appropriations. Because until there are basic changes in the direction of this government, this tragedy will multiply to apocalyptic proportions.
“The Administration yesterday said that no one anticipated the breach of the levees. Did the Administration not see or care about the 2001 FEMA warning about the risk of a devastating hurricane hitting the people of New Orleans? Did it not know or care that civil and army engineers were warning for years about the consequences of failure to strengthen the flood control system? Was it aware or did it care that the very same Administration which decries the plight of the people today, cut from the budget tens of millions needed for Gulf-area flood control projects?
“Countless lives have been lost throughout the South with a cost of hundreds of billions in ruined homes, businesses, and the destruction of an entire physical and social infrastructure.
“The President said an hour ago that the Gulf Coast looks like it has been obliterated by a weapon. It has. Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction.
“Our indifferent government is in a crisis of legitimacy. If it continues to ignore its basic responsibility for the health and welfare of the American people, will there ever be enough money to clean up after their indifference?
“As our government continues to squander human and monetary resources of this country on the war, people are beginning to ask, “Isn’t it time we began to take care of our own people here at home? Isn’t it time we rescued our own citizens? Isn’t it time we fed our own people? Isn’t it time we sheltered our own people? Isn’t it time we provided physical and economic security for our own people?” And isn’t it time we stopped the oil companies from profiting from this tragedy?
“We have plenty of work to do here at home. It is time for America to come home and take care of its own people who are drowning in the streets, suffocating in attics, dying from exposure to the elements, oppressed by poverty and illness, wracked with despair and hunger and thirst.
“The time is NOW to bring back to the United States the 78,000 National Guard troops currently deployed overseas into the Gulf Coast region.
“The time is NOW to bring back to the US the equipment which will be needed for search and rescue, for clean up and reclamation.
“The time is NOW for federal resources, including closed Army bases, to be used for temporary shelter for those who have been displaced by the hurricane.
“The time is NOW to plan massive public works, with jobs going to the people of the Gulf Coast states, to build new levees, new roads, bridges, libraries, schools, colleges and universities and to rebuild all public institutions, including hospitals. Medicare ought to be extended to everyone, so every person can get the physical and mental health care they might need as a result of the disaster.
“The time is NOW for the federal government to take seriously the research of scientists who have warned for years about the dangers of changes in the global climate, and to prepare other regions of the country for other possible weather disasters until we change our disastrous energy policies.
“The time is NOW for changes in our energy policy, to end the domination of oil and fossil fuel and to invest heavily in alternative energy, including wind and solar, geothermal and biofuels.
“As bad as this catastrophe will prove to be, it is in fact only a warning. Our government must change its direction, it must become involved in making America a better place to live, a place where all may survive and thrive. It must get off the path of war and seek the path of peace, peace with the natural environment, peace with other nations, peace with a just economic system.”
Full text
posted by phylos @ 20:24
2 Comments:
*Sigh*... Half of Kucinich's talking points contradict the other half, and quite a few make no sense at all. "Peace with the environment"? That means voting against flood-control appropriations. What's Kucinich's voting record on that issue? He trusts that you (and of course the media) won't check. I do believe I'll check that out myself.
Kucinich may not be aware that the levees around Nawlins have been designed to withstand a category 3 hurricane for decades (then again, maybe he's knowingly lying). Nobody in office ever expects a 100-year storm on his watch; that's because the mean time between 100-year storms is 100 years, like it says. It's infantile to blame a century of buck-passing on Dubya.
A lot of people screwed up here. Legally, of course, the immediate responsibility in these cases lies with local government. It's the law. We have laws in this country. They may be inconvenient, but they really do matter, not only in practice, but also in principle (no, I'm not going to waste my breath trying to explain the concept of "principle" to a lefty). The federal government can't just send troops into a state and seize control. State governments are not subordinate to the federal government in any conventional chain-of-command sense. Bush is not Blanco's boss. She doesn't report to him and he doesn't give her orders; if he tried to force her to take his orders, that would be grounds for impeachment, if not hanging to the nearest tree. (I know, I know, this is news to you. You're a lefty. All you know about US history is a vague notion that Christopher Columbus and John Kennedy wrote the Constitution at Gettysburg, on July 4, 1976, or something. But you really should try to learn about our system of government and its origins, however much you prefer emotion to facts). As long as the left doesn't run this country, we still have elections, and that's how Blanco got her job: She was elected by the voters. Bush didn't appoint her. He didn't interview her and decide she could do the job. Those poor bastards dying in the Superdome made that call. The same goes for Nagin. He and Blanco are not responsible to Bush. They're responsible to their constituents, whether they act like it or not. Bush is responsible for his subordinates' fuck-ups, not Nagin's. Should the voters then take the blame? Not really. For all I know, the alternatives were even worse. And most of those people in the Superdome probably didn't vote, or may have voted for the other guy, or whatever. "Responsibility" diffused to that degree becomes meaningless.
Why is it that you people think it utterly bizarre to suggest that the state and local governments should have made some attempt to do their jobs here? Can you explain that? You demand omniscience and operational perfection from the administration in DC, but you consider it perfectly okay that Nagin and Blanco are not merely incapable of doing their jobs, but unwilling even to try. Nagin ran a city below sea level in hurricane territory, and he was not familiar with the plans for evacuating the place. They did have plans to get the poor out, and they had the resources to do it. But nobody even made an attempt. Yeah, somebody in DC could have listened to the latest in a decades-long series of warnings circa 2001, and the new levees might have been in place as soon as 2010, that being the way these things work. But in the meantime, when you've got imperfect resources, you're supposed to do the best you can with what you've got. You don't just blow it off, and then go limp and burst into tears because the job you couldn't be bothered with is a hard one. Lots of jobs are hard. Dying in an attic is hard. Dying in the Superdome is hard, too.
It's shameful and disgusting to see you people on the left gloating over the bodies here. Yes, it's a big win for you. Yes, you'll get political mileage out of it, and I understand that you feel good about that, but do you really have no decency whatsoever? Do you have to act like it's Christmas morning?
Blanco and Nagin are ideal liberals: Impotent, incompetent, dishonest. All they know how to do is sit in their high-chair, banging their spoon on the tray and shrieking demands at the grown-ups. 100% of their thinking during this mess was how to manage the blame-placement after it was over. That was their sole consideration. It's yours as well.
Fuck them, and fuck you.
No administration is perfect, they are human beings who make human mistakes and we accept that. What happened in New Orleans proved that humans aren’t in the White House as they would have moved heaven & earth to save people inside two days; not rock up five days late asking what help is needed. It’s not a question of being a New York lefty or a Texas right wing Christian nazi…its a question of being a person who can reach out to their fellow man in their time of need rather than saying “you’re poor, don’t believe in God and without insurance so fuck you, you can die...one less person off the welfare list.” Bush should have screwed the laws of the land, worried about the issues with that later and got the help to those people who needed it, IMMEDIATELY. It is that simple, you can all stop your internal dialogue. You see any white people in the Superdome? Did you see any Republican voters in the Superdome? Neither did I, and THAT is why Bush didn’t do anything and shame on him. I’ll bet my life savings that he was checking Daddy & Dick’s Oilfields from Air Force One; not surveying the mass of human tragedy like his minions led you to believe.
Wake up America and get rid of this idiot now. Remember, inaction and indifference are weapons of mass destruction too. Judging by how much of this has been shown by the US president recently, you should be due a UN invasion shortly…
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