Serendipitous Crawl

One of those times when the picture is worth a thousand words:

2000 Buses?

Most of us have seen the Katrina footage of row after row of school buses submerged in flood water, and most have heard the outrage from Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity and others that 2,000 such buses went unused in the evacuation of New Orleans. It's become a conservative rallying cry around Bush, deflecting blame onto the mayor and local officials.

Problem is, the New Orleans school district doesn't own 2,000 school buses. From Media Matters:

According to a September 5, 2003, article in the Times-Picayune, "The [Orleans Parish school] district owns 324 buses but 70 are broken down." In addition, a Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development profile of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA), last updated May 5, notes that RTA owned 364 public buses, bringing the total of the city's public transit and school buses to fewer than 700....

The Hay of Tragedy

The Republicans are salvaging what they can from Katrina. They regretfully point out that there's plenty of blame to go around, and while pointing several fingers at governor and mayor, they decry the pointing of fingers. While the spinners spin, their money men are busy devising ways to profit from the destruction.

By now, most Americans have wised up.

Most of us see that this is not an isolated instance of management failure, but the failure of a philosophy. The federal government doesn't need to be relegated to a war machine, nor represent corporations over people, nor be solely in the business of business.

The federal government needs to respond to the needs of the people it represents, whoever those people may be, in whatever circumstance their need. A country is only as great as its infrastructure and the safety net it provides for all its citizens.

That is in direct opposition to the ruling theory, which, while it decries evolution, nevertheless implies not only survival but enrichment of the fittest, with the leftover crumbs scattered to the rest of us in the guise of charity, noblesse oblige and all that aristocratic crap.

See how well that worked in New Orleans?

The irony is they've sold this to the voting public as an alternative to the elitism of those of us who actually want government for all the people, not just those who manage horse shows and happen to room with the right folks in college.

Us 'intellectules' who've worked our asses off to know more than the privileged dumb asses presently running the show and still have trouble making our car payments have somehow become the elite, while those who make billions off the nation's disasters are merely humble public servants.

The party of the elite? The 'librul' threat to your bank account? Follow the money from here on, folks. Watch where the rebuilding dollars go. There's your elite, not some poor schmuck in tweed or blue jeans worrying about his mortgage the same as you.

Climate Science

While I admit relief that many in the major media finally shed their blinders in the Katrina aftermath, one element of the story is still under-reported.

Hurricanes, very simply put, are caused by air masses passing over heated bodies of water. Since the science of studying these storms was in its infancy, it's been a given that when ocean temperature increases, both hurricane frequency and intensity likewise increase.

Climate science, or climatology, is not a matter of reading tea leaves these days. It's not a belief system, rather it's the result of decades of research, analysis of voluminous data, and hypothesis put to the test of the scientific method, greatly aided in recent years by computer modeling of the many factors which go into creating the climate of this planet.

Based on all this, the vast majority of climatologists have been convinced for some time that Global Warming is a fact, not science fiction or conjecture. But in this country their warnings have been effectively shouted down. Click here for the typically shady mess from the point of view of a real climatologist.

There's no way burning millions of barrels of oil every day can harm the atmosphere, can it? (Insert Dubya smirking here.)

The sad fact is that the efforts on behalf of business profit are winning out over the bare-bones welfare of the rest of us. Average Joe thinks that Global Warming is hokum, at best a remote possibility that doesn't affect him or his family. Besides, who cares if it gets a little warmer? He sees no connection between Katrina and decades of pollution and the hole in that ozone thing, no connection between a warming ocean and New Orleans under water.

Average Joe still hasn't caught on that he's in far more danger from Mother Nature and those who mess with her than from a terrorist in a cave on the other side of the world.

How many Katrinas will it take before the blinders are blown away?

News Bulletin

New Orleans, LA-(appropiated press) It has been confirmed that no members of the Bush family have died in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. It is also widely reported that the Cheney family is safe in Wyoming. The family of Condoleeza Rice narrowly escaped disaster when the limousine driving them to the airport before Katrina hit was sideswiped by a Volvo. No injuries resulted, though a cousin of Ms. Rice reportedly wet her panties.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's family likewise suffered no casualties, although a nephew was briefly detained and released on bail after allegedly attempting to loot a Dunkin's Donuts in Altoona. His case is pending.

Letter from Michael Moore

An e-mail from Carmen in Colorado:

Not to mention that, as of yesterday, the VP is STILL on vacation at his Wyoming ranch!
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Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 3:18 AM
Subject: Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush


Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com

P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.

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NOTE: Last night on Lou Dobbs of CNN interviewed a member of the government who was criticizing the press for focusing so much on the "down-side" of the disaster "trying to make the President look bad"! (All you people out there in N.O. and the south, shape up now and quit fretting and complaining about your little situation of no food or water or place to go or being stranded in inhumane conditions or lost loved ones...not only did you cause the pres to have to cut his 5 week vacation short by 2 days because of your whining, but NOW you are giving him a bad image!!!). He went on to say the press is focusing too much on the disaster and not enough on the "challenges the government is facing in the aftermath of the hurricane." (EXCUUUUUUSE ME!!! we've neglected to give praise to Congress, who although they quickly assembled in the middle of the night to decide to keep Terry Shaivo on life-support, have RUSHED back to work 6 little days after the hurricane, what MORE do you people want????!!!!, and the media can't even give them the attention and thanks they deserve!). Needless to say, Lou Dobbs did not share his sentiment but said "right now our main concern is the refugee situation....we'll worry about members of the government later" (and gave a little laugh and shook his head in disbelief at what he had just heard)


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