We Were Americans: One Year After Katrina:
We Were Americans: One Year After Katrina:
#0We Were Americans: One Year After Katrina:
Posted: 8/28/06 at 8:19am
From DarkSyde on Daily Kos.
And one year after the storm, the federal government is just as unprepared as they were before.
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I suppose the tone was set five years ago, in the aftermath of 9-11 and in the build-up to Iraq, but it took a natural disaster for the horrible reality to really sink in: Our White House and Republican led Congress are rife with incompetent, dangerous clowns. But make no mistake, the lingering, bungled response to Katrina was not solely due to incompetence, it's a stark illustration of neoconservative ideology in action. And it's nowhere near done ravaging the country...
One year after the storm lashed the Gulf Coast, Biloxi is a wreck, Gulfport is in ruins, New Orleans is a ghost town of roach and rat infested debris, and hundreds of thousands of people have been scattered to the corners of the nation, forgotten, and left to fend for themselves. Stay the course? The course was never even set, much less embarked upon....
Never to my knowledge have so many innocent American paid so dearly, twice, for such opportunity for a leader to stand up and unite our country, only to see our President and the Republican Congress, aided and abetted by Karl Rove and a gang of media shills and partisan think-tanks, seize those apocryphal moments and use them to divide us into warring camps for their selfish and short-sighted advantage. It's been five years of astonishing neocon ineptitude laced with a hefty dose of intentional malice, to a degree I would have not thought possible and would have handily dismissed as crazy, had someone tried to warn me beforehand. The lesson should have been freely obvious, but as it happens, the cost of our collective education has been incalculable: Those that detest government, divert funds from community projects into the coffers of billionaires and corporations, and avoid accountability, aren't terribly effective at governance. Katrina was a stellar example, only one of many, of what that kind of philosophy produces.
We Were Americans
#1re: We Were Americans: One Year After Katrina:
Posted: 8/28/06 at 10:49am
Poll: U.S. not ready for major disaster
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer Sun Aug 27, 5:38 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Their confidence shaken by Katrina, most Americans don't believe the nation is ready for another major disaster, a new AP-Ipsos poll finds.
Poor people are more likely to fear becoming victims of the next disaster.
The survey, conducted one year after the devastating hurricane and with much of New Orleans still in shambles, found diminishing faith in the government's ability to deal with emergencies. It also gave President Bush poor marks for his handling of the storm's aftermath.
The region could get an eerily timed test of preparedness with forecasters concerned that a storm system named Ernesto could be at hurricane strength as it crosses over Cuba and heads across the Florida Keys this week.
Fifty-seven percent in the poll said they felt at least somewhat strongly the country was ill-prepared — up from 44 percent in the days after the storm slammed ashore on Aug. 29, 2005. Just one in three Americans polled believe Bush did a good job with Katrina, down from 46 percent a year ago.
Poll: U.S. not ready for major disaster
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