Cindy & Katrina: Two women who have exposed the Bush Republican corruption

[Guest guest]

Cindy & Katrina: Two women who have exposed the Bush Republican corruption

By Jane Stillwater http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com

 

Last month, Cindy Sheehan shown a brilliant spotlight on the Bush

Republicans, illuminating the calculated, cynical and deliberate way that they

had deceitfully, corruptly and deliberately led America into an unjust and

unnecessary war. " Exactly what noble cause did my son die for? " Cindy asked.

 

Did the " noble cause " that Casey Sheehan died for somehow invovle lining

the Bush Republicans' pockets with America's hard-earned money? As billions and

billions of our tax dollars mysteriously disappeared down the rabbit hole of

waste and mismanagement in Iraq, we began to suspect that it did.

 

Then Hurricane Katrina hit with all the lurid force of nothing America had

ever seen before, destroying and obliterating a entire section of this country.

And suddenly Cindy Sheehan was forgotten, stale. She was yesterday's news.

 

Or was she?

 

As the stories filtered back to us about how the Bush Republicans had

systematically drained major chunks of financing away from paying for the levee

maintenance projects necessary to keep the Big Easy safe, we realized that New

Orleans, like Iraq, was all about money.

 

As the stories filtered in about how millions of dollars had been spent by

Bush Republicans on ad campaigns to make pariahs out of the scientists who had

tried to warn us that Bush Republican pro-pollution policies were exacerbating

the global warming process that allowed Katrina to grow from some obscure

tropical storm into the Gulf Coast's worst nightmare, we began to realize that

here too governance -- to the Bush Republicans -- was all about money.

 

What Cindy and Katrina have both pointed out to us -- too late to save

America's long list of corpses -- is that, like termites burrowing from within

the structure of a home that seems from the outside to be solid -- Bush

Republicans have burrowed into our economy, eating a bit here (Enron), a bit

there (Halliburton's obscene profits from Iraq), a bite at a time (the

staggering national debt, the tax breaks for the rich, the union-busting, the

looting of our National Guard, the welfare-for-corporations legislature passed

by Congress, the de-funding of schools and hospitals, the pollution of our air

and rivers...) until the largest, strongest economy in the world became just an

empty shell.

 

Two women have shown us -- on national television -- pictures of what can

happen if we allow corruption from within. It's time to clear our foundations

of these termites. Their greedy crimes have cost us thousands of lives and

hundreds of billions of dollars. It's time to call in the exterminators and get

rid of these pests -- starting witn impeachment, asset impoundment and jail.

To quote Bush himself on TV last night, " Looters should be treated with zero

tolerance. "

 

I offer heart-felt thanks to Cindy Sheehan for being brave enough to point

this deceit and corruption out to us. However, I never will find it in my heart

to thank Hurricane Katrina.

 

PS: I tried to call my friend David (aka The Flaming Liberal) in New Orleans

today -- to see if he was okay -- and THE ENTIRE AREA CODE was busy. The entire

area code has left its phone off the hook. How sad is that.

 

*****

 

This just in from Rae [is anybody surprised? No.]: Halliburton gets Katrina

contract, hires former FEMA director.

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/hurricane_katrina.html

 

****

 

From Jordan [bumper sticker he saw on the way to school]: " Only when the last

tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been

caught will we realizea that we cannot eat money. "

 

****

 

From Katherine: Cavalierly toxic chickens come home to roost. Extraordinary

Problems, Difficult Solutions: Massive Floods, Pollution Make for 'Worst Case':

Louisiana, a center of the oil, gas and chemical industries, " was known for its

very weak enforcement regulations, " Kaufman said and there are a number of

landfills and storage areas containing " thousands of tons " of hazardous material

to be leaked and spread.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/31/AR2005083102758_\

pf.html

 

Also from Katherine: Katrina is not only moving on New Orleans. It also is

moving on the Port of Southern Louisiana. Were it to strike directly and

furiously, Katrina would not only take a massive human toll, but also an

enormous geopolitical one.

 

The Port of Southern Louisiana is the fifth-largest port in the world in

terms of tonnage, and the largest port in the United States. The only global

ports larger are Singapore, Rotterdam, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It is bigger

than Houston, Chiba and Nagoya, Antwerp and New York/New Jersey. It is a key

link in U.S. imports and exports and critical to the global economy.... The

United States imports crude oil, petrochemicals, steel, fertilizers and ores

through the port. Fifteen percent of all U.S. exports by value go thr!ough the

port. Nearly half of the exports go to Europe....

 

The port might become in whole or part unusable if levees burst. If the

damage to the river and port facilities could not be repaired within 30 days

when the U.S. harvests are at their peak, the effect on global agricultural

prices could be substantial.

 

There is a large refinery at Belle Chasse. It is the only refinery that is

seriously threatened by the storm, but if it were to be inundated, 250,000

barrels per day would go off line. Moreover, the threat of environmental danger

would be substantial....

 

This is not a prediction. We do not know the path of the storm and we

cannot predict its effects. It is a warning that if a Category 5 hurricane hits

the Port of Southern Louisiana and causes the damage that is merely at the outer

reach of the probable, the effect on the global system will be substantial....

 

Needless to say, the world's 5th largest port -- which is a key entrepot

in the incredibly stressed world energy market, to boot -- has been rendered

inoperative. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10019.htm

 

****

 

From Robert: Katrina's real name: THE HURRICANE that struck Louisiana yesterday

was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global

warming.

 

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was

global warming.

 

When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and cut

power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United Kingdom, the

driver was global warming.

 

When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the Missouri

River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason was global

warming.

 

In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain and

Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30 years, the

explanation was global warming.

 

When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees and

killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global warming.

 

And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain in

one day -- killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million others --

the villain was global warming.

 

As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense

downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.

 

Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off

south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the

relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.

 

Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane

Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to

keep the public in doubt about the issue.

 

The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires humanity

to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the

survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.

 

In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal industry

had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public dissenters on

global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than $13 million since 1998 on an

anti-global warming public relations and lobbying campaign.

 

In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral victory yet

when President [sic] George W. Bush was elected president -- and subsequently

took suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies.

 

As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we have

already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change.

 

Against this background, the ignorance of the American public about global

warming stands out as an indictment of the US media.

 

When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global warming, it

has focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic aspects and not

on what the warming is doing to our agriculture, water supplies, plant and

animal life, public health, and weather.

 

For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the

same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings

of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- more than 2,000 scientists

from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations.

 

Today, with the science having become even more robust -- and the impacts

as visible as the megastorm that covered much of the Gulf of Mexico -- the press

bears a share of the guilt for our self-induced destruction with the oil and

coal industries.

 

As a Bostonian, I am afraid that the coming winter will -- like last winter

-- be unusually short and devastatingly severe. At the beginning of 2005, a

deadly ice storm knocked out power to thousands of people in New England and

dropped a record-setting 42.2 inches of snow on Boston.

 

The conventional name of the month was January. Its real name is global

warming.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/30/katr\

inas_real_name/

 

****

 

From Gary: Another Terrible Casualty of the Iraq War: How New Orleans was Lost:

 

Chalk up the city of New Orleans as a cost of Bush's Iraq war.

 

There were not enough helicopters to repair the breeched levees and rescue

people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guards

available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting.

 

The situation is the same in Mississippi.

 

The National Guard and helicopters are off on a fools mission in Iraq.

 

The National Guard is in Iraq because fanatical neoconsevatives in the Bush

administration were determined to invade the Middle East and because the

incompetent Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refused to listen to the generals, who

told him there were not enough regular troops available to do the job.

 

After the invasion, the arrogant Rumsfeld found out that the generals were

right. The National Guard was called up to fill in the gaping gaps.

 

Now the Guardsmen, trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, are watching on TV the

families they left behind trapped by rising waters and wondering if the floating

bodies are family members. None know where their dislocated families are, but,

shades of Fallujah, they do see their destroyed homes.

 

The mayor of New Orleans was counting on helicopters to put in place

massive sandbags to repair the levee. However, someone called the few

helicopters away to rescue people from rooftops. The rising water overwhelmed

the massive pumping stations, and New Orleans disappeared under deep water.

 

What a terrible casualty of the Iraqi war -- one of our oldest and most

beautiful cities, a famous city, a historic city.

 

Distracted by its phony war on terrorism, the US government had made no

preparations in the event Hurricane Katarina brought catastrophe to New Orleans.

No contingency plan existed. Only now after the disaster are FEMA and the Corp

of Engineers trying to assemble the material and equipment to save New Orleans

from the fate of Atlantis.

 

Even worse, articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and public

statements by emergency management chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the

Bush administration slashed the funding for the Corp of Engineers' projects to

strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted the money to the Iraq

war.

 

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the

New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 8, 2004): " It appears that the money has been

moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq,

and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees

can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this

is a security issue for us. "

 

Why can't the US government focus on America's needs and leave other

countries alone? Why are American troops in Iraq instead of protecting our own

borders from a mass invasion by illegal immigrants? Why are American

helicopters blowing up Iraqi homes instead of saving American homes in New

Orleans?

 

How can the Bush administration be so incompetent as to expose Americans at

home to dire risks by exhausting American resources in foolish foreign

adventures? What kind of " homeland security " is this?

 

All Bush has achieved by invading Iraq is to kill and wound thousands of

people while destroying America's reputation. The only beneficiaries are oil

companies capitalizing on a good excuse to jack up the price of gasoline and

Osama bin Laden's recruitment.

 

What we have is a Republican war for oil company profits while New Orleans

sinks beneath the waters. http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09012005.html

 

****

 

From Counterpunch: The Perfect Storm: New Orleans and the Death of the Common

Good, by CHRIS FLOYD.

 

The destruction of New Orleans represents a confluence of many of the most

pernicious trends in American politics and culture: poverty, racism, militarism,

elitist greed, environmental abuse, public corruption and the decay of democracy

at every level.

 

Much of this is embodied in the odd phrasing that even the most circumspect

mainstream media sources have been using to describe the hardest-hit victims of

the storm and its devastating aftermath: " those who CHOSE to stay behind. "

Instantly, the situation has been framed with language to flatter the prejudices

of the comfortable and deny the reality of the most vulnerable.

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd09012005.html

 

****

 

From Michael: Democracy Now: Who was left behind in New Orleans? The old, the

poor, the young. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/31/143251

 

****

 

From V. Brown [This is what the Brits are hearing about New Orleans]: There's

not much I can say except, God help them all.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005400726,00.html

****

 

From " Amy goes to New Orleans " : This episode has been written but not typed.

Someone needs to find a publisher who will give poor sweet Mary Straitwell

mstraitwell a big cash advance so that she can type it up so that we

can share wonderful memories of the New Orleans that used to be. " We took the

trolley back home to our hotel after a wonderful evening on Bourbon Street. "

How long before someone can have that wonderful experience again? Nawlins, WE

LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!! And hope that all y'all will be the Big Easy once again --

soon! http://travelswithamy.blogspot.com/

 

****

 

I have become shocked and amazed lately at how bitter and cynical and mean

my e-mails are becoming -- but ever since Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld and Cheney bombed

several defenseless countries into rubble, failed to protect my country on 9-11,

scalped our treasury and blatantly STOLE two national elections, I've just not

been the same. I WANT to be a kind and loving and caring person but the example

being set for me by America's " leaders " has precluded that from happening. My

apologies.

 

In defense of my country, I must fight fire with fire. Those people in the

White House are NASTY.

 

****

 

 

 

 

If you like getting my outside-the-box essays but your in-box is too full

and you need a break, that's okay. Just e-mail me, say " Dear Jane " on the

subject line and I will take you off my list. Thanks.

 

And if you get more than one copy of this, blame it on my jankity old

computer!

 

 

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" Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and

loved: World Peace in one generation! "

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

" When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have

peace. "

Jimi Hendrix