The SOTU -- in New Orleans

[quaoar]

Bush made it sound last night like all sorts of great things are going on to help the folks in Louisiana and Mississippi.

http://www.nola.com/weblogs/bourbon/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_bstdiaries/archives/2006_01_30.html#108854

Perhaps no American city has faced such an uncertain future as metro New Orleans faces at the beginning of this year. So as the nation prepares to hear the president's State of the Union address, it's time for us to do likewise. Unfortunately it’s hard to focus on the state of anything outside our own ongoing tribulation . . .

200,000 homes destroyed.

400,000 residents in exile across the country.

170 miles of levees to repair.

120 days until hurricane season.

70 percent of the city dark.

Entire neighborhoods scoured away.

Minimal medical care, for only the most serious patients

Majority of businesses closed; those that are open are on short hours or limited service.

No consensus plan, at any governmental level, to resolve problems.

And hate mail continues to roll in from around the country.

This is the state of the union in greater New Orleans today, exactly five months after the levees broke and drowned us.

Embrace our pain.

< snip >

Those fortunate enough to find housing in the city of New Orleans live on an island we call the “Sliver by the River” . . . the high ground nearest the Mississippi that did not flood. We rarely venture away from the island, because the emotional pain of driving through miles of wasteland is too much to bear. We are like the survivors of a shipwreck, packed into a lifeboat and living on rationed food and water . . . looking back across miles of wreckage drifting on the ocean. We are grateful for life and safety, but we relive the horror of the shipwreck every day . . . the chaos, the frantic dash for the boats, the screams of those left behind.

[hatrack]

1. K & R

Awesome.

[CottonBear]

2. That is so very sad.

Dumb as a box of rocks Soledad O'Brien and DINO Mary Landrieu are discussing the lack of funding on CNN right now.
I wonder if Mary realizes her votes for Scalito won't get her any money for the Gulf Coast and NOLA.

[PassingFair]

6. Landrieu should be on the ATTACK right now.

Sick and tired of politicians who are afraid to lose. :puke:

She could be making history...

[pitohui]

7. she is on the attack

get out more

the mainstream media doesn't report our issues, they don't care

mary doesn't own the teevee or the radio or the newspapers and apparently even the internets are infested w. trolls (we've all seen em, think abt it) who funnily enough seem to have no job and nothing to do all day but to attack democrats

we have two senators in louisiana, twould be nice if a fraction of the time spent attacking mary who is actually getting on her hind legs and doing something would be spent on do-nothing david vitter

[pitohui]

8. headline today: "bush doesn't get it, landrieu says"

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-5/113877816275690.xml


read it, it's pretty clear who is still kissing ass, jindal and nagin (a republican who changed parties to run for mayor of new orleans since only democrats could be elected there) prime among the guilty

mary is speaking up just fine

melancon has been doing a damn fine job as well

even some republicans such as richard baker are making a little noise

the problem is not mary, the problem is mainstream media is bored of the story and wants to pretend it's all wrapped up when rebuilding has not really even begun

[CottonBear]

13. I realize Mary voted for cloture because of LA state politics.

She is getting screwed by the Republicans. I know she's trying to do the right thing for LA. It must be incredibly frustrating to try and work with Vitter. She's in a no-win sitaution. I hope she and Blanco can figure out how to do some sort of end run around the Republicans.

On a hopeful note, my very conservative LA sister-in-law is now pissed off at the Republicans. (She lives in the devasted hurriacne area.)

[PassingFair]

11. Ok, so SCREW VITTER, TOO!

I have to admit, she has a lot of LOYAL constituents, so I see she is admired in LA, BUT
what would it have cost her to vote NO on the cloture.
A strong democratic party is the only thing that will help the gulf areas, ultimately.

[quaoar]

9. Soledad has her moments

I've seen her roll her eyes when Republicans start spouting their BS.

[donheld]

3. Should be read by all Americans

Jon Donley knows that city well. You can feel his pain deeply.

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. K & R

[pitohui]

5. * should be ashamed to even go out in public after worthless address

he's still miffed that we don't want him to steal social security and wants to steal our health care too while we have real problems going on in this country? wtf kinda speech is that? he might as well have stayed in his little bottle of jim beam

read that essay again and then remember, that is just the new orleans state of the union

entire towns and cities destroyed or significant portions thereof destroyed from cameron, louisiana on the texas border to pascagoula, mississippi, each town be it as small as waveland or cameron that has been destroyed has its own story, some worse as far as the ENTIRE infrastructure being destroyed, look at st. bernard parish (a parish is a county) -- an entire county of the displaced!

it's clear this man has no conscience and no ability to care

perhaps no republican, who does not actually live here, has any conscience or any ability to care

every possible excuse is given, from global warming to veiled racism, as to why we should not be helped and why we should not receive a percentage of the federal oil moneys from the oil WE drill so that we can do it ourselves, but the real excuse is obvious, they just don't give a fuck, black, white, vietnamese, rich (ask trent lott!), middle, or poor, they just don't give a fuck, because we are from the south, we do the hard dirty work of this world instead of just shoveling around paperwork, and so we must be despised as subhuman

there is no possible excuse for these ... i don't even know the word, i would not even want to slam a cockroach by calling the * followers cockroaches and anyway a cockroach has more brains and organization

[G_j]

10. Bush has done no better rebuilding NO than he has rebuilding Iraq

and that may not be just an accident

[pitohui]

12. blanco goes to war

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-3/113877741975690.xml

the only thing these fucks care abt is their oil, fine, if they want it, they've better start paying a fair price for it

everybody in oil industry profited off katrina and rita except the victims where the oil is drilled

look at exxon's record-shattering profits, look at federal gov't raking it in and giving a pittance back, and tell me this is not justified

drill some oil offshare altantic or pacific, oh and refine it, transport, clean up the messes from the leaks, then get back to me abt we in louisiana are lazy-ass bums who do nothing but sit on our ass and play jazz all day for drunks

[quaoar]

14. Good for her

Bush has been trying to shift the blame to her and Nagin for months.

It's time she started throwing heat down the middle instead of off-speed junk off the plate. Maybe it's also time for one up and in.

[patricia92243]

15. Hate Mail?? Who on earth are they sending hate mail to and why??? nt

[ninkasi]

16. That caught my eye, too

I can't imagine what kind of hate would be directed of the victims of such a tragedy. For those stupid enough to still think that Chimp can protect them from "terra", just look at New Orleans, and the rest of the Gulf Coast that was affected by the hurricanes.

These people have been through hell, and most are still going through it. I would expect that quite a few are trying to rebuild their shattered lives while dealing with PTSD. Money that could have been used to rebuild has been funneled to the same old group of greedy cronies. New Orleans is a perfect example of how well Bush protects the nation.

[CottonBear]

19. Many of the suburbs of NOLA are populated by the white flight people

who left NOLA proper back in the 1960s because of school desegregation.

St. Tammany Parish (Slidell/Lacombe) is an example of such a population. Now this is not to say that minorites don't live in the other areas but they are not in the majority and are typically middle class rather than very poor.

[pitohui]

17. it's a newspaper

nola.com is the website for the new orleans newspaper, called the times-picayune

ironically republican owned and long-time supporter of every stupid-ass republican figurehead and fool propped up in front of them

katrina has been a real education for them, they now know what the rest of largely democratic new orleans always knew, which is that *co just don't give a care

even some teevee stations i've heard have been getting the hate mail of wingnuts trying to get them to shut down katrina and recovery coverage

[CottonBear]

18. The racists have come out of their dark spaces to spew hate

because they are really, really happy to see all the poor, black people displaced from NOLA. :(

[ninkasi]

20. That's sick and sadistic

Isn't a normal response to be sympathetic? I remember when my husband and I watched NOLA dying on national t.v., I couldn't stop crying. I saw old people, sick people, children, begging for help, and being treated like criminals. My sympathy remains, but I now feel rage at their abandonment.

We should have never let people die the way we did, and New Orleans should have been back on it's way to being rebuilt by now. So people who have been poor all their lives, and have had to struggle just to make ends meet, have what little they had taken away, and there is not more outrage? I would imagine that their relatives, and their communities, their neighborhoods, were the only thing that kept many people from despair...their lives might have been lived in poverty, but people still value a sense of belonging.

They have been scattered out all over the United States, and if I hear one more person talk about having "Katrina fatigue", I'm probably going to be arrested for assault. Lose everything, and have no way of getting it back, and then see how tired you get. This should never happen in America, or anyplace else, for that matter, but maybe we should stop going around and forcing "freedom and democracy" on other countries, and and rebuild our own.