Katrina and the Bush Administration

What a learning experience this week has been. Many facts have come to the surface and I have learned that America is concerned with the disaster of Katrina. With all this concern and fund raising, what actually seems to be the problem with the homeless displaced people in New Orleans?

In my own world, the shear numbers of residents who have no communications within the state government of Louisiana may be the most chronic as food, water, medical supplies were nowhere to be found. It seems that the residents of the surrounding states have tried to send help but the inability to get through to the displaced people was not possible. We all noticed that television cameras, news readers were able to get through to the most desperate of the people but the FEMA help could not! That is the question that I want answered! Homeland Security turned away help from Canada and who knows how many other offers of help from other countries.

This morning I read that in 2001 Bush scaled down the bureaucracy within FEMA to make it more efficient and at the same time scaled down the relief to many Americans who relied on FEMA support. Flood control for the State of Louisiana was also cut back by the Congress due to pressure to cut out pork. We have seen the consequences of this poor decision-making by the White House and Congress. It is simply another "quick fix" to divert attention away from some other plan by the POTUS that we all know now all know about.

I had no idea that the people of New Orleans were so terribly poor. I really didn't. Apparently this has been the condition of the state for many years. How were these people who lived in deplorable conditions allowed to continue in this poverty without other Americans knowing these conditions? What possible future did these people have when they had no education, no job training schools or any hope of improving their lives? Were there any discussions by the political leaders in this area that so many Americans were in need? What did I hear from the Mayor of N.O. or the Governor of Louisiana? They were prepared to prosecute the people of their city and state to the full extent of the law if they dared to take food and water from the stores.

We may have hundreds of thousands of displaced Americans who will need the kind of help we have in the past only offered to people of foreign nations. Billions of dollars have been spent rebuilding most of Iraq ; many places in the Indian Ocean after the Tsunami and of course most of Europe after WW2.

Should these displaced people be allowed to return to the conditions they had lived in for all these years, or should we, as Americans, offer solutions as options for all of them to consider? We must never forget that we have ignored these conditions for over a hundred years and we should not continue to allow it now!

I've been criticized for saying this but these Black poverty-stricken Americans need our help! They need shelter in a safe place and they need job training and decent schools.

I do not have the respect for the American government in the last 16 years to ever believe they have the brains or desire to do anything about this tragedy. Everything the last 3 Administrations have done has been to increase their own reputations, which have been pretty poor. Their desire for an American Empire has diverted them all away from their major problems in America and that is the culture, civilization and education of all our American children.

I've seen our own government change to reflect the family values of the Conservatives and we have seen up close and personal what those values are. They are mainly to bring all Americans into the Christian churches. Well, watch them at this time and see them make no effort get their hands dirty. My question, all week, is where the hell are the Churches when so many people are dying of disease, thirst and hunger? Where are Falwell, Robertson, Weyrich and the leaders of the Christian coalition when their wealth could have furnished a load of choppers filled with water, food, diapers and medical supplies that could have been brought into the situation?

We all are eager to send money into Louisiana and Mississippi but can't get trucks filled with supplies to New Orleans . Step one should be to get the people of New Orleans out of the disaster zone. Step two is to tend to their needs immediately and three to sit down and work with them on what they want for a future.

We have tons of jobs being given to the illegal Mexicans but we can't seem to figure out how to employ our New Orleans displaced Americans. What we cannot allow is for them to return to the conditions that they shared in places like New Orleans . The City of New Orleans must be made accountable for these horrible conditions and the State of Louisiana should be made accountable for the lack of sanitary conditions throughout the area. The Congressmen/women from Louisiana should be made responsible for not fighting for their own State during those House of Representatives and Senate meetings where billions of pork spending were added to just about every bill.

Everyone is pointing to the Bush Administration as a total failure when he lied our way into Iraq . He has succeeded in tearing down the entire Republican Party making us all look like Christian Missionaries rather than concerned representatives of the U.S. Constitution. I believe that this week alone should clear the reputation that the Conservatives have an ounce of family values. They do not! They have used Christians for their own power struggle and they should be removed from office starting in 2006 by dumping the entire Conservative Congress out on their fat asses.

I've been a Republican for over 50 years but what represents the party is gone. My party of limited government, individual freedoms and personal responsibilities has been sold out to an aggressive group of power builders called neocons.

Throw the bastards out but not without first giving them a chance to clean up the mess they have made in America . Get them focused on fixing the problems started by Katrina. Get them focused on putting the pressure on the Governors of all the American states to fix the damn education system and return academics to the schools. Let them point to Louisiana and Mississippi as failures to educate their own citizens.

Get these lazy Governors and Congressmen to start demanding that the federal government promote fair trade agreements and keep our jobs home. No more NAFTA or CAFTA to make it so simple for our manufacturing jobs to head south. We need those corporations in America to help rebuild our country when the neocons have been thrown out of the country.

We all should be thinking about returning the GOP back to the agenda of real values like following the Constitution and letting the American people take care of themselves in their personal lives. I also think we have seen the Christian churches in action this last week and I believe we should leave them alone to take a good long look at what they ignored during and after Katrina. No more faith based grants! Save the money for people who were out in the sewage that is now New Orleans .

America needs to work on the solutions for the mess we have had to endure these last 16 years. The Republican Party needs to drop their Conservative bullshit and get back to building a party of Americans focused on the Constitution not the bible. They need to throw out all the appointed Administration people who has been weaker than in any time in my history. Bush cannot display any leadership and should be the poster boy of how Americans were duped into thinking we had a party of family values.

If anyone has an internet site where we can start discussing the corrections for our displaced Americans please email me and let's start the discussions. This is no time to turn our backs on intelligent, rational discussions on this mess. We must never witness another disaster with Americans dying on streets of our own cities. I think we have seen the true value of Homeland Security and how worthless it is. We also have seen the uselessness of the Bush Administration and his destruction of the Republican Party.

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