(no subject)

[rivka]

I want to kill someone now.

I'm supposed to work at my job and go on with my daily life, with things like this happening?

Comments

[lietya.livejournal.com]

That's.... horrifying. *spit* So many people willing to help, so many ways to do it, and they were actively *refusing* to accept it.

(Canadian rescue teams were held up at the border for days, too; Canadians I know were distressed and disgusted that life-saving aid was being delayed and perhaps rejected.)

nola again

[ailbhe]

It has had me in tears of rage and grief every day since the levees broke, and I'm not even watching the television news.

God had better start smiting soon, is all I can say. Because it seems like they're too powerful for anyone else to do anything.

Re: nola again

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Americans have recently shown themselves capable of impressive self-organization. While dealing with a corrupt, inept, and callous government is a harder problem than aiding huge numbers of refugees, it may be doable....and I don't trust God's aim.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You ain't the only one.

We had company over last night (we do it every week) and I was a cross-grained, cranky, host.

I don't think any of them noticed it, but I kept noting minor things which pissed me off, and made me want to hit one of them. I suspect it's related to all the crap I'm seeing, reading, and writing about.

TK

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I picked a fight with a potential beau last night because I couldn't stand the idea of being nice to someone who claims to be a socially-liberal, economically-conservative Republican. Not the way I've felt for 10 days now.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

This wasn't pick a fight things (though I did snarki him more than once... oblivious he was, and I declined an invitation to go shooting with him, though I fear he is more than a tad unsafe with guns, if his excuses as to why none of the half a dozen automobile accidents he's been in are, in no way his fault, at all, but I digress).

No, I wanted to smash him in the face with an elbow.

Being socially liberal, and economically conservative (at least that's how I see it, though most of the Bushista I know would think me a free-spending freak because I think the burdens at present are 1: unsustainable, and 2: improperly resting on the middle classes and the poor) I'm glad I'm not trying to be a beau at the moment. :).

TK

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I actually think SL/EC people are the only hope we have of seeing any kind of return to sanity of the Republican party. (though I fail to see who's supposed to pay for some of the SL things that are needed, if not taxpayers, but let's not open that can of worms).

I just couldn't deal with a guy who's already stepped on my tail several times thanks to his unseen privilege getting into a debate with me about how it's basically unfair that I won't "give him a chance" and "see what a nice guy he really is" but maybe in a year or two if we're both still single, I'd come to see that and change my feelings about him. And I asked, "well in a year, what about you will have changed?" And he basically said "nothing," he's fine where he is. Yet he's allegedly drawn to me for my queer, feminist, etc. perspectives. But without me teaching him and railing at him when he's being an idiot, he wouldn't bother to go learn about some of that stuff on his own.

Sorry, I'm ranting incoherently.

I just couldn't handle him wanting to get close to me and then failing to understand why that might be an issue, while subtly casting the blame back in my direction. Not after the news diet of the past 10 days, which has been rather clogged with the guys he voted into office and their cronies.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Rant away (and I'm flattered you wanted to share that).

I do think a lot of the things I'm in favor of ought to be paid by the taxpayer. I also think the tax-structure ought to be completely revamped; a throwback to something like the 50s.

I think that, if we are going to use the tax code as a way to change social structures through the use of incentives, we need to make it a good that one closes the gap between top and bottom.

I want to see some of the inequities of time reversed (such as the problem in Calif. that property is only assessed for tax when it changes hands, so a lot of businesses (which put more strain on the infrastructure than residences) are paying taxes on property which was last assessed in 1978, while the people who are supplying the water, fire, medical, police, etc. for them are paying on the 2000 value of their land.

I want to see corporations paying for things, not getting billions of dollars in kickbacks; through tax-breaks, while the state of Washington can't pay its bills (right now Wash. loses; because of tax breaks, something like 3 billion a year, they are 1 billion in the red. The math is simple... people are paying for corporate profit).

I don't want the fiction of being a foreign company to allow one to no pay taxes, as a business, when being an expat doesn't save one from paying personal imcome taxes.

See, I figure tax and spend, is a perfectly reasonable way to go.

Much better than borrow and spend.

TK

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I want to scream and cry and hit somebody.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

As I said over at RoO:

I've never met General Blum, but I know he's a Marylander who used to be in the MD Army National Guard before he got promoted to being head of the Guard Bureau. The word on him in general is that he's a good guy. I know he commanded the Bosnian peace-keeping force for a year just before he became Guard Bureau head.

I'm not sure why he was tasked with giving this report. I'd have thought that General Honore would do that, though it's possible he's too plain spoken for the DoD to want him in front of the cameras.

Before we truss him up and roast him over the coals, it's worth noting that by the time National Guard units from other states got into Louisiana, the situation really had deteriorated into a mess. So I do appreciate that they were in a dilemma. They were getting reports of gun battles, police officers killed by who knows whom, and a general sense that it was a very dangerous place. So it was reasonable to want to consolidate the military strength before moving in to the convention center.

Other than that, I'm not going to try to second guess the commander on the scene. With communications shot to hell, rumors running rife, and the certain knowledge that no matter what decision he made somebody would find fault with it, he was in a very tough situation. Could he have done better? Maybe so. Could I have? Maybe so. But then again maybe not.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I made comments about this at Making Light (there's just no way I can retype everything. Lessee if I can pull them up, and paste them here.

I was bitching about this to Maia in the shower.

I think I understand the motives for this, but I don't like the thing, at all.

The Guard is being beat up, some of it justified, some of it probably not (I'll lay long odds that had they been told to get the help there, guys would have filled their rucks with water and MREs and humped it in on foot; turned around and gone back for more. It's what I'd do if it were SF, or Bakersfield or Arcata).

The TAG can't go out and say, "This is why we fucked up" because it probably reflects badly on his superiors. So he spins it to make it seem the delay was not only unavoidable, but needful, and the results laudable.

Which is stupid, because even if he were right, it can't play that way. It might, just might, have played that way, if he had been pitching this line on the 28th of August, but now, on the 8th of Sept., not a chance in hell anyone believes him.

Better to be silent, and take the heat, than to spew bilge and be seen as a patsy, a stooge and flunkie.

There's more in the thread here

TK

[wcg.livejournal.com]

The press conference was held at the Pentagon on Sept 3rd, after LTG Blum had returned from NO on the 2nd. That is six days after the 28th, but it's also five before Sept 8th.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Nice post, BTW.

And nice to have you back posting.

B

[selki.livejournal.com]

I've gotten sucked into doing a lot of reading on all this. It's enraging. The apologists/spinners, even more so. Or maybe not *more* so, but ... I have a hard time not wishing they'd all be locked for 5 days in filth with no supplies.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

no. fucking. words.

i want to kill bennett c. landreneau instead

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

nope, not with you on this one. yes, the situation at the convention center was horrible. but i can't see why this man is to blame for it, and i don't like the juxtaposition of those pictures with his words; it strikes me as ... *ick*. no good words. unfair to the man, at the very least.

maybe it's a language thing, and it's offending some people because general blum didn't seem to express much emotion for the people stuck at the convention center, and instead focused on how well his task had gone? he sounds like a "can do" sort of guy; i don't expect a whole lot of emoting from those. the only thing i am really questioning in his report is the "undesirables" -- who were they (people who had weapons or crack on them?), and what was done with them (did he mean to imply that they were not given any water/food/medical supplies)?

the rest of it seems pretty sensible to me. we had lots of reports of violence at the convention center, i would expect that one not send a half-baked force in there. if he had acted precipitously, and we had had a riot, some people would now be posting pictures of the dead and complain about inefficient military response. *shrug*. i wasn't there. i don't know how much force was needed, and even if i had been there, i don't have the knowledge to determine that.

instead of being mad at him, i am mad as hell at the louisiana homeland security people, because they are they ones who kept the red cross from entering the area and supplying food and water (http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html#4524) because they wanted to encourage people to evacuate. they are the ones who IMO were a major cause for the desparate circumstances at the convention center.