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jebbypalThis comment sums up my views pretty well. I've placed the pertinent passage from Mitsu's reply to one of the Bel Gravia dispatch's articles under the cut because it falls pretty far down after a lot of links:
I've considered myself a socially libertarian, fiscally conservative
Republican for a very long time. I got along with the idea that I wasn't
going to get a whole lot of help. College wouldn't be free. Job training
would cost money and time. And I'm probably a decent example of
up-from-not-much.
But after watching what's happening in New Orleans-an American city that I've
loved, visited and have always wanted to return to - I can't ever vote for
these people again.
Being a Republican means that you expect the government to do just a couple
things for you and nothing else. Build a road. Defend us from enemies,
foreign and domestic. Stuff that would be a lot less organized if we all had
to do it ourselves. Everything else is just gravy.
And as we poured money into Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, I thought, "Right on," because some of that
money's bound to fall on my head.
Well, something else would fall on my head first.
I work for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. And that means that if something really catastrophic happens in MY city, and they ask me to stick around, that's the job. We have A and B teams and I'm a disaster recovery specialist on Team A. I've drawn up plans with names like Drawbridge and Smoldering Crater.
....
Some people say that you can't hold the President responsible for this. Oh,
yes you can. Because when he looked over at John Ashcroft after the jets hit
the towers and said, "I want you to make sure this never happens again," it
was not meant to be specific to "no more planes hitting large buildings on
the East Coast, right, boss." It was meant that no American should have to
run for his life through an American city. While Americans may perish in a
senseless, unforeseen disaster, we'd save the ones we could.
And the Cabinet appointees were mushwits and he could barely speak a complete sentence and we're sending people overseas for God knows how long to help people who are indifferent at worst and hostile at best, but they were going to protect us. In 2004, that's all a lot of us needed. Well right now, it's
obvious that they can't.
Ask yourself this: What if Al-Qaeda blew up the levees instead of the
hurricane? Would the response have been any different?
No. It wouldn't. That city flooded in a day. And if it were Las Vegas, I would
have been in some operations center watching people try to decide who gets to
starve to death and who gets to get on a bus to Los Angeles or Phoenix. And
there would be no certainty that I'd be on that bus in time to protect my
wife and kids.
But one thing sure would have been different.
They wouldn't have had a whole week to sort it out and know what's coming.
They were supposed to KNOW this already. It will have been FOUR YEARS next
weekend since someone probably said, "Hey, what if..."
And for that, the whole stack of them should be fired.
-Mitsu
I've considered myself a socially libertarian, fiscally conservative
Republican for a very long time. I got along with the idea that I wasn't
going to get a whole lot of help. College wouldn't be free. Job training
would cost money and time. And I'm probably a decent example of
up-from-not-much.
But after watching what's happening in New Orleans-an American city that I've
loved, visited and have always wanted to return to - I can't ever vote for
these people again.
Being a Republican means that you expect the government to do just a couple
things for you and nothing else. Build a road. Defend us from enemies,
foreign and domestic. Stuff that would be a lot less organized if we all had
to do it ourselves. Everything else is just gravy.
And as we poured money into Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, I thought, "Right on," because some of that
money's bound to fall on my head.
Well, something else would fall on my head first.
I work for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. And that means that if something really catastrophic happens in MY city, and they ask me to stick around, that's the job. We have A and B teams and I'm a disaster recovery specialist on Team A. I've drawn up plans with names like Drawbridge and Smoldering Crater.
....
Some people say that you can't hold the President responsible for this. Oh,
yes you can. Because when he looked over at John Ashcroft after the jets hit
the towers and said, "I want you to make sure this never happens again," it
was not meant to be specific to "no more planes hitting large buildings on
the East Coast, right, boss." It was meant that no American should have to
run for his life through an American city. While Americans may perish in a
senseless, unforeseen disaster, we'd save the ones we could.
And the Cabinet appointees were mushwits and he could barely speak a complete sentence and we're sending people overseas for God knows how long to help people who are indifferent at worst and hostile at best, but they were going to protect us. In 2004, that's all a lot of us needed. Well right now, it's
obvious that they can't.
Ask yourself this: What if Al-Qaeda blew up the levees instead of the
hurricane? Would the response have been any different?
No. It wouldn't. That city flooded in a day. And if it were Las Vegas, I would
have been in some operations center watching people try to decide who gets to
starve to death and who gets to get on a bus to Los Angeles or Phoenix. And
there would be no certainty that I'd be on that bus in time to protect my
wife and kids.
But one thing sure would have been different.
They wouldn't have had a whole week to sort it out and know what's coming.
They were supposed to KNOW this already. It will have been FOUR YEARS next
weekend since someone probably said, "Hey, what if..."
And for that, the whole stack of them should be fired.
-Mitsu