A toast

I would like to toast our President who has been quoted as saying to Diane Sawyer "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees", despite at least one (and there have been many) reports that this was a disaster waiting to happen pre/911 assessment from FEMA (thank you Air America's "The Rachel Maddow Show" for this link).

A toast to our President for dismantling FEMA and most of it's budget to finance his imperialist, immoral war in Iraq.

A toast to President Bush reportedly playing golf the day before he had a press conference about the disaster. To Condi Rice for going to see Spamalot on B'way (thanks for supporting the arts Condi!!) and shopping for shoes the other day in New York (with her salary it's clear she doesn't have to loot for shoes).

A toast to the corporate media for showing their RACIST bias by calling whites who went after the disaster to get food and supplies as "finding bread and soda" but a black man in a similar position as "looting a grocery store". Boing Boing getting the scoop. At the bottom of the blog entry you were able to see both photos with captions however the black man remains as a looter while the white couple are erased because, "This photo was removed from Yahoo! News at the request of AFP. Yahoo! News statement on photo language controversy." Apparently instead of calling them looters as well it was better to exonerate their misdeeds by erasing them from public memory. The black man however remains a criminal.

A toast to corporate media for conflating the "looting" of people who needed supplies for themselves, their children, the sick/elderly with those people who are thug criminals who are taking advantage of the city's vulnerable state.

A toast to our governments quick and comprehensive response by getting those people who "chose" to stay behind food, WATER and shelter. Much credit goes to getting the National Guard there in a timely fashion....oops I'm mistaken, most of them are in FU*KING Iraq.

A toast to the corporate media for insisting that many of the poor people (a lot of them black if you haven't noticed) decided to stay behind by choice. Brilliant. This disaster happening at the end of the month (people hadn't received their paychecks yet), rising gas prices (can't get in your car to drive off into the sunset if you can't afford to fill up your tank), threats from employers that you would be penalized if you didn't stay the weekend before the hurricane, having state officials call for everyone in New Orleans to get out of dodge before the hurricane hit but NOT SETTING UP ANY SORT FREE TRANSPORTATION FOR PEOPLE WHO MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD TRANSPORTATION, telling people that they would have to be equipped with more than a weeks amount of supplies if they were to be housed in state recommended facilities all amounts to plenty of FUC*ING choice.

A toast to the idea of cramming people into stadiums with limited resources (food, water, medicine, medical attention, adequate sewer systems, hot water, air conditioning) and then wondering when such things are depleted are dumbfounded when people go beserk.

There's so much more to mention but I've run out of the bubbly.