That Thing You Do
So. I have been watching a lot of YouTube tonight after feeling like a jackass waking Joey and Dill up earlier (and therefore not having a movie to watch) and I've stumbled across a bunch of really interesting segments from FOX news, Cafferty on the Situation Room, and of course Stephen Colbert.
First, I want to know just how amused the execs at CNN were when they decided to put Cafferty across from Wolf Blitzer. For those of you who don't know, Cafferty is gruffly liberal and Blitzer is the worst kind of knee-deep-in-shit neo-conservative.
I also want to know this: Do we as a country feel more devastated by 9/11 or by Hurricane Katrina?
I realize I say this with a certain sort of distance, not living in NY or even having been there, but I feel like our country was more devastated by Katrina and yet still nobody seems to care.
Now, I'm not saying 9/11 wasn't devastating, and I know that it was, but when you look at things on paper 9/11 is easy to fix-- there was a target they could hand us on a [really expensive] plate, and there were things that we could fix to assure that nothing like this could happen again. Things that should have been fixed years and years ago. I'm kind of eye-twitchy that the new WTC buildings have slanted roofs since the majority of the people who died inside the buildings died because the door to the roof was locked, and even had it not been locked the roof was slanted and unfit for a helicopter landing.
Katrina, however, was full of missteps that could have been handled and, more distinctly, had been brought up to authorities prior to Katrina hitting the coast. They knew the levees weren't strong enough to handle a storm the size of Katrina and nothing was ever done. There's no evidence that anyone noticed the problems that caused the "extreme" devastation of 9/11 until the 9/11 Commission did their review. (if you like, just google "9/11 report text" and the NYT has it posted online-- I'm about half way through)
I've tried to stay neutral as far as my involvement in politics-- obviously, my views are liberal as they can get all things considered, but I try not to get emotionally i nvolved anymore. It's a depressing thought, to make that decision, I actually talked to Andrea Durham on the bus to the party last night about desensitzation. I said that the worst thing about becoming desensitized is the moment in which you realize that seeing these things on TV don't bother you.
That's another reason Katrina was more devastating to our country. 9/11 was a shock, it was an attack on our own soil and the first since the Civil War. However, we were not unused to war stories-- Mogadishu was prime in the news during Clinton's administration, as well as a low lying current of the Clinton administration trying to figure out the best way to rebuild credibility in the Middle East and eradicate the Taliban threat.
Katrina, however, was something we have never seen.
There are news images from the tsunamis in Thailand, floods in different parts of the country or the world, but seeing people who had nothing taken down to having less than nothing. Seeing people so desperate they were looting for bread and desperate for clean water, things most people take for granted-- it was a reality check. We had no. idea. what to do with these sights; I mean, I watched the second plane hit the tower. I was in shock. But just thinking about Katrina and the aftermath and the way these people lived and survived despite the best efforts of the government makes me tear up. People like the Katrina survivors make me believe that we do have instincts, we have instincts to survive and to support our herd/society. It wasn't the administration who saved the people of NOLA and the gulf coast, it was the regular every day people who went down and helped clean up, who sent clothes and school supplies and food for people who barely even had the clothes on their back, who went down and stuffed people in their cars and left who saved them.
So what does that say about how the administration is saving us after 9/11? If it is the regular every day people who saved the country after Katrina, who did it so quickly so that even a year after the fact there are but traces of the disaster left, then how is it that the politicians, those who are elected to protect us, haven't been able to redeem us from 9/11 five years after the fact?
It seems incredibly wrong to me that instead of praising our country for coming together and helping out after Katrina and calling upon that spirit to make our country a better place, they instead ignore that it happened in the first place and dwell on a war that drains our spirit, coffers, and population on a daily basis.
If you read that, you're a better person than I expected you to be ;o)
In that spirit, a couple of links:
Someone speaks out for the college students
Olbermann quotes Murrow (skip to the end if you don't want to hear about Rumsfeld, but it's a really great quote from Edward Murrow)
Goodnight and Good Luck.
Abraham Lincoln did not shoot George Wilkes Booth
The Titanic did not sink a North Atlantic iceburg
and Fox News is neither fair nor balanced.
These are simple historical facts intelligible to all adults, most children, and some of your more discerning domesticated animals.
And you have GOT to check out the Stewie cameo on this one.
Bill O'Reilly: The Sysiphus of morons-- I thought you'd like that one, Caroline
First, I want to know just how amused the execs at CNN were when they decided to put Cafferty across from Wolf Blitzer. For those of you who don't know, Cafferty is gruffly liberal and Blitzer is the worst kind of knee-deep-in-shit neo-conservative.
I also want to know this: Do we as a country feel more devastated by 9/11 or by Hurricane Katrina?
I realize I say this with a certain sort of distance, not living in NY or even having been there, but I feel like our country was more devastated by Katrina and yet still nobody seems to care.
Now, I'm not saying 9/11 wasn't devastating, and I know that it was, but when you look at things on paper 9/11 is easy to fix-- there was a target they could hand us on a [really expensive] plate, and there were things that we could fix to assure that nothing like this could happen again. Things that should have been fixed years and years ago. I'm kind of eye-twitchy that the new WTC buildings have slanted roofs since the majority of the people who died inside the buildings died because the door to the roof was locked, and even had it not been locked the roof was slanted and unfit for a helicopter landing.
Katrina, however, was full of missteps that could have been handled and, more distinctly, had been brought up to authorities prior to Katrina hitting the coast. They knew the levees weren't strong enough to handle a storm the size of Katrina and nothing was ever done. There's no evidence that anyone noticed the problems that caused the "extreme" devastation of 9/11 until the 9/11 Commission did their review. (if you like, just google "9/11 report text" and the NYT has it posted online-- I'm about half way through)
I've tried to stay neutral as far as my involvement in politics-- obviously, my views are liberal as they can get all things considered, but I try not to get emotionally i nvolved anymore. It's a depressing thought, to make that decision, I actually talked to Andrea Durham on the bus to the party last night about desensitzation. I said that the worst thing about becoming desensitized is the moment in which you realize that seeing these things on TV don't bother you.
That's another reason Katrina was more devastating to our country. 9/11 was a shock, it was an attack on our own soil and the first since the Civil War. However, we were not unused to war stories-- Mogadishu was prime in the news during Clinton's administration, as well as a low lying current of the Clinton administration trying to figure out the best way to rebuild credibility in the Middle East and eradicate the Taliban threat.
Katrina, however, was something we have never seen.
There are news images from the tsunamis in Thailand, floods in different parts of the country or the world, but seeing people who had nothing taken down to having less than nothing. Seeing people so desperate they were looting for bread and desperate for clean water, things most people take for granted-- it was a reality check. We had no. idea. what to do with these sights; I mean, I watched the second plane hit the tower. I was in shock. But just thinking about Katrina and the aftermath and the way these people lived and survived despite the best efforts of the government makes me tear up. People like the Katrina survivors make me believe that we do have instincts, we have instincts to survive and to support our herd/society. It wasn't the administration who saved the people of NOLA and the gulf coast, it was the regular every day people who went down and helped clean up, who sent clothes and school supplies and food for people who barely even had the clothes on their back, who went down and stuffed people in their cars and left who saved them.
So what does that say about how the administration is saving us after 9/11? If it is the regular every day people who saved the country after Katrina, who did it so quickly so that even a year after the fact there are but traces of the disaster left, then how is it that the politicians, those who are elected to protect us, haven't been able to redeem us from 9/11 five years after the fact?
It seems incredibly wrong to me that instead of praising our country for coming together and helping out after Katrina and calling upon that spirit to make our country a better place, they instead ignore that it happened in the first place and dwell on a war that drains our spirit, coffers, and population on a daily basis.
If you read that, you're a better person than I expected you to be ;o)
In that spirit, a couple of links:
Someone speaks out for the college students
Olbermann quotes Murrow (skip to the end if you don't want to hear about Rumsfeld, but it's a really great quote from Edward Murrow)
Goodnight and Good Luck.
Abraham Lincoln did not shoot George Wilkes Booth
The Titanic did not sink a North Atlantic iceburg
and Fox News is neither fair nor balanced.
These are simple historical facts intelligible to all adults, most children, and some of your more discerning domesticated animals.
And you have GOT to check out the Stewie cameo on this one.
Bill O'Reilly: The Sysiphus of morons-- I thought you'd like that one, Caroline