August 29, 2007

Two Years

Filed under: Katrina — PolitiCalypso @ 4:10 am

Two years ago at this exact day and exact minute, Hurricane Katrina made its first Gulf landfall on the Louisiana coast.

I would like to mark this day by providing a series of links to recent news about the recovery, or what passes for it. First is my series of blogs about the hurricane:

No Environmental Reviews
Disaster Profiteering (highly recommended)
The Working Class
Global Warming
Insurance Malfeasance
Blaming the Victims
Faith-Based Recovery, I
Faith-Based Recovery, II & III
Faith-Based Recovery, IV & V
Faith-Based Recovery, VI

Next, I have rounded up external links to news sources that have pertinent stories.

Katrina: A Reality Check for All Towns — Focuses on aftermath in New Orleans
New Orleans Still Struggling Two Years After Hurricane Katrina — Focuses on health care
Survey: Post-Storm Mental Health Worsens — Gulf Coast in general
FEMA suspends use, sales of ‘toxic’ trailers — However, just so no one forgets the stonewalling they did prior to this:
House Panel Probes Toxic FEMA Trailers

In the midst of all the 2-year anniversary coverage by the media, some of which will be disgustingly smarmy and positive to the point of being an outright lie, let’s not forget about anything attending the tragedy. I intend to mark the occasion later today by viewing An Inconvenient Truth again and considering the environmental aspects of the disaster, both those which followed it and those which I am convinced led up to it (i.e., global warming). The best way to observe the day is to consider what we might be able to do to prevent it from happening again.

August 5, 2007

The Cowardly 57

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 6:31 pm

There are no excuses to be made for the rollover of Congress, specifically 57 Democrats in the House and Senate, in codifying changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Changes that legalized the very behavior that a federal judge had ruled was a blatant violation of the act. It was an act of political cowardice and fundamental stupidity. Yes, I said stupidity.

The very purpose of FISA was to prevent the sort of egregious, unlawful behavior that the Bush administration was doing — wiretapping people without a warrant.

Y’see, in the general public, when someone breaks the law, they get punished. They don’t threaten the Legislature into altering that law.

I guess there is a different set of laws for those in the executive branch.

If these people don’t think that Bush’s goons are using the data to profile “troublesome” Americans, with no connection whatsoever to terrorists, then they are too delusional to occupy the offices that they hold. This man, his puppet master Cheney, and their goon Gonzales have proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted with a five dollar bill, let alone the private information of millions of Americans.

By rolling over, they have validated Bush’s “unitary executive” (i.e., king, or more appropriately, emperor) theory of government. He commands and they obey. He is not bound by the law; he is the law.

Shame on them. They deserve exactly what will be coming their way. America is no longer with Bush, and neither will it support those who aid and abet his lawbreaking.

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