Monthly Archive for September, 2005

Page 3 of 3

Choices & Catastrophe

Published on September 1, 2005 in ..The Dude, Politics and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

His Fraudulency, in regards to the flooding in New Orleans, said this “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we’re having to deal with it and will,” BBC. Liar. It was anticipated and he had the chance to provide funds to help insure against this type of thing but chose to divert them to Iraq.

“No one can say they didn’t see it coming … Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.” This from the website of the now submerged New Orleans Times Picayune. Salon.. Sydney Blumenthall in that Salon piece goes on to recount how a combanation of cuts and diversions, mixed with undermining scientific reports led to, or at least accentuated this disaster. Among the points: In regards to lack of wetlands support that scientist knew was necessary and dangerous if not fixed,

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. “There’s no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection,” said one of the report’s authors.

White House response to the report? Blumenthall notes that, “The chairman of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as ‘highly questionable,” and boasted, “Everybody loves what we’re doing.’ ”

Michael Parker didn’t love it. Bush appointed the former Republican congressman to head the Army Corps Of Engineers and shortly thereafter fired him (under the guise of resignation of course), for criticizing their refusal to do something about wetland projects and for budget cuts. TalkingPoints.

From Blumenthall:

Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised “no net loss” of wetlands, a policy launched by his father’s administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers.

One of the reasons flooding is so bad is that Lake Pontchartrain continues pouring through a levee that was widely recognized as being a potential problem and long lobbied for by the above mentioned Times Picayune for fixing. alot of money was invested in shoring up the city’s defenses for just such a predictable catastrophe until Bush’s cuts, which those in the Corps and the Picayune clearly identified:

The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security — coming at the same time as federal tax cuts — was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars

Editor-Publisher

Despite last year being the worst Hurricane season ever Bush made the biggest cuts yet to New Orleans Hurricane and flood control funding.

The danger posed by policies regarding wetlands and buffer controls they and surrounding islands provide, levee maintenance, FEMA cuts, and drainage improvements were all obvious to many whose appeals to the war hungry administration in power were lost. These effects are all past of well understood and forecast scientific data continually ignored by a man who must serve corporate greed and a plethora of constituents who dont believe in evolution and think science is undermining are morality. An EPA U.N report about global warming and its effects was derided by Bush and science excised from it. He called the report one, “put out by a bureaucracy,” (see above Salon link). They’ve removed other facts from similar reports and caused many scientists to quit the EPA since 2000. Facts making the link between Hurricanes and climate change have been continually ignored.

From Blumenthall:

In February 2004, 60 of the nation’s leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking”: “Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world’s most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy … Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle … The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease.” Bush completely ignored this statement.

Bush said this too yesterday: “I hope people don’t play politics during this period of time.” Of course not. no one wants to play at something they know they can’t win or debate a topic they know they have no facts or reality to back themselves with.

Of Miracles, Saints, and Charity.

Published on September 1, 2005 in ..The Dude, Irritations, Politics, Religion and The Ill-Literates. 2 Comments

I’m not discouraging anyone from helping the flooding victims in New Orleans. The more we can do the better. But yes I do have an issue with Church affiliated charities. Now it’s quite possible that some of these outfits only want to help needy people and will take anyone who wants to help out of a good heart and conscience. But there are far too many who use charity as carrot dangling on the stick of obedience. Far too many use one hand to give aid while the other pushes a bible in the faces of those being helped. In effect this is a form of bribery to get unfortunate victims of this cruel and nasty world to buy into their theory that someone is actually purposefully making it that way.

This is what Bush’s faith based initiatives are geared to do. Replace all secular forms of aid and assistance with religiously sponsored ones that shrink government while expanding church bank accounts. It is also meant to convert people. Pure and simple. They see Christianity as a tool for public control. Even in our prisons we have services being turned over to ministries that get their converts better living space and amenities in the jails as well as earlier parole. In return all they have to do is say they love Jesus and use bible based therapy programs to get all better. Believe or linger in prison. These are your choices.

For an example of what the dark side of the religious charity scam can do we need look no further that its icon and saint, Mother Theresa. Susan Shields joined her Missionaries of Charity for almost a decade before being disillusioned. She describes the mission as a “tangle of lies.”

While there she was taught submissiveness and that needless suffering, “makes God very happy.” Followers are also taught that getting attached to the sufferers was not good with god, who apparently gets a bit jealous and can’t love them as completely with all that petty human concern competing for their attention. Mother Theresa did not encourage those she claimed to help. There were no exhortations to self improvement or raising themselves up. No, they, like her followers must suffer using blunted needles even when others were obtainable because suffering makes us more holy. This was a woman with a sado masochistic streak a mile wide and who had been turned into a self appointed martyr to make all that pain turn her into something more. MT used her position to try and convert people instead of making their lives better. With a philosophy of pain and misery she encouraged the world’s suffering to accept their fates and except Jesus before they die. Can you imagine if truly noble leaders like MLK and Gandhi had taken that approach? How little the world would have improved with this faithful resignation and blissful oath making?

And for this she is a saint? Her sainthood by the way is also widely discredited and one of the miraculous key grounds for so cannonizing her refuted well by noted MT denouncer Christopher Hitchens who discusses one of the sainted falsifications HERE. Though this is an exceptionally bad day for me to entertain talk about miracles, as is usually the case with those purported by religious institutions, MT’s can be easily explained. What can not be explained is the rationalizing of so intimate a connection between sufferings cause and cure.

Many like Shields have left the order after getting fed up with how revolting and selfish it is. Turns out all the money you may have sent her over the years, and shes received quite alot, has done nothing but sit in her bank accounts while those that were intended to be helped by it were encouraged to suffer by this psychotic! The money, she and other high church officials would say, was merely a sign of god’s approval that the way they were doing things were just fine and keep up the good work.

Please by all means donate money to help numerous causes including those to alleviate the suffering of the displaced Hurricane victims in the Gulf Coast area. But if you don’t support proselytizing as a side order and motivation to it, give to the Red Cross, or as I did, to Mercy Corps, who have a high rating of efficiency low overhead, and rep for getting the relief where intended with a committment towards long term assistance and working with affected people.

Oh yes they arent’s religious. Neither are quite a few of those relief agencies listed at the Instapundit site, which came to my attention through the MoJo Blog. Some on that list are the same or similar to angry Bob’s, but there are quite alot of non denominational relief agencies there. Some if you care to examine the recommendations come from conservative sites. Which is not to say that some religious affiliated charities are not going to get the money to where it belongs, or that volunteers will be used to proseylitize. But if you’re as untrusting of their motivations as I am or just don’t have the time to research which ones are more reliable, now you’ve got a bit more of a selection. And admittedly in the heavily Catholic New Orleans area you are not going to get alot of forced conversions, so by all means volunteer if you have the time and you can only hook up with a church.

just remember in the future that there’s more involved and that charity and assistance should not be about advancing our own sanctity.