Remember

I think I'm done blogging for a day or two (though you never know what madness may grip me.) The enormity of what has happened, and the immersion in it over the week, has overwhlemed me. I'm still trying to understand what reason the authorities had for preventing the Red Cross from entering NOLA and stopping the residents from leaving while hundreds died and thousands suffered. And I'm wondering, like many others, just where the hell Dick Cheney, the second-highest official in the land, has been while his country has suffered through the worst natural disaster in its history? According to the San Jose Mercury-News, he waited until Thursday to mosey back to DC from Wyoming, but if he's done or said anything since, I've yet to find it. Maybe he's busy making sure the KBR and Halliburton are getting everything they need for their reconstruction contract to rebuild after the hurricane?

Never forget this. Never. George Bush and the Republican machine created the underfunded, impotent, dumbass, stripped-out neoconservative Norquistized "government" that stood by with its hands in its pockets while thousands died. And it WILL be thousands. The horror stories have yet to begin (like Abu Ghraib, you haven't heard anything yet). Every time Bush asks for his way with one of his subversive, drown-it-in-the bathtub nominees, remember this. Everytime he comes forward with another bright idea to change the regulations on pollution, or twists the NIH to cook the science on global warning, or blows off the need for funds toward our deteriorating infrastructures in order to send money to a war we didn't need, or offers a Federalist Society anti-government bible-thumper for a judicial appointment, remember this. Everytime he tells you that we need to "stay the course" in Iraq and things couldn't be going better, remember this. Everytime you pull up to the pump and see that gas has gone up yet another 20 cents, and find the cost of produce at the store has gone through the roof because of trucking costs, and see that perishables everywhere are getting awfully high, and then everything else is going up as well except your paycheck, and realize you have to change you vacation plans and cut back on food and maybe Christmas won't be so generous this year, and then you start cutting back on everything else when the cost of heating your home hits the roof this winter while the energy companies get those subsidies from Bush's budget, and you wonder why the price-gouging at the gas station was allowed to go on so long, remember this.

Remember.