The BBC sums it up pretty well, sometimes you need to be slightly removed from a culture to see it best.

"The uneasy paradox which so many live with in this country - of being first-and-foremost rugged individuals, out to plunder what they can and paying as little tax as they can get away with, while at the same time believing that America is a robust, model society - has reached a crisis point this week."

In other words we Americans value the go it alone rugged, take care of things on your own, never ask for a handout idea very highly. We value individual responsibility so highly that when we see people living in poverty and without health insurance the first thing we do is blame them for their own misfortune. We assume that the poor are lazy, they should be able to help themselves and live the American rags to riches dream. And when they don't live that dream we call them lazy, and when they finally go through the effort to ask for a 'handout' to help them improve their own lives we get upset and say that they are taking advantage of our government. The current Neo-Conservative administration takes this argument to its extreme, while at the same time believing with fierce conviction that America is a robust, model society. The current crisis in Louisiana shines light on the inherent fallacy of this way of thinking.

America as a whole is used to fending for itself, not looking toward the community in times of need. We can see that in New Orleans the federal government expected the affected cities and states to fend for themselves. We can also see that many of the stranded people of the city expected that they had to fend for themselves and use violence to get what they needed to survive. But what shines through all these examples is that expecting people to simply fend for themselves is a terrible policy that leaves an incredible number of people stranded and without hope. This flood simply allows us to see the people, and see that they are victims, rather than debating whether the people exist and whether or not the plight they face is their own fault. Here we can see that the fault lies with our broken system.


PS
The NY Times also wrote a great piece about people being stranded in poverty and how things have changed since 2001. I have archived it here "Life in the Bottom 80%"

I stumbled upon this quote from George Orwell

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."

"When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."

so next time you hear Byron Brown speak, remember that one, and vote for someone who's trying to rock the boat.

There is a vary interesting display downtown today and tomorrow that adresses the Human cost of the Iraq War. it's called Eyes Wide Open and it was created by the American Friends Service Committee. it feartures a pair of boots for every soldier killed in Iraq. the one that is in Buffalo today and tomorrow represents the number of National Guardsmen killed, some 280 people. it's striking to see, it helps give us perspective on the number of people that those "casualty figures" actually represent.

I urge everyone to go see it tomorrow, it will be in Lafayette Square in Downtown Buffalo from about 9:00am - Dusk.

Here are some pictures that my girlfriend Molly took at the one today.









More Images in My Flickr Blog

Just some recent pictures of mine.

I'm testing how I can post pictures on this site. so don't mind me, :)

I'm very tired, but I'd like to say some things about the disaster in New Orleans, I appologize if my writing is a little mangled but I think I've learned some things about the situation that people may not know, and I think it is important.

The Iraq War has made the situation FAR worse than it needed to be. the first reason for this is that nearly 40% of Louisianna and Mississippi's National Guard is in Iraq . that means 40% fewer of the best equipped first responders.
The second reason is that money that should have gone to the Army Corps of Engineers went to tha war effort. I know some people will call this a conspiricy theory or something but I research things before I go spreading them around as fact, here's a quote from the Times-Picayune.
"Army Corps of Engineers construction projects in the state, including levee and drainage projects in the New Orleans area, will see significant cuts.
The corps' New Orleans District, which stretches across the state's coastline, will get $290 million, a $34 million reduction from the dollars allocated for fiscal year 2005 by Congress, and almost $300 million less than the district says it needs to complete proposed and ongoing construction projects. (the same article said that they needed $63 million just to repair the Levees, they got almost half of that for the whole Louisianna coastline)(2-8-2005 "Bush budget cuts levee, drainage funds")

As many of you probibly already know New Orleans thought they had made it through the storm ok on Monday, then overnight the 2 of 4 levees broke, then everything went to shit. The levees should have been fixed. if our president wasn't parading around the middle east inciting terrorism, while at the same time pushing through tax cuts for multi millionares, the levees would not have broken. the Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of fixing the Levees but unfortunately that branch of the army got its budget cut. The city and state were begging the federal government for funding and instead it got cut, and now the whole fucking city is under water. This is why we have the National Guard, they're a state malittia whose commander in chief is the governor, right now 3,000 of Louisianna's National Guardsmen are watching this disaster on TV from fucking Baghdad when they should be at home helping people survive. so not only is this war costing billions of dollars, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Civillians, and thousands of military personell, NOW it is costing the lives of thousands of American Civillians on the gulf coast.

And where is the fucking president? he came back to Washington today, how generous, he took 2 days off his vacation and flew back to the capital 3 days after the storm. and now he's on TV and everywhere else trying to make it look like he cares. let's think about it for a second, before today the president spent a whopping 1 minute and 25 seconds talking to the people of America about the Hurricane, and he did so at 9am, at the beginning of a 40 minute speach that was focussed on selling the war in Iraq and comparing it to WWII . The Hurricane happened on Monday, that's 3 days before he got back to Washington, and in that time he spent a pathetic 1.25 minutes talking about what may be the worst Natural Disaster to strike America in a century. I have bad news for any gullible Republicans who think this asshole actually gives a shit about America. He doesent care, he got back to washington today and his PR people ar like "Um, Mr President, you look like a real fucking asshole right now for ignoring this tragedy, we got some speaches and plans ready for your lazy ass and unless you want Americans to catch on to the fact that you don't realy give a shit about them you better move fast." so I looked at the Witehouse website yesterday and it only mentioned the Hurricane in the sidebar, today the 4 top stories are about the Hurricane and there's a big glossy picture of the president standing with his father and clinton looking important.

that's all for now, if anyone finds something about how the bush administration refused to fund Levee construction in the news please let me know I want to know if anyone is covering this story.