what could have been

from jj32's diary @ http://dailykos.com

About 140 people - mostly elderly and infirm - arrived Saturday at McGhee Tyson Airport on a chartered mercy flight from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, welcomed to East Tennessee by a bright sun and a host of medical professionals straining at the reins to help their fellow human beings without regard to whether they were on the clock.

The displaced hurricane victims came to Tennessee on a hastily arranged flight, accompanied by doctors and carrying whatever they had in boxes, bags or, in one case, an old suitcase tied up with rope.

Former Vice President Al Gore arranged the flight and was on board, but he declined to take credit for the airlift, fearing it would be "politicized."

The patients and evacuees arrived aboard an American Airlines MD-80 about 3:15 p.m. The unloading process took almost two hours, as some walked hesitantly down a staircase beneath the rear of the aircraft. Others were rolled down a ramp from the front of the plane to waiting wheelchairs. Personnel from Rural/Metro and the Tennessee Air National Guard volunteered their services, as did others, to get the patients and evacuees loaded onto buses or ambulances for the ride to area hospitals to be assessed medically before going to a Red Cross shelter.

Gore chose not to speak to the assembled media, but he was seen in a black T-shirt and jeans moving rapidly from one side of the plane to the other assisting with the off-loading operation.


fuck i'm angry. how can i not be when all i do is think of everything we could have avoided the last 5+ years? think of all the americans who could have died differently. 9/11/2001 would have been any other september 11th, and almost 3,000 people would have gotten to go home after work. there would have been no war in iraq. close to 2,000 more already who would have been afforded the opportunity to live a long life. hurricane katrina was destiny. if it hadn't been that particular hurricane, it would have been another, but FEMA wouldn't have been folded into a *department of homeland security* and rendered a joke in the process. the budgets for flood control in greater new orleans wouldn't have been decimated. and president gore sure as shit wouldn't have waited damn near a week to get the ball rolling.

no, he would have kept james lee witt around to head that particular cabinet-level department, and its budget wouldn't have been slashed to pay for tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy.




have a good look at the man. does he look groomed for his photo op? uhh... no. he looks like he's spent the last several hours helping to unload an airplane. can you imagine chumpy, erm... chimpy doing that? "but i'll get all sweaty and besides, i only wear hickey freeman!"

i want a president willing to get red in the face for me goddammit! how come it is that so many people in this country voted for the son of a bitch currently occupying 1600 pennsylvania ave, washington d.c. 20050?

son of a bitch, indeed. i'm sure you've all heard about the remarks of chimpy's mom. god, what a fucking cunt! i can just hear her saying "don't let them touch anything and get their poor people's smell all over it!"

that particular pomme didn't fall very far from the tree, now did it?


k... now for the portion of today's installment where i pimp for your ca$h: if you haven't already, or if you have and can afford more, please get yer ass over to http://redcross.org or http://oxfam.org or http://noahswish.org or any other organization providing care and comfort for the victims of that bitch katrina and give em some of yer hard-earned dinero.

tyvm.