THE DOOMWATCH THAT NEVER SEEMS TO END

WHERE THE FUCK IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?

This is going to appear disjointed because, right now I feel disjointed. Almost a poem of helpless fury. All afternoon, I have been spasmodically watching a great American city – the birthplace of the blues – slip away. Where now is the much vaunted Homeland Security as inhabitants beg to TV cameras "Help us! Help us!"? Maybe too busy spying on librarians?

A massive chant – "Help us! Help us!", while I can personally do nothing except rage. I’ve seen people dying in the supposed shelters at the Superdome and the NO Convention center without food and water, while, tanks roll on downtown streets loaded with heavily armed police and National Guard protecting fucking corporate property. I’ve seen an NBC reporter in shock, telling of the deaths, and how the rumors of anarchy are vastly exaggerated, and trying to make clear the difference between anarchy and folks foraging for food and medicine to survive. He also begs for help.

And yet, on Fox news I’ve watched in disgust as Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly hammer on and on about "the breakdown of law and order", and stack up the buzz words until you need wings to stay above them – "rape", "looting", "crime", "gangs", "chaos" "disorder", "anarchy." On radio, the hideous Limbaugh huffs and puffs that the people still in NO and Biloxi don’t deserve help. They were warned to get out. (And a nod and a foul Limbaugh wink. After all, they’re only poor black people.)

BUT WHERE THE FUCK IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?

Fox would have us believe that relief cannot be brought until the streets are secure. And yet the continue to hamper relief efforts by spreading their horrorshow rumors. I am not going to forget this, you bastards. News crews fly in and out, and even Harry Connick can get in. Are media and musicians braver than FEMA and the National Guard? At the Convention Center, Connick seemingly talked to people and did what he could. The same NBC reporter told how he was the closest thing to an authority figure to come there since the levee burst. Maybe Fox are loyally covering up for the Federal cluster fuck, but, like I said, I ain’t going to forget what I’ve seen. Or the deathly quiet from all of those usually make so much unholy noise about the right to life. Were’s your fucking God today, Pat Robertson? No one to blame, Ann fucking Coulter? Where are the sooo patriotic flags in the windows of the SUV, assholes? Must the weeping be left to atheists?

EMAILS COME FROM THE EQUALLY ANGRY

HCB hasn’t been exactly helpless...Put Irish radio in touch with John Swenson, who's been supplying nightly reports on NO, as have I. The fun part is that John helped them make a connection with the bartender of Johnny White's Sports Bar, which has stayed open throughout, and she's feeding them the right sort of local color commentary. A real coup.

But he’s still pissed enough to be quoting Orson Welles...
Harry Lime: "Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?"
The Third Man
Bush looks down from Air Force One, 2000 feet in the air, and remarks "it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground," Wonder if he feels any more connected to the worms below than he does the red blots in Baghdad?

He also provides a link to a sobering essay by Dion Dennis
http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=468

While kaymo looks dourly to the future...
Or not. Maybe I'm just a cynical old hippy, but I have to wonder if the future New Orleans won't just be a small domed entity around the hotels and the French Quarter-- operated by Disney-- plus the industrial sector that the rest of the country needs, while the ruined slums and suburbs will be left to the Formosan Termites and the waves.This may sound heartless and all that, but this is a Republican country run by flinty hearted Christians who like to spend their money on themselves, right? Why would they want to build housing for hundreds of thousands of poor, nay destitute, African Americans, especially as said housing would just become a huge, juicy target for the next Category 5 Hurricane that happens to slam into that part of the Gulf Coast?
Estimated costs of rebuilding New Orleans are already running over $100 Billion. Seeing as how the country is already deep in the red and has an expensive little war on its hands that won't go away, I don't see how this thing is doable, other than as a limited re-build of a tourist district.But even that may be hard to contemplate, until the many square miles of flooded, ruined homes, mired in filth and corpses have been bulldozed, or cleared away.
And any time, this year or next, or a few more down the road, another big Hurricane is gonna come boiling out of the Gulf. And a little farther down that road, when the oceans are a wee bit warmer, there's gonna be a new kind of storm, Category Six, with sustained winds of 200 mph.In fact this disaster may just be the first of several to come, with Miami, Charleston, Houston, Savannah, Mobile all capable of providing the next. With the obvious fragility of American civilization exposed-- one big storm can disrupt gasoline supply to half the country-- one has to wonder if this may not be the beginning of a long retreat from the southern coasts, a pulling back to higher ground and safer land.

Some girl sends a related link to yet another of global warming symptom in Scotland...
"last year's breeding failures were due to lack of food for seabirds as a result of warming seas along the east coast which are a result of climate change."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4201880.stm

Maybe that’s enough for now. I feel strange. Disgust is tiring. I just heard on TV that Fats Domino is among the missing. And has anyone heard anything of Willy de Ville?

The secret word is Shameful