PRIORITIES & TRAGEDIES

Dear Editor;

      Hurricane Katrina: nature made the storm; man made the tragedy. Here's some of 'who' went wrong.
       
During 30 years of unusually mild hurricanes, Progressives - organized 100 years ago by Republican President Teddy Roosevelt - fought development of the coastal wetlands; nature's natural levees. They warned that with houses where the wetlands should be, killer hurricanes would wreck devastation. Their hearts hardened by the lust for mammon (the false god of riches & avarice) developers strong-armed legislatures, bulldozed the wetlands, built houses below sea level, grabbed the money, and ran.
     
Five years ago liberals & conservatives appropriated money to re-build New Orleans' levees. Seizing control of the Republican Party, Neo-cons, organized by Communists 70 years ago, sent the money to Iraq. Four years ago, PBS's NOW showed how a category 4 hurricane would destroy New Orleans. One year ago, Katrina performed exactly as predicted.
      
Governor Blanco ordered an evacuation, but President Bush sent most of Louisiana's emergency funds to Iraq with their National Guard, leaving evacuees on their own. Worse, as Ted Koppel reported, suburban police used shotguns & snarling dogs to force terrified refugees back into the deluge. Victims quoted the police: "We don't want you people walking through our neighborhood."
    
Governor Blanco immediately asked FEMA for "Everything you've got." FEMA sent nothing, not telling Gov. Blanco they wanted an itemized request. Ignoring field agents' desperate please for help, FEMA Director Michael Brown told friends: "I'm a fashion God" and asked them to recommend a sitter for his dog.
      
Publicly denying the devastation, FEMA investigators panicked when desperate citizens fired guns into the air to summon help. In a hysterical frenzy, FEMA reported riots, looting, and massive death tolls. Fifty FEMA agents a month resigned in disgust.
    
War fighters, recalled from Iraq to help, waited for special boots because combat boots were unsafe in the floodwaters. Meanwhile, Bush promised "zero tolerance" for barefoot parents entering abandoned stores to find shoes for their shredded feet and food for their starving children.
   
Neo-cons say Bush didn't know. Junior never reads magazines or newspapers, never listens to radio or TV and, according to the conservative McLaughlin Group and Time Magazine, yells at this staff when they interrupt his month long vacations with the nation's business. Bush's staff said they were afraid to tell him about New Orleans. Like 9-11 and his unprovoked attack on an unarmed and defenseless Iraq, Bush didn't know because Bush didn't want to know.
       
Louisiana nursing homes must have buses on call to evacuate senior citizens in an emergency, but since virtually every nursing home reserved the same 2 buses, Governor Blanco hired Greyhound and other companies to rescue seniors. FEMA commandeered the buses to move people into the sports arena, imprisoning them amidst rotting filth and denying them food, water and police protection for days. The National Rifle Association says police were kept busy illegally confiscating legally owned guns.
 
WALMART and other corporations sent trucks loaded with supplies, but were turned back at the barricades "because they hadn't been pre-approved." National Geographic said several victims died not from the storm, but from neglect. Chuckling slightly, Bush's Mommy said, "This is working very well for them."
      
Abandoned senior citizens suffered. Some died, also from neglect.
      
When Bush got bored playing cowboy and returned to his job, he proposed letting the military handle national emergencies. Despite reactivating disabled veterans, the military is bogged down in Iraq with too few war fighters and doesn't the job. The Pentagon's April 16, 2006 online edition of Stars & Stripes stated over 60 percent of our female war fighters are raped, molested and sexually harassed by our male war fighters. Our military is stretched too thin even to protect it sown from its own.
       
Bush hired transnational corporations to "rebuild" New Orleans. As in Iraq, they are bankrupting small businessmen and importing indentured servants to replace American workers. FEMA rebuilds whole islands for millionaires' homes, but barricades working people from their homes.
 
According to the U.S Department of the Treasury, last year alone Bush spent $3.3 trillion more than America had, borrowing most of it from foreign countries.
  
It's your debt.
 
Another Neo-con, Ronald Reagan, entrenched this borrow-and-spend policy. Another President Bush called it voodoo economics. Long ago bankrupt, we're selling America to pay our $50 trillion debt. That's why Chrysler is German and General Motors soon will be.  That's why conservatives are Bush's severest critics.
       
I'm not angry with Bush, and I don't hate him. Worse, I pity him.
 
Such a sad, pathetic little boy.
 
But such a naughty servant.
 
When you vote, remember which politicians sent a boy to do a man's job.
 
It isn't your father's Republican Party anymore.

Sincerely yours,

Ronald G. Denner
Saginaw


"I'm the Decider"
by Roddy McCorley

Dr. Seuss, anyone?
 
"I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation," President Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden. "But I'm the decider and decide what's best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of Defense."
 
Well, it took me awhile, but I finally realized what "I'm the decider," reminds me of. It sounds like something a character in a Dr. Seuss book might say. So with apologies to the late Mr. Geisel, here is some idle speculation as to what else such a character might say:

I'm the decider. I pick and I choose.
I pick among what's. And choose among who's.
And as I decide   Each particular day,
The things I decide on   All turn out that way.

I decided on Freedom  For all of Iraq.
And now that we have it, I'm not looking back.

I decided on tax cuts  That just help the wealthy.
And Medicare changes  
That aren't really healthy.

And parklands and wetlands
Who needs all that stuff?
I decided that none Would be more than enough!

I decided that schools  All in all are the best.
The less that they teach
And the more that they test.

I decided those wages  You need to get by,
Are much better spent   On some CEO guy.

I decided your Wade
Which was versing your Roe,
Is terribly awful  And just has to go.

I decided that levees  Are not really needed.
Now when hurricanes come
They can come unimpeded.

I've decided gay marriage  Is icky and weird.
Above all other things,
It's the one to be feared.

And Cheney and Rummy And Condi all know
That I'm the Decider - They tell me it's so.

I'm the Decider   So watch what you say,
Or I may decide
To have you whisked away.

Or I'll tap your phones.  Your e-mail I'll read.
`cause I'm the Decider -  Like Jesus decreed.
                                              
The Review welcomes your letters & correspondence. If you have a Letter to the Editor, please send it to Review Magazine, 318 S. Hamilton St., Saginaw, MI 48602 or e-mail to acidpen@sbcglobal.net