How many billions do they say will be directed at rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf coast? Eighty-something billion dollars. Huh? Just whereinhell do they come up with that wealth? Sure as shit not from the bulging federal treasury...which is basically imploding into a netherworld of future financial disaster.
So what do we see right away? Cozy-assed corporate shits belonging to the same rancid mafia cashing in immediately on this newly minted wealth. Did I hear the name Halliburton? Who's in charge of this "great effort" from the White House?...none other than everyone's favorite christofascist faker Rove! Warms the heart.
So we have a new New Deal for the South, with money popped into existence suddenly...most or all of which will fall into the greasy hands of greedfilled wretches...most or all of which will, of course, be financed not by U.S. corporate (or individual) taxes, but by China and other governments trying to keep the incredible shrinking dollar from breaking the levies of the international financial system (and that lovely American market from morphing into depression nothingness)...all of which, supposedly, must be paid back (will American troops be called out to quell the next Tiannamin Square uprising?).
Oh, right. Let us not forget that much of the relief money from contributions goes into a fund highlighted by Pat Robertson's "charity" (which channels half of the cash back into its fascist tv network). Good ol' "let's kill president Chavez" Pat...this, while Chavez himself offers more in material aid than most of the supposed "Christian" groups combined...

Finally, we're treated to the speculator spectacle...armies of shitheads (neo-carpetbaggers?) scouting out flooded properties for cheap deals...ah, what a wonderful New Orleans shall rise from the muck! With the speculators in the lead!

Fucking hell!
¡Hay que joderse!

thinking... 

what the fuck?

Might it be possible for thinking people to still argue for "free-market" politics (what the Europeans call "neo-liberalism"? This when the generalized privatization of everything in the U.S. economy has, of course, led to ever-more-Brazil-like contrasts in wealth/poverty, one of the industrial world's highest crime and encarcelation rates, a level of national debt that dwarfs that of Mexico, Brazil and Argentina before their respective crises (ironically, it's China that's keeping the U.S. economy afloat, by purchasing billions of dollars in U.S. bonds...will China act like the IMF and World Bank, sternly insisting that north Americans "tighten their belts" and start functioning with fiscal responsiblity? I doubt it).

And now this spectacle...an entire week goes by with hundreds of thousands of people abandoned to their fate, without food or other basics, with no escape out...and not enough public resources to mobilize. Not enough public buses to get people out...but of course, no need whatsoever for Greyhound or Continental to mobilize. Why should they? They might lose money. So the world looks aghast at the U.S., with every day bringing another reason to forget the United States as any kind of reference for decency or even practicality. Even Chavez is on the tube, talking about helping out the new wretched of the earth...in the States. How it is that Bush and his supporters can look themselves in the mirror, I do not know. As Maureen Dowd put it today - the United States of Shame.