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.