Building a Bridge to the 19th Century


Hey, who would've figured that a so-called 'businessman,'with a history of failures and shady dealings--and who only made money on a sweetheart deal in a licensed monopoly--would manage to fuck things up this badly? I mean, gee.

Let's see: two wars, neither one of which can be termed "victory" by anyone with functional brain cells...and now we've got nuclear Pakistan vowing to fire on any US troops or planes they deem as across a pretty ill-defined border...then we've got the financial meltdown (The good news: gasoline will be below $3.00 a gallon. The bad news: no one will have $3.00)...oh, and then there's the matter of Hurricane Ike's aftermath, bungled as only Team Bush can (or Team McCain could), off the national radar screen, maybe because it's not as much fun for Rick Santorum or Phil Gramm to blame white victims:

for some, the wait for a return to normalcy could be days. For others, it could be weeks.

"A good bath would be nice: have the fire department swing by and spray us down," said Carlos Silliman, 48, as he sat on a picnic bench in front of his Galveston Island home, where 18 inches of water flooded his garage and ruined a freezer full of venison. "I'm ready to have a cold beer and read the paper."

For most, such luxuries are far beyond the horizon. Many service stations have no gasoline, and some major highways remain under water. More than 30,000 evacuees are still living in nearly 300 public shelters, and roughly 2 million people in Texas alone are without power.

Ike's survivors have already walked for miles and waited for hours at supply distribution centers, gobbling up all that was offered: 1 million bottles of water, 1 million meals and 600,000 pounds of ice in just the first 36 hours after the storm passed.

It's not enough, and those dispatching truck after truck to distribution centers around the city know it. One such center north of Houston drew 10,000 people Monday in search of food and water.

...

Officials on the barrier island said it could be months before the city of Galveston reopens. The main gas and a primary electric transmission line to the island were severely damaged by Ike, which also tore at the wharves in the city's port. Officials warned that mosquito-borne diseases could begin to spread after one elderly man was airlifted to a hospital covered with hundreds of bites.

"Galveston can no longer safely accommodate its population," City Manager Steve LeBlanc said. "Quite frankly, we are reaching a health crisis for people who remain on the island."

The ONLY reason for the pitiful reaction to Ike (and Gustav) is that the Bush Administration has managed to squander resources on an almost unfathomable level. They truly HAVE built a bridge, if not to the 19th Century, then definitely to Bananaland.

And McCain-Palin promise to extend that bridge to nowhere.