thoughtful. entertaining. random.

nola: obama gets it!

Leave it to Sen. Obama (D-IL) to hammer home one of the key problems with BushCo and its approach to disaster preparedness:

“There’s been much attention in the press about the fact that those who were left behind in New Orleans were disproportionately poor and African American. I’ve said publicly that I do not subscribe to the notion that the painfully slow response of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security was racially-based. The ineptitude was colorblind.

“But what must be said is that whoever was in charge of planning and preparing for the worst case scenario appeared to assume that every American has the capacity to load up their family in an SUV, fill it up with $100 worth of gasoline, stick some bottled water in the trunk, and use a credit card to check in to a hotel on safe ground. I see no evidence of active malice, but I see a continuation of passive indifference on the part of our government towards the least of these.”

      – September 6, 2005

This is exactly what John Edwards spoke of in his abortive presidential campaign last year: there are two Americas, and the current administration is driving a wedge between the haves and have-nots that is only making things worse and setting us up for true domestic disaster. NOLA could be, in many ways, the tip of the iceberg.

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