Don't you find it curious how Vice President Dick Cheney is going to visit Georgia, next week, when he didn't visit New Orleans after Katrina?
And, as for Georgia, it'd be a welcome relief if "humanitarian aid" came in the form of interest, and not navy war ships.
On August 29, 2005, in the hours after Katrina hit, you may recall, Bush and McCain were too busy celebrating the Arizona senator's 69th birthday to notice thousands of those who were displaced, or drowning. Indeed, while they were busy cutting into the birthday cake, FEMA was busy not returning phone calls.
That the vice president has chosen the week of the third anniversary of Katrina to announce his field trip to Georgia is egregious in light of his administration's wanton, and boldfaced disinterest in the the poorest, and most economically disenfranchised, citizens of New Orleans.
The only thing more egregious is the gross neglect of a hurricane-ravaged city, over the past three years, which largely looks today as it did in the days after August 29th, as well as a policy of calculated disinterest in the plight of the homeless, and the indigent, throughout this great nation.
Clearly, if there was a vast reservoir of oil in the city of New Orleans, that would have been the vice president's first stop. Surely, too, Mr. Cheney is thrilled by the prospect of a lucrative reconstruction deal in Ossetia and Abkhazia. Leadership that cares more about rebuilding a foreign country over reviving a national treasure is one that has overstayed its welcome.
Two days from the Republican nominee-in-waiting's birthday, one that is easily remembered as it, coincidentally, happens to fall on the same day as a historic, and monumental, tragedy that resulted from institutionalized mismanagement, it's up to each and every one of us to ensure that John McCain and George W. Bush don't get to celebrate President McCain's 73rd birthday while the rest of us are mired in debt, displaced by foreclosure, or engaged in a battlefield quagmire that has only served to profit the privileged few who now happen to run this country, and are running it into the ground. Oil isn't our biggest import; aristocracy is.
The high priests of privilege have been playing poker with our future, and that of our children. Those who want an economic caste system, who want life and death to be predicated on privilege, belong in their country clubs, not in our government.
