THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IN NEW ORLEANS WAS GOVERNMENT

Government agencies constantly stopped people from being helped or helping themselves. Just one tiny excerpt from a detailed article:

"Yet, for all of the public angst over the federal government's - and especially FEMA's - post-disaster response, most observers have missed what is painfully obvious: the government's response was perfectly in character to how people in government act in such situations. To say this in an alternative way, government was being government the same way that a dog is a dog.

As anyone knows, dogs are territorial animals, and governments are territorial entities. The first rule that a government agent follows when confronted with an "emergency" is to "secure the area." For example, when two young men were merrily going on a murder and mayhem spree at Columbine High School in 1999, the vaunted police "SWAT" team stayed outside and encircled the complex because someone said that the area had to be "secured" before police actually could try to save anyone. (Of course, we found out later that not only did police fail to save people, but at least one person bled to death because police refused to get help until the man had died. This was not incompetence; it was the normal workings of the "I am in charge and don't you forget it" mentality that permeates government at all levels.)

Immediately after the hurricane had stopped in New Orleans, for example, a Wal-Mart had brought a truckload of bottled water; FEMA officials turned the truck away, declaring that it was "not needed." Before we dismiss this incident as yet another example of incompetent government, we should realize that the official's actions were completely within the character of government".

You really MUST read the whole thing in this case. You will be horrified

An Australian compares what happened in New Orleans with what happened in our last big flood, which happened right here in my home town of Brisbane in 1974. And everything he says is true. The water was over the top of the roofs of great tracts of houses here. I guess I don't have to tell you how differently the two situations worked out.

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ELSEWHERE

I mentioned the yesterday the United Nations Human Development Index. One of my readers looked into it a bit more deeply and found this page -- where it tells you how the index is calculated. There is actually a bit of bare-faced fraud in it -- surprise, surprise! As my reader dryly comments: "I was interested to see the equations used to generate the index. In particular, the fact that the GDP per capita component is the only one that is subjected to logarithmic compression before being applied. I'm figuring they do that to make sure the US doesn't top the table -- can't have the evil hegemon pointing the way now can we?"

Walter Williams points out how price controls made problems worse for people evacuating Houston and Galveston before hurricane Rita.

It takes the Europeans to make heroes out of Palestinian suicide bombers. See here and here for brief reviews of a new movie called "Paradise now" about two Palestinian suicide bombers, about their "motives" and their "human side". It's a German-Dutch-French co-production, funded by the "World Cinema Fund", which consists of the Berlinale and the Bundeskulturstiftung (Federal Culture Foundation) -- it's the first movie produced with their help. For the "Evangelische Filmjury", it's the movie of the month, since it "invites us to reflect about the motives of the attackers", and Amnesty International awards it with it's "peace prize", because it's "weder belehrend noch moralisierend" - neither moralizing nor cautionary.... The movie won the audience's award and the "Blauen Engel" (Blue Angel) as the "best European movie" at the 55. Internationalen Filmfestspielen in Berlin 2005. The movie ends with the explosion of the bomb. But you do not see mutilated bodies. The screen simply goes white... At least Die Welt (a major German newspaper) had the grace to call the film "enttaeuschend" (disappointing).

Abraham Lincoln where are you? There's a Leftist Confederacy forming: "In answer to a growing swell of interest in realistic responses to the excesses of the present American empire, The Middlebury Institute has been launched by a group of activists and professionals to promote the serious study of separatism, secession, self-determination and similar devolutionary trends and developments, on both national and international scales".

The Red Cross racket: "This skewed giving to Red Cross would be justified if the organization had to pay the cost of the 300,000 people it has sheltered. But FEMA and the affected states are reimbursing the Red Cross under preexisting contracts for emergency shelter and other disaster services. The existence of these contracts is no secret to anyone but the American public. The Red Cross carefully says it functions only by the grace of the American people - but "people" includes government, national and local. What we've now come to expect from a major disaster is a Red Cross media blitz. .... The Red Cross brand is platinum. Its fundraising vastly outruns its programs because it does very little or nothing to rescue survivors, provide direct medical care or rebuild houses. After 9/11, the Red Cross collected more than $1 billion, a record in philanthropic fundraising after a disaster. But the Red Cross could do little more than trace missing people, help a handful of people in shelters and provide food to firefighters, police, paramedics and evacuation crews during that catastrophe. When New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer asked for documentation of 9/11 expenditures, the Red Cross' response was that it is federally chartered and not answerable to state government regulators."

There is an interesting post up at Sir Humphrey that requires a bit of deep thought. It is about Lefties backing evolution under a rational disguise while simultaneously irrationally denying free market ideas, despite evolution and free markets being very close analogues. The post is a response to a number of Lefty blogs getting all self-righteous about the current resurgence of the intelligent design/evolution controversy in education in America at the moment. Excerpt: "So economically speaking the analog of the ID proponent is the socialist. Scientifically the analog of the free marketeer is the evolutionist. An ID advocate who also wants to control the economy is at least consistent to a set of principles, even if you might disagree with them. Those deriding ID while backing market interference or planning are inconsistent and anything but rational, let alone moral".

Great! The disgusting Leftist so-called "International Freedom Center" has been dropped from the 9/11 site in NYC.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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