What is it about these people? They just don’t know when to keep quiet.
Actor Sean Penn and singer Celine Dion each tried to help the victims of hurricane Katrina in their own way, Mr. Penn by trying to rescue stranded residents, and Ms. Dion by donating a hefty $1 million. Both efforts deserve our respect and our gratitude.
Too bad they didn’t stop there.
suffering ... dead bodies,” Mr. Penn declared. “There are people that are dying right now and I mean babies and old people and everybody in between - they're dying. There are people dying and (the US government are) not putting the boats in the water, I think that's criminal negligence. I don't think anybody ever anticipated the criminal negligence of the Bush administration in this situation." (That’s the cleaned-up version. The original sound bite was rifled with stuttering and uncertainty. It’s a good thing someone write his lines for him in movies.)
Mr. Penn’s efforts to aid New Orleans victims suffered when the boat he was using in a rescue attempt sprang a leak. He had planned to rescue children waylaid by Katrina's floodwaters, but forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the boat, which began taking water immediately. Mr. Penn was seen wearing what appeared to be a white flak jacket and frantically bailing water out of the sinking vessel with a red plastic cup.
Take 2: Celine Dion pledged $1 million to the Katrina victims. "There's people [sic] still there waiting to be rescued. To me that is not acceptable," she yelled. "I know they have reasons for it. But I don't want to hear those reasons. ... How can it be so easy to send planes in another country to kill everybody in a second and destroy lives. We need to serve our country."
"You know, some people are stealing and they're making a big deal out of it," Dion said on CNN's "Larry King Live." … "Oh, they're stealing 20 pair of jeans or they're stealing television sets. Who cares? They're not going to go too far with it. Maybe those people are so poor, some of the people who do that they're so poor they've never touched anything in their lives. Let them touch those things for once."
So, bash the President of the United States, who had nothing to do with the hurricane and wasn’t responsible for disaster planning and evacuation, and justify stealing TV sets and jeans at the same time???
God bless Hollywood.
Technorati Tags: Hurricane, New Orleans, Government, Sean Penn, Celine Dion, Disaster, Katrina
1 comment:
"So, bash the President of the United States, who had nothing to do with the hurricane and wasn’t responsible for disaster planning and evacuation, and justify stealing TV sets and jeans at the same time???"
I think it's pretty clear that a lot of people are to blame for this disaster, but the POTUS is not as squeaky clean as the conservative echo chamber would have you believe. He cut funding fir reparinng the levees, for one thing. I know, those repairs wouldn't have prevented this, but then all I can say is he's "lucky" Katrina came this year and not next. And he called the levee project pork, this just before signing the largest pork bill in the history of the US (which, by the way, way a major flip-flop on his part). It's indicative of this administration's priorities- bridges to nowhere for Republican Senators? OK. Reinforce flood protection for hundreds of thousands of poor black (Democrat?) citizens? WE NEED LESS PORK!!
"Nobody could have forseen the levees giving way", except those of who actually read papers. Once the word "New Orleans" entered the news for Katrina, Bush should have been on the phone telling his people to prepare for a massive deployment, instead of sitting back, chopping some wood, and waiting for a request. The former is leadership, the latter typical of this pooresident.
Of course we know what he is most concerned about (From the Salt Lake Tribune):
"There are all of these [volunteer firefighter] with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter said. "They [the hurricane victims] are screaming for help and this day [of FEMA training] was a waste."
Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.
But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas. "
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197
Regarding the looting stuff, I have no problems with the jeans- people need clothing. As for the TVs, good luck finding somewhere to plug it in. Personally, I'm not gonna judge people too harshly when they steal a TV a day after they lose everything, including family members, and watch corpses float by, women and children raped, and the our leaders (local, state, and federal) respond when it's convenient.
Can you say, w/out hesitation Mr. Shott, that in the same situation, you would still act as a model Christian? I'm not saying you wouldn't, but I don't think you can say you would.
Oh, and while the president didn't have anything to do with the hurricane coming, he will be responsible in the coming years when storms of Katrina's intensity occur more and more frequently. Of course I don't expect him, or any other opponent of climate change science, to accept that responsibility.
Post a Comment