Wow...just...wow

via Corrente:

Do These People Live On My Planet?
From the weblog of the objectivistly-named Jane Galt, here is the worst of American reaction to the New Orleans disaster in a nutshell. Below find samplings of statements that reveal a seemingly bottomless capacity for churlish, selfish, callous, racist cruelty by self-congratulatory blog barnacles who coolly watch the NOLA tragedy play out from the comforts of their dry, food-filled, proudly right-wing homes. I believe many of them may fancy themselves a tad intellectual, and hard-nosedly so. The poverty of their arguments demonstrates otherwise. And as none of them lay claim to any sort of humanitarian compassion, you won't be surprised to find it absent here. Hold on to your lunch:


I'll just quote a few, but be warned, this truly is vile stuff...


"As Clayton Cramer points out: the average poor American owns a car.

Poverty likely prevented some people in New Orleans from evacuating, but the majority of people still there CHOSE to be there.

In the US, the vast majority of people who are poor are poor because they CHOOSE to be poor. I recall a Cato or Heritage paper showing that something like 75% of all people living below the poverty line would be lifted above it if they just worked 40 hours a week on average.”

***

“But what if there really IS a correlation between race and a tendency to amoral, selfish, violent behavior? Wouldn't it be suicidal to ignore it just because it is unpleasant that life might actually be ordered that way?

I just feel sorry for any white people left in that city. I saw video of some white tourists walking aimlessly, dragging their suitcases behind them, looking for help. They said they hadn't seen any police. What a nightmare...white people abandoned in a lawless city full of black people with no police in sight, and no firearms to protect themselves. You can talk all you want about how awful it is to be a racist, but they are the ones who are finding out firsthand the brutal realities of race in this country.”

***

“It seems to me that the poor should have had the EASIEST time leaving. They don't need to pay for an extended leave from their home, they could have just packed a few belongings and walked away to start over somewhere else. What did they have to lose?

When the wealthy evacuate, they leave behind nice houses, expensive cars, possibly pets that they treat as members of the family, valuable jewelry, family heirlooms, etc. This makes it emotionally difficult for wealthy people to leave. But by definition, the poor do not have this burden: they either rent their homes, or they are in public housing; their cars are practically junk anyway; and they don't have any valuable possessions. This is what it means to be poor. These people could just pick up their few belongings, buy a one-way bus ticket to any city and be poor there. Supposing they even had jobs in NO, it's not like minimum wage jobs are hard to come by.”


You know, if my faith contained the concept of an Apocalypse, an End Times of some sort, I would be rather inclined to think that the fact that there are a lot of people in this country that feel perfectly justified and comfortable spouting shit like this...that they are, in fact, in control of the government of this country for the foreseeable future, would be a sure indicator of it. And part of me would have to think it was kind of deserved really.

Just when you didn't think the incompetence could get worse

via Sadly No!:

At any rate, I turned to page 5 and found this lovely story:

Brown pushed from last job: Horse group: FEMA chief had to be `asked to resign'

By Brett Arends


(I should note that in the print version, the headline simply reads, "FEMA BOSS FIRED FROM LAST JOB.")

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows. And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.

"This can't be serious," you say. "Surely, his work overseeing horse shows was a short-term position, right? I mean, maybe he had some kind of relevant experience before then, right?" And you'd hope so. But if you skip to the end of the piece, you'll find a big ol' "Sadly, No!"

Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders' and horse-show organization based in Colorado. "We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records,'' explained a spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner's office. "This was his full-time job . . . for 11 years," she added.

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

"He was asked to resign," Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.


"You gotta be shitting me," you say, slapping your head. "The guy who's in charge of the federal government's disaster relief program previously ran horse shows for 11 fucking years??? And he got fired from it???!!! How did he even get a job with the government???"

Ah, that's the best part!

Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2003 to work for the president's re-election campaign.

This is today's Republican Party establishment in a nutshell. They hire totally unqualified people to run governnment agencies simply because they used to be partners in beer pong tournaments. I hope, I really hope, that I'd be just as outraged were a future Democratic administration to exhibit such outright nepotism and incompetence. I cannot imagine being a mindless apologist for this kind of stupidity.