The City of Louisiana

[jamesq]

I was going to post a big damn blog about the destruction of New Orleans, but this about sums it up for me: http://media.putfile.com/OlbermannSwings

*** Late edit ***

I thought I'd add Mark Morford's take on the whole thing and also show you this wonderful photo I found:

Comments

[garething.livejournal.com]

Wow...

That needed to be said, and you could see the disgust in his eyes while he said it. Talk about giving it good and hard, too.

Hmmm...

[http://users.livejournal.com/-grog-/]

What a delightful skewering of BushCo's handling of the Katrina disasters.

Almost makes one hope that the voters might break the Republican grip on all 3 elected branches of government.

Re: Hmmm...

[jamesq]

Almost makes one hope that the voters might break the Republican grip on all 3 elected branches of government.

Having Diebold in your pocket means never having to worry about those pesky voters. It's not like BushCo won the last two elections.

[ladyerwyn.livejournal.com]

The voters will just swing all the way over the Dem camp. To them it's either republican or democrat and they won't look at anybody else. No independents, no green party, or any of the other parties. Here it's dem or republican. The people who actually vote for parties other than dem and republican get ridiculed. So they vote in a dem or repub and then spend the next four years complaining about him.

I say they should vote Oprah into office. She can be the Oprah party.

[jamesq]

Many years ago I worked for Office Despot. They sent me to San Francisco on a junket for sales training. I was there for a week and got to know some of my fellow sales weasels during that time. One of then was from Eugene Oregon, who told me about the bipolar nature of US politics. Me and a fellow from Saskatchewan in turn told him about Canadian politics. There was a Federal election going on at the time so we gave him an overview of the parties involved:

1) The Liberals (closest to your Democrats, but slightly more to the left - in Canada there pretty much dead center).

2) Progressive Conservatives (closest to the way the Republicans have been historically, but not recently)

3) The New Democrats (farther left then the Liberals, would never get elected in the States, but manage to get 5-10% of the seats here)

4) The Reform Party (closest to the way the Republicans under Bush Jr. are now).

5) The Bloc Quebecois (regional party dedicated to Quebec separation, a topic that, as an American, you are lucky to avoid).

And those were the ones that managed to get seats in Parliament. To round out the assorted nut clusters we have:

6) The Rhinoceros Party. Among their other promises, they wanted to level the country by bulldozing all the mountains into all the low bits so you could "coast from coast to coast". God I miss them.

7) The Natural Law party, which wanted to teach the nation Yogic flying so that we could usher in a new age of world-wide peace and harmony. Unlike the Rhinos, they were serious.

8) The Communist Party of Canada and

9) The Marxist-Leninist party of Canada. They're two parties because they had a schism in the 50's or 60's over whether the old Soviet Union was justified in sending the army in to thump any of the satellite states that got uppity.

10) The Canadian Heritage Party, Try to imagine the Republicans if they were run by Pat Robinson.

Eugene Oregon thought we were making this shit up.

In the intervening 15 years, some of these parties have vanished, some new ones have appeared (The Alberta Separation Party - aka the whiney bitch party), some have merged - the Reform became the Conservative/Reform Alliance Party, later simply the Alliance Party after someone told them what the acronym was. Eventually they merged/absorbed/bullied the Progressive Conservatives and are now simply the Conservatives.

Canadian Politics is fun!

Fantasy and Reality

[http://users.livejournal.com/-grog-/]

Reality being what it is, even the most fevered imagination won't come up with anything quite as bizarre.

Hesitating

[(Anonymous)]

I hate to say it but I stopped voting in Canadian politics during my sojurn out west. It wasn't a real decision based on what I felt was right or wrong. At least, not at first. At first it was just too awkward to get time to take a bus in to a far away city or town to vote.

Slowly over time it grew to a very large dislike of the whole process. A dislike of the way governments will do what they damn well please regardless of the consequences or the democratic choices of their voters (Remember the old "The People of Whitemud have Spoken" debacle, or the four years the Western Lottery foundation was sentenced to Stettler? Things like that hsould never have taken place.

But this is about that Grande Dame of cities in North America. New Orleans. A disgusting example of how cronyism can displace the responsibilities of those with acronyms behind their names. Those people who get positions of power based on favoritism and personal sucking up to the people in charge. I would love to say that things like this don't happen in Canada, but they do. Does anyone remember Walkerton? Do you think a province as small as PEI is immune to something like this when a large portion of its population is in the government, and they shuffle around madly when there is a shift in power at all levels?

Do you honestly think Edmonton is ready for a major event in Fort Saskatchewan that could make life miserable for the north eastern half of Edmonton? Not to mention Sherwood Park or other outlying areas if a refinery had a small/minor/large/fucking huge explosion? Could something as dangerous as Wabamum Lake happen in your own back yard and make your dream home a living nightmare for years or decades to come?

Responsibilities in the governments way of handling emergencies have taken on the characteristics of a house of cards. People in positions of responsibility who have no business being in charge are everywhere. Their positions should not be at the whim or fancy of a four-year-flip-flop. New Orleans should be a wakeup call to the publiic everywhere, but it won't be.

In four years (or three) do you really think this will be brought up during the voting season? In the next election do you think they will be showering politicians everywhere with criticism or disdain? I don't know, but I hope the current levels of criticism on the news continues. I hope they stop currying favor amongst politicians by kissing ass and bending over. I hope they are as biting and caustic as the politicians are amongst themselves.

It used to be said that your vote held the difference in who got into office. I don't believe that anymore. I believe it is us who determines that. Don't just vote, join. Don't just talk, do. Don't just speculate, learn. Don't just blog, write.

The future is going to be more of the same. There are no quick fixes that can be remedied by voting en masse against whoever is currently screwing things up. That never worked in BC. It won't work in Alberta, and it will never change things in Canada. It is a gradual thing which will have to start with the next generation. It is something which has to be taught to them. To be demonstrated in all it's greasy, naked truths. It is something that should be part of the curriculum from grade ten on. How the governemnt is supposed to work, how it does work, and how it has failed.

I never learned about Canada, the true Canada, until I went to University. That apathy was happily passed on to my generation from an apathetic generation of instructors and parents. I'm sad to say it will be passed on by the current generation as well. New Orleans is just the tip of a much, much larger problem. It's cerrtainly isn't going to be the end.