“Countless lives have been lost throughout the South with a cost of hundreds of billions in ruined homes, businesses, and the destruction of an entire physical and social infrastructure.
“The President said an hour ago that the Gulf Coast looks like it has been obliterated by a weapon. It has. Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction.
“Our indifferent government is in a crisis of legitimacy. If it continues to ignore its basic responsibility for the health and welfare of the American people, will there ever be enough money to clean up after their indifference?
“As our government continues to squander human and monetary resources of this country on the war, people are beginning to ask, “Isn’t it time we began to take care of our own people here at home? Isn’t it time we rescued our own citizens? Isn’t it time we fed our own people? Isn’t it time we sheltered our own people? Isn’t it time we provided physical and economic security for our own people?” And isn’t it time we stopped the oil companies from profiting from this tragedy?
“We have plenty of work to do here at home. It is time for America to come home and take care of its own people who are drowning in the streets, suffocating in attics, dying from exposure to the elements, oppressed by poverty and illness, wracked with despair and hunger and thirst.
“The time is NOW to bring back to the United States the 78,000 National Guard troops currently deployed overseas into the Gulf Coast region.
“The time is NOW to bring back to the US the equipment which will be needed for search and rescue, for clean up and reclamation.
“The time is NOW for federal resources, including closed Army bases, to be used for temporary shelter for those who have been displaced by the hurricane.
“The time is NOW to plan massive public works, with jobs going to the people of the Gulf Coast states, to build new levees, new roads, bridges, libraries, schools, colleges and universities and to rebuild all public institutions, including hospitals. Medicare ought to be extended to everyone, so every person can get the physical and mental health care they might need as a result of the disaster.
“The time is NOW for the federal government to take seriously the research of scientists who have warned for years about the dangers of changes in the global climate, and to prepare other regions of the country for other possible weather disasters until we change our disastrous energy policies.
“The time is NOW for changes in our energy policy, to end the domination of oil and fossil fuel and to invest heavily in alternative energy, including wind and solar, geothermal and biofuels.
“As bad as this catastrophe will prove to be, it is in fact only a warning. Our government must change its direction, it must become involved in making America a better place to live, a place where all may survive and thrive. It must get off the path of war and seek the path of peace, peace with the natural environment, peace with other nations, peace with a just economic system.”
http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0902-10.htm
Note: http://www.commondreams...
Floor Statement Of Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich Re: Katrina
Posted on Monday, September 05 at 19:55 by 4CanadaContributed By
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But then this is market economy democracy some of our friends are so desperately clinging to on their way to self destruction.
Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.
Nader, but more reasonable.Sadly though, he was a lil weasel without charisma & he had a pipsqueak voice, and that influenced his abysmal final round tallies for the Democratic leadership.I rate the latter impressions as superficial & secondary, but many in the general populace
view physical appeal as being equally important or more important than what's going on between the ears : policy & political philosophy.
So they went for ghoulish, waffling, Frankensteinian, dour
and dense John Kerry !
(Edwards or Dean might have been more effective)
Must be about 15 or so years ago, when a whining, silly looking , ultra neocon, fundamentalist weasel by the name of Preston Manning raised his ugly head in Alberta, where else, and formed the Reform Party of Canada, advocating the privatization of everything etc. etc.
He was an overnight success, who almost completely swept Western Canada. Then the Party became the Alliance, hoping to sweep up the Progressive Conservative Party, which was dead in the waters, almost killed by Mulroney. He failed and quit. His place was taken by another fundamentalis preacher, by the name of Day, who ran the Party into the ground.
But then the PCs also elected another little weasel for a leader, who broke his election promise and sold his Party to the former Alliance, now called Conservatives, lead, this time by not a weasel, but a cold blooded predator by the name of Stephen Harper, following Manning's ideals, including the sale of Canada to the USA for a promisory note for 15 pieces of silver, as they don't have the cash.
When physical appeal is supposed to be a deciding factor in politics, how did Bush get on the throne twice, unless we attribute his second success to preprogrammed voting machines without a paper trail? At least we are still civilized enough to mark our ballots with an X and have recounts. Perhaps our American friends should try this revolutionary method and have a chance to elect a human being for a change.
Ed Deak, Big Lake BC
My Limbaugh-loving cousin from Calgary threw the weasel
label at Howard Dean like many clannish American neo-Cons did, simply because his voice cracked when he delivered a
sports-style scream.We all witnessed the elementary smear
campaign that all media seemed to latch on to repetitiously
until Dean was 'discredited'.Dean was actually providing
an anti-war backbone for the Dems, consistency and an
aggressive no-bull approach against the republicans.
Of course, it was contradictory Kerry to the 'rescue'
when 'weasel' Dean was ousted.
Many Americans think we only get the CBC up here (which
isn't too bad because they usually interview folks
on different sides of the the issues).Truth is, we
also have CTV, Global and most of the news organizations
(like Fox) that Americans get closest to our center, south of the border.
When I think of Manning, Day and Harper, I cannot fathom
more unappealing politicians except for the more destructively successful Mega-Weasel Mulroney, Ruthless-Weasel Rumsfeld, Moronic-Weasel Bush and Oblivious-Weasel Cheney.There's always Pharmaslut-Weasel Rush Limbaugh for sideshow fun.
Oh my, the wacko-weasels of the right...
the other side. Too many weasels in the hen houses.
They, US or Canada, are generally a pretty unattractive
bunch of "leaders."
corporate, Americanized weasel doing the
centristic dance of deception and spouting
Canadianisms when the pressure is on.
Meanwhile, he secretly shifts to the
right - behind the scenes, as we wonder
why Canadian nationalism isn't
omni-present and why Canada is becoming
increasingly Americanized.
Out of the visible, viable voting
options, Duceppe and Layton are the
only 2 guys who are boldly transparent
and consistent.Layton is the only one
who is boldly transparent, consistent
and nationalistic.