When It's Needed Most, The Government Bails

Where is Kellog, Brown and Root when you need them? Aren't they experts at setting up field operations to feed, cloth and entertain large groups of people? Haven't they been enriched by the largesse of the US government over the last twenty years? But where are these patriotic capitalitsts? Too busy counting their Iraq profits? Too busy responding to that last no-bid RFP? You bet. They certainly aren't "on the ground" in the Gulf....unless you mean the Persian Gulf.

Halliburton and all its subs are too busy raking in the long, folding green to help the people of Louisiana and Mississippi. None of their substantial resources are being plied in the Delta, 'cause they're too busy sucking the nation dry in the deserts of the middle east.

The government, at every level, but particularly the Feds, have shown their true colors in this emergency. They have shown that they are, essentially, unable to respond at times of crisis. They have shown that average citizens are not important to them, and that when, push comes to shove, the President can manage, at best, a pathetic, weak-kneed speech. Clearly no one will be replaying them 30 years from now...like the do JFK and FDR....

So the government bails desperately, hoping that it can stand on the dias with a tin cup and offset its remarkable failure to protect its citizens. Hoping it can slosh enough water out of their sinking boat so that the 2006 mid-terms elections won't sink the neocon express.

This may be the wakeup call the southern states needed. This might remind them that, when it gets down to it, science and survival trumps everything else.