The president of Jefferson Parish was being interviewed by Russert. After he answered the questions, he said that he had one more thing to say. He then told the story of a colleague who's mother was in a nursing home in the disaster area.
As he began crying, he said that the mother would call every day and ask when she was going the be evacuated. He told her that she would be out Tuesday, he told there she would be out Wednesday, he told her they would have her out Thursday, he told her that they would have her out Friday.
She drowned in her nursing home on Friday.
This is what those that want to cut government to the bone do not understand. One of government's major responsibility is to protect the people when they cannot protect themselves.
When government is cut in the way we have seen in the past years, we are unable to protect our citizens. As we have seen, when we cannot protect and support our citizens, people die.
But who dies? Is it the comfortable few who call for these tax cuts? Are the confortable the stranded, the miserable or the dead? No, those greed filled Americans with an inability to extend compassion past their own driveway were safe and evacuated. They loaded up their cars and left the poor the infirm and the indigent behind.
Those with out resources and transportation were herded into inadequate shelter and treated like the animals those in the upper class think they are. Where is the compassionate conservatism now?
If you are not now angry, you are truly part of the problem, not part of the solution.
This was apparent within 10 seconds of the gentleman finishing his statements. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour started statements to the effect of "Hey, we are just fine here in Mississippi."
Barbour said that he could only control Mississippi, and they were getting enough food, the Coast Guard was saving people, and in essence they were just fine.
It made me sick. The whole "me and mine are fine, that's all I care about" it exactly what is wrong with America now. I hope Americans are watching, and learning from this. We are a society, and until we recognize all of our rights to be members of this society, we are lost as a society.
As quoted by Theodore Roosevelt: "This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."
I will link to the MSNBC video of the Meet the Press episode when it is available online.
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