Masters of the Universe...Right!

August has a great post today about the ridiculous arrogance of the gasbags who are saying about NOLA, "well, just dump it and move elsewhere - wasn't a good idea to begin with." You know, Chicago was built on a swamp (tall buildings there float on "pancakes" to keep them from sinking into the ooze), and was rebuilt after the famous Fire to urban glory under the Burnham Plan. If these fools had been making decisions, the place would have been abandoned as a write-off and an opportunity to sell bridges and corner offices and vacation plots to Greater Fools. Which is what they think the rest of us are - and I say, "Fuck 'em!"

Addendum: In an earlier post, I said I could very well have been stuck in the Dome (or the Convention Center) with the thousands still there, the old, the sick, the poor. This was not special pleading; I have plastic, but I also have a 97-year-old patient, and she and I have been watching the news from New Orleans with horror. My patient cannot travel easily, by any of the usual means - she will literally break. I am confident that her family would have moved heaven and earth to extricate her from such a disaster situation, but they may, themselves, have been unable to do so. So, when we watch the news tonight, and see these helpless people, do we begrudge any of the strongest of them for gleaning supplies from stores that are as stranded as they are, where the goods that could mean their survival will otherwise rot? My G-d, it's my job and my duty to protect the woman I take care of, and I'd swim though shit to keep her alive. Imagine how much stronger the urgency of parents, siblings, sons and daughters, cousins and aunts and uncles to do anything to keep their families alive and together, and then the helicopters pass by because someone took a potshot at them, or buses never arrive because the hazard is too great. Hazard for fucking whom? This is so fucking sick - and, as Wolcott rightly says, "...this is the time for politics, none better." You bet your boots, dude!