September 2006

so chavez said that George Bush (jr.) is the devil.

what’s wrong with that? metaphorically, it seems right on the money to me. as a “recovering catholic”, i have no personification of the devil just as i have no personification of god, or the supreme beings. they are known by their deeds.

and if george w. bush is to be known by his deeds, well, he is, in fact, the devil. there are many things i may not agree about with chavez, but the smell of sulfur lingering in the dead air behind yet another bush teleprompter speech sounds just about right.

george w. bush has destroyed the reputation and focus of the United States throughout the world. from being a peace-loving, assistance-providing, understanding nation, he has in a few short years destroyed all of that, pushed anti-American sentiment to an all-time high in our 2-1/2 centuries of existence, has killed more civilians in Iraq than were killed in Hiroshima (and with a whole lot less reason), and declares himself as having been chosen by god to lead this country in a new direction.

so, in this case, what is the difference between george w. bush and the ayatollah khomenei? or, for that matter, osama bin ladin. i can’t quite figure it out. if you can, your comments are SO welcome.

in the meantime, the US tortures prisoners without reason and holds saddam in prison for crimes he likely didn’t commit. was saddam a violent and sometimes evil dictator? no doubt.

but what is GWB? how is he different?

i am ashamed of our country. i am afraid to travel internationally because of the way bush has tarnished our reputation. i doubt that i am alone. but i’m just one citizen, who the hell cares what i think? i may as well live in ward 9 of new orleans, still waiting for repairs after a whole year has passed while here, in NYC, we squabble about that “hole in the ground.”

when do we get a reality check?

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on july 26th i filed a formal complaint with the DOT about a bus stop sign that existed on a corner where no buses have stopped for a several years now. (check the blog archives for my full rant about that.)

yesterday i get a letter from them, dated september 8th, stating that they have done a “full field investigation” and discovered that — holy shit! — there really IS a bus stop sign at a place where no buses stop.

now, this is at west 116th street and 8th avenue. there are DOT reps around here ALL THE TIME — clocking the buses and doing whatever it is they do with those clipboards. yet it takes a few weeks and a “full field investigation” for the DOT to figure out what was already obvious to everybody? your hard-earned tax dollars at work, folks. this is what happens with orgs like the TWU, where you practically have to do a homicide to lose your job. they shouldn’t have needed me to report this — they should have taken the sign down when the bus was rerouted. but that would be too logical.

they didn’t, of course, move the bus shelter. so it still appears that buses stop on that corner, when in fact they now stop across the street. there is no bus shelter at the new stop. guess if it’s raining, you can wait across the street and then make a mad dash across 8th avenue for your bus.

of course, you’re definitely risking life & limb if you do it that way, which is why most people don’t.

the DOT closed their letter by thanking me for my “interest in traffic safety”.

i wished they’d just thanked me for my common sense, and maybe taken a page out of my book to use for the future.

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a few feet down the boardwalk from the bantering cops, this man first sprinted and raved, then slumped and looked almost dead. seems like sombody in authority might’ve looked into it.

maybe they were busy catching up.

i made sure he was breathing. looked like a crack episode.

btw, these are all 60th precinct cops. have you heard about their recent bedbug outbreak? guess they had other things on their mind. check the link in the title above for all the creepy details.

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just another hardworking day in NYC. can’t possibly be much else to do in a town like this?

guess what? i don’t want the fucking poster.

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new orleans mayor ray nagin said “You guys in new york can’t get a hole in the ground fixed, and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair.”

and oh, boy, did he have to pay for that statement. i read in yesterday’s daily news how nagin came to nyc to visit the site and leave a memento and apologize to the families and so forth.

but you know what? he is RIGHT. and to a large extent, the families of the victims who were so outraged at nagin’s comment are responsible for this inexcusable delay. the squabbling over lawsuits and memorials is what has held up progress on this project, not a lack of funds or manpower, as is the case in new orleans. let’s face it, the federal government couldn’t give a damn if the 9th ward is never rebuilt — it’s not “their kind of people” who lived there, you know — and though it’s been widely acknowledged that the FEMA handling of the disaster was in itself a disaster almost as large as katrina herself, few amends have been made. oh, right, the first lady opened a library there, donated some books. thanks. now how about giving all those displaced residents a dry, non-toxic place to sit and read them? but no, it’s all on nagin’s back — and new orleans has never been known as a money city. its police department, for example, was the lowest paid in the nation, and i really can’t blame the new orleans cops who walked off the job when they saw that the federal cavalry wasn’t coming any time soon and that the damage inflicted by the hurricane, and the sheer volume of the stranded and the surviving was too big to manage. many of the officers — who had themselves lost homes or family members, let’s not forget — just headed for the hills. sometimes, context is everything.

so, in the context of not getting an almost completely destroyed city back in order after one year, with virtually no useful help from the federal government, nagin makes an entirely reasonable comment about nyc’s failure to rebuild on the WTC site in five years. and HE IS RIGHT.

we still have survivor families — some of which received a million or more dollars in either insurance or “hush money” (in exchange for agreements not to sue the city/port authority/et al) sniffing around for more. we have funds set up to increase the already-bloated (imho) memorial fund.

but we don’t have money to provide medical treatment to the thousands of WTC site cleanup workers who are now suffering a variety of life-threatening (and already, in some cases, fatal) symptoms of respiratory and other diseases directly related to the cleanup efforts. the workers were lied to at the time, they were told it was safe, many were not even issued so much as a surgical mask. but the survivors — and, it seems, much of the city — is far more concerned with the memorial than with the human lives that are now in danger due to these same attacks. more than a little hypocritical, wouldn’t you say?

mayor nagin, you were right. and i’m sorry that politics forced you to come here and apologize for a statement that was so, so true.

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