The Christian Right makes a mockery out of Katrina

I'm wiped; totally exhausted; the last thing I want to do is blog, yet I can't stop.

The past two weeks have been horrific, and beyond my comprehension.  I don't watch TV news because I can't look at the images; I am continually reading, and each article sets me off.  I have been both angrier and teary in the past two weeks than I ever have before.  God do I hate being weepy.

On Sunday 9/11, a sacred day in my city, I began to feel better. I realized that I didn't have to desert my life to volunteer in a resettlement center, I really could help effect change by blogging. 

Friends were visiting.  They have a condo in Atlanta and a summer house in Myrtle Beach.  They're giving the house to a family with animals;  and sharing the condo with a family with animals.  They requested a family that was in a resettlement area in Utah as they can't imagine people from New Orleans living among Mormons.

I began thinking about the Radical Right and how silent they were as they planned their spin.  This morning I read an article in The New York Times:

"WAS Katrina a man-made storm for profits?" asked Michael Shore, a contributor at the Web site Rense.com, a few days after the hurricane had all but obliterated New Orleans and its environs. "Just about every human being is totally unaware that technology exists now whereby weather can be used as a weapon of mass destruction." t's all part of a "hideous agenda," Mr. Shore wrote, to gain "total control of planet Earth."

Yes we do control the weather.  And I do mean the religious group that I identify culturally with.

But in the online post-Katrina theorizing, much darker musings have also emerged. Radical Christian Web sites are celebrating the fire-and-brimstone clobbering of a promiscuous city; anti-abortion groups have mounted spam campaigns that count the clinics now under water; and neo-Nazis have raised virtual fists, having somehow spotted Jews behind Katrina's 150 m.p.h. winds.

Anti-Semitic groups, for whom Katrina provided evidence that, among other things, "Israel plans to use the port of New Orleans in order to ship in weapons of mass destruction to use against American citizens" as one member at Aryan-Nations.org put it.

Damn they found out.  I lied, last week, when we said that we didn't have horns.  They're retractable.  And yeah sure, every American Jew puts Israel ahead of the USA and supports WMDs to be used against American citizens.  If my parents and I were all born in New York, that means I'm not an American citizen?  But my passport...

Apparently while Jews controlled the weather, Gays were being punished. 

For others, the storm was simply a divine gay-bashing, with numerous Web sites noting that Katrina landed just two days before the start of Southern Decadence 2005, the annual New Orleans celebration known informally as the Gay Mardi Gras.

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening," wrote Michael Marcavage at RepentAmerica.com, the Web site for the organization in Philadelphia that he directs, "this act of God destroyed a wicked city."

If that's not sickening enough we can always blame abortion.  And listen to the reasoning.  Makes perfect sense; very fact based.

Mr. Marcavage also noted that "Louisiana had a total of 10 abortion clinics, with half of them operating in New Orleans" - his implication being similar to one made by the group Columbia Christians for Life, which sent out mass e-mail messages comparing the tadpole swirl of clouds in satellite images of Katrina to the chin-tucked profile of a 6-week-old fetus.

Will you be pleased to know that some money is only being raised to help White victims?  New Orleans has many mixed-race residents; my god it and the bayous are famous for Cajuns and Creoles; my boyfriend Zachary grew up in one of the very affected areas.  Alway wanted him to be Cajun, but he was Jewish like me.

"Any cash, checks, money orders or goods sent to help with the Kinsmen Rescue Project must be considered gifts, with no strings attached on how the funds are spent," advised the proprietors of WhiteRevolution.com. "If you choose to give, you'll have to rely on our honor as Aryans that the funds are being spent to help our kinfolk in distress."

Don't you love that last sentence?  HONOR AS ARYANS; it's enough to reenergize me.  If bloggers have the power to print such nonsense and have it believed in more circles than I would like to think; I, as a blogger, have the power to refute it.

Though how can anybody refute the above?  It's so half baked it's funny.  But if you had told me a decade ago, a great president would be impeached because he lied about a blow job I would have laughed.  I wouldn't have believed that the 2000 election would be handed to Bush by five Supreme Court Justices nor would I have believed that Bush was sitting on intelligence reports prior to 9/11; the Downing Street Memo and the supporting documentation.  Nor would I have believed that a 9/11 or Katerina could happen.

Several years ago I would have laughed at the above article. I can't anymore.  I know our government allows sentiments like the above to flourish.  Don't give me the diverse cabinet bull.  Condi Rice is a 70 year old White male in a Black woman's body .

With each passing day I believe more and more strongly that the only option is to impeach Bush, and somehow get rid of Cheney and the entire cabinet. 

Blogging is becoming increasingly important; each day more people read us.  We can be on the inside of events before mainstream journalists many times.  As bloggers we're passionate about our work; we have to be as nobody is paying us.  We can be as opinionated as we want to be for the same reason.  Sometimes I think we should be reigned in.

But for the first time we have a truly free press. As long as inflamatory speech isn't invoked, people can say what they want to.  And I and many others can watch the above groups, and many others, see if  their power bases grow or lessen, and speak out when necessary

I write on my personal blog seven days aweek because people actually read it.  Seven days and I'm my own proofreader, fact checker, every type of editor and publisher, and that's not even the beginning of the blogging game which I am just learning.  My learning curve is slow.

I have somehow blogged my way into a position where I infuence other peoples thinking.  Maybe three people, but still...

It's an ego trip.  And it's a responsiblity.  That's why when I say IMPEACH BUSH, I say it with every bit of blood in my body. Winning The House in 2006 is no longer enough..

Bring it on! and some of us, in our personal blogs, have joined The Coalition to Impeach Bush  It's a big deal for me to use my blog as a vehicle to help impeach Bush as I have delusions of literary writing.  Many of my readers disdain politics.

While I can't afford to lose them; it's my country that I really don't want to lose.  Love the name of Tom Harper's blog, Who highjacked my country?  It's too true.

As bloggers we can help reclaim this country.  We're rapidly growing in both number and influence; we can explain how Bush is guilty of many impeachable offenses.

And those blogs quoted above?  People listen to them.  It is every decent blogger's responsiblity to make them much less read.

We can't control the weather but we can control the spread of anti-Semitism, racism, gay bashing, anti-abortion nuts and every other kind right wing nut thinking. 

We can multi task; we can help IMPEACH BUSH at the same time.