This is America?

Am I having some sort of acid flashback?

I can not believe I have lived to witness this:

Announcing the arrival of 300 Arkansas National Guard troops in New Orleans fresh from service in Iraq, [Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco] said, "these troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded."

"These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will," she said.

Granted, the Governor and the troops have no choice now, given the un-fucking-believable lawlessness.

This is America?

Anyone who has watched the scenes of mass despair, hundreds of people wading through flooded streets with whatever they can carry, Thousands upon thousands standing on highway overpasses or collapsed from unimaginable exhaustion. I lived in New Orleans for 4 years. My wife and family are from New Orleans. We go down there every Christmas to visit my wife's mother. I watch these scenes, I recognize some of the places where I spent a lot of time, and they are awash in such surreal human suffering and desperation...

And guess what... all the people are black. Every one of them. The only white faces you see are doctors, police, and soldiers. And every one of them looks just as freaked out as the displaced.

This is America?

The federal government has been criminally slow in getting the lead out on this. And if someone doesn't step up and just admit that they were caught with their pants down and that they are sorry, and they pledge the full power of American industry and science into easing the pain, supporting the refugees for as long as it takes, and rebuilding the city (not to mention all the smaller, yet no less humanly significant, towns along the Mississippi coast), no matter how much it costs... if someone doesn't just say, "ok, we fucked up", my head is going to explode!

This is America?

What an Olympian disgrace!