FEMA (Fucked up Emergency Management Agency)

(among other things to rant about)
If you go to FEMA's home page and search for where to donate money to help the victims of hurricane Katrina, the 3rd organization listed is a terrorist organization and hate group that has advocated the assassination of Venezuela’s democratically elected president.  What the fuck is it with BushCo and the right wing nut jobs?

from AmericaBlog
...
Well, guess Pat Robertson is a bit closer to the Bush administration than they're willing to admit publicly. Calling for the assassination of a foreign leader doesn't make him persona non grata, calling for the State Dept to be nuked doesn't make him a pariah, agreeing that gays and liberals caused Sept 11 didn't make him off limits either....

http://www.fema.gov/press/2005/katrinadonations.shtm
...
Donate Cash

  American Red Cross
  1-800-HELP NOW (435-7669) English,
1-800-257-7575 Spanish;

America’s Second Harvest
  1-800-344-8070

Operation Blessing (<-- known terrorist organization and hate group)
1-800-436-6348

...

Of course Karl Rove knows a vote is a vote and it's been shown in numerous polls that Americans are in general stupid, ignorant, bigoted and proud of it. The most recent poll from Pew Organization:
...

Most Americans believe that God was responsible for the creation of life on earth but divide on the question of whether and how life has changed since the creation. Overall, 78% say God created life on earth, while 5% think a universal spirit or higher power was responsible for the creation.

Support for teaching creationism along with evolution is quite broad-based, with majority support even among seculars, liberal Democrats and those who accept natural selection theory. At the same time, not all creationists believe that creationism should replace evolution in the schools: 32% of those who subscribe to the creationist view do not think it should be taught instead of evolution. These findings strongly suggest that much of the public believes it is desirable to offer more viewpoints where controversial subjects in the schools are concerned.

...
White evangelicals and black Protestants are the only religious groups expressing majority support for teaching creationism instead of evolution in public schools. Majorities of mainline Protestants, Catholics and seculars oppose this idea. Politically, a majority of conservative Republicans favor replacing evolution with creationism in the classroom, but support for this proposal falls below 40% for all other political groups, including moderate and liberal Republicans. Regionally, only among Southerners does a plurality (45%) support replacing evolution with creationism in the schools. (link)

Overall 64% favor teaching of creationism in school.  A significant portion of them favor replacing the teaching of evolution with creationism.  We've seen for a long time that religious fundamentalists are trying to take power. It's no different in the US than it is in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia or any other totalitarian theocracy.  Unless there is a drastic change soon I predict that the US will soon be a third world country.  It looks like the only thing that could save our civilization is if the rapture really occurred and all the wackos were sucked up to the mythical land of pink fairies. 

Now that  fundies have filed suit against the UC University system citing discrimination because they don't accept some of the text books that are published by Bob Jones University as adequate preparation for university. Students can still request admission based on their SAT scores, but if your scores are low and all you've learned about is the theory of how pink fairies or the Flying Spaghetti Monster has created the universe, UC says, sorry we really don't think you're the going to do well at university. Not very bright, ignorant and proud of it. Gee, maybe that just isn't going to work too well at some place like Berkeley which has 19 recipients of the Nobel Prize on their current and past faculty.

Christian Schools Bring Suit Against UC

Civil rights action says the system's admissions policy discriminates against students who are taught creationism and religious viewpoint.

By David Rosenzweig, Times Staff Writer

Amid the growing national debate over the mixing of religion and science in America's classrooms, University of California admissions officials have been accused in a federal civil rights lawsuit of discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints.

The suit was filed in Los Angeles federal court Thursday by the Assn. of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 religious schools in the state, and by the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, which has an enrollment of more than 1,000...(LA Times registration required (free))

And some good links and comments on the unbelievably stupid lies by Bush about the levees on a post on Pharyrngula. (unbelievably stupid lies by Bush  - what a meaningless phrase, that's what usually comes out of his mouth).  Sorry this is one where he just can't say the way he wants it to be and that's how it is. There are reports from his own agencies that warn about the dangers in the levees.

...I wish we could impeach a president for being an incompetent boob, a disgrace to his office and the nation, and just plain dishonest twit. We can arrest someone for being irresponsible and non compos mentis while driving a car, but when he's driving the country? Heck, all we can do is watch as he kills people and wrecks the nation.

George W. Bush, September 2005:

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Scientific American, October 2001:

New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh--an area the size of Manhattan--will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldn't go very far.

Yes, I'm pessimistic and think this country is fucked and doomed and feel fortunate to have lived before it collapses. At least I hope to live out my life before the United States and western civilization completely falls apart but I must say the odds don't look to be in my favor. Religion will be the undoing of society and civilization.  The only hope for civilization may be a country such as China, which of course has serious problems, but they have a chance to resolve the issues without basing their solution on a mythical sky god with the temperment of a 2 year old.