Fahn Miz'ippi Trailers

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That other four-letter eff-word, FEMA, was on the hot seat [yesterday], along with the four largest trailer manufacturers who supplied their toxic trailers to victims of Katrina.

The trailers were constructed of particle board laced with formaldehyde. Some of us remember formaldehyde from those stinky, rubbery frogs we had to dissect in high school biology lab.

Some remember even farther back, like Mr. Sunshine, to childhood and the killing jars he used to saturate cotton for collecting bugs for his collection. [I didn't dare ask how, as a kid, he managed to get formaldehyde...although there was this pathologist with the Heidelberg scar....]

So functionally, we've been putting families, like the family featured on the NBC Nightly News report, into killing jars to live for years, to put their children's health at risk, to deal with the headaches and the uncaring BushCo FEMA and their local bureaucracies because these were, after all "poor" people and they didn't have the connectedness of, say, Trent Lott and his beachfront front porch...or Mississippi Governor Hayley Barber and his casino cronies.

Betcha there's not a whiff of formaldehyde around those guys. There is another stench, though. The stench that says maybe the wrong member of the Lott family's doin' time...and the wrong Southern Governor was sent to prison.

Back in 1997, we had a bit of water up here in Prairie Country. Fargo was spared the worst of the damage, Grand Forks was not so lucky. Trent Lott was riding high back then, and his response to the dire straits and emergency needs? He'd see to it we got some of his "fahn Miz'ippi trailers...." Never could get that out of my head...fahn Miz'ippi trailers.

Prairie Postscript: Is there anything more pathetic than a gaggle of corporate owners sayin' they couldn't he'p themselves about supplying shoddy [fill in the blank]....they had no pride of quality control because the gummit didn't give 'em standards. Pa. Thet. Ick.

UPDATE: CNN reporting this morning that Mississippi Congressman Bennnie Thompson will hold hearings on the tons of supplies FEMA stored—and gave away to state and federal agencies instead of Katrina victims. The only Mississippian who would respond gave the same feeble type of response as the corporate owners gave [see my paragraph above]. Pa. Thet. Ick.

Hearings in the Senate? Guess the presiding committee chair, L'il Joe Sidewinder Sidekick has "other priorities." Joe Lieberman–AWOL.

Originally posted 7-9-2008 @ 9:09 PM