rickoshadows said:
I have a few questions for those defending the relief efforts so far....
You're asking the wrong people. These nutsos live in a fantasy world unencumbered by anything resembling reality.
"They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying," as Nagin said.
FEMA Chief Waited Until After Storm Hit
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ONSE?SITE=SCFLO&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&SECTION=HOME
The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region — and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.
Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.
Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast.
But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.
Andrew Sullivan who's hardly a liberal, is furious
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/
"I'm trying to think of what this event means in the national psyche.
The complete collapse of effective government and of emergency procedures four years after 9/11 mean only one thing. We do not have an administration capable of running the country during the war on terror. They have bungled homeland security; they have mismanaged Iraq; they have dropped the ball in New Orleans. In each case, a conservative government does not seem to understand that law and order are always, always, the first priority. The glib self-congratulation of government official after official made me retch listening to them”
Sullivan also rips "the blithering idiot, Michael 'heck of a job' Brown, hired with no credentials to run a critical agency at a time of national peril. I guess some of us pundits bear the blame. We should have known that someone who had been fired for being unable to run an Arabian Horse Association had the job of responding to a national disaster in the war on terror. He was hired because a Bush crony, Joe Allbaugh (also hired because he was a major Bush fundraiser) liked him. The good ol' boy network at its most brazen. If the president wants to recover even a little from what has happened to his reputation, he has to fire Brown. Now.
That's the test of whether he gets it. Not his furrowed brow press conferences. Not his spin. Not the desperate attempts by Republican partisans -- once again! -- to blame someone else down the chain of command."
The Wall Street Journal editorial
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007213
cuts Bush little slack, saying that "the aftermath of Katrina poses a threat to his entire second term . .
"Mr. Bush is going to have to recognize the obvious initial failure of the Department of Homeland Security in its first big post-9/11 test. The President created this latest huge federal bureaucracy, against the advice of many of us, and we're still waiting for evidence that it has done anything but reshuffle the Beltway furniture. If FEMA can't now handle the diaspora out of New Orleans to Houston, Baton Rouge and other cities, the political retribution will be fierce."
Frank Rich
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/opinion/04rich.html
"From the president's administration's inattention to threats before 9/11 to his disappearing act on the day itself to the reckless blundering in the ill-planned war of choice that was 9/11's bastard offspring, Katrina is d�j� vu with a vengeance.
"The president's declaration that 'I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees' has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleezza Rice's 'I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center.'
The administration's complete obliviousness to the possibilities for energy failures, food and water deprivation, and civil disorder in a major city under siege needs only the Donald Rumsfeld punch line of 'Stuff happens' for a coup de gr�ce. How about shared sacrifice, so that this time we might get the job done right? After Mr. Bush's visit on 'Good Morning America' on Thursday, Diane Sawyer reported on a post-interview conversation in which he said, 'There won't have to be tax increases.' . . .
A visibly exasperated Shepard Smith, covering the story on the ground in Louisiana, went further still, tossing hand grenades of harsh reality into Bill O'Reilly's usually spin-shellacked "No Spin Zone."
Among other hard facts, Mr. Smith noted "that the haves of this city, the movers and shakers of this city, evacuated the city either immediately before or immediately after the storm." What he didn't have to say, since it was visible to the entire world, was that it was the poor who were left behind to drown.
"Surely it's only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer."
New Yorker Editor David Remnick
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?050912ta_talk_remnick
"To a frightening degree, Bush's faults of leadership and character were brought into high relief by the crisis. Suntanned and relaxed after a vacation so long that it would have shamed a French playboy, Bush reacted with fogged delinquency, as if he had been so lulled by his summer sojourn that he was not quite ready to acknowledge reality, let alone attempt to master it. His first view of the floods came, pitifully, theatrically, from the window of a low-flying Air Force One, and all the President could muster was, according to his press secretary, 'It's devastating. It's got to be doubly devastating on the ground.' The moment demanded clarity of mind and rigorous governance, and yet he could not summon them. The performance skills Bush eventually mustered after September 11th -- in his bullhorn speech at Ground Zero, in his first speech to Congress -- eluded him.
"The whole conceit of his Presidency, that he was an instinctive chief executive backed by 'grown-ups' like Dick Cheney and tactical wizards like Karl Rove, now seemed as water-logged as Biloxi and New Orleans. The mismanagement of the Katrina floods echoed the White House mismanagement -- the cavalier posture, the wretched decisions, the self-delusions -- in postwar Iraq."
Just as serious, the President’s priorities, his indifference to questions of infrastructure and the environment, magnified an already complicated disaster. In an era of tax cuts for the wealthy, Bush consistently slashed the Army Corps of Engineers’ funding requests to improve the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain. This year, he asked for $3.9 million, $23 million less than the Corps requested. In the end, Bush reluctantly agreed to $5.7 million, delaying seven contracts, including one to enlarge the New Orleans levees. Former Republican congressman Michael Parker was forced out as the head of the Corps by Bush in 2002 when he dared to protest the lack of proper funding.
Similarly, the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which is supposed to improve drainage and pumping systems in the New Orleans area, recently asked for $62.5 million; the White House proposed $10.5 million. Former Louisiana Senator John Breaux, a pro-Bush Democrat, said, “All of us said, ‘Look, build it or you’re going to have all of Jefferson Parish under water.’ And they didn’t, and now all of Jefferson Parish is under water.”
Josh Marshall
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006410
"It's almost awe-inspiring to see the level of energy and coordination the Bush White House can bring to bear in a genuine crisis. Not hurricane Katrina, of course, but the political crisis they now find rising around them . . . The storyline and the outlines of the attack are now clear: pin the blame for the debacle on state and local authorities . . .
"This whole conversation we're having now is not about substance, but procedural niceties , excuses which it is beyond shameful for an American president to invoke in such a circumstance. We don't live in the 19th century.
All you really needed was a subscription to basic cable to know almost all of the relevant details (at least relevant to know what sort of assistance was needed) about what was happening late last week. The president and his advisors want to duck responsibility by claiming, in so many words, that the Louisiana authorities didn't fill out the right forms. So what they're trying to pull is something like a DMV nightmare on steroids."
, I'm always glad to see you weigh in on things but you know how certain people are going to respond. The LDs and Dittmans of the world will spin an opinion blaming The Mayor and, somehow, Clinton. In Dittman's case, he'll somehow find a way to get Hussein in there too. What they really want to say is, "too bad those black people are so stupid, didn't they listen to the warning to get their black asses out of there? Hey, and what about that black Mayor? That'll teach 'em for not electing a good, God-fearing whitey". That's exactly what they WANT to say even though the real answers are obvious.
