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I'm spilling my guts over at The American Street today, and with this post, very cleverly linking my 3 blogs and a couple of blogfriends all at the same time.

As Small Faces sang in Itchycoo Park, "It's all too beautiful".


Oh, and
Happy Birthday!
to my dear friend
and husband of 26 years.

Keep fighting
the good fight.

I love you more than ever.

And On A Happier Note...

Over at Pen-Elayne on the Web, Elayne Riggs has some great shots of fellow bloggers taken at a backyard picnic thrown by Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged, including Michael Berube, Steve Gilliard, and Barbara O'Brien (many others, too!) Fun to see what people look like.

Nice to blog about something that doesn't depress the hell out of me. Thanks, Elayne.

A Change Is Gonna Come

Brian Williams, long a cheerleader of the Bush regime, went to NOLA and had an epiphany. Now the news anchor of one of the top broadcast stations in the country has used the word “criminal” in relation to George W. Bush and his administration:

“There was water, there was food, and there were choppers to drop both. Why no one was able to combine them in an airdrop is a cruel and criminal mystery of this dark chapter in our recent history. The words 'failure of imagination' come to mind.”

He concludes:

“I refuse to believe that anyone I met at the dome has lesser value than anybody in my family that I go home to. I don't believe that about this country. I don't want that to be the lesson in this. I was angry. People were going without and dying in the wealthiest country the world has ever known.”

The ramifications of this can’t be overestimated, I think. Many, many reporters, including those like Shepard Smith from Fox, had their eyes opened by this tragedy. They were there before the spin began, and they had their own experiences to compare to the puling excuse-mongering and mirroring that Bushco began in earnest when the outrage began to penetrate their force field of entitlement. Will they hold onto this newfound ability to speak the truth and demand it from others?

They'd better. Because I see Watts and Detroit all over again if they don't.

Elect Us And We'll Prove It

In Paul Krugman's latest column this morning, he outlines some examples of Bush's deliberate seeding of important agencies with the kinds of destructive appointments guaranteed to bring those agencies down. Using FEMA as a starting place, he ticks them off, with examples: the EPA, FDA, CPB, and then on to the Treasury Department itself, and Homeland Security, two agencies you'd think even Bush would have a stake in preserving. He sums up at the end:

"The point is that Katrina should serve as a wakeup call, not just about FEMA, but about the executive branch as a whole. Everything I know suggests that it's in a sorry state - that an administration which doesn't treat governing seriously has created two, three, many FEMA's."

Doesn't treat governing seriously. That's the crux of it. Conservative satirist P.J. O'Rourke once cracked, "Republicans say, 'Government doesn't work. Elect us and we'll prove it.'" I would take the opposing view, and suggest that Bush has treated governing very seriously. Seriously in the sense that he is serious about destroying it as we have always known it.

And now his clusterfuck excuse for an infrastructure has made the point for O'Rourke and Krugman and me and many others, among them, William Greider. In a devastating article, "Rolling Back the 20th Century", written for The Nation back in April of 2003, Grieder described the long-term plans of the extreme right, and their yearning for the good old days of the McKinley era, the Gilded Age of robber barons, non-existent health and safety regs, and near-slave labor. Here he is, laying out the basic plan:

"§ Eliminate federal taxation of private capital, as the essential predicate for dismantling the progressive income tax. This will require a series of reform measures (one of them, repeal of the estate tax, already accomplished). Bush has proposed several others: elimination of the tax on stock dividends and establishment of new tax-sheltered personal savings accounts for the growing "investor class." Congress appears unwilling to swallow these, at least this year, but their introduction advances the education-agitation process. Future revenue would be harvested from a single-rate flat tax on wages or, better still, a stiff sales tax on consumption. Either way, labor gets taxed, but not capital. The 2003 Economic Report of the President, prepared by the Council of Economic Advisers, offers a primer on the advantages of a consumption tax and how it might work. Narrowing the tax base naturally encourages smaller government.

§ Gradually phase out the pension-fund retirement system as we know it, starting with Social Security privatization but moving eventually to breaking up the other large pools of retirement savings, even huge public-employee funds, and converting them into individualized accounts. Individuals will be rewarded for taking personal responsibility for their retirement with proposed "lifetime savings" accounts where capital is stored, forever tax-exempt. Unlike IRAs, which provide a tax deduction for contributions, wages are taxed upfront but permanently tax-sheltered when deposited as "lifetime" capital savings, including when the money is withdrawn and spent. Thus this new format inevitably threatens the present system, in which employers get a tax deduction for financing pension funds for their workers. The new alternative should eventually lead to repeal of the corporate tax deduction and thus relieve business enterprise of any incentive to finance pensions for employees. Everyone takes care of himself.

§ Withdraw the federal government from a direct role in housing, healthcare, assistance to the poor and many other long-established social priorities, first by dispersing program management to local and state governments or private operators, then by steadily paring down the federal government's financial commitment. If states choose to kill an aid program rather than pay for it themselves, that confirms that the program will not be missed. Any slack can be taken up by the private sector, philanthropy and especially religious institutions that teach social values grounded in faith.

§ Restore churches, families and private education to a more influential role in the nation's cultural life by giving them a significant new base of income--public money. When "school choice" tuitions are fully available to families, all taxpayers will be compelled to help pay for private school systems, both secular and religious, including Catholic parochial schools. As a result, public schools will likely lose some of their financial support, but their enrollments are expected to shrink anyway, as some families opt out. Although the core of Bush's "faith-based initiative" stalled in Congress, he is advancing it through new administrative rules. The voucher strategy faces many political hurdles, but the Supreme Court is out ahead, clearing away the constitutional objections.

§ Strengthen the hand of business enterprise against burdensome regulatory obligations, especially environmental protection, by introducing voluntary goals and "market-driven" solutions. These will locate the decision-making on how much progress is achievable within corporate managements rather than enforcement agencies (an approach also championed in this year's Economic Report). Down the road, when a more aggressive right-wing majority is secured for the Supreme Court, conservatives expect to throw a permanent collar around the regulatory state by enshrining a radical new constitutional doctrine. It would require government to compensate private property owners, including businesses, for new regulations that impose costs on them or injure their profitability, a formulation sure to guarantee far fewer regulations [see Greider, "The Right and US Trade Law," October 15, 2001].

§ Smash organized labor. Though unions have lost considerable influence, they remain a major obstacle to achieving the right's vision. Public-employee unions are formidable opponents on issues like privatization and school vouchers. Even the declining industrial unions still have the resources to mobilize a meaningful counterforce in politics. Above all, the labor movement embodies the progressives' instrument of power: collective action. The mobilizations of citizens in behalf of broad social demands are inimical to the right's vision of autonomous individuals, in charge of their own affairs and acting alone. Unions may be taken down by a thousand small cuts, like stripping "homeland security" workers of union protection. They will be more gravely weakened if pension funds, an enduring locus of labor power, are privatized."

In every instance outlined here, Bush has moved to make Grieder's nightmare a reality, and he has only just begun. Even now, his apologists on the right are minimizing the signifigance of the lives lost and the damage done down south, positioning Bush to arise from these ashes like the murdering phoenix he has been after every disaster his administration has overseen.

If you want to stop this man, if you want to fight back, it's crucial to expose this agenda at every turn, and to keep reminding people where their troubles are coming from, because we have seen how American amnesia has time and again aided these people in their short-term history rewrites. It's very easy for people to see their local infrastructures disappear and their schools collapse, and then blame local and state officials for it. But in truth, it was the Bushco plan all along to strip the states and municipalities of funds, layer on financial responsibilities that once belonged to the fed, add unfunded mandates to increase the burden, and then turn around and point to their own tax breaks and crow about getting government off our backs, all the while breaking the bank with the spiralling debt of those tax breaks, their ongoing wars, and the huge subsidies they handed out like candy to their already sinfully wealthy corporate buddies.

All of which is calculated to wipe government as we once knew it off the face of the map, and render individuals powerless and ineffectual. Welcome to the Republican machine.

Signing Off Till Monday

Because I just can't stay in one place too long. But till then, there's this, for my brother-in-law, who used to live in NOLA; his wife, who met him there; and all the wonderful people of that town---patience, cher. May you rebuild better, and safer, than ever, and may all your dear ones come back to you safe:

"Well, I wish I was in New Orleans
I can see it in my dreams
arm-in-arm down Burgundy
a bottle and my friends and me
hoist up a few tall cool ones
play some pool and listen to that
tenor saxophone calling me home
and I can hear the band begin
"When the Saints Go Marching In"
by the whiskers on my chin
New Orleans, I'll be there

I'll drink you under the table
be red nose go for walks
the old haunts what I wants
is red beans and rice
and wear the dress I like so well
and meet me at the old saloon
make sure there's a Dixie moon
New Orleans, I'll be there

and deal the cards roll the dice
if it ain't that ole Chuck E. Weiss
and Clayborn Avenue me and you
Sam Jones and all
and I wish I was in New Orleans
I can see it in my dreams
arm-in-arm down Burgundy
a bottle and my friends and me
New Orleans, I'll be there"

---Tom Waits, I Wish I Was In New Orleans

Painting by John Haymsen

FEMA, Orphan Of The Storm

Two bits on FEMA:

First, from Mike Froomkin, a link to a post titled "I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp" by an author named Valhall, purporting to describe an evacuee camp set up by FEMA at a Baptist youth camp called Falls Church. He posted it hoping someone could prove it to be faked, but as he noted, and I concur, the behavior of FEMA's agents in these last days makes it all the more likely to be credible. Take a look at the text and photos, and maybe do a little digging on your own. At face value, I'd say it's probably real.

And second, an illuminating interview held this morning on NPR station WHYY's Radio Times with former FEMA Deputy Director George Haddow, who held the position under Clinton. He explains clearly what FEMA's responsibility is (to coordinate federal, state and local emergency services and to take the lead in situations of overwhelming disasters like Katrina), how Katrina should have been handled, how similar situations had been handled by his agency in the past, how state and local governments had been starved of funds and consequently cut back on emergency preparedness, and much more. He minces no words in assigning blame "all the way to the top." The interview will be available in archives later this afternoon, if you want to hear it.
UPDATE: The interview is up.

Someone (Andrew Sullivan?) said it's too bad this isn't a parliamentary system so we can have a vote of confidence on Bush. But you know at least 38% would be happy to keep him right where he is.

Eulogy For The American Dream

Josh Marshall has put up a really fine Katrina event timeline, and invites contributions/corrections. He also notes the information shutdown on NOLA being engineered by FEMA, and comes to this conclusion:

"Take a moment to note what's happening here: these are the marks of repressive government, which mixes inefficiency with authoritarianism. The crew that couldn't get key aid on the scene in time last week is coming in in force now. And one of the key missions appears to be cutting off public information about what's happening in the city.
This is a domestic, natural disaster. Absent specific cases where members of the press would interfere or get in the way of some particular clean up operation, or perhaps demolition work, there is simply no reason why credentialed members of the press should not be able to cover everything that is happening in that city.
Think about it."

Well, a certain core group of people in the country aren't thinking about it at all, and thanks to the news blackout underway, they probably won't have to. Editor & Publisher reveals this, from a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released yesterday:

"While 42% of respondents characterized Bush's response to the disaster as bad or terrible, 35% said it was good or great. Federal agencies got exactly the same marks. State and local officials fared only a little better--their response was described as bad or terrible by 35% and good or great by 37%.
Again, the views were strongly based on partisan leanings, with Republicans giving the president good grades on this issue by a 69% to 10% margin, while Democrats' views were precisely the opposite. But independents gave Bush a thumbs down by 47% to 29%.
Asked who was MOST responsible for the post-hurricane problems, 13% picked Bush, 18% said federal agencies, 25% selected state/local officials and 38% said no one was to blame.
Asked if top officials in federal agencies responsible for emergencies should be fired, 29% said yes, and 63% no. "

You read it right. "35% said it was good or great", and "38% said no one was to blame"! H.L. Mencken once said that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, and P.T. Barnum said there was a sucker was born every minute, but neither of them may have ever fully grasped the utter meanness, domestic xenophobia, and fear-and-hate-fueled cruelty that currently underlays the American character. I used to think such people were the minority.

I know, now, that they are exactly who America is.

I Want A Little Perspective, Said Sean

From The Medium Lobster:

"More importantly, one must recognize that there are limits to what powers the federal government should exercise in a crisis. Yes, it is the right and duty of the president to override state drug policy, to determine who can or cannot marry, to indefinitely detain citizens without due process and to torture and kill prisoners as he sees fit, but disaster relief is a matter that should be left to the states. Yes, the images of the drowned, the diseased, and the desperately dying drove much of the country to outrage, but how much more outraged would America have been if FEMA had fed the Superdome refugees without the full oversight and authorization of the State of Louisiana? Had the president sent rescue helicopters to evacuate New Orleans the day the levees burst, he might have saved thousands of lives, but he would also have overstepped his authority - and if there's one thing George W. Bush refuses to countenance, it is abuse of power."

And don't forget that it is also the right and duty of the president to intervene in a family matter when a life support decision has to be made, though for the folks in NOLA who were hoping for some life support---not so much.

Let's see...the court ordered the Schiavo feeding tube removed on Friday, March 18. And on Monday, March 21, Bush signed the bill to allow a federal court to review the case. That's 3 days. And this is what he said at the signing:

"Those who live at the mercy of others deserve our special care and concern. It should be our goal as a nation to build a culture of life, where all Americans are valued, welcomed, and protected..."

Still working on that, are we George?

Oh, well. It's hard work, huh?

The Investigation President

"Are we ready for the next major catastrophe?"--Morning Edition, 9/7/05.

Well, sure. They'll piss around with their thumbs up their asses (the tough go shopping, eh, Condi?) until a sufficient number of expendables are dead and dying that they can safely come in, survey the devastation they've allowed, and then blame "bureaucracy" and call out in high dudgeon for another "investigation."

Sam Rosenfeld at Tapped points up the shining paradigm of the Bush admin, and the ideology that underpins it:

"That’s the Bush approach in a nutshell -- make messes, then take credit for boldly tackling those messes. Exacerbate crises, and then expend maximum effort to reap the political rewards that are inherent to occupying the office to which the public instinctively turns in times of such crisis."

And just in case you thought it didn't have anything to do with deliberate genocide, Yglesias outlines the methodical destruction wrought by Bush on the nation's safety net, though his conclusion is rather lame: left and right should come together and compromise on a solution--give money to the poor AND deal with out-of-wedlock births. Please! Out-of-wedlock births have been steadily decreasing, while the gap between rich and poor has expanded steadily under Bush. Funny how the people who claim that throwing money at a problem never works are always the people who have enough money to throw at their own problems (like education for their kids.)

Money is for those who deserve it. The rest get after-the-fact, poseur "investigations".

UPDATE:Words fail me.

Help For Katrina's Victims

From the new site, Katrina Refugees United:

"If you are a victim of Hurricane Katrina, register with this site to let the world know how to contact you. You can give as much detail as you'd like. Then anyone visiting refugeesunited.org can quickly find out how you are doing.

If you are looking for a victim in the Gulf Coast region, you can search for your loved one's name and location. In the very near future, you will be able to post your questions to this site so that your query will be visible to anyone visiting refugeesunited.org.

This site is designed to be a central collection point for information on anyone impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Tell everyone about refugeesunited.org. We're here to help."

If you have a blog, please post this info and the link to the site. Help get the word out so these folks can find their friends and families. No central record-keeping of names has yet been created, and currently many people are scattered all over the country, some unable to remember their own names, who have been separated from the people who care for them. Spread the word.

UPDATE: The Other Sarah has more news for those trying to locate loved ones-- there's also a link for the displaced at the Red Cross website, here. You can choose to register in English, Spanish, or if you're like my blogbrother Lambert, in French. Thanks, TOSarah!

Zero-Sum Tolerance

low culture makes the connection.

Bad Trip

'Scuse me, while I puke and die.

From Editor & Publisher, via Eschaton.

The Magnificent Opportunity

Surprise, it's not New Orleans!

Via Billmon, who is way too kind to him, we find David Broder sucking on the bones of the dead, cracking every last marrowy tidbit out of the political opportunity they afford for his hero:

"We cannot yet calculate the political fallout from Hurricane Katrina and its devastating human and economic consequences, but one thing seems certain: It makes the previous signs of political weakness for Bush, measured in record-low job approval ratings, instantly irrelevant and opens new opportunities for him to regain his standing with the public...for a president who believes that actions speak louder than words, this is an advantageous setting."

Yes, this is a magnificent opportunity for Bush to salvage his low ratings (isn't this the president who pays no attention to polls?), and Broder, who has been on the Bush team, lo these many years, says "Have at it!" He goes on to skewer the "fragmented" Congress--those puling, gutless punks--but notes that "...the president flew back from vacation to take command of the hurricane response..." Take command, did he? He didn't even know what the fuck time of day it was! He was led by the hand like the babyfied, spoiled brat he is, and told every step of the way how to respond. Hell, if he didn't have Karl Rove to pull his strings he'd likely still be back in Texas with his pud in his hand, beating off to fantasies of Cindy Sheehan.

In a new low, even for Broder, he writes this with a straight face:

"The decline of oversight hearings on Capitol Hill reflects what many of the commentators called a loss of institutional pride in Congress. Majority Republicans see themselves first and foremost as members of the Bush team -- and do not want to make trouble by asking hard questions. Democrats find it more rewarding to raise campaign funds and cultivate their own constituencies."

Funny how everyone forgets people like Henry Waxman and John Conyers, isn't it? Just this week I got this in my e-mail from John:

"First, I have asked the Federal Trade Commission to study price gouging in the gasoline market...

Second, as Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, I plan to introduce legislation explicitly giving the federal government authority to pursue such price gouging actions -- price gouging is a national problem, and it warrants a national response...

Third, I am introducing a law to amend the Bankruptcy Code so that the most onerous provisions of the new law, scheduled to take effect October 17, do not inflict damage on the millions of victims of Hurricane Katrina and their families."

Yes, John Conyers, who everyone including Broder's colleague at the WaPo, Dana Milbank (hahahah, good one, Dana, you kill us) had such a good laugh at when the Bush-controlled Congress forced him to hold his inquiries into impeachment in some basement, and who tried to hold Bushco accountable for their deadly lies before the war. And Henry Waxman, who has fought the good fight against Bush on too many fronts to enumerate. But no one in the "grown-up press" pays any mind to these folks. No, people like Milbank laugh them off the radar, and then people like Broder cast aspersions at the entire political body because it's so easy to lie, lie, lie about it all and create the reality they want and because the whole country is so numb from bullshit that people have just stopped trying to winnow the wheat from the chaff.

They need to shut up and go down there. They need to shut up and do something worthwhile and useful for once in their pathetic, pampered lives. They need to stop talking about the political opportunities and take someone some food.

Christmas Came Early

From the Times-Picayune, via Eschaton:

"Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.
Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.
Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.
Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach."

Do you want to know why? Because this is the age of laissez-faire government. The free market will determine how much aid goes to those in need, and the cost of gas will be determined by whatever the traffic can bear. The private sector knows best, and this government has become merely a spear-carrier and comfort woman to the CEOs of the world. And the private sector knows that the people imprisoned in the cauldron of New Orleans were the least of the consuming masses, and the least of assets to 4th quarter profits and bottom-line accounting. When government abdicates the very skeleton of its duties to private interests, are we surprised to find that even the most crucial, life-or-death things only get done if they balance positively against somebody's cost-benefit analysis? These are the people who brayed proudly how they were going to get rid of their own functions, then set about proving it time and again in Interior, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and Housing. And now we are surprised that they sat on their hands while thousands died? This is their ideology in action. This is who and what they are. This is George Bush's gift to you.

That's It

A post I wrote for Corrente this morning after watching Meet The Press. It's starting to get legs elsewhere, and I wanted it in my archives:


I'm done for awhile. I can't stand it.

UPDATE: So I lied. Make me the president. On Meet the Press just now Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard broke down and cried, cried so hard I cried with him, as he described the repeated promises made, day after day through the whole week, to an old lady in a nursing home begging for help, who finally drowned on Friday because no one came. FEMA had told them everyday that help would arive, and everyday it did not. He told about how, early in the week, FEMA turned back water sent by WalMart, diesel fuel brought by the Coast Guard, and shut off their emergency communications lines, which the sheriff had to repair and then place armed guards near to stop further shut offs.

(I guess lying isn't the sole qualification to be president anymore. Now it has to be mass murder. Or is it genocide-by-ommission?)

UPDATE 2: Think Progress has the pix and transcript of the interview with Broussard here, and Crooks and Liars has the video. I defy you to watch this and not weep. Here's part of the transcript:

"I want to give you one last story and I’ll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I’m in, Emergency Management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” and he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.” Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday… and she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing] Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody’s promised. They’ve had press conferences. I’m sick of the press conferences. For god’s sakes, just shut up and send us somebody."

God damn George Bush. God damn him to hell.

Remember

I think I'm done blogging for a day or two (though you never know what madness may grip me.) The enormity of what has happened, and the immersion in it over the week, has overwhlemed me. I'm still trying to understand what reason the authorities had for preventing the Red Cross from entering NOLA and stopping the residents from leaving while hundreds died and thousands suffered. And I'm wondering, like many others, just where the hell Dick Cheney, the second-highest official in the land, has been while his country has suffered through the worst natural disaster in its history? According to the San Jose Mercury-News, he waited until Thursday to mosey back to DC from Wyoming, but if he's done or said anything since, I've yet to find it. Maybe he's busy making sure the KBR and Halliburton are getting everything they need for their reconstruction contract to rebuild after the hurricane?

Never forget this. Never. George Bush and the Republican machine created the underfunded, impotent, dumbass, stripped-out neoconservative Norquistized "government" that stood by with its hands in its pockets while thousands died. And it WILL be thousands. The horror stories have yet to begin (like Abu Ghraib, you haven't heard anything yet). Every time Bush asks for his way with one of his subversive, drown-it-in-the bathtub nominees, remember this. Everytime he comes forward with another bright idea to change the regulations on pollution, or twists the NIH to cook the science on global warning, or blows off the need for funds toward our deteriorating infrastructures in order to send money to a war we didn't need, or offers a Federalist Society anti-government bible-thumper for a judicial appointment, remember this. Everytime he tells you that we need to "stay the course" in Iraq and things couldn't be going better, remember this. Everytime you pull up to the pump and see that gas has gone up yet another 20 cents, and find the cost of produce at the store has gone through the roof because of trucking costs, and see that perishables everywhere are getting awfully high, and then everything else is going up as well except your paycheck, and realize you have to change you vacation plans and cut back on food and maybe Christmas won't be so generous this year, and then you start cutting back on everything else when the cost of heating your home hits the roof this winter while the energy companies get those subsidies from Bush's budget, and you wonder why the price-gouging at the gas station was allowed to go on so long, remember this.

Remember.

We Were Only Kidding, Folks

Dangle an apple in front of a starving man, and then snatch it away:

"Buses taking Hurricane Katrina victims far from the squalor of the Superdome stopped rolling early Saturday. As many as 5,000 people remained in the stadium and could be there until Sunday, according to the Texas Air National Guard..."We were rolling," Capt. Jean Clark said. "If the buses had kept coming, we would have this whole place cleaned out already or pretty close to it."

In the meantime, medical staff has been evacuated out of the Superdome, and the place looks like a landfill hit by a tornado. People are saying they have to find boxes to go in when they need to relieve themselves. No one knew why the buses stopped coming, but if the following tidbit is any clue, we can guess, rightly or wrongly, what might be going on:

"At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line — much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday.
"How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.
The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome."

In the meantime, fires are raging along the waterfront amidst a city flooded with toxic and flammable substances, and the hydrants are dry. The people still trapped there are being imprisoned by the authorities, who couldn't be bothered to communicate meaningfully with them up till now, except to make sure they knew they couldn't leave town by walking out.

Maybe he didn't care enough to shore up the levees in NOLA, but Bush certainly pays attention when it's time to stick a finger in the dike and stem a flood of negative opinion. Bush has held fewer press conferences than any other president, and yet:

"Hoping to turn the tide of opinion in his favor, Bush spoke four times publicly on Friday."

That would be because in his prideful, control-freak way, he has been rejecting or deflecting aid offers left and right, and when the whole world heard him say (4 days after the hurricane hit):

"I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country's going to rise up and take care of it. You know we would love help, but we're going to take care of our own business as well, and there's no doubt in my mind we'll succeed."

they heard him say, "Thanks but no thanks"---something on a par with his "Bring 'em on!" routine. So it's hard work, you know, putting out all those PR fires (evidently harder than putting out fires in NOLA). Gotta get up there, face the music, shuck and jive and look pained and hope somebody buys the routine.

To which the mayor most eloquently responded:

"I don’t want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don’t do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can’t even count.
"Don’t tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They’re not here. It’s too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let’s fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country."

But make sure the rich and the white get first dibs.

Crossposted at Corrente.

Do These People Live On My Planet?

From the weblog of the objectivistly-named Jane Galt, here is the worst of American reaction to the New Orleans disaster in a nutshell. Below find samplings of statements that reveal a seemingly bottomless capacity for churlish, selfish, callous, racist cruelty by self-congratulatory blog barnacles who coolly watch the NOLA tragedy play out from the comforts of their dry, food-filled, proudly right-wing homes. I believe many of them may fancy themselves a tad intellectual, and hard-nosedly so. The poverty of their arguments demonstrates otherwise. And as none of them lay claim to any sort of humanitarian compassion, you won't be surprised to find it absent here. Hold on to your lunch:

“…it is more tragic when someone dies because they have nowhere to go, than when only their own bullheaded stupidity is to blame.”

“As Clayton Cramer points out: the average poor American owns a car.
Poverty likely prevented some people in New Orleans from evacuating, but the majority of people still there CHOSE to be there.
In the US, the vast majority of people who are poor are poor because they CHOOSE to be poor. I recall a Cato or Heritage paper showing that something like 75% of all people living below the poverty line would be lifted above it if they just worked 40 hours a week on average.”

“What I can't understand is why they couldn't be bothered to take the bus or just walk over to the Superdome, where there was an organized attempt to help them out. They had 48 hours to gather up what they could carry and move to a shelter.
And how could anyone in New Orleans fail to grasp the problem so completely that they didn't even bother to stockpile a couple day's worth of drinking water? I couldn't believe it when I saw victim after victim going by on TV saying, "we haven't had anything to drink since the storm hit".

“But what if there really IS a correlation between race and a tendency to amoral, selfish, violent behavior? Wouldn't it be suicidal to ignore it just because it is unpleasant that life might actually be ordered that way?
I just feel sorry for any white people left in that city. I saw video of some white tourists walking aimlessly, dragging their suitcases behind them, looking for help. They said they hadn't seen any police. What a nightmare...white people abandoned in a lawless city full of black people with no police in sight, and no firearms to protect themselves. You can talk all you want about how awful it is to be a racist, but they are the ones who are finding out firsthand the brutal realities of race in this country.”

“Compassion for the victims of this disaster is all well and good but sooner or latter we are going to need to address the moral hazard we create by federalizing disaster relief.”

“I see no moral, pragmatic, or constitutional argument to justify 99.9% of the social programs created in the 20th century, and I would repeal them with a snap of my fingers if I could.”

“It seems to me that the poor should have had the EASIEST time leaving. They don't need to pay for an extended leave from their home, they could have just packed a few belongings and walked away to start over somewhere else. What did they have to lose?
When the wealthy evacuate, they leave behind nice houses, expensive cars, possibly pets that they treat as members of the family, valuable jewelry, family heirlooms, etc. This makes it emotionally difficult for wealthy people to leave. But by definition, the poor do not have this burden: they either rent their homes, or they are in public housing; their cars are practically junk anyway; and they don't have any valuable possessions. This is what it means to be poor. These people could just pick up their few belongings, buy a one-way bus ticket to any city and be poor there. Supposing they even had jobs in NO, it's not like minimum wage jobs are hard to come by.”

If you've managed to keep your gorge down up to this point, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din. Notice how frequently they couch immoral concepts in language using the word "moral"? Their master's voice. And of course, that cozy "This is what it means to be poor", coming from someone who probably never went hungry a day in his life. I don't know where these people live, but it's not in my America.

Religion---Pah!!

And where are those evangelical churches through all this horror in Louisiana? Where are all those bastards who are so eager to jump on their white horses for all the little 8-celled eggs and the Terri Schiavos? What do they think about REAL human suffering? Has anyone heard anything from them, other than that this was God's retribution for the sins of the city? Anything of comfort, of substance, in a public forum?

And where's that damned fabulous new Pope everyone was creaming their jeans over? What, he can't jump on a plane and make an appearance, shame the president into some action, comfort the people of one of the most Catholic cities in the world, grease the wheels of the relief system a little and say a blessing or two? What the hell is the point of having him around?

The Hollow Man, The Stuffed Man

God help me, but I've grown so jaded that when I notice Bush waits to arrive in NOLA until the Guard finally appears with food and water, I think "damage control" and "best face forward."

He truly is dust and a shadow.

Property Over People, or Shoot First, Make It Up Later

So Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, has unleashed the troops with orders to "shoot to kill". Does this sound like an American leader addressing a problem affecting Americans?

""These troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded," (the governor) said on Thursday night of one group of 300 National Guard troops being deployed here after recent duty in Iraq. "These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will."

Before going one sentence further, remember that, along with the very real violence being carried out by opportunists and criminals, there are also many people involved in the "looting" who have been abandoned to their own devices for all intents and purposes, and who are simply trying to survive.

The last time U.S. troops opened fire on their own citizens was May 4, 1970 at Kent State in Ohio. 28 Guardsmen fired about 65 rounds into the crowd of unarmed kids, killing 4, wounding 9, and putting one, Dean Kahler, in a wheel chair for the rest of his life. Though widely condemned in liberal circles, this incident was not only excused, but heartily celebrated by Americans across the country, who wrote an incredible array of poison pen letters to local papers praising the actions of the Guard.

Now we have a situation of nearly incomprehensible proportion, where criminals and madmen roam New Orleans' hellish streets, preying on the weak and desperate and traumatized, and reportedly shooting at rescue workers and authorities. (How much of the bungled and indefensible rescue effort has been truly hindered by them, and how much they are being used to smoke-screen the incompetence of those efforts, may never be known. And let's leave aside for another day the question of how much of a problem the shootings would have been in a country that didn't push deadly weapon ownership like a bad drug and make guns available on practically every corner.) But those who have been driven to "loot" by the failures of emergency measures they expected to depend on, those who have gone days without food or water, can all too easily become lumped in with the criminals, especially by strangers who wade into the midst of the situation with every expectation of being attacked. When faced with this scenario, can we expect the troops to be able to make the distinction? I don't know; I'm asking.

The parallels to Iraq are becoming almost mythical. A civilian populace in despair, trying to survive under appalling conditions, is being driven to manage its existence at the most primitive of levels. The behaviors they display, arising naturally out of those conditions, appear savage and uncivilized to their liberators, and this alienation makes it easier to keep a wall up against empathy. When you stop being able to empathize with a group it's a short step to demonizing them, or in this case, lumping the good in with the bad. As in Iraq, every civilian becomes a potential enemy, a combatant, and fair game.

If the kids at Kent State could be demonized sufficiently to, not just exonerate, but celebrate their killers' actions, how much easier will it be to do so to the hurricane victims of New Orleans, who are already being tarred with blame for not leaving, for living where they did, and for just being there, period? Michael "Not Responsible" Brown of FEMA says they should have just gotten out. The humanitarians over at NRO's The Corner have pitched the rum idea to eliminate federal flood insurance subsidies because people just need to take responsiblity for their actions. Never mind that it would leave NOLA's poor, who live by the water because in that crazy town it's the only affordable real estate, utterly homeless and bereft of everything they ever had.

Leaving aside the lessons we've failed to learn in Iraq on how to handle civilian populations under disasterous conditions, how will it play in Peoria if and when our own streets begin to resemble Baghdad's? When a nation's military is turned on its own people, we know it has descended into tyranny. But how long will Americans be content to excuse even this?

No One Could Have Anticipated Our President Would Be An Imbecile

From the front page of the NYTimes comes this picture of New Orleans' latest hell:

"The explosion was in a chemical storage facility near the Mississippi River, Lt. Michael Francis of the Harbor Police was quoted as saying by The Associated Press. A series of smaller blasts followed and then acrid, black smoke hundreds of feet high. The vibrations were felt all the way downtown. "

I wondered when this part of it would start. Check out Chris Mooney's prescient description of the events now playing out, written 4 months ago:

"In the event of a slow-moving Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane (with winds up to or exceeding 155 miles per hour), it's possible that only those crow's nests would remain above the water level. Such a storm, plowing over the lake, could generate a 20-foot surge that would easily overwhelm the levees of New Orleans, which only protect against a hybrid Category 2 or Category 3 storm (with winds up to about 110 miles per hour and a storm surge up to 12 feet). Soon the geographical "bowl" of the Crescent City would fill up with the waters of the lake, leaving those unable to evacuate with little option but to cluster on rooftops -- terrain they would have to share with hungry rats, fire ants, nutria, snakes, and perhaps alligators. The water itself would become a festering stew of sewage, gasoline, refinery chemicals, and debris...

A direct hit from a powerful hurricane on New Orleans could furnish perhaps the largest natural catastrophe ever experienced on U.S. soil. Some estimates suggest that well over 25,000 non-evacuees could die. Many more would be stranded, and successful evacuees would have nowhere to return to. Damages could run as high as $100 billion. In the wake of such a tragedy, some may even question the wisdom of trying to rebuild the city at all. And to hear hurricane experts like Louisiana State University's Ivor van Heerden tell it, it's only a matter of time before the "big one" hits.

Currently, pretty much every long-term trend cuts against the safety of New Orleans. Levees are subsiding; coastal wetlands (which can slow storm surges) are continually disappearing; and sea levels are rising. And then there's global warming -- a warmer world with warmer ocean temperatures should theoretically experience worse hurricanes. Most importantly, the Atlantic Ocean appears to have entered an active hurricane cycle, with the potential to fling storms at the Gulf Coast for years to come. This puts New Orleans on the vanguard among U.S. coastal cities (including New York) that will have to think hard about their growing vulnerabilities in the coming years. The process of deciding how to save an entire coastal metropolis has begun, but the discussion has largely been confined to experts, and not nearly broad or ambitious enough yet."

Chris was on the BBC this morning, talking about New Orleans. But this isn't the time for laying blame, is it? Not the time to play politics. Not the time to wag fingers. Thank God for the clear vision of James Wolcott.

Cross-posted at Corrente.

From Inside The Abyss

What could be going through the mind of the shooter?

“The evacuation of stranded hurricane victims from New Orleans' Superdome stadium has been disrupted after shots were fired at a rescue helicopter.
A spokesman for the Louisiana ambulance service told the BBC the crowd had grown unruly and he was concerned for the safety of his staff.”

Maybe it’s this:

“During the storm, more than 9,000 people took shelter at the Superdome, but the numbers have swelled to 20,000 and conditions there have sharply deteriorated.
The heat, humidity and sanitary conditions are reported to be unbearable, and people are crowding onto the stadium's concourse to avoid the stench…

The tens of thousands of people who are still in New Orleans are desperate to leave, the BBC's Alistair Leithead reports from the Louisiana city.
There is no electricity, and people who have lost everything are struggling to find food and clean water.”

Shooting the very people coming to your aid seems utterly insane, as has much of the behavior of the victims since Katrina began the devastation of New Orleans. The apparently savage and self-destructive behavior exhibited by the looters puzzled many at first, but though reports of opportunists stealing everything from cars and guns to prescription drugs may make us recoil, not everyone engaged in stealing or other acts are bad.

Many of the looters are just people bereft of even the most essential things---food, clean water, baby diapers, life-saving medications---who have gone days without them---and who saw a chance to stay alive and took it.

With his usual empathic compassion, Bush whips out the Stern Daddy persona that his sycophants seem to find so comforting:

"I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law," Bush said, 'Whether it's looting or price-gouging or insurance fraud."

Trapped in the city, waiting for days on rooftops or forced back inside flooded buildings without lights or air conditioning or by an unenforceable curfew, surrounded by death, sewage, stench and chaos, many of them must be driven half-mad with grief and fear. Who knows how many people have been attacked, raped, even murdered, by the marauding bands of vultures that have been roaming the streets, and how do you tell who is coming to help you and who might hurt you after awhile? Traumatized, left for days by a broken system that can’t adequately respond thanks to the financial and logistical crippling George Bush has given it, and unsure when they will be rescued, if ever, they have taken the same actions most of us would have if we were stuck in the same situation. And who’s to say that the mind doesn’t begin to cloud after all this, that after days of paranoia and trauma, you don’t become a little unhinged and just need to strike out at someone, anyone? Personally, I wouldn't hesitate a moment to break into a pharmacy for the meds my child needed, or into a store for food, water, or shoes that weren't soaked into muck.

Not much seems to have been written about this so far, but look for a goodly amount in the near future, as more people are brought out and the stories they tell become common knowledge. We won’t have just a massive reconstruction task ahead of us; we will have the repair and reconstruction of thousands of human beings, as well.

How To Be A Small Ray Of Hope

So many tragedies swirl around us that it becomes incomprehensible, impossible to hold it all in the front of the mind. While the trauma and hell of Katrina's aftermath plays out down south, it's easy to forget the 953 who just died in a meaningless stampede on a bridge in Iraq; or the 1 year anniversary being marked in Russia of the cruel murders of the schoolchildren in Beslan.

If you are looking for a way to break through the sense of helplessness that so often comes with overwhelmingly bad news, the Red Cross is looking for volunteers for any numbers of positions, including those in Disaster Services. Their websites must be being hit pretty hard now, because they are slow, so be patient.

The word has come down for state employees in PA, at least: you can go, if you want. In a recently released memo it was stated:

"The Red Cross is currently offering a four hour training course in disaster relief by which participants will be certified as disaster relief volunteers for the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina. The Red Cross is requiring a commitment from these participants to perform the disaster relief work for three weeks. Commonwealth employees who are certified by the Red Cross as a result of this training may be released if operationally feasible and may use civil leave for the disaster relief work."

I'm still chasing down further info, but by navigating the Red Cross website I put together this much, at least. Go here. Click on "Emergency & Safety" in the drop-down window on the upper left. Put in your zip code and the distance you are willing to travel (if you want to help down south, you will eventually be able to volunteer for national disasters once you have located a local agency that will train you). A list will come up, from which you can choose.

More on this as I learn more.

The Death President

As the horrors of New Orleans begin to mount, one thing seems clear:

George Bush has their blood on his hands.

And before you dismiss this as just another liberal hatefest speech, consider the following, from the February 7, 2005 issue of New Orleans CityBusiness:

"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has identified millions of dollars in flood and hurricane protection projects in the New Orleans district.
Chances are, though, most projects will not be funded in the president's 2006 fiscal year budget to be released today.
In general, funding for construction has been on a downward trend for the past several years, said Marcia Demma, chief of the New Orleans Corps' programs management branch.
In 2001, the New Orleans district spent $147 million on construction projects. When fiscal year 2005 wraps up Sept. 30, the Corps expects to have spent $82 million, a 44.2 percent reduction from 2001 expenditures.
Demma said NOC expects its construction budget to be slashed again this year, which means local construction companies won't receive work from the Corps and residents won't see any new hurricane protection projects...

Unfunded projects include widening drainage canals, flood- proofing bridges and building pumping stations in Orleans and Jefferson parishes. The Corps also wants to build levees in unprotected areas on the West Bank.
Demma does not expect the Corps to award many more projects before fiscal year 2005 ends...

The most urgent work being delayed by funding shortfalls involves levee construction on the West Bank.
The West Bank doesn't have the first level of protection completed. So, that's the really critical one, Demma said."

Now scroll 6 months ahead, to these words from the mayor of NOLA:

""We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and other people dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said in calling for an all-out evacuation of the city's remaining residents. Asked how many died, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

From yesterday's Kansas City Star:

"“We’ve lost our city,” said Marc Morial, a former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League. “I fear it’s potentially like Pompeii.”"

Could the damage and deaths have been prevented, or at least seriously curtailed? Yes, and not only by better preparation; a larger force of rescue operations might have made a difference, had they existed. From yesterday's Washington Post:

"National Guard officials in the states acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops -- most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense missions since 2001."

Mississippi has over 4000 troops in Iraq, or 40% of its Guard force. Louisiana has 3000 over there. Many of the exhausted troops that are here and available have just finished their rotations over there.

Will Bunch did an excellent job of pulling the sources and quotes together to draw a picture of a President and Congress more interested in sending money to a bogus war than "protecting the homeland":

"At least nine articles in the
Times-
Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars...

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.
The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed."

Bunch noted that:

"One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach."

Bush's absurd funding of Homeland Security projects has been criticized before (sending the same amount of money to the barren plains of Wyoming as to the target-rich states of New Jersey and New York, failing to require protective measures for chemical and nulcear facilities), but his castration of the very agency created to deal with emergencies like the New Orleans disaster is less noticed. In a recent Washington Post column, Eric Holderman, director of Washington state's King County Office of Emergency Management, outlined the birth and history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, its absorption into the newly-created Homeland Security department, and then blasted Bush for "destroying" it:

"This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.
FEMA will be survived by state and local emergency management offices, which are confused about how they fit into the national picture. That's because the focus of the national effort remains terrorism, even if the Department of Homeland Security still talks about "all-hazards preparedness." Those of us in the business of dealing with emergencies find ourselves with no national leadership and no mentors. We are being forced to fend for ourselves, making do with the "homeland security" mission. Our "all-hazards" approaches have been decimated by the administration's preoccupation with terrorism."

Note that just last night on ABC, Elizabeth Vargas, reporting from NOLA, wondered why FEMA and many other government interventions talked up so much by spokesmen were "nowhere to be seen". It would be inaccurate to paint the agency as doing nothing; that's not true. What with much of the money and manpower that would have gone to averting this disaster misallocated or simply no longer there, FEMA is doing the best it can. And it has sent out the call for people to send cash contibutions to organizations like the Red Cross, Second Harvest, and an array of church groups. But maybe if Bush hadn't come up with the bright idea to divest it of it's true purpose and instead put it in charge of the concentration camps, it would have been able to take action sooner and in a more meaningful way.

Now it and every other remnant of Bush's ragtag domestic emergency contingent, is scrambling to put fingers in a dike that's already long since busted wide open.

If you want to know who their killer is, George, look in the mirror.

UPDATE: The NYTimes gets it:

"While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?
It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal."

Change that to none.

UPDATE 2: NPR News just played Bush's fatuous "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" speech, and followed up immediately with a "but the Times-Picayune had reported for years..." one-two punch that tore a big hole in that lie. The word is spreading.