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McCain’s Louisiana Lying

Raise your hands if you’re at all surprised.  From the Obama campaign:

During a press conference today in Louisiana, Senator McCain was asked why he twice voted against creating a commission to investigate the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.  McCain responded, “I have supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy.”  However, Senator McCain has voted against such measures on multiple occasions.  In response, Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan issued the following  statement:

“Whether he simply wasn’t aware of his voting record again or he was intentionally misleading the people of Louisiana, John McCain certainly isn’t offering us ‘leadership you can believe in.’”

McCain Said He Supported “Every Investigation” Into the Government’s Response to Hurricane Katrina. During a press conference today in Louisiana, McCain was asked why he twice voted against creating a commission to investigate the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.  McCain responded, “I have supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy.” [Fox News Channel, 6/4/08]

McCain Repeatedly Voted Against Establishing A Commission To Study The Response To Hurricane Katrina. In 2005 and 2006, McCain voted against proposals to establish a Congressional commission to examine the Federal, State, and local government response to Hurricane Katrina in U.S. Gulf Region.  Both proposals were sponsored by Senator Clinton.  [S. Amdt. 2716, Senate Vote 6, 2/2/06; S. Amdt. 1660, Senate Vote 229, 9/14/05]

I’m hoping that by November, “Straight Talk Express” will be nothing more than a punchline.  I am very, very happy that the Obama campaign is attacking McCain’s honesty, and spotlighting his undying loyalty to The Worst President Ever.

Honesty and independence are the McCain brand, and without them he has nothing but anger and war and lobbyists.  So if Obama can strip those positives away from him, he can pretty much forget about the Moderate/Independent/Undecided/Reagan Democrat vote.  He’ll have to rely on Dubya’s Twenty-Eight-Percenters, and they don’t trust him much either.

Add comment June 4th, 2008 at 09:00pm Posted by Eli

That Hagee Endorsement Is Working Out Very Well For Him.

Yeah, getting that Hagee endorsement sure was a coup for John McCain:

On his radio show yesterday, right-wing talker Dennis Prager asked Hagee to respond to “the various charges made against him” in a fact sheet put out by the Democratic National Committee. Asked about his comments on Hurricane Katrina, Hagee said “the topic of that day was cursing and blessing”:

(…)

PRAGER: Now, they have you on Hurricane Katrina, quote, from NPR two double-o six: “All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.” Go ahead.

HAGEE: Yes. The topic of that day was cursing and blessing. Moses taught in the book of Deuteronomy that everything in life is either a blessing or a curse. There are days that things happen that at the time look like a curse. In the passing of time, they may become what appears to be a blessing. An illustration is Joseph, when he was sold into slavery it looked like a curse, it looked like the worse day of his life. When his brothers came into Egypt looking for food, what looked like a bad day 13 years before turned out to be a blessed day. What happened in New Orleans looked like the curse of God, in time if New Orleans recovers and becomes the pristine city it can become it may in time be called a blessing. But at this time it’s called a curse.

(…)

PRAGER: Right, but in the case, did NPR get, is this quote correct though that in the case of New Orleans you do feel it was sin?

HAGEE: In the case of New Orleans, their plan to have that homosexual rally was sin. But it never happened. The rally never happened.

PRAGER: No, I understand.

HAGEE: It was scheduled that Monday.

PRAGER: No, I’m only trying to understand that in the case of New Orleans, you do feel that God’s hand was in it because of a sinful city?

HAGEE: That it was a city that was planning a sinful conduct, yes.

Granted, I’m not exactly the foremost expert on religion, but it sure does sound like Hagee is making some kind of Great Flood analogy, where God cleanses the Earth of the wicked for a clean start.  Either that, or He was simply so outraged by the idea of a gay pride parade that he wiped out the entire city.  But if God hates gays and their horrible, sinful gay parades of gayness that much, why is San Francisco still standing?  I mean, it’s in prime earthquake country, and yeah, it got hit pretty bad in 1989, but it hasn’t been totally devastated since 1906, and I’m pretty sure that was before gayness was even invented.

So what gives?  Why wipe out New Orleans and not San Francisco?  Is it all the black people and the poor people?  Is that it? Or maybe God is waiting for all the gay people to migrate to San Francisco, until it’s like Israel for gays (Gaysrael?)… so then He can wipe them all out at once, thus conserving His divine energy and reducing collateral damage to cities like New Orleans.

Um, not that I’m actually advocating that God destroy San Francisco, I’m just trying to understand the apparent inconsistency here.  Admittedly, I can’t see the entire universe, so I’m sure there must be very good big-picture explanation that I just can’t comprehend.  Or, alternatively, Hagee could just be a hate-filled crackpot who believes God to be an omnipotent version of himself, but I’m sure a Serious Presidential Nominee Of A Major Political Party would ever seek the endorsement of a hate-filled crackpot.  No, surely not.

Boy, I sure hope McCain gets some questions about this when he’s in Louisiana tomorrow.  I hope they make him angry.  You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

3 comments April 23rd, 2008 at 07:34pm Posted by Eli

Mission Accomplished

Bravo, Dubya. Not many American presidents manage to get the word “diaspora” associated with their names in the history books.

What’s truly scary is that it wasn’t even your biggest fuckup.

2 comments December 18th, 2007 at 11:30am Posted by Eli

Krugtrina

The Shrill One has some very good thoughts on how the Bush administration and GOP’s response to Katrina is emblematic of their response to everything:

Two years ago today, Americans watched in horror as a great city drowned, and wondered what had happened to their country. Where was FEMA? Where was the National Guard? Why wasn’t the government of the world’s richest, most powerful nation coming to the aid of its own citizens?

What we mostly saw on TV was the nightmarish scene at the Superdome, but things were even worse at the New Orleans convention center, where thousands were stranded without food or water. The levees were breached Monday morning — but as late as Thursday evening, The Washington Post reported, the convention center “still had no visible government presence,” while “corpses lay out in the open among wailing babies and other refugees.”

Meanwhile, federal officials were oblivious. “We are extremely pleased with the response that every element of the federal government, all of our federal partners, have made to this terrible tragedy,” declared Michael Chertoff, the secretary for Homeland Security, on Wednesday. When asked the next day about the situation at the convention center, he dismissed the reports as “a rumor” or “someone’s anecdotal version.”

Today, much of the Gulf Coast remains in ruins. Less than half the federal money set aside for rebuilding, as opposed to emergency relief, has actually been spent, in part because the Bush administration refused to waive the requirement that local governments put up matching funds for recovery projects — an impossible burden for communities whose tax bases have literally been washed away.

On the other hand, generous investment tax breaks, supposedly designed to spur recovery in the disaster area, have been used to build luxury condominiums near the University of Alabama’s football stadium in Tuscaloosa, 200 miles inland.

But why should we be surprised by any of this? The Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina — the mixture of neglect of those in need, obliviousness to their plight, and self-congratulation in the face of abject failure — has become standard operating procedure. These days, it’s Katrina all the time.

Consider the White House reaction to new Census data on income, poverty and health insurance. By any normal standard, this week’s report was a devastating indictment of the administration’s policies. After all, last year the administration insisted that the economy was booming — and whined that it wasn’t getting enough credit. What the data show, however, is that 2006, while a good year for the wealthy, brought only a slight decline in the poverty rate and a modest rise in median income, with most Americans still considerably worse off than they were before President Bush took office.

Most disturbing of all, the number of Americans without health insurance jumped. At this point, there are 47 million uninsured people in this country, 8.5 million more than there were in 2000. Mr. Bush may think that being uninsured is no big deal — “you just go to an emergency room” — but the reality is that if you’re uninsured every illness is a catastrophe, your own private Katrina.

Yet the White House press release on the report declared that President Bush was “pleased” with the new numbers. Heckuva job, economy!

Mr. Bush’s only concession that something might be amiss was to say that “challenges remain in reducing the number of uninsured Americans” — a statement reminiscent of Emperor Hirohito’s famous admission, in his surrender broadcast, that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” And Mr. Bush’s solution — more tax cuts, of course — has about as much relevance to the real needs of the uninsured as subsidies for luxury condos in Tuscaloosa have to the needs of New Orleans’s Ninth Ward.

The question is whether any of this will change when Mr. Bush leaves office.

There’s a powerful political faction in this country that’s determined to draw exactly the wrong lesson from the Katrina debacle — namely, that the government always fails when it attempts to help people in need, so it shouldn’t even try. “I don’t want the people who ran the Katrina cleanup to manage our health care system,” says Mitt Romney, as if the Bush administration’s practice of appointing incompetent cronies to key positions and refusing to hold them accountable no matter how badly they perform — did I mention that Mr. Chertoff still has his job? — were the way government always works.

And I’m not sure that faction is losing the argument. The thing about conservative governance is that it can succeed by failing: when conservative politicians mess up, they foster a cynicism about government that may actually help their cause.

Future historians will, without doubt, see Katrina as a turning point. The question is whether it will be seen as the moment when America remembered the importance of good government, or the moment when neglect and obliviousness to the needs of others became the new American way.

If the American people are not paying attention to this, or noticing that this is a Republican pattern, then the Democrats should by God be pointing it out every chance they get, as part of every single electoral campaign. “If something bad happens to you, do you want the government to handle it like it handled Katrina? Or Iraq?”

I’m looking forward to Mit Romney promising “double Katrina” on the campaign trail…

1 comment August 31st, 2007 at 07:20am Posted by Eli

Terrible Two

I’ll sum up: It’s two years later, and New Orleans is pretty much still in ruins, and the Bush administration is obviously in no hurry to do anything about that.

If you want the definitive long version, read Jill. But prepare to be sad and angry. Or sadder and angrier.

2 comments August 29th, 2007 at 09:59pm Posted by Eli

Simple Answers To Simple Questions

The front-page blurb for Douglas Brinkley’s op-ed about New Orleans asks:

Is the Bush administration leaving Katrina-ravaged neighborhoods to die on the vine?

Yes.

Actually, this is Brinkley’s conclusion as well, and it’s definitely worth a read. As if we needed any more proof that the Bushies are horrible, awful people.

1 comment August 27th, 2007 at 01:46pm Posted by Eli

The Real Villains Of Katrina

Yep, you guessed it: It’s the Scary Black People. This is, like, Olympic-level victim-blaming.

Will this country ever grow up?

2 comments August 21st, 2007 at 11:18pm Posted by Eli

Cause And Effect

This…

[Katrina is] the signal conservative failure, the sine qua non of all we warn about here at the blog. In fact, we could write about nothing else, and teach our lesson just as well: that conservatives can’t govern, because of their contempt for government.

It also allowed us to gauge our conservative fellow Americans’ moral level.

(…)

Conservatives, of course, claim to be patriotic. They claim to be the most patriotic souls of all. Sometimes - say it ain’t so! - they’ve been known to say other kinds of Americans are not patriotic, because they don’t believe the right things about preventive war, theology, and uncritical worship of the President (if the President is a Republican).

But patriotism has a simple definition: love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it.

This is, of course, something progressives have no problem doing. Because it means, simply, that all Americans are every other American’s concern. It means always acknowledging a national community, one to which we owe a constant obligation, parallel to our more local networks. It means that there is a certain level below which no American should be allowed to fall: in rights, in services, in solicitude from Washington. That no one who lives under that flag can ever be left behind. Even if they have the misfortune to live in a city that was hurt more by a hurricane than your city; and even if one city proves tragically less prepared to cope with a hurricane than another. That being an American means: step up. Our nation will sacrifice for you. That is what patriotism means.

Conservatives, on the other hand, were glad to let a certain group of Americans flounder and rot - to gloat that certain supposed local failings trumped national obligation, and use “clever” graphics and just-so stories to shirk that obligation.

It proves they aren’t patriots at all.

Leads to this…

The era of conservative values — a tight-fisted approach toward government aid to the poor, traditional positions on social issues and a belief in a muscular foreign policy — that emerged in the 1990s is coming to a close.

Disenchanted by the failures of the Bush administration, the public is moving away from its policies, values and ideology. This shift is an echo of the late 1960s, when weariness with the Vietnam War and discord at home resulted in a backlash against Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, and the late 1970s, when growing discontent over the stumbling performance of Jimmy Carter’s administration opened the door to the Reagan revolution.

(…)

[If] Rove hoped for a permanent majority, his hopes may have been dashed. Today, half the public — 50 percent — lines up with the Democratic Party, compared with 35 percent who align with the GOP. Even more striking is the public’s disenchantment with military muscle, a traditional GOP bailiwick. Today 49 percent think that military strength is the best way to ensure peace, the lowest level recorded for this question in the two decades that Pew has been conducting political values studies.

Here’s something Democrats can really take heart from: Public support for more government aid to the poor and needy is back. The percentage of those who say that “it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves” has gone up 12 points since 1994, the pivotal year when Republicans took control of Congress with their promises of a “Contract With America.” Support for more government involvement in dealing with social problems is on the upswing overall.

More Americans now subscribe to the sentiment that “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” Seventy-three percent concur with that statement today, up from 65 percent five years ago. A nationwide Pew survey last month found that 48 percent of the public sees American society as divided between “haves” and “have nots,” with as many as a third describing themselves as “have nots.” Both measures are substantially higher than in the late 1990s.

I think more than anything else, their callous, mean-spirited response to Katrina was what exposed the GOP as un-American, with no regard for anyone outside their own inner circle.

Add comment August 20th, 2007 at 08:13pm Posted by Eli

Your Republican Government

Oh. My. God.

Chairman Waxman:
“Another FEMA official wrote, the office of general counsel has advised ‘We do not do testing, because it would imply FEMA’s ownership of this issue.’ Early in the process, due to the perseverance of a pregnant mother with a four month old child, FEMA did test one occupied trailer. The results showed that their trailer had formaldehyde levels 75 times higher than the maximum workplace exposure levels recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The mother evacuated the trailer. FEMA then stopped testing other trailers.”

So, um, yeah. God forbid FEMA should want to take responsibility for the trailers they’re putting people in because their homes were destroyed…

2 comments July 19th, 2007 at 03:30pm Posted by Eli

Crisis Mythmanagement

One of the most repulsive frauds concocted by Karl’s little shop of horrors is the idea that the Republicans in general, and Dubya in particular, are somehow “tough on terror.” It is utter and complete bullshit. Pre-9/11, the Democrats (and Richard Clarke) were the ones desperately trying to warn the Republicans and the Bush Administration about the dangers of terrorism, and getting contemptuously brushed aside.

Now that 9/11 has shown us that Islamist terrorism can actually occur on American soil, Bush and the Republicans are like nothing so much as a man talking tough with his pants down around his ankles.

Add comment May 8th, 2007 at 04:28pm Posted by Eli

My Bush Vs. NOLA Theory

I think I have finally figured out why Bush hates NOLA so much. It’s not because it has so many poor black people, or because it’s mostly Democratic - those only explain his callous indifference.

New Orleans destroyed his presidency. That was the turning point where everyone who was not hopelessly hooked on the Republican Kool-Aid realized that Dubya’s strong-leader-who-will-protect-us-all pose was a total sham. And everything went downhill from there.

He can’t salvage his presidency, but by God, he can make New Orleans pay for not getting out of the way of that damn hurricane, and for not sitting down and shutting up and pretending to be grateful for whatever superficial days-late photo-op charity he saw fit to bestow upon them.

The history books will unanimously wonder what we ever saw in this cretinous lizard.

2 comments April 30th, 2007 at 01:04pm Posted by Eli

The Bush Administration Hates New Orleans.

This goes beyond simple incompetence. Like Bush’s refusal to waive the 10% matching requirement for federal aid, this is deliberate malice:

As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide.

Titled “Echo-Chamber Message” — a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again — the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans “practical help and moral support” and “highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving.”

Many of the U.S. diplomats who received the message, however, were beginning to witness a more embarrassing reality. They knew the U.S. government was turning down many allies’ offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina’s victims.

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

(…)

The struggle to apply foreign aid in the aftermath of the hurricane, which has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $125 billion so far, is another reminder of the federal government’s difficulty leading the recovery. Reports of government waste and delays or denials of assistance have surfaced repeatedly since hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.

(…)

In one exchange, State Department officials anguished over whether to tell Italy that its shipments of medicine, gauze and other medical supplies spoiled in the elements for weeks after Katrina’s landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, and were destroyed. “Tell them we blew it,” one disgusted official wrote. But she hedged: “The flip side is just to dispose of it and not come clean. I could be persuaded.”

(…)

And while television sets worldwide showed images of New Orleans residents begging to be rescued from rooftops as floodwaters rose, U.S. officials turned down countless offers of allied troops and search-and-rescue teams. The most common responses: “sent letter of thanks” and “will keep offer on hand,” the new documents show.

Overall, the United States declined 54 of 77 recorded aid offers from three of its staunchest allies: Canada, Britain and Israel, according to a 40-page State Department table of the offers that had been received as of January 2006.

(h/t CREW)

But wait, there’s more. Consider this story from September ‘05:

The Ministry of Defence in London said last night that 400,000 operational ration packs had been shipped to the US.

But officials blamed the US Department of Agriculture, which impounded the shipment under regulations relating to the import and export of meat.

The aid worker, who would not be named, said: “This is the most appalling act of sickening senselessness while people starve.

“The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are NATO approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq.

“Under NATO, American soldiers are also entitled to eat such rations, yet the starving of the American South will see them go up in smoke because of FDA red tape madness.”

The worker added: “There will be a cloud of smoke above Little Rock soon - of burned food, of anger and of shame that the world’s richest nation couldn’t organise a p**s up in a brewery and lets Americans starve while they arrogantly observe petty regulations.

“Everyone is revolted by the chaotic shambles the US is making of this crisis. Guys from UNICEF are walking around spitting blood.

(…)

“It is perfectly good NATO approved food of the type British servicemen have. Yet the FDA are saying that because there is a meat content and it has come from Britain it must be destroyed.

“If they are trying to argue there is a BSE reason then that is ludicrously out of date. There is more BSE in the States than there ever was in Britain and UK meat has been safe for years.”

Bush. Hates. NOLA.

4 comments April 29th, 2007 at 01:53pm Posted by Eli

NOLA/Broder Followups

For those of you who are appalled at Bush’s mean-spirited coldness towards New Orleans, Senator Landrieu has an online petition to apply some citizen pressure to get legislation passed to waive the 10% requirement, and then override Bush’s veto. Please go and sign it.

And for those of you who are appalled at David Broder’s mean-spirited cluelessness towards Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic Caucus has got his back. Even Lieberman. David, when even Joe Lieberman tells you you’re a dishonest, ignorant hack, you might want to listen.

3 comments April 27th, 2007 at 10:26am Posted by Eli

Speechless

If there’s one thing that the last six years have taught me, it is that George W. Bush can always find a new depth to sink to:

The New Orleans City Business has an article on Louisiana’s effort to pressure Bush for the waiver. Though such a waiver is in the Iraq Supplemental bill which Bush will veto, we learn from the article that…

Bush also vows to veto any new funding or legislative attempt to waive the 10 percent match.

Here’s the White House justification…

The White House maintains $1 billion was provided for the 10 percent match in the $10.4 billion in community development block grants already awarded to Louisiana.

In other words Bush is saying give us back a billion of the aid we gave you and you’re good to go. Nice trick. But here is a major problem even with that…..

Bush ignores a major problem with using CDBG funds for the 10 percent match, said Landrieu spokesman Adam Sharp.

“It ignores the greater paperwork issue,” Sharp said. “Right now, each of the more than 20,000 public assistance projects require two different sets of paperwork - one for (the Department of Housing and Urban Development) to confirm that you are allowed to use CDBG funds to pay the 10 percent, and one for FEMA to confirm that disaster funds can be used for the other 90 percent. The paperwork can take months, if not years, to complete, per project. The red tape alone is enough to strangle recovery.”

Louisiana’s congressional delegation, Democrats AND Republicans alike, say they will continue to push for the waiver. Landrieu thinks the votes are there to over ride Bush’s vetoes ….

“I feel confident because the Democratic Congress is going to make sure that that happens even if the White House will not,” she said. “He can veto it. If that ever happens, I think we’ll have the votes to override him.”

I really hope Landrieu is right. I would love to see Bush show his true colors and then get overridden anyway. I can’t find the words to say how much this disgusts me. What an utter tiny-minded, petty, vindictive little bastard.

1 comment April 26th, 2007 at 10:52pm Posted by Eli

Like I Just Said…

From the Houston Chronicle’s NewsWatch blog, by way of Think Progress, by way of First Draft:

One thing Bush likes to do in the Gulf Coast is hand out American flags to families rebuilding their houses. Long before he shows up, Bush’s advance team scouts the non-hostile property owners in a neighborhood, and later, the president drops by and gives the family a flag. The White House thinks this makes for good pictures - and maybe it did, a month after the storm. But a year and half later, with the region still a mess and so many people displaced, it seems a little tone-deaf to be handing out flags - politically, it does invite comparisons to what Bush isn’t doing in the region.

So not only is Dubya responding to massive devastation by handing out flags (because he is the very embodiment of patriotism, after all), but he’s only handing out flags to Real Americans.

I wonder if any of those Real Americans are saying, “I’ve been your loyal supporter for the last 7 years, and you come down here and give me a fucking FLAG when my house has been destroyed??? Fuck you and fuck your party, I’m voting for Gore next year like I shoulda done 7 years ago. Maybe I’d still have a house.”

5 comments March 2nd, 2007 at 12:57pm Posted by Eli

Mission Accomplished

I think this is exactly what Bush and the Republicans want.

Between New Orleans and Iraq, it’s pretty clear that this is the last administration on Earth that you would want “rebuilding” your home.

The biggest drawback to being atheist/agnostic is not having the satisfaction of knowing that there’s a hell waiting for these inhuman creatures who corrupt and destroy all that they touch.

2 comments February 16th, 2007 at 12:20am Posted by Eli

Froomkin’s Festival Of Wankery

Just too much blood-boily goodness in White House Watch today, so I’m going to try to hit multiple highlights here:

It’s become accepted journalistic shorthand to say that the previous NSA [warrantless] spying program no longer exists, having been replaced by a new program that meets court muster. But as I first noted in my January 19 column, that’s certainly not the way Bush himself sees things. In an under-the-radar broadcast interview, Bush put it this way: “Nothing has changed in the program except for the court has said we analyzed it, it is a legitimate, it is a legitimate way to protect the country.”

And yesterday, in an interview with members of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Bush continued in that vein.

Today’s lead Wall Street Journal editorial states that “we’ve been critical of Mr. Bush, notably on his decision to abruptly change gears and subject his NSA warrantless wiretap program to judicial review. So we asked why he had made that decision after 13 months of insisting that those wiretaps were a Presidential prerogative?

“‘Scrap the program’ is not accurate,’ he insisted. ‘The program exists. And now we’ve had a program ratified by the judiciary which is going to make it easier for a future President to have this program in place. . . . It had nothing to do with diminution of Presidential authority. It had everything to do with getting a second branch of government to support that which I have done.’”

Wow. So not only does Dubya basically say that the top-secret FISA court ruled that wireless wiretapping was cool with them, so he can keep on doing it, but the Wall Street Journal actually scolds him for even letting them rule on it in the first place. Just amazing. This is probably a good time to mention once again that those warrants can be obtained retroactively 72 hours after the initial wiretap. The only way the warrant requirement can be a hindrance is if you have no grounds for one.

Okay, moving on… From an interview on Fox News with Neil Cavuto:

Cavuto asked: “How do you think the troops would feel about a President Obama?”

Bush: “Oh, I don’t know. He ain’t — look — he hasn’t got elected yet. He ain’t even got the party’s nomination either. He’s an attractive guy, he’s articulate, I’ve been impressed with him, I’ve seen him in person, but he’s got a long way to go to be president.”

Okay, I can maybe let the “articulate” thing slide as not provably a racist codeword here, because the fact is that Obama is not just “articulate for a black guy” - he’s the best speaker in the Democratic party this side of Bill Clinton, and it would be strange not to make some mention of that. But as if to underscore the point, the Leader Of The Free World, the Most Powerful Man On Earth, uses “ain’t” not once, but twice in the two sentences immediately before it. Makes you right proud, don’t it.

But this, I think this is my favorite of them all, the Wanker Di Tutti Wankers moment:

Asked about federal disaster response by Cavuto, Bush had this to say:

“I think the federal bureaucracy responded pretty quickly for Katrina — and New York. We set up the funds, we put people in place, the monies were spent, the monies were distributed.” He shrugs. “And where there is — I mean, I’m confident there’s some places where the money’s been slowly spent, and we’re constantly listening to members of the Congress to make sure that we are able to free monies that the bureaucracy is, you know, withholding money or slowing up the expenditure of money.“

Yes, that’s right, it’s all the mean ol’ bureaucracy’s fault. The Mighty Decider wants nothing more than to move heaven and earth to restore New Orleans and Trent Lott’s porch to their former glory and then some, but that damn bureaucracy keeps getting in the way. (Hey, remember that time when he charmingly dismissed that EPA global warming study as “that report put out by the bureaucracy”?) You can practically see the little Grover Norquist imp perched on his shoulder when he spouts this crap. Side note: How long before he “accidentally” “mispronounces” the name of his opposition as “the Bureaucrat Party”?

Unfortunately, I’m still not done…

U.S. News reports that “Democrats on Capitol Hill are increasingly concerned that President Bush will order air strikes against targets in Iran in the next few months or even weeks. . . . Democratic insiders tell the Political Bulletin that they suspect Bush will order the bombing of Iranian supply routes, camps, training facilities, and other sites that Administration officials say contribute to American losses in Iraq. Under this scenario, Bush would not invade Iran with ground forces or zero in on Iranian nuclear facilities. But under the limited-bombing scenario, Bush could ask for a congressional vote of support, Democratic insiders predict, which many Democrats would feel obliged to endorse or risk looking like they weren’t supportive of the troops. Bombing Iran would also take attention away from the troubled situation in Iraq and cause a rally-round-the-president reaction among Americans, at least for a while.”

Attention Democrats: Voting in favor of starting a second third, even bigger war and occupation when we can’t even handle the ones we’ve got would be, um… what’s the word I’m looking for here… stupid. Half of you got railroaded into okaying the invasion of Iraq, and now you own a piece of that fiasco, to the point where the Lamont Uprising had to shame you into even making it a campaign issue last year. What possible reason would you have to want to own any piece of a war against Iran, which is far larger and more powerful than Iraq? You don’t seriously believe that it’s going to be a glorious victory you wish you had endorsed, do you? Not with this gang of incompetents in charge, commanding a broken army.

Skim skim skim… Surge… Libby… Aspens… A-ha!

Michael Abramowitz and Lori Montgomery write in The Washington Post: “President Bush acknowledged Wednesday that there is growing income inequality in the United States, addressing for the first time a subject that has long concerned Democrats and liberal economists.

“‘The fact is that income inequality is real — it’s been rising for more than 25 years,’ Bush said in an address on Wall Street. ‘The reason is clear: We have an economy that increasingly rewards education and skills because of that education.’”

Yes, of course. CEO’s make a gajillion* dollars a year solely because of their superior education. Everyone who doesn’t make a gajillion dollars a year must be uneducated and stupid. Like me.

And since no Festival Of Wankery would be complete without the Second Family, here we have Mary Cheney explaining what a baby is:

Katharine Q. Seelye writes in the New York Times: “Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, for the first time yesterday publicly defended her decision to become pregnant and asserted that same-sex couples were equally capable of raising children as heterosexual couples.”

Cheney “gestured to her middle — any bulge disguised by a boxy jacket — and asserted: ‘This is a baby. This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. It is my child.’”

Okay, fine, whatever. All I want is for your baby and your sexual orientation to get the exact same level of respect from conservatives and Republicans as they give to all other gay couples and their children. My preference would be for them to embrace and accept all gays as full and equal citizens under God and the law, but failing that, they should at least be consistent.

*All dollar figures in metric gajillions.

Add comment February 1st, 2007 at 07:40pm Posted by Eli

Roadkill

(WARNING: Potentially insensitive analogy ahead)

While here in South Carolina, I saw both a dead cat and a dead dog on the side of the road (not at the same time). It’s a sad sight to begin with, and then I think about how that that cat and that dog were probably someone’s pets, and some unfortunate family is just devastated because their four-legged family member got hit by a car, and that makes it even sadder.

Now imagine that it’s someone’s mom or dad or grandma or brother or son, and they got shot or blown up for no good reason other than that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Now imagine that there’s hundreds of thousands of them.

20 comments December 20th, 2006 at 03:54pm Posted by Eli

You’re Doin’ A Heckuva Job, Buellie.

Choice nugget from the WaPo’s analysis of the partisan “debate” over whether Bush was lying when he said, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees,” or just chose his words poorly (yeah, like “anybody,” and “anticipated”…):

As the debate reached a new boil, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the resignation yesterday of Matthew Broderick, the department’s director of operations coordination, who will leave March 31. Chertoff said Broderick wants to spend more time with his family, but he is the second person associated with the Katrina response to resign, following Michael D. Brown, who directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

I know Bush hires a lot of unqualified people for high-stakes positions, but Ferris Bueller?
That’s just rubbing our noses in it.

“Okay, how are we going to get all of these people out of New Orleans?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Bueller?

Anyone?”

Add comment March 3rd, 2006 at 02:26pm Posted by Eli

Questioning The Unquestioning

Interesting how Hurricane Katrina actually destroys spin (maybe it’s only when it brings the eye to bear, though).

Multiple (I think) Wanker Of The Day honoree John Dickerson observes that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” wasn’t the only self-serving BushCo. lie destroyed by the August 28 Katrina briefing video:

Based on what I’d been told by White House aides over the years, I expected to see the president asking piercing questions that punctured the fog of the moment and inspired bold action. Bush’s question-asking talents are a central tenet of the president’s hagiography. He may not be much for details, say aides, but he can zero in on a weak spot in a briefing and ask out-of-the-box questions. I have been repeatedly told over the years that he once interrupted a briefing on national defense to pose a 30,000-foot stumper: What is the function of the Department of Defense?

(Ooo, ahh, what a bold and daring question - hell, he probably asked because he genuinely didn’t know…)

So, surely during this briefing about an impending natural disaster, the president would have had a few pointed inquiries. The experts assembled in boxes on his screen like guests on Hollywood Squares had just told him the coming hurricane “was the big one” and talked about “the greatest potential for large loss of life.” Yet according to the Associated Press, which is the only press organization that has reviewed the video, Bush didn’t ask a single question in the briefing, but told officials “we are fully prepared.”

You know you’re in trouble when Michael Brown outshines you. [OUCH!] But the president’s question-free briefing is more than a momentary bad piece of public relations. It’s a blow to a key Bush myth. The Bush management philosophy relies on him as an interrogator. He delegates, but that’s OK because he knows how to question those he empowers to make sure they’re focused. Question-asking is also a central public tool in the “trust me” presidency. We aren’t supposed to worry that the NSA wiretapping program goes too far because the president has asked all the questions. When the president was wrong about the level of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the strength of the insurgency, it wasn’t because he didn’t ask enough questions, we have been told, it was because he was given the wrong answers.

I too remember reading multiple times about what a brilliant and incisive leader Bush is in meetings, but perhaps it’s only true in meetings about issues that Bush actually cares about. Katrina couldn’t advance the Republican agenda in any obvious way, so it was just a nuisance to get out of the way as quickly as possible. The idea that whiffing on the disaster response might be a political disaster in its own right was apparently far too abstract for anyone to grasp, and I just can’t seriously believe that any of the Bush inner circle stayed up nights worrying about the possible deaths of a few thousand commoners (See: Gulf War II, The). And if it’s not a cause that Bush is personally committed to, his default position is, “I have people who take care of that.” It never even occurs to him that he actually has to take action himself to make things happen.

I bet there were a lot of meetings like this at Bush’s oil companies, right before they went under. I bet there were some key junctures where CEO Bush could have saved those companies with swift, decisive action, and he instead left it up to subordinates (who, I will also bet, were unqualified cronies) to figure it all out while he, ah, went to Margaritaville and frolicked in the snow.

I can certainly understand the appeal of the “CEO President” concept, but I can’t understand how it can be expanded to include CEOs who have never made a company stronger, or even kept it alive for more than a few years. How could anyone expect them to do better running the biggest corporation on Earth?

Add comment March 3rd, 2006 at 01:42pm Posted by Eli

Bush Takes The Bullshit By The Horns

Generally speaking, I mainly read the NY Daily News for the sports (I know, it’s kinda like the inverse of reading Playboy “for the articles”), but Denis Hamill does a damn fine job of hitting Bush with the chair today:

I’m amazed that anyone is amazed that it took George W. Bush three days to show up in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

That’s exactly how long it took him to show up at Ground Zero after 9/11.

So it mystifies me that the pundits and the cable gasbags keep telling us that George W. Bush missed his “bullhorn moment” in New Orleans.

No, he didn’t.

Because his bullhorn moment in New York City was just as late and just as disgraceful as his fumbling handling of the Katrina carnage.

(snip)

It will go down as one of the worst moments in American history because when he stood on the smoldering ruins amid the dust of the dead it was through that bullhorn that Bush’s Big Lie was first shouted to the world that the people who knocked down those buildings would soon be hearing from us.

(snip)

Historians will refocus that bullhorn moment as the point of origin to exploit a terrible attack on America for a preconceived war in Iraq that had nothing to do with our dead.

Historians also will remember that directly after the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 2001, killing 2,749, our fearless leader, with all that Texas Air Guard combat training, hopped aboard Air Force One and lammed to, um, Omaha.

Talk about heroic.

And as real heroes dug in the rubble for signs of life, shortening their own lives in the toxic air, Bush hid out. Then three days later, when the coast was clear, he arrived to shoot a Karl Rove-inspired reelection commercial and to launch a war in Iraq.

The invasion of Baghdad started in New York in that “bullhorn moment” three days after Sept. 11.

(snip)

I often ask successful conservative businessmen friends if they would let George W. Bush run their private businesses. They almost always smile and admit they wouldn’t. And yet they voted for him torun the most powerful nation on the planet.

Yowza! Read the whole thing - I left some real good stuff on the cutting room floor. I… really don’t have anything to add to it.

5 comments September 20th, 2005 at 07:03pm Posted by Eli

Media, Take Heed

Frank Rich’s column on the growing cracks in the Bush administration’s imagecraft is excellent, of course, but I’m particularly intrigued by one little almost-throwaway tidbit:

You know the world has changed when the widely despised news media have a far higher approval rating (77 percent) than the president (46 percent), as measured last week in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

I seem to remember the media’s “approval rating” being well under 50% not so long ago. The fact that it appears to have cranked way up in the wake of some extremely and uncharacteristically anti-Bush reportage on the handling of Hurricane Katrina is very telling, and suggests to me that the public’s appetite for Republican propaganda has worn very thin indeed, if I may employ some Tom Friedmanesque metaphor mashing.

Will the media take notice and start doing their jobs, in order to preserve their credibility? I doubt it. I believe their primary objective is pleasing their parent corporations, not garnering ratings or respect. But if I’m wrong, or if more and more people see the media for the right-wing spin outlet it has become, it could be very very good for the Democrats, and very very bad for the Republicans.

We shall see.

1 comment September 18th, 2005 at 01:40am Posted by Eli

The Lemonade Party

I don’t always get a chance to read it, but Dan Froomkin’s White House Briefing is one of my favorite columns. It’s a great sampling of political articles, opinion pieces, and blog posts, and Froomkin is very refreshingly not-a-Republican-tool. Today he had a couple of truly infuriating posts under the heading “The Not-So-Hidden Agenda.”

Indeed…

John R. Wilkie and Brody Mullins write in the Wall Street Journal: “Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, say they are using relief measures for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast to achieve a broad range of conservative economic and social policies, both in the storm zone and beyond.

“Some new measures are already taking shape. In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.

“Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims’ right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction.”

It is just amazing how utterly devoid of shame the Republicans are, and how completely spineless the Democrats. How can they not call the GOP on their exploitation of yet another tragedy for political gain? Heck, the Republicans make out so well from catastrophes that I have to wonder whether they really have any desire to prevent them at all.

In brief, the Republicans are masters at making lemonade out of lemons, while the Democrats could fuck up chocolate. But maybe, just maybe, the Republicans won’t have enough sugar this time. They certainly have more than enough water.

But wait, there’s more! From an LA Times article on the same topic, we get this little gem…

” ‘Bush has a very well defined vision of what government should do and how it should do it,’ said Michael Franc, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization consulted by the White House. ‘This is a moment to teach or explain to the American people how his values apply to this catastrophic situation.’ “

Um, hello? Heritage Foundation? The president already “taught” the American people how his values apply to this catastrophic situation. That’s why his approval rating is sinking through the floor.

Add comment September 15th, 2005 at 05:58pm Posted by Eli

George W. Bush: Worse Than Racist?

I’ll stop being cynical when life gives me a reason.

I’m seeing a lot of polling and talk about how President Bush’s lame response to Hurricane Katrina was racially motivated, but I really don’t think that’s it. I think his lame response was simply a reflection of his innate lack of seriousness and engagement, and his inability to understand the concept that he is Ultimately Reponsible For Stuff, and can’t just twiddle his thumbs and wait for the grown-ups to take care of it.

Seriously, if New Orleans had been populated exclusively by white people who were not oil billionaires and/or assorted Pioneers and Rangers, I believe that Bush’s “response” would have been absolutely identical.

In fact, I would argue that accusations of racism actually let Bush off the hook for his bone-deep incompetence, by making it appear to be a matter of choice. This allows his base to continue believing that he could and would take care of them if disaster struck. It may even advance the Republican’s deeply evil “Southern Strategy,” by allowing the most racist troglodyte elements of the party to admire the bold and decisive way he sat back and let Mother Nature take care of all them damn nigras, unlike all those other fancy-pants Washington Republicans who just throw around weaselly code words without ever lifting a finger to do anything about The Negro Problem.

Our message should not be that Bush won’t save black people from disaster because he’s a stone-cold racist, it should be that he can’t save anyone from disaster because he’s a stone-cold fuckup. The beauty of it is that it attacks Bush on one of his supposed strengths (CEO president, my ass), and deprives the Republicans of another cherished opportunity to paint us as shrill, race-card-playing hippies with alarmingly large penises.

4 comments September 13th, 2005 at 06:27pm Posted by Eli

Dionne The Mark?

I sure hope E.J. is right…

The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them — and the country.

Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush’s government doesn’t work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.

(snip)

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration’s strong suits.

(snip)

[I]f ever the phrase “reinventing government” had relevance, it is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows political hacks to push aside the professionals.

I especially like Dionne’s implication that not only will the American people repudiate Bush, not only will they repudiate the Republicans, but they will repudiate the (mostly) Republican way of doing business, where cronyism and payback are elevated over competence and the public good.

And satisfying as it would be to see Bush and his posse finally dishonored as the charlatans and criminals they are, it buys us nothing if his Congressional enablers do not also pay a stiff price, and that should include the spineless appeasers on the Democratic side, the Liebermans and Bidens and Nelsons.

In a perfect world, the Republican-lite DLC would become the new Republican party and leave us liberal Democrats alone, and the hardline religious and fuck-the-poor Republicans would be relegated to the lunatic fringe where they have always belonged, and leave everyone alone.

Do I think it’ll happen? Well, not really, not anytime soon. I think Dionne underestimates the power of inertia and the status quo, fueled by the narrow self-interest of politicians on both sides of the aisle (think gerrymandering). As long as the Republicans control the media and the machinery of voting, and as long as the Democrats cower in their can’t-we-all-just-get-along defensive shell, American democracy will continue to suffocate and slowly expire before our eyes. But the Democrats need to fix themselves before they can even begin to think about fixing the country, and even then it’s going to be a long, hard slog.

Add comment September 13th, 2005 at 06:15pm Posted by Eli

It’s A Good Presidency

Separated at birth?

From How Bush Blew It at Newsweek:

It’s a standing joke among the president’s top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States…. The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington. The president’s chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president’s early return and the delicate task of telling him. Hagin, it was decided, as senior aide on the ground, would do the deed.

And from a synopsis and analysis of classic Twilight Zone episode “It’s A Good Life,” presented as a metaphor for Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

Anthony Fremont is a six-year-old with extraordinary powers to control the little town where he lives by simply wishing away people and things that anger or bore him. He has isolated the town by banishing electricity and cars. Other than his powerful wishing, Anthony has the mind and imagination of a typical little boy…. The people in Peaksville have to smile all the time, think happy thoughts, and say happy things, because that’s what Anthony commands and, if they disobey, he can wish them into a cornfield or change them into grotesque versions of themselves. Anthony dislikes singing and punished Aunt Amy for thoughtlessly singing in his presence.

(snip)

Comment: Substitute a big person for the arbitrarily vindictive little boy and this story also gives a general idea of how groups, including families, work when they are dominated by narcissists. But bear in mind that there’s a necessary requirement for such a reign of terror to continue: the isolation of a captive audience. One of the ways tyrannical narcissists isolate their captives is by telling them that they must keep secret what goes on inside or face dreadful punishment, because they’re so special that no one outside the group is capable of understanding them…. For a real-life example, see the story of the Phelps family.

For all intents and purposes, our country is at the mercy of an extremely powerful, yet shallow and petulant child whom no-one dares contradict. The results have been predictably tragic, and there is no reason to hope for improvement.

6 comments September 12th, 2005 at 12:32am Posted by Eli

The Trouble With Competence

Just another one of those posts where I want to, shall we say, formalize something I’ve been saying in the Eschaton comments.

The catastrophe in Louisiana and Mississippi has served to shine a glaring spotlight on the rot of incompetence at the Bush administration’s core. It is painfully clear that “Brownie” was woefully unqualified to run FEMA, and attained the position solely because he is a Friend Of Bush, as did his predecessor and his immediate subordinates. This is typically attributed to corruption and unseriousness about the important business of governing, but I don’t think that tells quite the entire story of why competence is like kryptonite for the Bush administration.

To put it simply, competence gets in the way of loyalty. (Or at least, loyalty in its most cramped and narrow yes-man sense) Competence requires at least a passing familiarity with reality, which is sometimes not what the boss wants it to be. If the boss cannot accept anything that does not fit in with his worldview, then the competent employee will inevitably come into conflict with the boss’s agenda. And the farther from reality the boss is, the more frequent such conflicts will be. So if the boss’s priority is to employ people who won’t rock the boat or tell him anything he doesn’t want to hear, then he will naturally turn to those who have always agreed with him in the past, who make him feel comfortable.

Now, of course, a real leader does not fear competence - a real leader welcomes competence and alternative viewpoints to his own, and uses them to make himself stronger. But, needless to say, President Bush is not a real leader, and surrounding himself with people who tell him he is only makes him less of one.

3 comments September 11th, 2005 at 08:09pm Posted by Eli

Tone-Deaf And Dumb

Some more thoughts on the Katrina aftermath:

I understand the Republican strategy (which I just freudianly mistyped as “tragedy”) of trying to shift all responsibility to the Democratic state and local government. It’s craven and morally bankrupt, but Not Owning Your Fuck-Up is basic self-preservation, and is what passes for admirable behavior among politicians in general, and Republican politicians in particular. But it also looks like there is a remarkable lack of compassion for the victims among the Bushies, and outright hostility towards them by the right-wing pundits.

To recap the examples I can remember (with help from Atrios), in no particular order:

• After remaining on vacation for a few days after the hurricane hits, Bush finally shows up and reminisces about the great partying he had in New Orleans in his younger days, talks about sitting on the great new porch Trent Lott is going to have, and tells “Brownie” that he’s doing a heck of a job. Meanwhile, Cheney is fishing and Condi is shopping and having her Grand Day Out at Spamalot and Ferragamo.

• Barbara Bush expresses her fear of Texas being overrun by those uncouth refugees, and chuckles about what a sweet deal this Astrodome gig is for them. Tom DeLay compares it to summer camp and suggests that it’s “kind of fun.”

• Glenn Beck voices his contempt for the refugees for being insufficiently supportive of the president (much like those pesky 9/11 widows who just won’t leave well enough alone), and Mark Williams insults the dead and stranded’s intelligence for being too damfool to evacuate.

• Baton Rouge Republican Representative Richard Baker expresses gratitude that God has “finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans.”

The thing here is, even if the Republicans somehow manage to succeed in diverting accountability away from the head of our entire government, that still doesn’t erase the impression that Bush and the Republicans very clearly DID NOT GIVE A FUCK. An entire American city gone, thousands dead, and Bush and his Republican cronies display absolutely zero awareness of or interest in the seriousness of the situation in any terms other than the purely political. Even if non-wingnuts can overlook or forgive incompetence, especially if it’s incompetence by proxy, can they overlook or forgive this kind of moral and spiritual vacuum?

Indeed, his choice of FEMA appointments suggests that he doesn’t much care about disaster preparedness at all. Perhaps he was counting on the next catastrophe to be the terrorist attack he’s been inviting, where wholesale casualties would give him a chance to once again wrap himself in the War-Preznit flag and bully everyone into “rallying around the president” again, as he invades Iran or Syria or Venezuela or Bhutan.

As I have said before in other venues, I think BushCo. really thought that the rest of America, or at least the Republican base, would care as little about the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of poor and black people as they do (hey, it’s not like anyone important died, right?). I desperately hope that they’re wrong.

Another thing that seriously disturbs me about the administration’s response is the gratuitous, selfish phoniness of it, where valuable resources were diverted from relief efforts for the sole purpose of making the president look good. A fake levee repair effort was started and then swiftly abandoned after Bush posed with it. 50 of the 1,000 firemen who came to New Orleans from all over the country to help were assigned to stand-behind-the-president-so-he-can-bask-in-
your-reflected-9/11-glory duty as he toured the disaster area.

Yes, it’s appalling that the administration spinmeisters are this callous, but we already knew that. What’s chilling is that they’re this arrogant. They had to know that this sort of callousness would be absolutely devastating if it were widely reported, which means that they also knew that it would not be widely reported. This country is in serious trouble if they are right.

7 comments September 9th, 2005 at 10:35pm Posted by Eli

“I Don’t Think That’s A Total Stretch.”

Oopsie…

Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, the principal target of harsh criticism of the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, was relieved of his onsite command Friday.

(snip)

Earlier, Brown confirmed the switch. Asked if he was being made a scapegoat for a federal relief effort that has drawn widespread and sharp criticism, Brown told The Associated Press after a long pause: ”By the press, yes. By the president, no.”

(snip)

Bush administration documents have credited Brown with overseeing emergency services while working for the city of Edmond, Okla., in the mid-1970s. Brown’s official biography on the FEMA Web site says he served as ”an assistant city manager.” But a former mayor of Edmond, Randel Shadid, told AP on Friday that Brown had been an assistant to the city manager — never assistant city manager.

”I think there’s a difference between the two positions,” said Shadid. ”I would think that is a discrepancy.”

Asked later about the White House news release that said Brown oversaw Edmond’s emergency services divisions, Shadid said, ”I don’t think that’s a total stretch.”

Can I please, please start calling him “The FEMA Impersonator” now???

Add comment September 9th, 2005 at 07:25pm Posted by Eli

Who Needs It?

Well, great:

More than half the people in this country say the flooded areas of New Orleans lying below sea level should be abandoned and rebuilt on higher ground.

An AP-Ipsos poll found that 54 percent of Americans want the four-fifths of New Orleans that was flooded by Hurricane Katrina moved to a safer location.

Umm… so what? Let’s let the people of New Orleans make that call, shall we? Was there even a need to poll on this?

Add comment September 9th, 2005 at 09:28am Posted by Eli