I wonder if Mr. War President won't yet get to preside over a big war: at home.
I'm sure you are getting more news about what's happening in New Orleans that I am, so there's not much point in posting any links to any stories of the human disaster it is. So I'll just throw in somem commentaries.
Paul Krugman, not surprisingly, criticizes the current administration.
"Conservatives" are apparently promoting a race war.Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.
So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.
First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive?[...]
There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.
Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"
Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.
Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."
In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.
Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness?
"New Orleans was ripe for collapse. Its dangerous geography, combined with a dangerous culture, made it susceptible to an unfolding catastrophe. Currents of chaos and lawlessness were running through the city long before this week, and they were bound to come to the surface under the pressure of natural disaster and explode in a scene of looting and mayhem."[...]
"Like riotous Los Angeles since the 1960s, New Orleans has been a wasteland of politically correct dysfunction for decades -- public schools so obviously decimated vouchers were proposed this year (and torpedoed by the left), barbaric gangster rap culture no one will confront lest they offend liberal pieties, multiculturalist frauds who empower no one but themselves, and cops neutered by the NAACP and ACLU."
I don't think we needed to be told.It began, fittingly enough, with jazz from New Orleans natives Harry Connick Jr. and Wynton Marsalis. But "A Concert for Hurricane Relief," a heartfelt and dignified benefit airing on NBC and other networks last night, took an unexpected turn, thanks to outspoken rapper Kanye West.
Appearing two-thirds through the program, West claimed, "George Bush doesn't care about black people," and said America is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible."
The show, simulcast from New York on NBC, MSNBC, CNBC and Pax, aired live on the East Coast, enabling the Grammy-winning rapper's outburst to go out uncensored.
Comedian Mike Myers was paired with West for a 90-second segment that began with Myers speaking of Katrina's devastation. Then, to Myers' evident surprise, West began a rant by saying, "I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food."
NBC said in a statement that West's comments were unscripted and "in no way represent the views of the networks."
LaBelle writes:
As I always say, a good story can never be embellished enough.Watching the abandonment of those poor people in New Orleans is enough
to make me want to crawl in a hole and cover my head. I can't even describe how angry I am. That asshole on the radio program Tamie at the office listens to just sickened me beyond belief today. His comment on seeing the images from NO - "It looks like Africa." Exactly the reason they are dying on the streets there - no water, no food, no buses to get them the hell out of there. I heard one woman today say it's natures way of weeding out the undesirable! I really wanted to punch her stupid face. Tony Messenger is calling for the city of Columbia to offer up the Hearnes Center for a shelter for some of these people. Like that's going to happen. Ye gods - they're BLACK people. POOR BLACK people. We have enough problems with our own POOR BLACK people. Can't be bringing in any more.
The rescue of the people of New Orleans is a major fuck up. And that asshole in the oval office says no one thought the levees wouldn't hold!!![...]
Oh, and another thing - all that inadequately armored equipment the Louisiana National Guard had to take with them to Iraq would have worked just fine for rescue purposes in their home state, don't you think? Not to mention all the soldiers over there who have no idea what's happened to their families back home. And you can bet they are the very ones who are stranded, dying or dead already in New Orleans right now.
And while I'm ranting, I'll just take on the Tribune. [Ed: Local Columbia, Missouri, newspaper.] Big headline in tonight's paper - Mexico family takes in refugees (that
would be Mexico, Missouri :) ) I read the article. Those 'refugees' were Tulane students [...]. They were from Maryland, Illinois and Conneticut. Now they
could just go HOME. To call them "refugees" was ridiculous.
Jody comments:
And, lastly, just let me remind you that there's a little problem when your patriotic neighbors hammer you with comments about our wonderful army that exists to protect you. Maybe it does....if you're white and support the power structure.Katrina has sent a warning about US vulnerability and we
will see the disconnect between Bush's words and actions and the breakdown of the overall social contract, while people begin to make smarter choices of where and how to live and communities realize they need to become more self-sufficient.
I wonder...with the same indiscriminate rush? "More than willing."Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said the 300 troopers from the Arkansas National Guard had been authorised to open fire on "hoodlums" who terrorised the flooded city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The deployment came amid intense criticism of the Bush Administration for a tardy response to the disaster, which is feared to have killed thousands and left hundreds of thousands stranded and homeless.
"These troops are fresh back from Iraq, well trained, experienced, battle tested, and under my orders to restore order in the streets," Ms Blanco said.
"They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded.
"These troops know how to shoot and kill, and are more than willing to do so if necessary. And I expect they will."
Dana Milbank in the WaPo:“I’m looking forward to my trip down there,” President Bush said in the White House driveway yesterday morning before leaving to tour the storm wreckage.And evidently all helicopters were grounded for the duration of the Clueless One’s visit.
Something must have happened in flight, because when he arrived in Mobile, Ala., two hours later, he reported: “I’m not looking forward to this trip.”
I'll bite.(Update: Dennis Kucinich: “Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction.”)[...]
Bush is going on a tour, but promises not to enjoy it: “I’m not looking forward to this trip. ... It’s as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine”. Stupidity?
New Orleans headlines at Raw Story:
MoveOn makes available 42,000 beds for Katrina survivors
Halliburton gets Katrina contract, hires former FEMA director
Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food
July 2005 article reveals New Orleans told poor: 'You're on your own'
Questions of racism in hurricane photo captions; Yahoo responds
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