"Fema Fool Sat On His Hands"

I couldn't say it any better than the New York Post:

FEMA FOOL SAT ON HIS HANDS

September 7, 2005 -- The head of FEMA waited a mind-boggling five hours after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf before even contacting his boss about sending personnel to the area — then suggested workers be allowed two days to get to the ravaged region, shocking internal documents reveal.

One stunning Aug. 29 memo — sent from embattled Federal Emergency Management chief Michael Brown to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff — called killer Katrina a "near-catastrophic event," but otherwise lacked any other urgent language underlining the potential magnitude of the disaster.

Nursing Home Residents Left to Drown

In Nursing Home, a Fight Lost to Rising Waters

CHALMETTE, La., Sept. 6 - They nailed a table against one window, ran a heavy electric wheelchair with a table on top against another and pushed a couch against a door. These failed defenses are still in St. Rita's nursing home, as are at least 14 swollen, unrecognizable bodies.

St. Bernard Parish officials say that 32 of the home's roughly 60 residents died on Aug. 29, more than a week ago.

It is a measure of the enormity of the disaster that has struck southern Louisiana that no one has removed many of the bodies, and local officials say there are no immediate plans to do so. The flood victims still lie where they died - draped over a wheelchair, wrapped in a shower curtain, lying on a floor in several inches of muck.

The home, about 20 miles southeast of downtown New Orleans, is still surrounded by three feet of murky water. Eight vehicles are parked in front, covered in debris and mud.

Indeed, officials suspect that there may be hundreds of similar, though smaller scenes of death that will become apparent only after the water recedes and they are able to search every house in the region.

32 people died in this one nursing home alone. There are 76 nursing homes in New Orleans alone. Surely others were located in the storm's path in Mississippi and Alabama.

Where were the evacuations? Where were the rescuers? Where was the federal government? These people tried to save themselves. Why didn't we save them?

This disaster is America's shame.

Lethal Photo Ops

From raw story:

San Diego hospital closed to accommodate Bush visit; No chemo

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 30 -- The Naval Medical Center in San Diego's Balboa Park was shut down to accommodate a visit by President George W. Bush Aug. 30, RAW STORY has learned, forcing patients to cancel chemotherapy treatments and hundreds of scheduled patient visits.
"The pharmacy is closed. The emergency room is closed. Even chemotherapy patients will not be allowed on base," the daughter of one patient told RAW STORY shortly before the President's arrival. "My mother is a patient...She was contacted and told that her appointment had been canceled and would be rescheduled later…All civilian personnel and patients will not be allowed on base."

Hundreds of patient visits were cancelled as a result, she said. Patients and staff at the Naval Medical Center voiced concern over the shut-down of non-critical patient care services for a photo op that never even materialized. None were willing to go on record by name for fear of retaliation, such as loss of jobs or revocation of healthcare privileges.

[The scheduled photo-op was never held, for unexplained reasons.]

**********

When a haircut given to President Clinton aboard Air Force One inadvertently delayed air traffic and inconvenienced travelers, the media was quick to criticize the President. No such outcry has occurred over George W. Bush’s aborted photo op, or the interference it caused in medical care for seriously ill patients.

After civilian patients and volunteers were sent home in preparation for the President’s visit, "remaining military personnel were told to show up looking very spiffy, to appear in the auditorium and to remember that they will be on film," one hospital insider told RAW STORY. "In other words, 'If you want a career, and not to be sent to Iraq, cheer like hell.'"

Why no media was allowed inside the hospital to film the President--and why plans for the carefully orchestrated photo op were abandoned at the last moment--remain unknown.

"Impeach Bush Before More People Die"

From Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (go to the original post for links):

impeach bush before more people die

those aren't my words, although i have certainly thought them. these are the words of the former assistant secretary of the treasury under reagan, paul craig roberts.

and he's got some more words.

the raison d'etre of the bush administration is war in the middle east in order to protect america from terrorism and to insure america's oil supply. on both counts the bush administration has failed catastrophically.

bush's single-minded focus on the "war against terrorism" has compounded a natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in american history. the us has lost its largest and most strategic port, thousands of lives, and 80% of one of america's most historic cities is under water.

if terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest terrorist success in history.

oh, yeah...he's got some more, too....

...every expert and newspapers as distant as texas saw the new orleans catastrophe coming. but president bush and his insane government preferred war in iraq to protecting americans at home.

...the bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. bush has squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. he has run through hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. he has lost america's reputation and its allies. with barbaric torture and destruction of our civil liberty, he has stripped america of its inherent goodness and morality. and now bush has lost america's largest port and 25 percent of its oil
supply. why? because bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a claque of crazy
neoconservatives who have sacrificed america's interests to their insane agenda. - paul craig roberts at counterpunch

Anatomy of Many Thousand Murders

From Think Progress:

KATRINA TIMELINE

Howard Dean, a Real Leader

I received the following email from Howard Dean last night (I'm on the national Democratic Party email list, as I am a congenital Democrat. I'm also on the Republican Party email list, just so I can see how the re-thugs address their constituencies.) The Democrats are cancelling all fundraising events, cancelling their fall meeting, released DNC staff to participate in relief operations, and urging people to open their home to flood victims.

As reported here earlier, the Republicans intend to respond to the disaster by eliminating the estate tax and cutting Medicaid.

By giving us the "Dean Scream" (as well as "Swift Boating", and other atrocities) the media also gave us the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Can you imagine Howard Dean staying on vacation during a Category 5 hurricane? I can't even imagine Howard Dean on vacation, to be honest. He's a bulldog, and I say that with great admiration.

The Deaniacs were right. Send Bush back to Crawford. Impeach the incompetent b@st@rd.

Dear [truth],

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, you mobilized to make sure that the Red Cross had the financial resources it needed to respond swiftly. The response was literally overwhelming -- so many donations poured in that their web site struggled to process them.

Since then Americans have seen another kind of disaster unfold. The irresponsible lack of attention by our federal government has led directly to the devastation of communities and the loss of American lives.

The federal response over these crucial first days has been totally unacceptable. There will be a time for a full accounting of the preventable part of this disaster, and those responsible will be held accountable. It will be soon.

But there are lives to save right now and our focus must be steady. People need help right now. And you can be a direct participant in the relief efforts by providing housing for a victim of the disaster.

The vast number of evacuees has triggered a cascading crisis -- the first group of evacuation centers in the Gulf States has been overwhelmed, and the surrounding states have seen their capacity exceeded as well.

Hundreds of thousands of survivors are being transported in small groups to cities and towns across the country. A coalition of groups has put together a web site to collect offers of housing and provide a place for victims to search for help. You can offer shelter -- whether for a few days or a few weeks -- by signing up here:

http://www.hurricanehousing.org

To support your volunteer housing operation the following steps have been taken:

We are briefing Democratic elected officials on the HurricaneHousing.org program and asking that they treat this as the front-line network of volunteers who are ready and waiting to provide shelter in their jurisdiction.
We have asked outside organizations to direct their members to HurricaneHousing.org to volunteer; those organizations with representatives on the ground have been asked to help victims connect with the housing bank.
We have directed the staff at Democratic Headquarters in Washington to use local volunteers signed up on HurricaneHousing.org as they work with DC emergency response officials to assist hundreds of survivors being transported to the DC Armory, which is located nearby.
In addition to mobilizing our infrastructure to support the housing drive, we have also taken the following steps in the last week:

All DNC fundraising events have been cancelled until further notice and donations are being directed to relief organizations.
The DNC Fall Meeting that had been scheduled to take place this week has been postponed.
All staff have been given leave to participate in relief operations (many are completing Red Cross training this week and will deploy shortly).
The Democratic leadership in Congress has proposed a comprehensive policy package to ensure that victims receive health care, financial assistance and educational and employment opportunities during the crisis (go to www.democrats.org/reliefplan for more). But more than anything our organization has done, the thousands of acts of compassion by ordinary citizens and a renewed sense of common purpose will be the legacy of this effort.

Our American community will emerge stronger from this crisis.

Thank you for doing what you can.

Governor Howard Dean, M.D.

P.S. -- A number of organizations on the ground still need financial support. You can learn about them here:

http://www.democrats.org/reliefgroups

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.


Contributions or gifts to the Democratic National Committee are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

Click here to unsubscribe from this mailing list.

DNC, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington DC 20003

Harold Myerson: "The 'Stuff Happens' Presidency"

The 'Stuff Happens' Presidency

Even if we'll never win the national-greatness sweepstakes for solidarity, though, we've long been the model of the world in matters infrastructural, in roads, bridges and dams and the like. But the America in which Eisenhower the Good decreed the construction of the interstate highway system now seems a far-off land in which even conservatives believed in public expenditures for the public good. The radical-capitalist conservatives of the past quarter-century not only haven't supported the public expenditures, they don't even believe there is such a thing as the public good. Let the Dutch build their dikes through some socialistic scheme of taxing and spending; that isn't the American way. Here, the business of government is to let the private sector create wealth -- even if that wealth doesn't circulate where it's most needed. So George W. Bush threw trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, and what did they do with it? Did the Walton family up in Bentonville raise the levees in New Orleans? Did the Bass family over in Texas write a tax-deductible check to the Mennonites for the billions of dollars they would need to rescue the elderly from inundated nursing homes?

**********

The Republicans profess belief in trickle-down, but what they've given us is the Flood.

Courageous Journalism is a Fairy Tale

From Democratic Veteran

Once Upon a Time

The Government did not tell the media what to report, or not report, sometimes they really, really wanted to but there was this little thing called the First Amendment, in a quaint document called the 'Bill of Rights'. In modern times, the Media is all about Access, and the government is all about Granting Access. Access has all kind of perks, like big salaries for those who have it, and lots of face-time on camera to make you a "star" and best of all, a Nickname from America's Worst President Ever, because Nicknames make you feel like you have "Insider Access".

So now when stories need to be told, the government says "tell this, but don't tell that" and those with Insider Access dutifully and gravely nod their heads and say "OK, we won't because we want to keep our multi-million dollar salaries, and our fame and most of all, our Nicknames at events where we get to see the Naked Emporer in person."

The U.S. agency leading Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts said Tuesday that it does not want the news media to photograph the dead as they are recovered....

"We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media," the spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

Once upon a time, before Insider Access and big salaries and Nicknames, that was called Prior Restraint. Or perhaps that was just a Fairy Tale.

posted by Jo Fish on 09.07.05 at 09:17 AM

Operation Photo Op, George W. Bush Edition, 4.0

Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

**********

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

Bush's use of firemen: props : This post contains the photographs with the firemen who thought they would be deployed as emergency workers used as human background for President Photo Op.

The Potemkin President, Part II

So what's next? Will they round up some doctors and have them tag along with Shrub while he visits patients at an emergency field hospital? (Ideally, a tidy tent full of young, attractive African American patients -- nothing bloody or threatening.) Surely that can be arranged.

Or how about a town meeting with the engineers plugging the levee breaks? They could explain what they're doing and show Shrub their plans, and he could nod his head and pretend like he understands what they're talking about. That shouldn't take more than a half a day out of their schedule. And what's another half day when most of those people have been trapped in their attics for a week already?

But of course, cops and soldiers always make the best stage props. So why not pull them all off the streets for a speech, or better yet -- a turkey dinner? The president could serve!

One thing that really makes me angry watching this disaster coverage is how many times people talk about Bush's "leadership" during 9/11. What a joke. Everything Bush did on 9/11 and afterwards was a giant photo op, and the press ate it up & pushed it as though it were the truth.

Remember? George Bush never actually did anything. He read "The Pet Goat" to children. He hopped on his plane and flew around the country for hours, landing in Louisiana and Nebraska. He spoke briefly in Florida that morning, from Barksdale Air Force Base that afternoon, and at 8:30 that night. All those speeches were written by others, and he is reading them. It wasn't very inspiring, and his absence from the long day of rescue, collapsing buildings and death was in great contrast to the reassuring presence of Rudy Giuliani. I don't particularly like Giuliani, but I felt like he was president that day. He was reassuring, he captured the tragedy when he said the number of dead would be more than we could bear, and most importantly he was there. He didn't run and hide like George W. Bush.

Bush and his loyal aides began to go to the press with stories of the inspiring words Bush had spoken to them while he was on the run. There were no objective witnesses to these stories; they were all from Bush's political aides and allies. Here's how CBS News unquestionly reported their recollections:

Aboard Air Force One, Mr. Bush had a job for press secretary Fleischer.

“The president asked me to make sure that I took down everything that was said. I think he wanted to make certain that a record existed,” says Fleischer

Fleischer’s notes capture Mr. Bush’s language, plain and unguarded. To the vice president, he said: “We’re at war, Dick, we’re going to find out who did this and kick their ass.” Another time, Mr. Bush said, “We’re not going to have any slap-on-the-wrist crap this time.”

The President adds, “I can remember telling the Secretary of Defense, I said, ‘We’re going to find out who did this and then Mr. Secretary, you and Dick Myers, who we just named as chairman of the joint chiefs, are going to go get them.’”....

Mr. Bush had a question for CIA Director George Tenet. "George Tenet was just asked, 'Who do you think did this to us,'" recalls Rice. "He said, 'Sir, I believe its al Qaeda. We’re doing the assessment but it looks like, it feels like, it smells like al Qaeda.'”....

“At one point, he said he didn’t want any tinhorn terrorist keeping him out of Washington,” Fleischer says....

“He decided that the primary tone he wanted to strike that night was reassurance,” remembers Hughes. “We had to show resolve, we had to reassure people, we had to let them know that we would be OK.”

Just off the Oval Office, Mr. Bush added the words that would become known as the Bush Doctrine - no distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them. The staff wanted to add a declaration of war but Mr. Bush didn’t think the American people wanted to hear it that night.

He prepared to say it from the same desk where Franklin Roosevelt first heard the news of Pearl Harbor. Now Bush was commander in chief, and 80 million Americans were watching.

“Today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts,” he said from the Oval Office that night.

The Oval Office speech came at the end of the bloodiest day in American history since the Civil War.

Mostly it was all photo op. The bullhorn moment, pure photo op:

In the afternoon, word spread that President Bush was about to visit the site. Beckwith couldn't see much, so he climbed on top of an excavated firetruck to get a better view. A balding guy in a suit joined him - Beckwith thought it was a Secret Service agent - and asked if the truck was sturdy. The stranger told him that a VIP wanted to stand there.

The stranger was Bush's senior political aide, Karl Rove, and the VIP was Bush. Moments later, Bush joined Beckwith, threw his arm around him and raised a bullhorn to deliver some of the most memorable words of his presidency: "Well, I can hear you. The whole world can hear you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon."

The pitch at Yankee Stadium which the Republican convention made so much of? Throwing a pitch is probably the only thing this dim-witted exercise freak could be counted on to do competently by himself, without stage management and someone putting words in his mouth.

Yet the press presented all this to us as real, as true. It wasn't true. It was a huge political photo op. Bush & Karl Rove got away with it then, and they think they're going to get away with it now. I feel betrayed by the corporate media. They were complicit in allowing this incompetent boob to stay in office. Will they have the courage to report that everything he is doing right now is political, for show, a photo op? Based on recent history, I am deeply pessimistic.

Survivor Stories

Unfortunately, this post will the first in a series.

Lethal chaos: Professor describes scene at New Orleans hospital: Civil Rights attorney Bill Quigley

Storm Survivors Told To 'Expose Themselves': Ged Scott, Liverpool, England

Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences
Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky

Subject: a survivor's story: Katrina in New Orleans: My cousin Denise

3 Duke students tell of 'disgraceful' scene

Joanna's story (audio file)

Katrina Survivor Alleges Police Brutality: Jonathan Garner

Survivor Success Story: Melissa Ragan

Local Superdome Survivor: Lia Mittelstadt, Randolph, Wisconsin (with video link)

Lia Mittelstadt, A step "into hell"

Survivor recounts disaster’s onslaught: Janice Jamison, Muskogee, Oklahoma

Storm survivor determined to start life anew: Anya Maddox

Breck family fearing for the unknown: Carol Roshto-Smith, Breckinridge, CO

Survivor can’t escape memories: Bobby Main

Ex-county man rides out Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans: Jimmy Shields

Timely decisions meant difference between life, death: Henry Duvelle, Christine Stach, Jean and Matthew Meissner

South Floridians Share Survivor Stories As Cleanup Continues: Miriam Mapl, Mark Poole, Katara Tillman

Survivor struggles to get help for dead family: Geno Veva

'It was terrifying,' Biloxi survivor says: Joy Schovest

"Expect Up to 40,000 Bodies"

From Talking Points Memo

Not certain what to make of this -- but it's an interview with a local mortuary director in the Shelbyville (Tenn.) Times-Gazette. The mortician, Dan Buckner, is part of DMORT (Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team), which is a volunteer wing of the Department of Homeland Security called in to set up morgues and process bodies in major domestic disasters. And he's been deployed to Gulfport, Miss. Bucker tells the paper that "DMort is telling us to expect up to 40,000 bodies." And he goes on to say that that number does not "include the number of disinterred remains that have been displaced from ... mausoleums."

(ed.note: A note of thanks, if that's the word, to TPM Reader EO for the sobering tip.)

Here's the original interview TPM links to: Funeral director deploys to hurricane region

A co-owner of Shelbyville-based Gowen-Smith Chapel has been deployed to Gulfport, Miss., to help with recovery since Hurricane Katrina, and his business partner here has described the grim task there.

"DMort is telling us to expect up to 40,000 bodies," Dan Buckner said, quoting officials with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, a volunteer arm of Homeland Security.

**********

"My personal opinion is they will be recovering bodies for 30 ... to 120 days," Buckner said.

Lou Dobbs Peddles BushCo BS

Just watched Kitty Pigeon (is that her real name) trot out the Bush talking points on Lou Dobbs' CNN show. That is, it's the fault of the local and state authorities for not completely evacuating the city of New Orleans.

I am left with these questions:

(1) What percentage of the citizens of Mississippi and Alabama in the storm's way evacuated? Why aren't Haley Barbour (R) and Bob Riley (R) included in the scouraging of local officials? Because they are Republican? Because we don't have their death tolls yet? Because their portion of the levee system didn't breach?

(2) Who cares what the local officials did in evaluating the performance of FEMA? FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security. We are evaluating the performance of the agency which would have to clean up after a terrorist attack made without warning. If FEMA was in charge of the evacuation of the Twin Towers on 9/11, all those people evacuated by the FDNY and NYPD would have died. FEMA couldn't get water and food to people they were standing right next to for 5 days. How could they have evacuated a building in less than 2 hours?

Besides which, this was a national emergency. FEMA has TAKEN primary responsibility for all such incidents. The buck stops on George W. Bush's desk. He should be impeached for causing the deaths of so many innocent Americans through his criminal negligence.

Brace for a Staggering Death Toll

New Orleans Braces for Staggering Death Toll

Officials are preparing for thousands of dead

By Der Spiegel (Germany)

09/05/05 -- -- Over the weekend, New Orleans's rescue operation turned into a recovery mission to find the city's dead. There are still no firm estimates for the exact death toll -- but most agree it will be out of the ballpark, at least for a natural disaster in an industrial nation. United States Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt is expecting that 1,000 to 2,000 body bags will be filled. But the city's deeply stressed out mayor, Ray Nagin, who infamously called on President George W. Bush to "fix this goddamned crisis," offered up a staggering figure in interviews.

Here's his equation: The city has close to 500,000 residents and if you conservatively assume that 5 percent remained in New Orleans after the flooding, the numbers could go through the roof. "So you probably have another 50-60,000 out there," he said. "You do the math, man, what do you think? Five percent is unreasonable? Ten percent? Twenty percent? It's going to be a big number." Louisiana's Republican Senator, David Vitter said he believes the figure will exceed 10,000.

"Here Lies Vera. God Help Us."

From The Independent (UK)

The city where the dead are left lying on the streets

In a makeshift grave on the streets of New Orleans lies the body of Vera Smith. She was an ordinary woman who, like thousands of her neighbours, died because she was poor. Abandoned to her fate as the waters rose around her, Vera's tragedy symbolises the great divide in America today

**********

"Here Lies Vera. God Help Us."

**********

As the floodwaters are pumped out of New Orleans' streets, rescue workers are bracing themselves for further grisly discoveries and a death toll that will eventually reach tens of thousands.

Wait Until He Finds Out He Was On Vacation

from Talkings Points Memo: Bush to lead investigation into his own failure ...


from truth: I can see the interview next year with Diane Sawyer, Diane leaning forward, lips parted, vaseline on the camera lens, breathlessly asking, "What do you say to the American people, what went wrong, Mr. President?"

And he'll lean forward and give her that faux-earnest empty-headed grin, and say "Diane, nobody knew enough to call me and tell me a hurricane was comin! Nobody knew me taking a month of vacation would affect the government response to a catastrophe! Nobody knew I was on vacation!

"And then when I came back on Wednesday, cuttin my vacation back by two days I might add, heh heh, lot to ask of a sitting president, president needs balance in his life to lead effectively, well when I come back folks expected I would take charge! And that's not what this President does, Diane! I sit back and let the good folks I appointed do their jobs! My job is to get the right people in the right places and let 'em do their jobs. So my good friends Brownie and Mikey C were handling this crisis, and they were doin' a wonderful job. Great job. We had all kinds of aid lined up to go in to New Orleans at that point.

"So I took all that aid with me on Friday when I went to the Gulf Coast. Regular convoy, you saw the pictures on TV, right? I mean, this was only 5 days after the hurricane! Only 4 days after the levee filled New Orleans with water! It was hard work getting all those supplies together, hard work! Brownie and Mikey did an excellent job, excellent job.

"And you know the result of the investigation I headed, you know I announced the investigation only 8 days after the hurricane! 8 days! It was a bipartisan investigation I might add, got those good ol' boys Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, good ol'boys both, helped me put John Roberts on the Supreme Court, good men, both of them, well, they said that nothing better could have been done! We got those good folks supplies as soon as humanly possible. Only thing they could find wrong was all those folks in my administration who didn't know I was on vacation. Those good folks shoulda been informed.

"So we're gonna fix that. Next time I go on vacation, I'm gonna send out a memo to all my cabinet secretaries, you know, so something like this never happens again. Because that's what this administration is about, responding to the needs of the people.

"Hey, it's time for 4 hour mountain bike ride, wanna come along Diane! It'll be fun."

College Kids Save Lives While FEMA Dithers

From the invaluable Americablog (Note to self, gotta figure out how to put up a blogroll again)

3 Duke students travel to New Orleans, rescue people, come back while feds say they couldn't help anybody

But hey, in all fairness, George Bush was on vacation.

A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren't receiving help from authorities.

The group, led by South Carolina native Sonny Byrd, say they also managed to drive all the way to the New Orleans Convention Center, where they encountered scenes early Saturday evening that they say were disgraceful.

"We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn't go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai," said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla....

At 2 p.m., the trio decided to head for New Orleans, Buder said. After looking around, they swiped an Associated Press identification and one of the TV station's crew shirts, and found a Kinko's where they could make copies of the ID.

They were stopped again by authorities at the edge of New Orleans, but this time were able to make it through.

"We waved the press pass, and they looked at each other, the two guards, and waved us on in," Buder said....

"Anyone who knows that area, if you had a bus, it would take you no more than 20 minutes to drive in with a bus and get these people out," Buder said. "They sat there for four or five days with no food, no water, babies getting raped in the bathrooms, there were murders, nobody was doing anything for these people. And we just drove right in, really disgraceful. I don't want to get too fired up with the rhetoric, but some blame needs to be placed somewhere."

It Depends on What the Definition of "Immediately" Is

Bush is holding a photo op with the Cabinet in the White House right now, talking about the things that he's going to do immediately.

The "Hurricane Katrina" logo on the screen underneath his picture reads 8 days, 4 hours.

Immediately.

Some More Good Posts on Katrina

Too much out there for individual posts:

Harpers Magazine Weekly Review
Posted on Tuesday, September 6, 2005. By Paul Ford.

"Fifty-five countries offered aid to the United States....The United States was performing a "needs assessment" to decide whose help to accept."

Financial Times: Tragic costs of Bush’s Iraq obsession
By Michael Lind

San Francisco hopes FEMA prediction was only 2/3 correct, because "In early 2001, shortly after President George W. Bush was inaugurated and before 9/11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned of the three most devastating disasters that could strike the US: a terrorist attack on New York City, a hurricane flooding New Orleans and a San Francisco earthquake. The Bush administration was focused on its priority: Iraq."

Would-be rescuers cool their heels

Chaos in New Orleans delays California team eager to enter fray(registration required; use www.bugmenot.com to get username & password)

"The 83 members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Urban Search and Rescue team from Orange County, Calif., have been told to stay downtown at the Hyatt Regency Dallas at Reunion.
Since Friday, FEMA rescuers have been stuck in Dallas, waiting for the call to head to New Orleans. Since Friday, they have been sitting tight at the luxury hotel with members of five other teams of specialists from California, Nevada and Washington state – about 500 people all diverted to Dallas on the way to the Gulf Coast."

We're Still Only Talking To Each Other

If you don't read blogs, and most people in the country don't, you probably don't know anything reported on this site. A commenter suggests creating an uber-blog newspaper to get the word out. Good idea.

1906 San Francisco Earthquake More Competently Managed

From Alternet

Government's lightning-quick disaster response!

100 years ago, after the San Francisco earthquake:

The earthquake struck at 5:13 AM.

By 7 AM federal troops had reported to the mayor.

**********

by April 20 (two days after the earthquake) the USS Chicago had reached San Francisco [from San Diego], where it evacuated 20,000 refugees. (DailyKos)

I'm with the Times-Picayune. Fire Brown, fire Chertoff ("Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater"), fire all these incompetent murderers.

John Lewis Proposes a New Marshall Plan to Rebuild New Orleans

'This Is a National Disgrace'
Opinion: A civil-rights leader mourns an African-American population left behind.

It's so strange that when we have something like this happening, the president gets two ex-presidents—his father and Bill Clinton—to raise money. What they propose to do is good, and I appreciate all the work the private sector and the faith-based community are doing. But when we get ready to go to war, we don't go around soliciting resources with a bucket or an offering plate. We have the courage to come before Congress and debate the issue, authorize money. That's what we need to do here. By next year we'll have spent $400 billion to $500 billion in Afghanistan and Iraq. That money could be used to help rebuild the lives of people. If we fail to act as a nation, I don't think history will be kind to us.

We've got to do more than the $10 billion that Congress appropriated. We need a massive Marshall-type plan to rebuild New Orleans. But in rebuilding we should see this as an opportunity to rebuild urban America. New Orleans could be a model. There must be a commitment of billions and billions of dollars—maybe $50 billion to $100 billion. I think even in other urban centers, there are people who are just barely existing. We sing the song "Hope is on the way," but it's taking a long time before hope arrives. It becomes very discouraging where you see people dying—children, the elderly, the sick—the lack of food and water. I've cried a lot of tears the past few days as I watched television—to see somebody lying dead outside the convention center. I went to Somalia in 1992 and I saw little babies dying before my eyes. This reminded me of Somalia. But this is America. We're not a Third World country. This is an embarrassment. It's a shame. It's a national disgrace.

Lewis is the U.S. congressman from the Fifth District of Georgia.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

Note from truth: Hope this post comes out. Blogger is hopping all over the place. I've gotten 3 different templates in the past 10 minutes while trying to create a new post. None of them allow me to use the toolbar, that's why the excerpted text is not indented.

Gotta learn HTML.

Operation Photo Op, Donald Rumsfield Edition, 1.0

From Reuters:

WRAPUP 7-New Orleans police kill looters in shoot-out

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld toured a medical facility at New Orleans' international airport. He spoke and shook hands with military and rescue officials but walked right by a dozen refugees lying on stretchers just feet away from him, most of them extremely sick or handicapped.

The Receding Water Will Spread This Toxic Filth Around the Gulf and Eventually the World

from skippy the bush kangaroo (yes, he posts in all lower case letters, like e.e. cummings). To click on the links contained within the article, click on the article title. Skippy is raising money from blogtopia (yes! skippy coined that phrase!) and so far has raised over $10,000.

yes...it does get worse

...it seems that a toxic landfill site on which housing was built in central new orleans is now under floodwaters with the potential to pollute and contaminate portions of the gulf coast. despite the overwhelming international coverage of hurricane katrina's lethal attack on southern u.s. states, it is the current issue of solid waste & recycling magazine that unearthed an environmental hazard that has the potential of being an underwater love canal.

cnn and fox news have now been alerted.

something called the agriculture street landfill (asl) is located on a 95-acre site in central new orleans.

it is registered as a "superfund site" (whatever that is) on the federal government's national priorities list of highly contaminated sites requiring cleanup and containment. but nothing has been done.

...according to the editor of hazardous waste magazine, the asl site -- now under water -- will almost inevitably leach toxic effluent into the floodwaters, with the potential of inflicting unpredictable damage on the coast, and those that live there -- a possible environmental catastrophe. - toronto star

houses and buildings that were constructed in later years directly atop parts of the landfill. residents report unusual cancers and health problems and have lobbied for years to be relocated away from the old contaminated site, which contains not only municipal garbage, but buried industrial wastes such as what would be produced by service stations and dry cleaners, manufacturers or burning. the site was routinely sprayed with ddt in the 1940s and 50s and, in 1962, 300,000 cubic yards of excess fill were removed from asl because of ongoing subsurface fires. (the site was nicknamed "dante's inferno" because of the fires.)

the asl can be thought of a sort of love canal for new orleans -– and now it sits under water. - solid waste & recyling

a political problem was lurking behind the scientific numbers. nobody in the city or federal government wanted to take responsibility for the problem. the epa was overseeing the pollution problem, but the neighborhood was built on land the city had owned and polluted. It had been financed under a department of housing and urban development program. - nola.com

Lame Excuses

from the Los Angeles Times yesterday:

Bush's Hurricane Response a Disaster

Nearly five years ago, the Bush administration rode into office bearing its cynicism about government high, like a banner. ">Nearly five years ago, the Bush administration rode into office bearing its cynicism about government high, like a banner.

It promoted a massive tax cut as a way of "starving the beast" of federal government. President Bush traveled the country telling us that we were overdependent on the government for help with healthcare and retirement. To those wondering what resources might see them into old age, he advised: "a conservative mix of stocks and bonds."

New Orleans is, or should be, the graveyard of the conservative ideology that government is useless. An American city is reduced to Third World desperation as people who own nothing scrounge for necessities in a sea of waste and federal officials offer lame excuses about how their disaster plans would have worked fine had there not been, you know, a disaster. The president, at the head of a global power that can't get its own troops or supplies off their bases to reach the needful, whines, "The private sector needs to do its part."

How FUBAR is FEMA? Let me count the ways

from dailykos, via the florida blues blog. Hit the link to the original post to link to the stories (in bold, below) referenced.

FEMA is FUBAR

David of Daily Kos says to take a look at this list of stories he's rounded up about FEMA:

FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations

FEMA turns away experienced firefighters

FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks

FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel

FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food

FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans

David says: We know FEMA's budget and operations have been gutted. We know FEMA's currently run by a washed-up hack attorney who couldn't even get a job at Jacoby & Myers. But this is beyond outrageous. I am sure there are plenty more stories like this; I collected these in just ten minutes on Google News and DKos. Looking at this list, it would be hard to blame you if you thought FEMA actively wanted rescue and relief operations to fail.

Of course, that's not the case - but these ranks failures transcend even the corrupt indifference we've grown sadly accustomed to over the past five years. If there's any hope for the recovery efforts, it'll come from guys like Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré and Clinton-era FEMA director James Lee Witt, not criminal incompetents like Michael D. "Brownie" Brown.

More:

FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid

FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board

FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck

FEMA turns away generators (See entry from 3:32 P.M. by Ben Morris, Slidell mayor)

FEMA: "First Responders Urged Not To Respond"

Trent Lott Jumps Off Bush's Sinking Ship

Cut the red tape, Lott says
Criticizes FEMA for holding up 20,000 trailers 'sitting in Atlanta'

POPLARVILLE, Mississippi (CNN) -- Sen. Trent Lott berated both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and his own state's emergency management, MEMA, for being mired in red tape at a time of urgent need given the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina.

Lott said he has been trying to get FEMA to send 20,000 trailers "sitting in Atlanta" to the Mississippi coast, and he urged President Bush during a meeting Monday to intervene. He said FEMA has refused to ship the trailers until contracts are secured.

"FEMA and MEMA need to be saying, 'Yes' to Mississippi's needs, not, 'No.," the former majority leader said in a written statement.

"Mississippians are homeless, hungry and hurting."

Guess George W. Bush won't enjoy sitting on Trent Lott's rebuilt front porch quite so much.

The Three Stooges review a five-day-old weather map for the benefit of cameras

You've got to click on the link to see the picture, because I'm a technical luddite and still don't know how to post pictures. It's one of the pictures taken during Operation Photo Op 1.0 (Friday), via firedoglake.com, via uggabugga:

More Useless Props for Guitarzan

The Three Stooges review a five-day-old weather map for the benefit of cameras. I guess Katrina was prettier then. Note African-American shoehorned into the picture, tail rotor of helicopter and all the bright, shiny colors.

Suppose anyone was lamenting what they should've been doing five days earlier when Katrina was still out over the Gulf of Mexico?

I'm thinking not.

Why were the Red Cross, Coast Guard, National Guard and Army helicopters there one day and gone the next?” “Who changed priorities?”

From the excellent site rawstory.com:

Lethal chaos: Professor describes scene at New Orleans hospital

A first-hand account of the New Orleans devastation from leading human rights attorney

Loyola University law professor Bill Quigley, best known for his work with Haitian pro-democracy activist Father Jean-Juste, spent some time speaking to Raw Story’s Jennifer Van Bergen about his experience inside New Orleans’s ground zero.

When the category-four Hurricane Katrina made landfall early last week, Bill Quigley was volunteering at Memorial Hospital, at the heart of what would be later described as the worst-hit area. His wife Debbie, a medical doctor at Memorial, was on duty that night.

**********

The power went out early Monday. The sickest patients, roughly seventy or so, were evacuated by helicopter Sunday. Not until Wednesday morning did more helicopters appear. Quigley and other volunteers tried to get the attention of the numerous helicopters they could see hovering over the city. The sickest patients were brought up eight flights of stairs in sheet slings to the roof. Some patients were kept on the roof as long as 24 hours.

**********

Quigley says they saw helicopters from the Red Cross, the National Guard, the Coast Guard and the Army. One Army helicopter, which the volunteers on the roof managed to “flag down” wouldn’t land and refused to take anyone, even those remaining critically ill patients, because “they were full with rescue workers and could only pick up individuals one at a time off of roofs, which they stated they had been doing all day.”

Instead, Quigley says the Army helicopter dropped some food supplies that turned out to be just three or four boxes with tin cans of Vienna sausages.

These were not enough to feed the patients, let alone the staff or volunteers. Food and water supplies were dwindling.

After that the helicopters never returned to Memorial Hospital.

“We couldn’t figure out why they didn’t come back,” Bill said.

Tulane University Hospital had been evacuated, Quigley heard, but those at Memorial “were left to die or get out as best they could.”

At least ten patients died while awaiting rescue workers. Many died because their life-sustaining medical treatment required electricity.

***********

Bill, tired and still dazed, wonders what happened.

“Why were the Red Cross, Coast Guard, National Guard and Army helicopters there one day and gone the next?” he opined. “Who changed priorities?”

The helicopters didn't return until Wednesday. Isn't that the same day Bush returned from his vacation? Did they stop the rescue so he could ride in on Air Force One, the cavalry, and lead the convoy through New Orleans?

Where George W. Bush Got His Compassionate Conservatism

Callous indifference begins at home:

Barbara Bush: Things Working Out "Very Well" for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans

NEW YORK Accompanying her husband, former President George H.W.Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated, "This is working very well for them."

**********

In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston."

Then she added: "What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

"Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands -- and the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry." -- John Lennon, at the royal variety concert in 1963.

12:52 p.m. update
PS. E&P actually ameliorated the quote from la Bush. What she said on the tape about New Orleans' newly destitute is: "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they want to stay" in Texas.

"As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast"

I love the rat imagery! From the BBC:

Viewpoint: Has Katrina saved US media?

As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s.

Mr Bush's famed "folksy" style has failed to impress in this crisis
Then as now, good reporting lies at the heart of what is changing.

But unlike Watergate, "Katrinagate" was public service journalism ruthlessly exposing the truth on a live and continuous basis.

Instead of secretive "Deep Throat" meetings in car-parks, cameras captured the immediate reality of what was happening at the New Orleans Convention Center, making a mockery of the stalling and excuses being put forward by those in power.

Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina.

Today's Meme: Don't Criticize Until Disaster is Cleaned Up

Apparently this is Karl Rove's latest meme: Don't critize the government until Katrina is cleaned up. I have seen former presidents Clinton & Bush and several community leaders and talking heads trotting out this line. But they're wrong. The extreme incompetence cannot be ignored, because more will die if the most incompetent boobs -- the political hacks at the top of FEMA and elsewhere -- stay involved.

There is nothing wrong with criticizing the CURRENT MISTAKES being made by people running a disaster cleanup where there are still victims alive, waiting to be saved. It's called "constructive criticism". We're trying to help you understand how to do the job right!

Keeping out the NGOs is wrong. Not accepting international offers of aid is wrong. Not accepting public offers of aid, firemen, police, planes, doctors -- that's wrong. Requiring bureaucratic paperwork while human beings are dying for want of aid is WRONG. Delaying food shipments and suspending relief operations so the President can do photo-ops is wrong. And these are all decisions that have been made within the last 7 days by the federal officials running this disaster cleanup.

It is critical that Brown, Chertoff be removed IMMEDIATELY and replaced by experienced & competent disaster managers. (I'd like to remove Bush immediately as well, but that's not going to happen. And Cheney is probably in charge anyway.) Who ran the 9/11 cleanup? Send him to New Orleans. Do we really expect that the former head of the International Arabian Horse Association (Brown) is going to improve on the job? There are still people alive in the rubble. Send in a pro, send in someone from New York who knows how to bang heads and get things done. Put Bill Clinton in charge! Let BushI hold out the tin cup by himself. Do something. Send in more military with a broad authorization to do what it takes to get the job done.

But for any of these changes to take place, we have to first understand the enormity of the mistakes made by the people in charge. So I reject this meme. Criticizing the government at this juncture is patriotic. Saving lives is the priority, not making rich incompetent boobs feel better about their clusterfuck operation.

Broussard: I know what the body count is so far, but I won't horrify the nation

Via AmericaBlog, from WWL-TV's blog:

Broussard Warns of Massive Death Count

Broussard: I know what the body count is so far, but I won't horrify the nation

The World Press Gives George W. Bush a Grade of F-

Press dismay at Katrina chaos

Here's just one excerpt, from Spain's El Pais:

"Up until Monday, Bush was the president of the war in Iraq and 9/11. Today there are few doubts that he will also pass into history as the president who didn't know how to prevent the destruction of New Orleans and who abandoned its inhabitants to their fate for days. And the worst is yet to come."

Operation Photo Op, George W. Bush edition, 3.0

Found this on Surburban Guerrilla:

Bush visit halts food delivery

Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.

The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.

“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.

The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.

I'd make this the basis of the second* Article of Impeachment in the Impeachment of George W. Bush.

George W. Bush has landed in Baton Rouge, LA for another day of Operation Photo Op. Pray that more don't die from this type of insanity this time.


* Here's the first Article of Impeachment.

"God, we hope it's no more than 10,000"

DEATH TOLL IN NEW ORLEANS

....A senior military commander on duty in New Orleans was no more optimistic.

"Maybe 3,000, maybe 5,000. God, we hope it's no more than 10,000," he told CNN.

Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

So say the people on the front lines:

An Angry 'Times-Picayune' Calls for Firing of FEMA Chief and Others in Open Letter to President On Sunday

Hurricane Katrina was a Political Epiphany

James Carroll
Katrina's truths

[The first epiphany is American poverty exposed.]

The spectacle of failure, how for days the government was powerless to help such people, only put on display how government was already failing them and everyone else. Here was Katrina's second main epiphany -- what it means that the United States, after a generation of tax-cutting and downsizing, has eviscerated the public sector's capacity for supporting the common good. The neglect of civic infrastructure, the destruction of social services, the abandonment of the safety net, the myth of ''privatization," the perverse idea, dating to the Reagan era, that government is the enemy: It all adds up to what we saw last week -- government not as the enemy, but as the incompetent, impotent bystander. The bystander-in-chief, of course, is George W. Bush, whose whining self-obsession perfectly embodies what America has done to itself.

One cannot see the devastated cities or that river of refugees or those harried National Guard soldiers without seeing something even more disturbing -- Katrina's third epiphany. This is what war looks like, and the harsh reality is that the United States has been the source of exactly such devastation elsewhere. Obliterated cities, populations pushed into refugee camps, young American soldiers overwhelmed by the impossibility of their mission -- this is Iraq today. Oil is part of the Gulf Coast story and part of Iraq's story, too. We are at war for oil, a war we cannot win. Four dollar gasoline. The truth is crashing over us, a tsunami of it.

James Carroll is an interesting guy. He was ordained as a priest in 1969, worked as chaplain at Boston University from 1972-1974 where he was also an antiwar protester, left the priesthood in 1974 and has been a writer ever since. His father, Joseph Carroll, was a lieutenant general in the Air Force who was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Vietnam War, a top advisor to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and a key figure in the US Air Force bombing campaign in Vietnam. James Carroll has written an autobiography about his struggles with his father, entitled God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us, which received the 1996 National Book Award in nonfiction.

Operation Photo-Op Ramps Up Again

White House Enacts a Plan to Ease Political Damage

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 - Under the command of President Bush's two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

It orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush planned for Monday, directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan.

The effort is being directed by Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and his communications director, Dan Bartlett. It began late last week after Congressional Republicans called White House officials to register alarm about what they saw as a feeble response by Mr. Bush to the hurricane, according to Republican Congressional aides.

As a result, Americans watching television coverage of the disaster this weekend began to see, amid the destruction and suffering, some of the most prominent members of the administration - Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense; and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state - touring storm-damaged communities.

Mr. Bush is to return to Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday; his first visit, on Friday, left some Republicans cringing, in part because the president had little contact with residents left homeless.

The Gulf Coast is still the largest disaster on US soil and all they care about is saving their own political bacon. Disgusting.

Operation Photo Op, Laura Bush Edition, 2.0

The Frontlines of the American Refugee Crisis

From someone on the ground in Lafayette, Louisiana who was volunteering at the Cajundrome:

It actually couldn't have been a worse experience; a team of us were working to put up a website with directions to every Red Cross shelter in the region when we were evicted from the computer room by the Secret Service.

There's only one room in the Cajundome with telephones and internet access for refugees, and Laura Bush shut it down for eight hours (along with the food service rooms to the side and the women's showers). You may have seen it on CNN; apparently seven refugees were allowed back so Laura could help them in front of the cameras.

If you saw that footage, that's where I put in half my volunteer hours. Not knowing Bush was still back there later I tried to insist on being allowed back into the room to a "Red Cross" guy who must have been a Secret Service agent undercover. A hint for future Secret Service agents: The real Red Cross guys don't look like they want to break your legs for walking too close to the barricade, because they're too busy passing out food and helping people. They're also less likely to use phrases like "Stand fast, sir!"

Now, I know this is the sort of thing that happens whenever a VIP tours a disaster site, and maybe Laura Bush handing out that loaf of bread really will lead to an increase in donations. All I can say is, to have paralyzed a third of a day of operations at this stage of the game, it fucking well better. And I tried to position myself to say this to her in front of the television cameras too, but instead I only got a wave and a smile as she hurried past me.

7:10 a.m. update: Fixed broken link, thanks Big Daddy in comments

Shelter From the Storm

Mass. Governor Romney is on TV announcing that Massachusetts is planning to take in 2,500 Gulf Coast evacuees and housing them at the just closed Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod.

If a million people are displaced, if the 47 non-affected states split them equally, each state needs to take in more than 20,000 people, so this is just a start.

The Raw Truth

I am still in tears from watching this man on Meet the Press.

Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish, being questioned by Tim Russert:

MR. BROUSSARD: ...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.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President...

MR. BROUSSARD: 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 sakes, shut up and send us somebody.

1:45 p.m. update: As I read on another blog (can't remember which, now), this means that the mother of the Emergency Management Services Director in Jefferson Parish died on Friday -- during Operation Photo Op.

While Bush was posing in front of fake food distribution centers, faking levee repair, and shutting down helicopter rescue services in New Orleans for 8 hours, this man's poor mother drowned in a nursing home.

What if -- just try to imagine, what if -- Bush had spent the money and resources he spent on Operation Photo Op on sending rescuers to the SEVENTY-SIX nursing homes in New Orleans, many of which are flooded. Do you think the old folks in the nursing home were able to comply with the supposed "mandatory" evacuation? Did they even hear about it? Think about that every time you hear another moron from the media or the administration talking about the people who didn't "obey" the mandatory evacuation. The onus is on the government to evacuate those people, and they didn't. Bush was riding his bike, Cheney was fishing, Condi was shoe shopping, Rummy was destroying Iraq, Karl Rove was spinning, and the Corporate Media was in their usual prone position.

When Bush is impeached, this poor woman's death during Operation Photo Op should be the first Article of Impeachment.

Must Reads

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo: while thousands wither away in the heat without food or water

Spontaneous Arising: Mad Max Wears a Badge in New Orleans

Americablog: Bush faked levee repair for photo op yesterday

Political Animal: BEHIND THE CURTAIN

dailykos: Unforgivable

War and Piece: German TV reports

"How do you like having a president who at a time like this reminisces about getting drunk in New Orleans?"

KATRINA
While Bush fiddles, New Orleans dies

Jimmy Breslin:

He barely seemed to understand there was a hurricane for the first three days. He was in Coronado, outside San Diego, and in his speech, he managed to mention New Orleans, by saying that people should not return to their homes until rescue crews could do their work.

Nobody had to be told not to return to their homes because they don't have homes to return to, and no bus fare to go anywhere.

**********

Friday, showing up on the fifth day of a national tragedy, Bush made a little humorous aside about the times he was in New Orleans celebrating too much. Beautiful! If he tried to walk fifty yards he could have tripped over somebody's dead black grandmother under a blanket.

How do you like it? How do you like having a president who at a time like this reminisces about getting drunk in New Orleans? White boy with Daddy's money roaring at Mardi Gras in a town black for the rest of the year.

If whites were in trouble in New Orleans, trust that his government would have been there early and the aid massive.

**********

...Bush stands there, uncovered, without an American flag draped around him, as the most incompetent president we've ever had.

The horror of New Orleans in 2005 is a national disgrace.

M. Charles Bakst: Bush, Katrina and 9/11

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 were a national disaster.

The horror of New Orleans in 2005 is a national disgrace.

As bad as 9/11 was -- the brutal shock that it was, as impossible to absorb as it was, to see the Twin Towers explode, to imagine the agony of humans incinerated -- coping with it still was easier in some ways than watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At least in 2001 there were heroes, lots of them, notably New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the firefighters and police officers who nobly rushed into buildings to save lives, often at the expense of their own.

And, after a momentary stumble, President Bush stood tall. This was the man who went to Ground Zero and spoke defiantly of the terrorists. And who later spoke to Congress with steely confidence and grim determination and declared, "I will not forget the wound to our country and those who inflicted it. I will not yield, I will not rest, I will not relent in waging this struggle."

This nation, in grief and in purpose, was as united in those days as I have seen it. In that saddest of times, people were proud to be Americans.

This past week has been a national embarrassment.

George Bush, who once seemed so decisive and so inspiring, has never seemed smaller, more out of touch, more overwhelmed by the job. He had, of course, weakened himself by getting the country bogged down in Iraq in a war that may be impossible to win and seems irrelevant to the genuine threat from terrorists.

But it is much more than that.

In the crucible of New Orleans, Bush has symbolized all of the government officials at any level who failed to anticipate or act upon the dangers hurricanes in general and Katrina specifically posed to New Orleans and, certainly, bungled the response to the devastation that finally came. (How dismaying it was to read yesterday of a Red Cross official saying the U.S. Department of Homeland Security "has basically told us they don't want us -- our Red Cross folks -- in New Orleans because our presence would keep people from evacuating.")

America has become a laughingstock, to think that people could suffer here for days on rooftops or terraces or in a sports arena or convention center without rudimentary help like food or water, amid lawlessness and stench, surrounded by death.

I do not diminish the horrors that took place within the World Trade Center or the vividness of the sight of the buildings exploding and falling.

But in terms of faces and voices of individuals in anguish -- faces that you actually have seen and voices you have heard -- enduring misery, begging for aid, and feeling abandoned by their government -- New Orleans has presented the starker, more inexplicable tableau.

The news media have superbly conveyed this suffering. They have not as successfully forced government officials to account for the poor planning and slow reaction.

The New Orleans catastrophe is made uglier by the fact that most victims are black and poor. This is the reality of inner city life. Race and class. You may wonder if race and class explain the slowness of the federal response.

The most inspiring thing about this tragedy is to be found among the huge numbers of organizations and individuals who have been collecting money and supplies for hurricane relief -- it will be long needed -- in New Orleans and elsewhere. They represent the best impulse in the nation's character and they remind me of a notion I associate with Jimmy Carter. Wouldn't it be nice to have a government as good and decent as the American people?

M. Charles Bakst, The Journal's political columnist, can be reached by e-mail at mbakst [at] projo.com

'My Pet Goat' -- The Sequel: This time the president did not merely dither for seven minutes, but for three days, and his top aides followed suit.

'My Pet Goat' -- The Sequel

While the 9/11 “My Pet Goat” episode was certainly illuminating, it’s not certain what might have worked out better that day had the president dropped the book and taken action. But his failure to grab the reins in the hurricane catastrophe for three days this week probably doomed hundreds, or more, to death.

This is not mere incompetence, but dereliction of duty. The press should call it by its proper name.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P.

Justice Rehnquist Has Died

Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies

May he rest in peace. Cancer is an awful thing.

Justice Rehnquist, the original legal oxymoron. Now we have Clarence Thomas who makes him look like a conservative piker.

Fox, CNN, Headline News, & MSNBC have all suspended their coverage of Lake George where more than 10,000 American citizens lie dead to report on this breaking news. Is there any truth to the rumor that Karl Rove did him in to get pictures of the disaster in New Orleans off the TV screens?

My heart sinks for my country. Bush gets to appoint another Supreme Court justice.

1:25 a.m. update: Steve Gilliard says, "Well, at least he wasn't eaten by alligators."

He didn't die in New Orleans.

As Always, the President's First Priority Was Saving Himself; It Was The Poor Who Were Left Behind to Drown

Frank Rich:

Falluja Floods the Superdome

AS the levees cracked open and ushered hell into New Orleans on Tuesday, President Bush once again chose to fly away from Washington, not toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate the many differences between a natural catastrophe and a terrorist attack. But character doesn't change: it is immutable, and it is destiny.

As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2.

After dispatching Katrina with a few sentences of sanctimonious boilerplate ("our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens"), he turned to his more important task. The war in Iraq is World War II. George W. Bush is F.D.R. And anyone who refuses to stay his course is soft on terrorism and guilty of a pre-9/11 "mind-set of isolation and retreat." Yet even as Mr. Bush promised "victory" (a word used nine times in this speech on Tuesday), he was standing at the totemic scene of his failure. It was along this same San Diego coastline that he declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln more than two years ago. For this return engagement, The Washington Post reported, the president's stage managers made sure he was positioned so that another hulking aircraft carrier nearby would stay off-camera, lest anyone be reminded of that premature end of "major combat operations."

This administration would like us to forget a lot, starting with the simple fact that next Sunday is the fourth anniversary of the day we were attacked by Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Even before Katrina took command of the news, Sept. 11, 2005, was destined to be a half-forgotten occasion, distorted and sullied by a grotesquely inappropriate Pentagon-sponsored country music jamboree on the Mall. But hard as it is to reflect upon so much sorrow at once, we cannot allow ourselves to forget the real history surrounding 9/11; it is the Rosetta stone for what is happening now. If we are to pull ourselves out of the disasters of Katrina and Iraq alike, we must live in the real world, not the fantasyland of the administration's faith-based propaganda. Everything connects.

Though history is supposed to occur first as tragedy, then as farce, even at this early stage we can see that tragedy is being repeated once more as tragedy. From the president's administration's inattention to threats before 9/11 to his disappearing act on the day itself to the reckless blundering in the ill-planned war of choice that was 9/11's bastard offspring, Katrina is déjà vu with a vengeance.

**********

A visibly exasperated Shepard Smith [of Fox/Faux News], covering the story on the ground in Louisiana, went further still, tossing hand grenades of harsh reality into Bill O'Reilly's usually spin-shellacked "No Spin Zone." Among other hard facts, Mr. Smith noted "that the haves of this city, the movers and shakers of this city, evacuated the city either immediately before or immediately after the storm." What he didn't have to say, since it was visible to the entire world, was that it was the poor who were left behind to drown.

Qualifying for the FIFA World Cup is sweet. Doing it against your archrival is nirvana.

USA slam Mexico to reach Germany

Steve Ralston & Damarcus Beasley with the goals, MOTM was GOOOOOOOOOOOCH. Oguchi Onyewu owned Jared Borgetti, the alltime leading scorer for Mexico. The first Mexican to play in the English Premier League got schooled by our 23-year-old superstar in the making.

On to Germany!

11:00 p.m. update, I saw this on bigsoccer.com:

Borgetti got Onyewued.

It's About the Incompetence

Brownie the Crony

[From the Boston Herald] The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.

And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.

The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.

Here's the guy who should still have the job. At least the governor of Louisiana has had the good sense to bring him in:

Blanco Appoints Witt

Gov. Kathleen Blanco has appointed former FEMA Director James Lee Witt as a special adviser to help her manage the recovery and restoration efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Witt was FEMA director under former President Clinton, serving in that position from 1993-2001.

"My Hero Is a Bus Thief"

My hero is a bus thief

When I heard President Bush on Thursday morning call for "zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this," it gave me shivers.

I know he wanted to send a tough message to thugs stealing guns, drugs and flat-panel televisions, holding up hospitals, shooting at helicopters.

But doesn't he realize he would be heard by the moral equivalent of school administrators?

These are people who suspend girls for bringing Midol in their purses or butter knives in their lunchboxes.

What would they do to a kid who steals a bus?

When he arrived at the Astrodome about 10 p.m. Wednesday, 20-year-old Jabbar Gibson modestly confessed that he had commandeered a school bus in New Orleans, then picked up about 70 passengers before heading out for the 13-hour trek to Houston.

Stealing a bus is a felony.

It's also an act of heroism.

There's something about the obliteration of a city and all its survival systems of social support and discipline that messes with moral norms.

"The Red Cross is Locked Out So They Can't Document the Atrocities"

Why the Red Cross is Locked Out and the People are Locked In

Crooks and Liars video of Geraldo Rivera and Shep Smith at the Convention Center reveals a big part of Team BushCo's disaster management strategy: lock down the cities so the hideous element isn't allowed to threaten the suburbs with invasion. And the Red Cross is locked out so they can't document the atrocities. They have a habit of doing that.

Of course, why didn't I think of that? Just like after Fallujah, the U.S. refused to let the International Red Cross in.

Despicable.

MSM Picks Up Red Cross Story

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food

As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.

Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now.

"The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.

"Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders."

Calls to the Department of Homeland Security and its subagency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were not returned yesterday.

wkyc.com (Northeast Ohio): Few answers for thirsty, hungry in New Orleans

The American Red Cross, Salvation Army and other charitable organizations that typically are the first to respond to disaster sites with food and water have been kept out of the city.

“Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities,” said Gregg Tubbs, a spokesman for the American Red Cross. “The Red Cross can’t get in there. We can’t enter New Orleans against their orders.”

By LARRY WHEELER, Gannett News Service

(Contributing: GNS reporter Raju Chebium, in Metarie, La., and Dan Turner, The (Shreveport, La.) Times, in Baton Rouge, La.)

KCBI-TV (Idaho): Doctor says Red Cross should have been there

September 3, 2005 12:56 PM

The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS "Where is the Red Cross?"

A doctor at the airport in New Orleans posed that question today to an Associated Press reporter. The doctor, one of the first to set up a triage center at the airport, says he wishes the Red Cross had been there, since the organization has the expertise to set up that kind of facility. He said he hasn't seen any Red Cross presence there.

And the picture that emerges is a bleak one. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a surgeon who visted the airport today, says the hallways and floors are "filled," and that people are dying because the resources aren't there to treat them.

Donations pour in to aid groups for Katrina relief

By ADAM GELLER, The Associated Press

Published: Saturday, Sep. 3, 2005

But aid groups said their efforts were limited in important ways.

“We are not in New Orleans,” the Red Cross’ Dodge said. The federal Department of “Homeland Security has basically told us they don’t want us, our Red Cross folks, in New Orleans because our presence would keep people from evacuating.”

A spokesman for the federal agency said Friday that there is not an absolute policy barring relief groups from the entire city, but that its own efforts were taking precedence there.

“There may well be situations where it merits the Red Cross holding back while our personnel go in first,” said the spokesman, Russ Knocke. “But our priority is meeting the immediate life-saving and life-sustaining needs of those who’ve gone through a nightmare.”

Other groups also reported that they were not being allowed into the city. MAP International said it was working to send medical supplies to a New Orleans hospital, but that the shipment was being held up by a difficulty in getting the credentials needed for drivers to get through roadblocks set up by the National Guard.

Second Harvest said it had secured a warehouse between New Orleans and Baton Rogue, because its workers can’t get to their facility in New Orleans. But setting up operations was being complicated by shifting demands. “At this point we don’t know how many people are in need and where they are. Evacuees arrive at different places everyday,” Daly said.

Homeland Security SNAFU

Last night on ABC news they interviewed one of the truck drivers who was delivering a truck full of water to New Orleans. He said he loaded up in Texas on MONDAY and Homeland Security held him up from delivering until Friday.

Isaiah 41:17-18

When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.

I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.

George W. Bush has forsaken New Orleans


Clusterfuck 3.0

Even Fox is Outraged

Horror Show

Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera were livid about the situation in NOLA as they appeared on H&C. When Hannity tried his usual spin job and said "let's get this in perspective," Smith chopped him off at the knees and started yelling at him saying, "This is perspective!" It was shocking.

[video links -- I don't have the bandwidth, click on the link above to view]

Geraldo who I'm no fan of was crying, holding a little child up to demonstrate the extremely inhumane conditions these people are forced to live under. Forced is the right word because they are locked in the dome by our government and can't leave. Troops are guarding the bridge.

This goes beyond political lines and it's as sad a situation as I've seen. Let's see all the happy politicians slap themselves on their backs after viewing this segment.

Homeland Security Keeping Red Cross Out of New Orleans

I just sent this as an email letter to the editor or news tip to about 10 newspapers:

Homeland Security is keeping NGOs out of New Orleans

If you go to the Red Cross website, they are saying that they are being kept OUT of New Orleans by the state Homeland Security Department, and that this is because if the Red Cross is there, people won't evacuate.

So, with no plan to evacuate tens of thousands of people, while starving & dehydrating them, in the Convention Center, in the Superdome, on I-10, under overpasses, in fields, Homeland Security has been keeping help out of New Orleans. People are dying of thirst, heat exhaustion, lack of medical care, and the Red Cross can't go in.

This is even posted on the Red Cross website. Here's the link: http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00. [...]

The Red Cross is getting the lion's share of charitable gifts, and they are being kept out of New Orleans by the insane bureaucrats of Homeland Security.

This is the worst, most incompetent relief effort in the history of the world. Hundreds if not thousands have perished unnecessarily. Shame, shame.

United States of Shame

United States of Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

Operation Photo Op Shuts Down Helicopter Relief Flights

A CRIMINAL INCOMPETENT IS OUR PRESIDENT

Thousands of people stranded in two swamped parishes south of New Orleans are just as desperate for supplies as those trapped in the city but can’t get the attention of federal disaster relief officials, their congressman said Friday.

And to make matters worse, says Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La., he was unable to deliver that message to President Bush during his visit to New Orleans because the president’s security detail couldn’t clear him to board Air Force One.

After waiting 90 minutes Friday while a U.S. marshal using a satellite phone repeatedly tried, and failed, to contact Bush’s plane – located just 300 yards away at New Orleans’ Armstrong airport – a disgusted Melancon left.

**********

And for the entire time Bush was in the state, the congressman said, a ban on helicopter flights further stalled the delivery of food and supplies.

Do you think Bush will attend the funerals of the people he's killed with his murderous negligence? Nope, me neither.

Operation Photo-Op -- Laura Bush Edition

Evacuees at Cajundome wait for first lady, and for lunch

Couldn't have those refugees eating before the camermen got there.

As the first lady toured the Red Cross shelter at the Cajundome this morning, a line of evacuees waiting to eat their lunch trickled out the door of the Dome.

First lady Laura Bush arrived about midday to tour the shelter and meet evacuees.

By 12:50 p.m., the trays of food were still covered and hungry evacuees stood in line, holding empty plates. Rice, beans and jambalaya were on the menu. About that time, volunteers began rolling the carts of food into position to serve.

New Orleans is Burning and the Department of Homeland Security Won't Let the Forest Service Send Planes to Put Out The Fires

Forest Service offers planes to help fight fires

The Forest Service has offered fixed plane aircraft used to fight forest fires to help extinguish blazes in New Orleans, according to two congressional sources. But the sources said the planes, which can pour large amounts of water on fires, remained grounded in Missouri Friday because the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t authorized their use.

The department is overseeing federal hurricane relief and rescue operations.

"We’ve been asking them to request that the planes be used, but nothing has happened,” said one of the two congressional sources, both of whom asked to remain anonymous. The planes were offered by the Forest Service because of news reports that firefighters in New Orleans lacked adequate water pressure to fight a number of fires in the city.

There was no immediate comment from the Forest Service, which is part of the Agriculture Department, or the Department of Homeland Security.

Clusterfuck 2.0