Boo Hoo. I thought Americans were resourceful:
Ford Motor Co. could be offering more hybrid vehicles if it weren't for the shortage of specialized components, partly due to the "predatory" approach taken by some Japanese automakers, Ford Chief Operating Officer Jim Padilla said Tuesday.
"It is a supply issue, and it's supply of several technologies," Padilla said at the Reuters Summit in Detroit. "The Japanese have shown a little bit of a predatory approach."
Using the nickname Bush used for Brown, Kerry said, "Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq, what George Tenet is to slam-dunk intelligence, what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad, what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy, what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning, what Tom DeLay is to ethics and what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' "
Other priorities are now taking over:
The FBI is joining the Bush administration's War on Porn. And it's looking for a few good agents.
Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of "the Director." That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
[...]
"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."
Among friends and trusted colleagues, an experienced national security analyst said, "it's a running joke for us."
A few of the printable samples:
"Things I Don't Want On My Résumé, Volume Four."
"I already gave at home."
"Honestly, most of the guys would have to recuse themselves."
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern."
--Lord Acton
Jeanne at Body and Soul found this nugget from the Business section of the NY Times yesterday:
DISASTER has a way of bringing out the best and the worst instincts in the news media. It is a grand thing that during the most terrible days of Hurricane Katrina, many reporters found their gag reflex and stopped swallowing pat excuses from public officials. But the media's willingness to report thinly attributed rumors may also have contributed to a kind of cultural wreckage that will not clean up easily.
More evidence of the incompetence at the top of FEMA, and our federal Governemnt. The Forgotten Towns:
PEARLINGTON, Miss. (AP) -- For more than a week, Pearlington survived largely on its own. Then, 10 days after Hurricane Katrina annihilated this tiny hamlet on the Louisiana state line, Jeff McVay and five other members of a state emergency response team from Walton County, Fla., arrived at the request of Hancock County.
McVay, who's been through many hurricanes, was stunned by what he found - a town that had nothing but a place to get water, ice and military-issued meals. There was no Red Cross. There was no shelter. He called home and asked for six more men.
I had an opportunity to attend a conference call this evening, arranged by Charles Kuffner of Off the Kuff, for John Courage.
Courage is running for Texas Congressional District 21. CD-21 is currently held by Lamar Smith. Yes, this Lamar Smith.
There are four congressional districts that affect me, and Austin as a whole. Three in Austin directly, and one to the north, which is where the biggest suburbs of Austin are.
CD-31: Mary Beth Harrell
CD-25: Lloyd Doggett
CD-21: John Courage
CD-10: Ted Ankrum hasn't officially announced, but will on 1 October 2005.
In addition there is the Senate race, and what is shaping up to be a real battle, the Governor's race.
An opportunity is before us. The public is becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the government, from the President on down. Congressional approval ratings are at historic lows. With a swing of just 14 seats, Democrats can have a majority in the house. Above are just four candidates that can put Democrats that many seats closer.
From the conversation this evening, John seems like a very credible candidate. I will be putting out more information about these races, and more as it comes out.
Right now, however, Democracy for America is holding a vote to determine who they are going to provide their first endorsement to. If I am not mistaken Courage is in second place. Tomorrow DFA is going to open up voting for the final round. Go there and cast a vote. Preferably for John.
Republicans on three separate congressional committees this week derailed three formal "resolutions of inquiry" by Democrats that would have required the Bush administration to turn over sensitive information and records relating to the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Had the resolutions of inquiry been adopted, they would have led to the first independent congressional inquiries of the Plame affair, and perhaps even the public testimony of senior Bush administration aides such as Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, about their personal roles.
Courtesy of Billmon, this CNN/Gallup poll:
45 percent said Americans should make "major sacrifices" to pay for the [Katrina reconstruction] effort. But only 20 percent said they would be willing to make those sacrifices themselves.
Just when you think that it can't get any worse. A Texas legislator goes and acts like an idiot:
An immigration memo intended for embattled White House advisor Karl Rove arrived instead on the fax machine of a Democratic congressman, RAW STORY can reveal.
As Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast three weeks ago, veteran workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency braced for an epic disaster.
But their bosses, political appointees with almost no emergency management experience, didn't seem to share the sense of urgency, a FEMA veteran said.
[...]
Chertoff worked from home the day Bosner first warned of the hurricane's catastrophic potential for New Orleans, CNN's Tom Foreman reported. Chertoff also has been criticized for writing a memo the day after Katrina struck, delegating authority to Brown and deferring to the White House rather than taking charge.
Insofar as the War in Iraq is equal to Bush:
Support for the war in Iraq is slipping in President Bush's home state, with only 28 percent of Texans saying the conflict is going well, poll results released Sunday show.
The Scripps Howard Texas Poll, which surveyed 1,000 randomly selected residents from Aug. 22 through Sept. 3, also shows that Texans are increasingly uneasy over the wider war on terrorism, with three out of four respondents saying another attack on the United Stated is at least somewhat likely during the next year.
[...]
Texans are nearly equally divided on how they think Bush is handling the war: Fifty percent said they approve while 46 percent said they disapprove. By contrast, in spring 2003, when Allied forces toppled Saddam Hussein's government, 78 percent of respondents said Bush was doing a "good" or "excellent" job with the war.
[...]
"Especially during the first 10 days or two weeks of her vigil, Cindy Sheehan was seen as a distraught mother who had lost a son in Iraq, so it made people come to grips with their own feelings on the war," Jillson said.
"There is very little enthusiasm for the war, even among those who support it and want to see it through," he said. "It's more of a resignation that we can't just walk away from it at this point."
"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."
--Mignon McLaughlin
Atrios calls the NY Times wankers for this. I call the NY Times charlatans. They are merely acting the part of a newspaper.
And what a piss poor job they do:
The joke has long been that dead people vote in Hudson County, New Jersey's legendary enclave of machine politics. But now the joke may be on New Jersey, according to a new analysis of voter records by the state's Republican Party.
Comparing information from county voter registration lists, Social Security death records and other public information, Republican officials announced on Thursday that 4,755 people who were listed as deceased appear to have voted in the 2004 general election. Another 4,397 people who were registered to vote in more than one county appeared to have voted twice, while 6,572 who were registered in New Jersey and in one of five other states selected for analysis voted in each state.
I happen to have at my disposal for research purposes voter registration files with 2004 vote history for several states, including Ohio, but unfortunately not New Jersey. I decided to do the same match as the New Jersey Republicans for the state of Ohio. I found 9,108 instances where voters had the same first name, last name, and birth date. However, there were 6,498 matches on `1/1/1800', which some Ohio counties use to identify missing birth dates.
Congressional Republicans are looking for dead people. Not to bury them, not to console the families of the bereaved. Not even to help tally the casualties of Hurrican Katrina.
Congressional Republicans are looking for dead people in order to use them as political props:
Federal troops aren't the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions' legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky's voice mail: "[Arizona Sen.] Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."
Only a tiny percentage of people are affected by the estate tax—in 2001 only 534 Alabamans were subject to it. And for Hill backers of repeal, that's only part of the problem.
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
--Voltaire
Republican Congressmen Tom Davis (Va), and Kenny Marchant(Tx) proposed legislation to screw the American Taxpayer during the recovery from Katrina:
Big federal contractors have scored a major victory with yesterday’s news that House Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) and Representative Kenny Marchant (R-TX) introduced legislation that will waive meaningful taxpayer protections and competition in contracting whenever Congress or the President declares a national emergency or there is a disaster. It is rumored that the legislation will be included in a manager’s amendment to the next Katrina relief bill. Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has donned the legislation (H.R. 3766) the “Disaster Profiteering Act.”
The Davis legislation would allow agency heads across the federal government to treat all purchases related to national emergencies as “commercial items,” meaning that contracts can be made under a no-bid process and that the government would not have the authority to audit purchases after they have been made. A second, unrelated provision deals with Katrina volunteers.
So much for that fiscal restraint (which didn't exist anyway):
President George W. Bush's advisers said on Friday billions of dollars needed to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast will be borrowed and will raise the deficit but Bush still wants to extend tax cuts.
The President hailed for the return of Conservativtism, invokes Liberalism:
The era of big government is back. President Bush is presiding over the most expensive government relief and reconstruction operation in U.S. history, casting aside budget discipline.
Bush and his Republican allies in Congress are deferring - for now - vows to finish the Reagan revolution against big government and turning to some of the same kinds of public health, housing and job assistance programs they once criticized as legacies of the Democrats' New Deal and Great Society.
Just when you thought that real progress was being made in New Orleans, this happens:
I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.
"There comes a time in every man's life and I've had many of them."
--Casey Stengel
Computer problems. Lite posting until resolved.
In the latest inanity coming from the Bush administration about Iraq, the greatest problem facing Iraq, is that Fox News anchors is that they can't get a cup of coffee.
Even worse, is that they wouldn't have, if Saddam was in power!
¡cómo es horrible!
Meanwhile, by a party-line vote, the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday rejected a Democratic proposal to establish an independent, bipartisan commission - similar to the one launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks - to examine what went wrong in Katrina's wake.
... said the air in NYC was safe after the WTC towers collapsed.
Mayor Ray Nagin said earlier this week that those two sections could reopen from dawn to dusk as early as Monday, provided the Environmental Protection Agency finds the air is safe.
This ought to make for some fun times ahead:
A federal judge declared the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools unconstitutional Wednesday in a case brought by the same atheist whose previous battle against the words "under God" was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on procedural grounds.
Some of you may know that I am employed in the computer industry. I get a number of the trade magazines, and in this weeks Information Week, there is an article about how companies that rely on transportation handled the inevitable transportation problems that come from hurricane damage:
Trucks attempting to move goods in and out of that region won't have it easy, either. To reach a total of five affected ports in the Southeast, responsible for moving 450 million tons of cargo annually, they face miles of road closures and bridges washed away across Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Joe Conason says much better what I have been trying to say for sometime:
[...]
The obvious fact is that Republicans are the party of big spending, big deficits and big government, no matter how indignantly their leaders profess to despise all those terrible things. Yet the history of the Bush administration and the G.O.P. Congress makes it equally obvious that they're also incompetent at governing. So the question that Americans now confront is why these fakers should be allowed to waste hundreds of billions of dollars, adding to the hundreds of billions they have already squandered, when the results of their exertions are so unsatisfactory -- and so self-serving.
Although George W. Bush is universally acknowledged to be the most conservative President in recent memory, he is now doing exactly what he and his ideological allies have always mocked liberals for doing. In the classic right-wing cliché (which isn't heard much these days), he is "throwing money at the problem" of the hurricane's aftermath.
[...]
The money quote on this topic was uttered by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Asked once why his revolutionary Republican comrades were consuming so much more federal pork than the Democrats ever did, the Texas conservative replied smugly: "To the victors go the spoils."
"After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said, 'No hablo ingles.'"
--Ronnie Shakes
Louisiana's governor condemned the Federal Emergency Management Agency Tuesday for moving too slowly to recover the dead from New Orleans and said she has signed a contract directly on behalf of the state with the recovery company originally hired by FEMA.
[...]
Asked about the issue, FEMA spokesman David Passey said, "From what I understand, Kenyon had some questions about the contract."
He said FEMA had expected Louisiana from the beginning to take the lead in the collection of bodies and FEMA was satisfied that the state had signed a contract with the company.
[...]
Kenyon said September 7 it had been hired by FEMA for recovery services. Passey told reporters after a regular FEMA briefing that the two sides had only a verbal agreement and that Kenyon had rejected a written contract offer.
A wave of suicide bombings and other attacks rocked central Iraq Wednesday, killing at least 140 people and wounding more than 230, police said.
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties."
--Sir Francis Bacon
"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at joint White House news conference with the president of Iraq.
"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.
The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country.
Recent months, and especially the recent two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.
[...]
And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Friday, Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then become clear. Monday's resignation of FEMA Director Michael D. Brown put an explanation point on the failure. The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the last two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.
But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The president's post-election fixation with privatizing part of Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.
[...]
And what of Bush, who has more than three years left in his term? Paradoxically, his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era, as he and we have known it, really is gone. He can decide to help us in the transition to what comes next. Or he can stubbornly cling to his past and thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.
Not well. As if that is a surprise:
he United States is losing ground in education, as peers across the globe zoom by with bigger gains in student achievement and school graduations, a study shows.
Among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. is ninth among industrialized nations in the share of its population that has at least a high school degree. In the same age group, the United States ranks seventh, with Belgium, in the share of people who hold a college degree.
By both measures, the United States was first in the world as recently as 20 years ago, said Barry McGaw, director of education for the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Development. The 30-nation organization develops the yearly rankings as a way for countries to evaluate their education systems and determine whether to change their policies.
... that no good deed goes unpunished:
Texas schools won't get federal emergency funds to pay for additional teachers and textbooks to accommodate students displaced by Hurricane Katrina, according to a memo released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Texas schools will need an estimated $450 million to educate the anticipated influx of students displaced by the hurricane. Officials had hoped those costs would be covered by grants from FEMA because Texas has been included in the disaster declaration.
But, according to a FEMA memo sent to state officials on Saturday, Texas schools will be eligible for reimbursement for temporary classroom buildings, mental health counselors and school computers. Hiring additional teachers and the purchase of books is not eligible "at this time," according to the memo.
Shakespeare's Sister has some information on David Paulison.
Turns out he was the Einstein who recommended stockpiling duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect us after a Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical attack.
Amid a slew of stories this weekend about the embattled presidency and the blundering government response to the drowning of New Orleans, some journalists who are long-time observers of the White House are suddenly sharing scathing observations about President Bush that may be new to many of their readers.
Is Bush the commanding, decisive, jovial president you've been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press?
Maybe not so much.
CNN:
No one would mistake Blanco, 62, for Rudy Giuliani. In the first week after the storm hit, she came across as dazed and unsteady, at one moment in despair over "people probably who are on drugs, who are threatening other people, who are causing our rescue effort to stall"; at another, declaring her troops had "M-16s, and they're locked and loaded."
The president stopped to talk to the pool outside a one story school being repaired, just after 2 pm CDT. He made no news at the 28th Street Elementary School. Asked about Mike Brown resigning, he said he hadn't spoken to Chertoff or Brown, but will be on AF One.
"Maybe you know something I don't know," he said of Brown.
R. David Paulson
Don't know much about him so far, except that he is Administrator of the U.S. Fire Aministration
Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Mike Brown, under fire over his qualifications and what critics call a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, resigned Monday
I wonder how much longer Brian Williams will have his job after this?:
"By dint of the fact that our country was hit we've offered a preponderance of the benefit of the doubt over the past couple of years," the Nightly News anchorman said. "Perhaps we've taken something off our fastball and perhaps this is the story that brings a healthy amount of cynicism back to a news media known for it."
Some one in Congress maybe uncomfortable with how quickly Bush's friends are scooping up contracts to clean up, and rebuild New Orleans, has launched an investigation of how the contracts were awarded:
A powerful investigative agency of the US Congress is to investigate the award of contracts by the Bush administration for emergency and reconstruction work in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The Government Accounting Office, which monitors public spending, is to audit the contracts won by the US firms. Already contracts have been given for repairing New Orleans' flood levees, rebuilding naval facilities, providing temporary housing and removing debris.
As the shock of what we have witnessed of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, more questions are being raised about the lack of response, as compared to other hurricane response efforts. Today, Bush denied race played a factor in the response (or lack thereof):
President Bush denied Monday there was any racial component to people being left behind after Hurricane Katrina, despite suggestions from some critics that the response would have been quicker if so many of the victims hadn't been poor and black.
"The storm didn't discriminate and neither will the recovery effort," Bush said. "The rescue efforts were comprehensive. The recovery will be comprehensive."
Last week, I spoke highly of my Governor, Rick ‘Goodhair’ Perry, and his response to Hurricane Katrina. This week, I see he descends back into his regular self, and allows bigotry, and hatred to spew forth in his presence, unchallenged.
“They have devil worship. They advertise 'Sin City' tours. They celebrate Southern decadence. Girls go wild in New Orleans. Sometimes God does not speak through natural phenomena. This may have nothing to do with God being offended by homosexuality. But possibly it does.”
--Rev. Dwight McKissic, Cornerston Baptist Church, Arlington Texas
and these aren't poor black people:
Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.
One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.
Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
From AMERICAblog we find this NYTimes article describing the 'Freedom' Walk sponsored by the Pentagon. This walk was supposed to commemorate Freedom in America:
Earlier in the day, several protesters appeared to run into trouble with the large police presence at the Pentagon and along the route. One man who registered for the walk was detained by a Pentagon police officer after he slipped a black hood over his head and produced a sign that read, "Freedom?"
The man was removed from the Pentagon registration area, handcuffed and taken away in a police car. It was not clear whether he was charged or simply detained and the police did not respond to messages requesting more information.
Ann Grossman, 56, from Silver Spring, Md., also carried a homemade sign, which read "Honor Our Troops, Respect Their Lives," that was confiscated by police at the Pentagon. Ms. Grossman registered to participate in the walk, saying she did so to voice her opposition to the Iraq war, and she was allowed to participate without the sign.
Because Bush cannot go one day with out "thinkin' about" 9-11 (everyday), he has to link Hurricane Katrina and 9-11, however not everyone is buying it:
Alice Tobias, 32, said: "Right now this feels pretty much like a war zone. But it's kind of hard to think about 9/11 when we are going through our own destruction. They knew it [Katrina] was coming, everybody from the mayor to the president, but they did nothing."
Digby writes about a Time Magazine article, in which the Republican Party are working on a three-point plan to rehabilitate their image after this past couple of weeks.
However, Digby points out a fourth point, which is making its comeback after a number of years of being on hiatus. The Southern Strategy.
The plan by which Republicans play on the fears of the White Southerner, by talking about crime, affirmative action, and other things which have been blamed on the "Black Menace". It was something that the Republicans used throughout the 60's, 70's, and the 80's to capture the majority of the Southern White voter. They did it with such effectiveness, that the general consensus today, is that the Democratic Party has not opportunity to win a statewide election in the southern states, other than in the urban areas. For example New Orleans.
The Mayor of New Orleans was a Republican who did not have a chance to win the mayors office. He changed parties, and was subsequently elected mayor.
Lately we have had Pat Buchanan revisiting his 1992 Republican convention speech and trotting out the "welfare state" message, the "inner city crime" fears that spurred the White Flight movement. All the code words used to signal to the right, that their racial worries were known. We already have the immigration issues which has been simmering for the past couple of years, and now, with the complicity of the news media, in the way the looters were portrayed during the days after the hurricane, the images are still vivid in peoples minds.
Over the next weeks, months and years, the rebuilding of New Orleans is going to be forefront in a lot of peoples minds. We already have heard from the wealth white suburban property owners, that they don't want New Orleans to be the same. They don't want "them". Whether black or white, "they" are poor. The poor tend to vote Democrat. If "we" can eliminate "them" not only will New Orleans resemble the suburban communities they moved to, but the Democratic mayors, and the Democratic voters, Democratic state congressmembers, and create some utopian Christian Conservative enclave.
Part of what may thwart this goal is the cajuns and the creoles whose families have lived for generations in South Louisiana. They no more want to leave their homes, then the wealthy suburbanites want them back.
The question is, with the activitiy that needs to happen in South Louisiana, and Mississippi, is will it be these Republican exclusionists who win out, or will it be the rest of us.
Will the Southern Strategy be successfully implemented again?
And it wasn't the Louisiana Governor:
The Department of Homeland Security, facing the first major catastrophe since it was created, failed to issue a critical disaster declaration until more than a day after the storm. The White House never appointed a coordinator to monitor the developing storm and its aftermath.
Though several government agencies were certain by 6 p.m. on Aug. 29 that New Orleans' levee system had given way, no official screamed for urgent help when daylight hours might still have facilitated a rescue effort.
By that time, water had been pouring from the damaged 17th Street Canal for up to 15 hours. A National Guard timeline places the breach at 3 a.m. Aug. 29, and an Army Corps of Engineers official said a civilian phoned him about the breach at 5 a.m., saying he had heard about it from a state policeman.
But officials sounded no alarm until the next morning, after the city had been flooding for at least 24 hours.
BAGHDAD, Sept. 10 -- Scores of Mississippi National Guard troops in Iraq who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina have been refused even 15-day leaves to aid their displaced families, told by commanders there were too few U.S. troops in Iraq to spare them, according to members of the Mississippi Guard.
[...]
Guard members and relatives said in e-mails or telephone interviews that virtually all of the roughly 300 soldiers of 155th Brigade's B and C companies had their homes destroyed or severely damaged in the hurricane.
Eighty Mississippi Guard members have been granted emergency leave, Murphy said.
The rest have been refused leave, told by their brigade command that all other forward operating bases "are tapped out and cannot send troops," one Mississippi Guard member wrote in an e-mail that was shared by a family member, with his permission, on condition of anonymity.
"The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time."
--Willem de Kooning
The Swift Report: Hurricane Reconstruction May Require Intelligent Designer:
WASHINGTON, DC—The White House indicated this week that hurricane reconstruction in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama may be too complex for human hands and may instead require the work of an Intelligent Designer. The announcement came during Vice President Dick Cheney's damage assessment trip to the area on Thursday. While Mr. Cheney was said to have been impressed with the pace of recovery—particularly in Mississippi—he apparently doesn't believe it will continue to evolve satisfactorily without the involvement of a higher power.
Cheney: both sides please
"Some people think that the rebuilding will just sort of evolve over time while others think that we could really use an Intelligent Designer about now," explained a source who traveled with the Vice President this week. "Mr. Cheney isn't saying that humans can't do this, he just thinks it's only fair to have the debate."
Savings from the sky
Conservatives who are already balking at the huge bill from cleaning up and rebuilding the Gulf states say that hiring an Intelligent Designer could also save taxpayers big bucks. The reason: while humans can take years to rebuild an entire city, an Intelligent Designer can do it in as little as a day. "It took Him a week to create the entire universe," points out an assistant to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. "He could get Biloxi up and running in an afternoon."
... do you make lemonade?
With the nearly unprecedented opportunity for a massive public works project that lies before us in rebuilding the portion of the Gulf Coast affected by Hurricane Katrina, which could expand beyond the immediate borders of South Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, Republicans appear to be setting up a situation in which the greater public good will be subverted by Republicans desire to drive down wages, and kill unions.
There'’s more bad news today for Gulf Coast region workers still reeling from the hurricaneÂ’s onslaught. First, there's the New York Times article describing the plight of some one million people thrown out of jobs, many of them without skills that would make them readily employable in other regions. We'’re reminded again how many people labor for a lifetime in low-wage, dead-end jobs that leave them with few options or opportunities at a moment like this.
Then there'’s Bush'’s order suspending the application of the Davis-Bacon Act on federally-financed construction projects in parts of Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.
Organizers of the Pentagon's 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.
[...]
Pettiford said officers would patrol to keep interlopers out because the Pentagon restricted the event in its permit application. "That is what their permit called for, so we have those fences to keep the public out."
"Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster."
--Quentin Crisp
For Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico it is Gary Jones.
From his bio, Mr. Jones looks like a very competent individual:
Gary E. Jones was appointed acting regional director of FEMA's Region VI in December 2004. Mr. Jones is responsible for administration of emergency management programs in the five-state region that includes Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. He is also responsible for oversight and implementation of response and recovery operations for presidentially declared disasters in Region VI.
In 1993, Mr. Jones was designated deputy regional director and has served as acting regional director on four other separate occasions. From 1983 until 1993, Mr. Jones worked in the FEMA Region VI Technological Hazards Branch, serving as branch chief and regional assistance committee chairman. The branch program responsibilities included Radiological Emergency Preparedness, Radiological Defense, Hazardous Materials, Earthquake Preparedness, Hurricane Preparedness, Dam Safety and the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program.
Mr. Jones has 41 years of government experience at the federal and state level. Prior to joining FEMA, Mr. Jones worked for the Arkansas Department of Health in a variety of emergency medical services positions and later served three years as the director of Arkansas’ Emergency Medical Services Program. Following his 13 years with the Arkansas Department of Health, Mr. Jones served as the Arkansas state coordinator for physician recruitment with the U.S. Public Health Service.
Mr. Jones holds a master's degree in public health administration from Tulane University and a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Arkansas.
Helping in Houston:
This is a letter written by Melissa Noriega, wife of Rick Noriega, who is a Texas State Representative from the Houston area.
The GRB [George R. Brown Convention Center] is organized, orderly and automated. When the folks arrive, we cheer and clap for them, whisk away their dirty clothes while they shower and get them squared away. The moms get queensized air mattresses and the single men cots, in different areas, separated by police and National Guard walking around being very present and very nice. Everyone gets a blanket and a pillow, and if they ask, they can have a second one. The sheets are clearly donated and the floor of the GRB is a sea of quilt squares and out-of-style stripes. The generous people of Houston reached into their linen closets and made up the visitors' beds.
There is a chow hall. It is set up with round tables and chairs in groups. There are handwashing stations set up everywhere, with the hand gel to kill germs--so far the group is pretty healthy.There are port-a-potties tucked away from everyone. There is bottled water everywhere. The guests (that's what they are called--NOT refugees or victims) sit down and eat, with plasticware and napkins. There is a schedule for meals, and lots of lines, so folks don't have to stand long.
[...]
The fire dept. folk, HPD--all are performing at max with a great attitude. I haven't even begun to name all the groups and individuals that deserve kudos, but there is what amounts to a city under the roof of Houston's George Brown Convention Center, and your son-in-law has done an incredible, magnificent job. I am beyond proud of my husband, grateful to God for the attitude and help everyone has provided, impressed with the City folks and just downright amazed at what has been done so quickly and so well. Next--a school. That stuff starts tomorrow.
This is NOT a permanent solution for these folks--a shelter is not housing, but Houston has risen to the task and has been magnificent. Please remember that this will not be over tomorrow when the news cameras go away and everyone goes back to work. We will need to work this hard to get these folks hooked up with opportunites to work and live again.
Pray for everyone down here--God bless,
Melissa Noriega
... they don't want any viewers either:
Kyra Phillips, the White House toady who berated Nancy Pelosi online and inserted her own personal opinion during the interview, was just on reviewing the controversy.
After running a clip of the controversy she began reading some of the emails. One, from a Marina, (I believe from New Paltz, N.Y.) said CNN should get rid of Kyra or lose her as a viewer.
Kyra's terse response: Goodbye Marina.
As much as Rick Perry has done wrong for Texas, and Texans, I am not one that will withhold praise when it is due. Since hurricane Katrina hit, Texas has taken in nearly 250,000 people from the affected areas, and given them shelter and food. It wouldn't have happened were it not for the support of Governor Rick Perry.
I have been one of the many who have attacked him for his policies, called him 'Goodhair', and would love to see him replaced next year.
However, credit where credit is due. He has accepted as many evacuees as the state could handle, and when the influx of people began to exceed Texas' capacity to help, he was on the phone to governors of other states lining up places to send people, and arranging for the transportation there.
Never let it be said that I cannot recognize when someone I don't agree with does good.
Good on 'ya Governor.
Nearly a week after they were requested and with emergency systems taxed, the radio equipment and portable generators that Gov. Kathleen Blanco asked federal officials to supply have yet to arrive.
Those items were among several that Blanco requested Friday [2 September 2005] in a letter to President Bush to help out with Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts.
The governor asked for portable radios, equipment and tower crews to work on beefing up the communications grid that failed and kept rescue personnel, police and emergency workers from being able to talk to each other easily.
"The radio system that is currently operational in the greater New Orleans area was designed to support 800 users; there are currently 2,500 users. To address the radio communications requirements, we need additional frequencies," Blanco said in her letter.
She also requested 175 generators to help local parishes and emergency staff who are struggling without power or with flooded generators and the diesel fuel supplies to run them.
Federal officials haven't filled either request, according to state officials.
Those items would be helpful, said Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, with the Louisiana National Guard, but he added, "The mission's getting done without all this."
FEMA officials on Thursday said they were tracking down the status of those items requested but not received.
"If the governor asked for it, we're going to get it for her," said FEMA Director Mike Brown.
Organizers of the Pentagon's 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.
The march, sponsored by the Department of Defense, will wend its way from the Pentagon to the Mall along a route that has not been specified but will be lined with four-foot-high snow fencing to keep it closed and "sterile," said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense.
According to ABC and others FEMA Director Michael Brown was relieved of duties for hurricane relief. According to ABC, rumors are Brown will (finally) be leaving FEMA.
Brown's replacement, at least for the hurricane relief effort, is Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen.
Thankfully, someone with real leadership experience is in charge.
The question that remains is, why did it take this long?
Left for dead, probably. Looking at the Bob Harris post I linked to below, it seems that an entire swath of south Louisiana was ignored, and left for dead. All of the coastal parrishes were not covered by Bush's state of emergency declaration.
No wonder the people there feel forgotten. They appear to not have even be considered in the first place.
A Texas grand jury has indicted a political organization formed by Tom DeLay, accusing it of taking illegal corporate money as the House majority leader helped Republicans win control of the Texas Legislature and keep Congress in GOP hands.
If Bob Harris is correct, 25 parrishes in Louisiana were left out of President Bush's federal emergency declaration.
What is worse is those 25 parrishes are the coastal parrishes directly in line with what was the projected path of hurricane Katrina.
To be fair, 5 of those parrishes were covered by the emergency declaration from hurricane Cindy
What happened? Why were these parrishes not covered?
We're not number one. We're not even close.
By which measures, precisely, do we lead the world? Caring for our countrymen? You jest. A first-class physical infrastructure? Tell that to New Orleans. Throwing so much money at the rich that we've got nothing left over to promote the general welfare? Now you're talking.
The problem goes beyond the fact that we can't count on our government to be there for us in catastrophes. It's that a can't-do spirit, a shouldn't-do spirit, guides the men who run the nation. Consider the congressional testimony of Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush's 2000 campaign manager, who assumed the top position at FEMA in 2001. He characterized the organization as "an oversized entitlement program," and counseled states and cities to rely instead on "faith-based organizations . . . like the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service."
[...]
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?
Even now, with bedraggled rescuers pulling decomposed bodies from the muck of New Orleans, Bill Frist, the moral cretin who runs the U.S. Senate, wanted its first order of business this week to be the permanent repeal of the estate tax, until the public outcry persuaded him to change course. The Republicans profess belief in trickle-down, but what they've given us is the Flood.
The world looks on in stunned amazement, unable to understand how a once great nation has grown so indifferent not just to its poor and its blacks but even to the most rudimentary self-preservation. Some of it is institutional racism, but the primary culprit is the economic libertarianism that the president still espouses whenever he sells his Social Security snake oil. It's that libertarianism, more than anything else, that has transformed a great city into an immense morgue.
But, hey -- stuff happens.
"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."
--George Santayana
... and they don't like what they see.
However, when all is said and done, it appears that some good may come from the disaster that is Katrina's aftermath:
No strangers to bureaucratic bungling and turf wars, the nation's governors watched in horror as government agencies handled Hurricane Katrina with glaring incompetence - and now worry that the next disaster could deal their states the same ugly fate.
The fear is bipartisan. Republican and Democratic governors agree that the response to Katrina was deplorable, and many ordered reviews of their own state emergency strategies to root out problems they're witnessing in the Gulf Coast.
Their top priority: Avoid the bureaucratic red tape that tripped up state, local and federal authorities at every step of the Gulf Coast crisis. Thousands of lives may be at stake after the next natural disaster or terrorist strike.
Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded
This is one of those stories which makes me angry about the lack of response by FEMA, and other agencies who should have been sent into New Orleans, and other areas affected by Hurricane Katrina immediately afterwards.
Two Navy helicopter pilots were delivering supplies to Stennis Space Center on the Mississippi coast. After dropping their load, and preparing to head back to their base at Pensacola Naval Air Station, the pilots received a radio broadcast from the U.S Coast Guard requesting assistance with rescuing people near the University of New Orleans. Rather than return to Pensacola, they flew to the area where the help was being requested.
When they arrived in the area, the pilots said that they saw few rescue personnel in the area, and decided to do what they could to assist. After rescuing more then 100 people from apartments, overpasses, and a few homes in the area, and taking them to Lakefront Airport where an emergency medical unit was setup, they stopped to refuel their helicopters, and contacted their commander back in Pensacola to inform them of what they had been doing.
The next morning, after returning to base, they were called into a meeting with their commander who reprimanded them for not continuing the mission they were dispatched to perform, which was ferry supplies from Pensacola to Mississippi. The two pilot were then reassigned to overseeing a temporary kennel which is housing pets rescued from the affected areas.
In response, a number of members of this unit have removed their unit insignia in protest.
I was in the military, and I fully understand the need to complete the mission you are assigned to, and what the consequences could be if the mission is not completed. By the same token, it is clear that in the eyes of these two pilots, the need to assist with life saving rescue missions was one that could not be ignored.
I believe this is one case where what the pilots did was commendable. Fortunately they did not have rank taken, or other administrative punishment meted out (or at least not reported), but the formal reprimand, plus reassignment to, although important, but not critical work in response is absolutely not commendable.
If the appropriate preparation had been taken by FEMA, DHS, Louisiana Department of Emergency Services, and others, then the circumstances in which these two pilot found themselves in, would never have arisen.
However, like many things that have cropped up since Bush was elected, the people who should be in charge, are not, and the people at the bottom get punished for it.
At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had ''absolutely no credentials.''
She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown.
''He said 'Why would I do that?''' Pelosi said.
'''I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?'''
''Oblivious, in denial, dangerous,'' she added.
The vice president has at long last lumbered back from a Wyoming vacation, and, reportedly, from shopping for a $2.9 million waterfront estate in St. Michael's, a retreat in the Chesapeake Bay where Rummy has a weekend home, where "Wedding Crashers" was filmed and where rich lobbyists hunt.
"My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared."
--P. J. Plauger
Salon.com (get the day pass) shows just how desperate the Bush administration is right now.
From all across the nation, local fire departments have sent firefighters -- many of them trained in emergency medicine and search-and-rescue techniques -- to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency requested the help. But when the firefighters arrived in Atlanta, loaded down with the firefighting gear FEMA told them to bring, they were sent to a hotel to wait. Some of them have been waiting for three or four days now. Some have been assigned to sit through an eight-hour class on topics that included sexual harassment. And some have been dispatched to the disaster area to work as human props behind George W. Bush as he toured the destruction.
On Monday, the Tribune says, some firefighters began to take off their FEMA-issued T-shirts in protest. A FEMA spokesman responded by questioning the firefighters' willingness to help in a time of need. "I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak told the Tribune.
The California Assembly voted Tuesday to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry, making the state's legislature the first in the nation to deliberately approve same-sex marriages and handing a political hot potato to an already beleaguered Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R).
After a vehement floor debate in which legislators quoted the Pledge of Allegiance and accused each other of abusing moral principles, the state Assembly passed the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, which recasts the definition of marriage as between "two persons," not between a man and a woman. The state Senate passed the bill last week.
From Talking Points Memo we are pointed to an article from the St Petersburg Times in which President Bush was informed of the potential for a catastrophe as a result of hurricane Katrina making landfall:
On Saturday night[27 August 2005], Mayfield was so worried about Hurricane Katrina that he called the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi and the mayor of New Orleans. On Sunday[28 August 2005], he even talked about the force of Katrina during a video conference call to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
"I just wanted to be able to go to sleep that night knowing that I did all I could do," Mayfield said.
Anderson Cooper just said on CNN that the Louisiana Superdome will likely have to be torn down.
The first national landmark victim because of the Bush administration, and FEMA's lack of preparation and action from this.
"Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."
--Aaron Broussard
--President, Jefferson Parrish, Louisiana
I couldn't agree more.
Because Jefferson Parrish President Aaron Broussard dared to speak ill of FEMA's response (or lack thereof) to the disaster that is happening along the Gulf coast, the Right begins to swiftboat Broussard:
Sharon Weber of Wal-Mart called back. She said that last week, FEMA diverted those water trucks to "another location, which [FEMA] felt was in greater need than where they were headed."
R.I.P.
In and amongst the tragedy along the Gulf Coast, we tend to forget that life goes on throughout the rest of the country.
Friday, actor Bob Denver died. His family asked that in lieu of flowers anyone wishing to remember Bob Denver, should send a contribution to his foundation, which helps disabled in West Virginia.
There is no web page that I can find for the Denver Foundation. The Denver Foundation on the web, is not the same thing.
The snail mail address for contributions is:
The Denver Foundation Inc
P.O. Box 931
Princeton, WV 24740
Additional information can be found at Bob Denver's Gilligan Fan Club
"Bush skipped his usual weekend biking outings and went to a Red Cross operations center in Washington on Sunday. His trip Monday was meant to underscore his concern. He'll visit again."
Keen and Benedetto also write: "In a flurry of e-mail exchanges late Saturday night when they learned about Chief Justice William Rehnquist's death, President Bush's top advisers debated -- after their most difficult week since 9/11 -- what calamity might be next."
In the world of George W. Bush, partisan political issues are more important the death and destruction inside the borders of the United States.
Rather than wait, Bush feels the need to get his ultra conservative Supreme Court nominee on the bench, while people's attention is focused elsewhere.
I recognize that the business of dealing with the country's business must continue, however, Bush's elevation of John Roberts nomination from Associate Justice to Chief Justice smacks of partisan political opportunism. Then for Republicans to push for his hearings next week, when the government needs to be ensuring that relief efforts continue, and identifying what has gone wrong with the preparations for hurricane Katrina, and the aftermath?
Placing party over country does not even begin to describe what is happening.
Right now there are organizations all over the country vying for monetary contributions to assist in the recovery and relief efforts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Agencies like the Red Cross and others have collected millions of dollars. Another destination to consider are the relief funds created by the states of Louisiana and Alabama (yes I am aware of what the office in Alabama is called). Mississippi does not appear to have a state administered relief fund.
Habitat for Humanity has also pledged to help people in the affected area to rebuild their homes.
Also check your local grocery stores to see if they are doing anything.
In Texas many HEB Grocery stores are collecting specific items to be trucked to east Texas and other areas to ensure the the refugees (as they are being called) can have food and necessities that they had to leave behind. The good thing that HEB was doing was having the items sorted at the time of purchase so that time would not be wasted having to sort out whatever food items were being collected.
Help if you are able.
"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."
--Soren Kierkegaard
So I have been caught up in the Eschacon thing, having a great time, meeting the members of the Eschaton community, and others who attended.
It has been a very odd weekend, however. As we were enjoying each others company, the Bush Administration have been an absolute disgrace.
The utter, criminal behavior of the Bush administration is a stain on America, and all Americans that cannot be removed with a bit of posturing and photo opportunities helpfully provided by our media.
After the Washington Posts total lack of judgement in putting out an article in which they claimed that the Governor of Louisiana did not declare an emergency until after the hurricane, they posted a retraction. However, just like the other scum that constitute the Washington Media Establishment, the Washington Post keeps the "anonymous White House source" who provided this "tip", anonymous.
The absolute disregard the Washington Post is showing for the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama with this kind of non-fact based, pro-Bush spin reporting is stomach churing. It appears that they are, not just willing, but happy to provide any nugget of information, no matter the relationship to the truth, that makes the Bush White House seem more in charge, and on top of things then they really are.
Everyday the pure contempt that FEMA, Bush, Cheney, Rice, and the entire cabal has for the people of South Louisiana in particular, but additionally everyone who was affected by Katrina has risen to the level that I have no words to describe it.
I am disgusted.
To me personally, George W Bush does not even rise to the status of human any longer. Between him, DHS director Chertoff, and FEMA director Brown, we have a triad of the worst of human nature. How anyone can stand and defend these three people, who ostensibly should be helping the people who have been impacted, rather than posturing and posing and making ridiculous assertions that are easily proven false, just defies everything that compassion towards other human beings, should be. I am beside myself.
I find it to be an absolute disgrace.
The media enablers in Washington are no better. In fact they are worse, because it is their job to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable". Instead they choose the opposite path.
To comfort the comfortable, and blame the afflicted for their condition.
Instead, my state, Texas, one state that most Liberals want to "give back to Mexico", is doing more to help the residents of this area that even the federal government is willing to do.
Before FEMA lifted one God Damned finger to help, Texas was acting. Before FEMA would do any-God-Damned-thing, Texas was pre-positioning disaster recovery teams (along with other states). Before George W. Bush put his God Damned guitar down, Texas was taking in refugees from this disaster. While Condi Rice was purchasing THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of God Damned shoes, Texas was doing something. While Dick Cheney was preparing to help Halliburton get a NO-God-Damned-BID contract to rebuild the port of New Orleans, Texas was helping the people who lost everything.
This is what we, the People of the United States of America, have for leaders.
Before any of them are willing to any-God-Damned-thing to help American Citizens who are in distress, they have to help their own, get God Damned Guitar lessons, and get one more shopping trip in.
They all deserve the same fate as the people of New Orleans.
Fuck 'em all.
We have moved from incompetence, to gross incomptetence to outright criminal neglect:
Three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA, we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. When we got there with our trucks, FEMA says don’t give you the fuel. Yesterday — yesterday — FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards and said no one is getting near these lines…
As a result of their absolutely unacceptable performance in dealing with the tragedy in New Orleans, the Bush administration, along with its media lackeys, are taking on a blame the victim position.
Case in point, today the Washington Post lies for the Bush administration
Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.
NOW THEREFORE I, KATHLEEN BABINEAUX BLANCO, Governor of the state of Louisiana, by virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution and laws of the state of Louisiana, do hereby order and direct as follows:
SECTION 1:
Pursuant to the Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, R.S. 29:721, et seq., a state of emergency is declared to exist in the state of Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of the state of Louisiana;
SECTION 2:
The state of Louisiana's emergency response and recovery program is activated under the command of the director of the state office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness to prepare for and provide emergency support services and/or to minimize the effects of the storm's damage.
SECTION 3:
The state of emergency extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday, September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner.
Apparently the Bush administration is willing to sink to some pretty low levels:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
09/03/2005
Landrieu Implores President to "Relieve Unmitigated Suffering;" End FEMA's "Abject Failures"
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., issued the following statement this afternoon regarding her call yesterday for President Bush to appoint a cabinet-level official to oversee Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery efforts within 24 hours.
Sen. Landrieu said:
"Yesterday, I was hoping President Bush would come away from his tour of the regional devastation triggered by Hurricane Katrina with a new understanding for the magnitude of the suffering and for the abject failures of the current Federal Emergency Management Agency. 24 hours later, the President has yet to answer my call for a cabinet-level official to lead our efforts. Meanwhile, FEMA, now a shell of what it once was, continues to be overwhelmed by the task at hand.
"I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims -- far more efficiently than buses -- FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.
"But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast -- black and white, rich and poor, young and old -- deserve far better from their national government.
"Mr. President, I'm imploring you once again to get a cabinet-level official stood up as soon as possible to get this entire operation moving forward regionwide with all the resources -- military and otherwise -- necessary to relieve the unmitigated suffering and economic damage that is unfolding."
Today's aerial tour of the 17th Street levee will be featured tomorrow on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Later, Sen. Landrieu will also appear on CBS's 60 Minutes.
There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.
ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.
I guess I should put my $.02 into the pot.
I got here Thursday afternoon, so Mrs. David and I had plenty of time to wander around and see some of Philly Thursday and Friday. Now, I grew up in Pennsylvania, so for me this was a bit of a homecoming.
For Mrs. David, this was her first time, so we took in some of the sights. We haven't tried to get into the major sights. Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, etc. Just kind of wandered around taking in the city.
Friday night was first to The New Wave Cafe after the very surreal experience and awkward introductions at the sign-in. After food and drinks at The New Wave, it was on to The Khyber to hear Milton and the Devils Party.
A good evening was had.
Today(Saturday) brought some sore heads, and tired bodies for the blogging panel.
In attendence was Mr. Shrill himself. The topic naturally was Hurricane Katrina and the absolutely unacceptable response of FEMA, and the Bush administration. However, I am sure the media enablers will play along with the narrative that Bush wants about his steely resolve and compassion.
The afternoon session of the panels, included Democrats. Current members of congress, candidates, and a representative from the DNC and DCCC. The discussion then turned to prospects in 2006 and beyond.
Things may be starting to turn for the better.
Hopefully it will continue.
Just watching CNN Situation Room.
I am sure that Wolf Blitzer was very uncomfortable as Jack Cafferty was ranting for almost 5 minutes uninterrupted, blasting the Bush administration for not doing anything.
When they cut back to Wolf, he sounded very uncomfortable.
I wonder how long Mr. Cafferty will remain disillusioned by the Bush administration.
Scott McClellan says:
That's why we have a massive effort underway to continue getting food and water and ice to those who are in need. There are ways for them to get that help.
Light posting this weekend.
I am travelling to Philly for Eschacon.
If you are going, see you there.
"When I get to be a composer I'm gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama. "
--Langston Hughes
"To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi"
--William Faulkner
"On Mardi Gras 1928, a crowd gathered around a woman on Canal Street dancing the Black Bottom. A friend of the dancer's played the ukulele while the crowd 'stamped their feet.' An admiring fat man 'flung her a handful of coins.' If he thought the dancer would appreciate his largess, he was wrong. She gathered the coins together and threw them back at him. 'Anybody can tell you're not used to Carnival!' she cried. 'On Mardi Gras we dance 'cause we want to.'"
All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival,
by Reid Mitchell
Democratic Underground has been collecting information on what organizations are providing relief for those areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.
If you can help, please do.
A lot of people are beginning the "day late and dollar short" chant. Though, it would have been totally appropriate (hell, even expected) for the President to do something ahead of time.
Such as, Oh, I don't know, maybe stationing Naval vessels off the coast of Louisiana to provide relief efforts yesterday?
Well, at least he is finally getting off his ass, and doing something. I suspect that after Trent Lott spoke up, it was decided that politically he couldn't ignore it any longer.
After five years of this, we should be thankful for the little things.
New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers faces cuts:
In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding.
It would be the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans district, Corps officials said.
I've been here over 30 years and I've never seen this level of reduction, said Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district. I think part of the problem is it's not so much the reduction, it's the drastic reduction in one fiscal year. It's the immediacy of the reduction that I think is the hardest thing to adapt to.
There is an economic ripple effect, too. The cuts mean major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.
Money is so tight the New Orleans district, which employs 1,300 people, instituted a hiring freeze last month on all positions. The freeze is the first of its kind in about 10 years, said Marcia Demma, chief of the Corps' Programs Management Branch.
KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) - Gunmen have killed a security official in Iraq's North Oil Company and a companion traveling with him in a car, a police source said on Tuesday.
The killing on Monday night appeared to be part of a campaign to undermine Iraq's oil industry, the biggest source of income for the U.S.-backed government.
Insurgents have also blown up pipelines in their bid to topple Iraq's new leaders.
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
--John Adams
Starbucks has these new cups you get with a cup of coffee, which have some quotes on them. Apparently one of these quotes have upset some Conservative women's group:
A national Christian women's organization is accusing the Seattle-based coffee maker of promoting a homosexual agenda because of a quote by author Armistead Maupin, whose "Tales of the City" chronicled San Francisco's homosexual community in the 1970s and 1980s.
Maupin's quote — one of several dozen in "The Way I See It" promotion — says his only regret about being gay is that he repressed it for so long.
"Corporations have deeper pockets and therefore more influence than individuals do," said Maureen Richardson, state director of Concerned Women for America of Washington.
"I think it's wiser for them to stay out of these issues so that they don't offend conservatives and people of faith."
Right now on CNN.com homepage, there are two competing headlines.
In a sign that the war in Iraq is beginning to get to some people, the press is beginning to ask if pro-war officials will send their own kids to war:
It's a question from the press sure to be posed more and more as the months go on, directed at public officials who continue to support the Iraq war: If you believe in the cause so deeply, why aren't your own kids signing up? Most prominently, President Bush (through his press spokesmen) is now hearing it, but it's now trickling down to the congressional and state level.
I have been remiss in fufiling my obligation as a member of the media.
This is not a security issue, per se, but it could be a problem if you end up at a malicious site. Firefox - Prefetch.
In a nutshell, Firefox, and Mozilla will, in the background, fetch, before you need it, a page you are likely to need. Fortunately the website you are navigating to, has to have the "prefetch" tag in the web page, and it can only fetch http links.
Well, Google is enabling that feature in its search results, so potentially one could end up unintentionally downloading porn. Not so much an issue, unless you are browsing at work, and your information security department does internet usage tracking.
The method to turn it off, although not difficult, is rather technical in nature, so let me state up front, do this at your own risk.
In the address bar type:
Via The Raw Story we learn that the FBI has been targeting anti-war groups for domestic spying:
The American Civil Liberties Union today released an FBI document that designates a Michigan-based peace group and an affirmative action advocacy group as potentially "involved in terrorist activities,"
Charles Kuffner points us to this Houston Chronicle article about why the Texas lege could not come to an agreement on property taxes during the last special session here in Austin:
A series of meetings was held of 40 to 50 lobbyists and trade association directors representing a variety of business interests, including electric utilities, the petrochemical industry, hospitals, lawyers, electronics and retail sales.
Utilities and the petrochemical plants, with sprawling facilities that rack up huge property tax bills, wanted some relief, just like homeowners.
Companies with high-dollar investments such as utilities, the petrochemical industry and the insurance industry wanted the state's business franchise tax expanded to cover all businesses at a lower rate.
Businesses such as Dell, SBC and several Texas newspapers that avoided the franchise tax through loopholes and partnerships that had never been taxed were either reluctant partners in expanding the franchise tax or outright opposed it. The partnerships started fighting to stay out of the tax bill in the regular session after the House and Senate offered proposals to broaden the franchise tax.
By the end, most groups had lobbied their way out of the tax legislation this summer. And the petrochemical industry, which had pushed the hardest early on for property tax relief, was left holding the bag to pay it for everyone.
"It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated."
--Alec Bourne
As Hurricane Katrina does its thing to the Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi Gulf coasts, George W. Bush decides to hold a Medicare rally in Arizona and California.
After a weekend in which the countryside near his ranch was dominated by demonstrations both in favor of the Iraq war and against it, President Bush travels to Arizona and California today on domestic business: promoting the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit for seniors.
Today the NY Times sinks to a new level of, of, I don't know what to call this:
The New York Times reporter Judith Miller has now been in jail longer for refusing to testify than any reporter working for a newspaper in America. It is a very long time for her, for her newspaper and for the media. And with each dismal milestone, it becomes more apparent that having her in jail is an embarrassment to a country that is supposed to be revered around the world for its freedoms, especially its First Amendment that provides freedom of the press. Ms. Miller, who went to jail rather than testify in an investigation into the disclosure of an undercover agent's identity, has been in a Virginia jail 55 days as of today.
According to John at Americablog, even a category 5 hurricane bearing down on the gulf coast of the US will not interrupt his vacation.
Afterall, it's hard work being President.
Too hard to care about some people who are in the path of an approaching hurricane.
"Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it."
--Dan Quayle
An evangelical group has begun a weeklong advertising campaign in Iowa criticizing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist for backing expanded embryonic stem cell research.
"We know Iowa is a way to get everybody's attention," said Gary Cass, head of the Florida-based Center for Reclaiming America. "Our hope is Senator Frist will hear from Iowans and they are kind of a bellwether state in the heartland."
In an increasing sign, that Bush and Rove are worried about every single Republican supporter, the White House obviously pressures the Base Re-Alignment Committee to reconsider their decision to close Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.
One campaign promise the Senator John Thune made was that him being a Republican would ensure that Ellsworth would not close.
Well, it is obvious, by this latest move, that the White House is scared.
"Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything."
--Henri Poincare
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush played host to the White House press corps Thursday night for a private off-the-record dinner at his ranch.
The casual affair of fried catfish, potato salad, coleslaw, homemade cheese and chocolate-chip cookies followed a tradition in which Bush and his wife, Laura, have the press covering his annual August vacation out to the their ranch in central Texas as a sort of thank-you.
The event was not held last year because of the busy campaign season. The invitations to the reporters were issued on the condition that they not discuss conversations at the event.
Gov. Bob Taft made opening remarks at mandatory ethics seminars for state employees in 2003 and earlier this year where a memo on free golf that led to his recent conviction was either discussed or referred to in handouts.
[...]
In June 2003, though, Taft made opening remarks at mandatory ethics training for senior state government employees. Afterward, two members of the ethics commission distributed a six-page outline of Ohio's ethics laws and rules, including a reference to the 2001 document, according to records of the 2003 event obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.
Fox sinks to an Orwellian low.
On 7 August Fox News gave out the adress of someone they thought was a terrorist.
Let me repeat that.
Fox News gave out the address of someone they thought was a terrorist
The colossal screw up here, is that the individual Fox thought was a terrorist, moved out of the house three years earlier, thus placing the current occupants of the house in jeopardy from some vigilante.
Fox did retract the story, and in the reasoning for giving out the address of someone they thought was a terrorist, who incidentally did not live there for the past three years, was:
"I thought it might help police in that area now that we have positively identified a terrorist living in [Orange County]," he said.
"Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does."
--Bill Nye
Bloomberg has an interesting article comparing the CEO's of Costco and Wal-Mart (particularly Sam's Club), but the comparison makes for interesting reading.
Costco Wholesale Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. both offer low-priced goods, yet when it comes to paying their employees, there is a difference in dollars and cents that starts with hourly workers and goes to the top.
Costco, the fourth-largest U.S. retailer, pays fulltime employees an average hourly wage of $17; Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, pays $9.68.
As for their CEOs, total 2004 pay for James Sinegal of the Issaquah, Washington-based Costco was $2.7 million; for H. Lee Scott of the Bentonville, Arkansas, Wal-Mart it was $17.9 million.
Bush takes time out of his vacation to meet with the families of soldiers.
Only this meeting will be with soldiers familys who agree with him:
After the speech, Bush was meeting privately with relatives of 19 military families before returning to his Texas ranch in the evening.
[...]
Among the family members scheduled to meet with Bush was 18-year-old Stevie Bitah. Her father, Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Virgil R. Case, died June 1 from non-combat related wounds in Iraq.
Bitah said she does not share the anti-war views of Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who lost a son in Iraq and has given momentum to the peace movement by holding a vigil near Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch. But Bitah said she hopes U.S. forces will return soon to spare other families the loss she endured.
"I don't think he intended to go over there and have people lose family members. He's doing it for specific reasons; he's doing it to protect our country," Bitah said of Bush. "My dad chose to go over there and that's something he was proud of, and our family was proud of him."
No, not a cock ring.
The Silver Ring Thing program, which preaches abstinence-only sex education, in addition to religious education, had its funding cut off because the group would not separate its religious message from its sex ed message.
The federal government has cut off funding to a nationwide program that promotes abstinence to teens through skits and music videos, saying the group in charge of the campaign did not adequately separate religion from its message.
The Silver Ring Thing program, related to a Christian ministry based in the Pittsburgh suburbs, puts on shows at churches nationwide that include "Saturday Night Live"-style skits, music videos and a message of abstinence. Young people are given a silver ring and decide whether they want to pledge to abstain from sex.
According to President Bush, there is nothing better.
If there is no higher calling for an American, than to fight and die in Iraq, then why aren't Bush's daughters in Iraq?
Why aren't the members of the Young Republican Party, or anyone who believes that in Iraq fighting?
Why isn't President Bush there? After all, it would be answering his own call to duty.
Yesterday the Bush Administration tried to distance itself from the fatwah issued by Pat Robertson.
The administration quickly distanced itself Tuesday from the suggestion by religious broadcaster and Bush backer Pat Robertson that the United States assassinate a leftist Latin American head of state. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called Robertson's remarks about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez "inappropriate," but stopped short of condemning them.
"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity."
--Christopher Morley
Via The DCCC we learn that Indiana Congressman John Hostettler finds divorce to be as dangerous as gay marriage or abortions:
Rep. John Hostettler told area clergy that divorce on demand is as dangerous as gay marriage, and pastors' actions will be key to strengthening all Indiana families.
[...]
"The picture of marriage is the picture of Christian salvation," said Hostettler, who describes his elected office as a ministry. "Any diminishing of that notion - whether homosexual marriage or any other degradation of marriage - is something we must fight in public policy."
[...]
While Hostettler's comments energized the group, laws governing marriage are rooted primarily at the state level. Enter the Indiana Family Institute [a nonprofit with close ties to Focus on the Family] and its lobbying efforts to strengthen state law's stances on family.
WaPo:
Reviving Jim Crow?
Any day now the Justice Department will render judgment on one of the single most discriminatory pieces of voting legislation of recent years: a Georgia state law requiring voters to present one of only six forms of photo identification before they can exercise their right to vote. Before enforcing this statute, Georgia must get Justice Department approval by proving that the law will not put minority voters in a worse position than they were in before the requirement was instituted.
FromDaily Kos we have this LA Times article
Nearly every Monday for six months, as many as a dozen congressional aides — many of them aspiring politicians — have gathered over takeout dinners to mine the Bible for ancient wisdom on modern policy debates about tax rates, foreign aid, education, cloning and the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Through seminars taught by conservative college professors and devout members of Congress, the students learn that serving country means first and always serving Christ.
They learn to view every vote as a religious duty, and to consider compromise a sin.
That puts them at the vanguard of a bold effort by evangelical conservatives to mold a new generation of leaders who will answer not to voters, but to God
Bill Moyer, 73, wears a "Bullshit Protector" flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)
Mary Beth Harrell has announced her intention to run for the 31st Congressional District of Texas against Republican John Carter.
This district is fairly Republican, however, there have been a number of people who have moved in this direction out of Austin, and during the last election there were a surprising number of Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers.
This district does encompass Fort Hood, so I expect there to be a lot of pro-military advertisements coming from the Carter campaign.
This will be a tough campaign for a Democrat. However, he campaign motto, is one that I have mentioned a Democrat should definitely run with:
Hot on the heels of the sliming of Paul Hackett, another Iraq War vet takes on the Republicans for 2006.
David Harris will be taking on Smokey Joe Barton for the Texas 6th CD. Harris received a Bronz star for his actions in Iraq.
He will be launching his website, tentatively, on 15 October. Keep an eye out for it.
And prepare for the questioning of the legitimacy of his Bronze star.
Thanks to Damon @ Burnt Orange Report for the info.
E&P:
Meeting briefly with reporters Monday aboard Air Force One, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman subbing for Scott McClellan, said that President Bush believes that those who want the U.S. to begin to change course in Iraq do not want America to win the overall "war on terror."
"So he believes that people have a fundamental right to express their views. That's one of the reasons we're fighting this war on terrorism, to protect our fundamental rights. But at the same time, he disagrees strongly."
No Proof Found of Iran Arms Program:
Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.
"The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions," said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.
No matter how much he pretends otherwise, Ohio Governor Bob Taft is still a convicted criminal.
The tiny town of Midvale got all dressed up for Gov. Bob Taft's first public appearance since he was convicted of ethics law violations. But some residents said they weren't impressed by the show featuring the governor breaking ground at an elementary school.
"I don't think this is what he'll be remembered for," said Beverlea Bell, 51, as she pointed to the shell of the school the village is replacing. American flags decorated the road to the nearby field where the new elementary school will be built, and cheerleaders performed at the site.
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
--Mahatma Gandhi
Connecticut sues the federal government over NCLB:
Connecticut became the first state to file suit against the federal government over the No Child Left Behind Act, claiming the Bush administration has not provided enough money to pay for new testing and programs.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Hartford against federal Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, asks a judge to declare that state and local funds cannot be used to meet the goals of the law.
"We in Connecticut do a lot of testing already, far more than most other states. Our taxpayers are sagging under the crushing costs of local education," said Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell. "What we don't need is a new laundry list of things to do - with no new money to do them."
Like Digby I saw the interview on Olbermann's show with Gary Qualls.
Like Digby, I found what Qualls said to be just a pathetic attempt(at whose prompting remains to be seen) to slime Cindy Sheehan, when just a week earlier Qualls was friendly with Sheehan and the anti-War protestors.
Whether it is for purely political reasons, someone from the 101st Fighting Keyboarders got to him, or some other Chickenhawk called him, Qualls has done a 180° flip.
It is time to put Qualls on ignore.
That is what "Christian" minister Pat Robertson advocates:
You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.
Supporting the Troops Republican style:
(Minn.) STATE SEN. BECKY LOUREY: This is before my son died, and the point I had wanted to make was that when my son went to Bosnia, he had wonderful tents, you know. The Army was in charge, subcontracting with contractors. When my son went to Iraq, he was sleeping in the sand, being bitten by sand fleas, you know, and that was because Halliburton had a no-bid contract, Halliburton, a company that has headquarters offshore in the Cayman Islands and is avoiding paying taxes in the United States, a no-bid contract without the experience to get the equipment to the troops that they need, and I had wanted to talk to Rumsfeld about that, and I think that he should in fact retire, excuse himself, because of the ineptness of his job.
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is."
--Chuck Reid
