Recently in Katrina Category

"I have often said that history will look back and determine that which could have been done better, or, you know, mistakes I made. Clearly putting a 'Mission Accomplished' on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake. I've thought long and hard about Katrina -- you know, could I have done something differently..."

After eight long years, the end is in sight, and the Idiot Wind is at long last subsiding. For the 43rd president of these United States, George Dubya Bush, gave his final press conference today, during which he finally conceded that "there have been disappointments." Why, yes, yes, there have. "Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were -- things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way." Um, yeah.

At any rate, don't worry: I'm sure we'll be getting one last round of 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 before closing time, when Dubya delivers his "farewell address" on Thursday. One can only hope that it turns out to be Eisenhoweresque, and not one more final, futile attempt to rewrite the history books. But I'm not keeping my fingers crossed.

"The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard...It's just fine to make it harder for the average Joe to file for bankruptcy, as did that wretched bankruptcy bill passed by Congress in 2005 at the request of the credit card industry. But the big guys are 'too big to fail' because they could bring us all down with them." After the Bear Stearns deal and all it would seem to portent about the condition of the Dubya economy, E.J. Dionne reads the riot act to free market fundies.

In related news, WP's Dan Froomkin's notes how Dubya's handling of the economy is now being compared to the aftermath of Katrina. 'As the storm clouds gathered, was President Bush once again asleep at the wheel? A consistent theme in today's political and economic coverage is that Bush's failure to recognize the severity of the ongoing financial crisis and act accordingly is reminiscent of his disastrously slow and inept response to Hurricane Katrina....'As with the war in Afghanistan, the Iraqi war aftermath, the Hurricane Katrina disaster and current efforts at Mideast peace, investors are concerned that the president is responding too late and with inadequate understanding, resources and creativity.'"

"A lot of people down here probably wondered whether or not those of us in the federal government not from Louisiana would pay attention to Louisiana or Mississippi...And I hope people understand we do. We're still paying attention. We understand." Dubya marks the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by mouthing platitudes in New Orleans, claiming "this town is better today than it was yesterday. And it's going to be better tomorrow than it was today" (He might have more credibility on this if he hadn't said the same thing about Iraq for four years and running.) Says TIME's Michael Grunwald of Dubya's claim: "Many of the same coastal scientists and engineers who sounded alarms about the vulnerability of New Orleans long before Katrina are warning that the Army Corps is poised to repeat its mistakes -- and extend them along the entire Louisiana coast. If you liked Katrina, they say, you'll love what's coming next." And see also Looka's evaluation of how far we -- haven't -- come in the two years since this man-made disaster. It's shameful.

"'This is a terrible mistake by the Democratic leadership, to take someone with serious ethical allegations against him and put him on one of the most sensitive and important committees in Congress,' said Rep. Peter T. King (N.Y.), the ranking Republican on the committee." The House GOP begin making a stink over William Jefferson's appointment to the Homeland Security Committee. I hate to say it, but I'm inclined to agree. Jefferson is an ethical embarrassment, and he should've been backbenched on everything until his bribery investigation concludes. Surely some other Dem on the committee could've taken up the slack with regards to the FEMA issue.

"As the Hurricane Katrina anniversary coverage blows out to sea and New Orleans braces for another year of neglect, it's worth pausing to consider the fallout from the disaster that was previously deemed the worst in U.S. history -- the 1927 Mississippi flood." Slate's David Greenberg takes a moment to remember the big 1927 flood, which significantly altered New Era attitudes about the appropriate duties of the federal government (and will also play a significant role in the latter half of my dissertation.)

"Seen the arrow on the doorpost saying, 'This land is condemned, all the way from New Orleans to Jerusalem.' I traveled through East Texas where many martyrs fell, and I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell." Or Kind Willie Clinton, for that matter...a belated happy birthday to our ex-president, who turned 60 yesterday.

So, the pre-born aside, how does Dubya feel about the plight of actual, honest-to-goodness post-born American kids living in poverty these days? Well, judging from his recent statements on poverty, or complete and utter lack thereof since Katrina faded from public memory, he couldn't care less. "Domestic poverty did not come up in his State of the Union address in January, and his most recent budget included no new initiatives directed at the poor."

"If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government--indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government--is the only kind of conservative government there is. Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well." Perhaps overplaying the Hartzian "America is liberal and liberal only" card just a bit, Boston College professor Alan Wolfe argues convincingly why conservatives can't govern, and explains how, despite the emerging right-wing consensus to the contrary, Dubya's many failures and Boss DeLay's corruption aren't a betrayal of conservative thinking, but a culmination of it. (By way of Blivet.)

Defying Dubya's talk of a veto -- in keeping with the Operation Offset line of thinking, he wants less spending to help mitigate his ridiculous tax giveaways -- and Dennis Hastert's declaration that it was "dead on arrival" in the House, the Senate passes an $109 billion emergency spending bill 77-21. "The Senate bill would provide $70.9 billion to the military to pay for personnel, operation and maintenance, and procurement costs, along with diplomatic efforts such as democracy-building programs. The Senate more than doubled a $58 million request for peacekeeping assistance in Sudan, providing $173 million. Bush requested $19.8 billion in hurricane-related assistance, and the Senate responded with $28.9 billion -- adding projects large and small."

"The eight-month, bipartisan investigation's central finding is that FEMA should be replaced by a new National Preparedness and Response Authority. Its head would report to the secretary of Homeland Security but serve as the president's top adviser for national emergency matters, akin to the military role played by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." As hurricane season nears, the future of FEMA becomes a political football between the Senate (who favors abolishing it) and the White House (who doesn't.) The Senate report also "singled out President Bush and the White House as appearing indifferent to the devastation until two days after the storm hit."

"'In 1906, San Francisco was the largest city west of the Rockies. We had 400,000 people in the city,' Eisner said. 'Today we have 7 million in the Bay Area. And the consequences of a disaster of this magnitude in an urban area are significant.'" On the eve of tomorrow's centennial of the great San Francisco earthquake, a new study suggests another Big One would mean a Katrina-level disaster for the Bay Area. "Seismologists generally agree that a repeat of a 1906-size earthquake is inevitable, though when and where along the fault are unknown. In 2002, the U.S. Geological Survey reported a 62 percent chance of a magnitude-6.7 earthquake or greater hitting the Bay Area within 30 years." And, in a related story, historians look for lessons for post-Katrina New Orleans amid the rubble of 1906.

"'This makes it perfectly clear once again that this disaster was not out of the blue or unforeseeable,' said Sen. David Vitter (R-La.)...'It was not only predictable, it was actually predicted. That's what makes the failures in response -- at the local, state and federal level -- all the more outrageous.'" A newly released video shows a typically incurious Dubya being warned -- before Katrina hit -- that the New Orleans levees might break. Of course, we already knew Dubya lied about the levees, but, still, a picture is worth a thousand words.

A joyous Fat Tuesday to you and yours, and particularly to the scrappy, fun-loving residents of N'Orleans. Needless to say, it's been a tough year down there.

"'I look around,' Mr. Lott said, 'and think, "Am I the only one who thinks this is stupid?"'" Hearings into Katrina, foreign affairs, and other matters of state are postponed as the Senate commits to a day of stunt votes by both parties, mainly because Catkiller Frist had more pressing business -- a fundraiser, of course -- the prior evening. "Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, said, 'It's sort of arrogant of us, isn't it, scheduling them and then not keeping our appointments?'"

"If some kind of inquiry would be beneficial to getting a resolution to this issue, then sure, we should look at it. But if the inquiry is just some kind of a punitive inquiry that really is not focused on finding a way out of this, then I'm not so sure that I would support that." Bad news for congressional oversight and the rule of law: After an "all-out" campaign of White House arm-twisting, crucial Senate Republicans -- including Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel -- appear on the verge of folding up the tent on the proposed NSA hearings. The critical vote will come tomorrow, but it's iffy. "Two committee Democrats said the panel -- made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats -- was clearly leaning in favor of the motion last week but now is closely divided and possibly inclined against it."

"'If 9/11 was a failure of imagination then Katrina was a failure of initiative. It was a failure of leadership. In this instance, blinding lack of situational awareness and disjointed decision making needlessly compounded and prolonged Katrina's horror.'" A new House report makes official what we all already know -- From ignoring information about broken levees to needlessly squandering federal funds, the Dubya White House badly bungled the response to Katrina. ("Heck," even Brownie is proclaiming it from the rooftops these days.) As Get Your War On so aptly put it months ago, "There should be a rule that if you slack off while an American city is destroyed, and then your response is to fly around hugging people and making excuses, you have to stop being President. And if it happens again four years later, you really have to stop."

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Really, Dubya? As Looka and the WP point out, two different government reports suggested the damage Katrina would cause to New Orleans in the days before it hit. "The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina's size would 'likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching' and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain.. So, yet again, the president has lied to the American people and stonewalled congressional investigations into his actions. They used to call these impeachable offenses -- Now, we call them Wednesday.

"We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum. We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen." By way of Looka, who's been doing an exemplary job covering the Katrina aftermath, remember New Orleans.

As Chuck notes, "Why are [Dubya and the GOP] balking at spending $32 billion to protect a major American city from further destruction while they seem to have had no trouble passing four tax cuts in the last week that totalled $95 billion?" Update: The White House announces it will spend $3.1 billion on levees. Well, it's a start, I suppose.

"Can I quit now? Can I come home?" Yes you can, Brownie. Thanks for doing such a heck of a job.

Has Operation Offset been enacted? "Beginning this week, the House GOP lawmakers will take steps to cut as much as $50 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget for health care for the poor, food stamps and farm supports, as well as considering across-the-board cuts in other programs." There's today's GOP in a nutshell for you. When the going gets tough, their first instinct is to keep the Dubya tax breaks for millionaires and crack down instead on food stamps and Medicaid. Really, who put these assholes in charge of the public purse? You couldn't find a more detestable gang of bandits and thugs if you tried.

"Earth, that living, seething, often inhospitable and not altogether intelligently designed thing, has again shrugged, and tens of thousands of Pakistanis are dead...Americans reeling from Hurricane Katrina, and warned of scores of millions of potential deaths from avian flu, have a vague feeling -- never mind the disturbing rest of the news -- of pervasive menace from things out of control. Too vague, according to Simon Winchester." In light of the horrifying calamity in Pakistan this past weekend (as well as Katrina and the tsunami), George Will peruses Simon Winchester's new book on the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

"''We've had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks...We've gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn't actually happening.'" As the Republicans fall into further disarray over such matters as Harriet Miers, the slew of indictments, and Katrina spending, it now appears that the GOP is even having trouble lining up candidates for 2006. But can the Dems capitalize on the GOP house divided? If Katrina is any indication, we're still clearly in deep, deep trouble. For even despite all the current legal and political woes for Dubya and the sheer rapacity of Operation Offset, many on the left see the post-Katrina debate over poverty slipping away...

"It was during the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman that such great progressive policies as Social Security, protective labor laws and the GI Bill were adopted. But with them came something else that was quite destructive for the nation: what I have called 'affirmative action for whites.' During Jim Crow's last hurrah in the 1930s and 1940s, when southern members of Congress controlled the gateways to legislation, policy decisions dealing with welfare, work and war either excluded the vast majority of African Americans or treated them differently from others." With Katrina as a newspeg, Columbia's own Ira Katznelson previews his new book on New Deal racial exclusion in the Washington Post.

Looka points the way to a truly horrifying breakdown of Operation Offset, the House Republicans' disgusting, abhorrent proposal to pay for Katrina reconstruction (without, of course, touching a red cent of Dubya's millionaire tax breaks) So, guess who foots the bill?

"The Republicans would freeze funding for the Peace Corps, the Global AIDS Initiative, U.N. peacekeeping operations and a wide variety of third-world development programs; eliminate the EnergyStar program, eliminate grants to states and local communities for energy conservation, reduce federal subsidies for Amtrak, eliminate funding for new light-rail programs and cancel the president's hydrogen fuel initiative; eliminate state grants for safe and drug-free schools because 'studies show that schools are among the safest places in the country and relatively drug free'; and eliminate the teen funding portion of Title X, which provides 'free and reduced-price contraceptives, including the IUD, the injection drug Depo-Provera, and the morning-after pill' to poor teenagers.

[T]he Republican plan also calls for 'rational reforms to Defense and Homeland Security.' Does this mean cutting weapons systems at the expense of big defense corporations? Well, no. But it does mean closing schools for the children of soldiers, cutting grants for local responders and offering National Guard members the 'option' to purchase a less comprehensive healthcare plan."

So, just to clarify: Rather than roll back the Dubya tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, which almost alone would raise the necessary funds, Boss DeLay and the House GOP want to cut a Grover Norquist-style swath of destruction through our government and foist the clean-up bill on everyone but their fatcat cronies. I must say, I am consistently surprised by the current GOP leadership's ability to plumb new depths of repugnance.

Oh no. Here we go again. Rita's officially a monster -- the third strongest hurricane in recorded history. And, this time, it looks like Galveston -- a town that knows a thing or two about deadly hurricanes -- is on the brunt end. Let's get it together this time, y'all.

FYI, Medley has birddogged a great Dubya lightbulb joke...

So apparently it was Follow-the-Money-Monday in Washington yesterday, which nine times out of ten will mean trouble for the GOP. On the same day that the FEC filed suit against the pro-Republican political group Club for Growth (in what may well be the first of many actions taken against soft money groups in both parties), David Safavian, the top federal procurement official at the White House, is arrested for lying about his involvement with -- and obstructing the investigation into -- "Casino Jack" Abramoff. Safavian, who as of last week was not only "setting purchasing policy for the entire government" but active in Katrina relief efforts, has a history of crooked behavior -- he was earlier a bagman for Utah Rep. Chris Cannon. So, naturally, Dubya put the guy in charge of the nation's pursestrings in 2004.

And here's an interesting triangle for you. Safavian is also "a former lobbying partner of anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, he of the "drowning goverment" and "bipartisanship is date rape" quips, at a firm they co-founded called Janus Merritt (It was acquired in 2002.) As it turns out, Norquist was also -- and I can't believe I hadn't heard this before -- none other than Casino Jack's college roommate. Hmmm...you think maybe the shredder was working overtime this weekend at Americans for Tax Reform? Update: Upon further review, the article calling Norquist and Abramoff college roommates was probably wrong. However, their close college connection as leading Reagan Youth in Massachusetts (along with Christian Coalition guru Ralph Reed) is without question -- more in the comments.

With the administration's numbers in a continuing death spiral ever since their sheer incompetence, blatant cronyism, and general heartlessness was exposed by Katrina, several recent anti-Dubya speeches of note:

President Clinton: "Now, what Americans need to understand is that means every single day of the year, our Government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts. We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else...We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense. I think it's wrong."

John Kerry: "'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.'"

John Edwards: "I might have missed something, but I don't think the president ever talked about putting a cap on the salaries of the CEOs of Halliburton and the other companies . . . who are getting all these contracts...This president, who never met an earmark he wouldn't approve or a millionaire's tax cut he wouldn't promote, decided to slash wages for the least of us and the most vulnerable."

Bill Maher: (I forgot where I saw this one first, but it's a toss-up between Booknotes and Follow Me Here.) "On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: 'Take a hint.' "

"Grab some black people who look like they might be preachers." By way of Breaching the Web, this site has gathered all of the staggering quotes on Katrina emanating from the mouths of the GOP. Similarly, Salon has assembled an hour-by-hour recap of the government's response to the hurricane. Both are well worth a read.

As Dubya's numbers hit a new low and TIME Magazine starts digging deeper into "Brownie's" resume, Dubya's flak at FEMA belatedly gets the hook. Better late than never. By the way, can you guess to whom the White House is doling out the clean-up contracts? Here's a hint: It starts with an H and ends with an Alliburton.

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." Seemingly devoid of the empathy enzyme in any case, many key Republicans -- not just Dennis Hastert and Barbara Bush -- seem to be having trouble mustering up a way to discuss Katrina that doesn't reflect their party's general lack of Christian compassion. When meeting with young New Orleans evacuees at the Astrodome, Boss DeLay "likened their stay to being at camp and asked, 'Now, tell me the truth, boys, is this kind of fun?'" Meanwhile, Rick Santorum blames Katrina on...the National Weather Service (to help out his donors at Accuweather).

"With the midterm congressional elections 14 months away, both parties see high stakes in where blame will eventually fall for the government's lagging response to Katrina. Yesterday, congressional Republicans tried to get a head start, announcing the formation of an investigative commission that they can control. They rejected Democratic appeals to model the panel after the Sept. 11 commission, which was made up of non-lawmakers and was equally balanced between Republicans and Democrats." Continuing their attempts to shield Dubya (and themselves) from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, the congressional GOP set up a dummy commission to get to the bottom of absolutely nothing, just the way they want it.

By way of Breaching the Web and Medley, the Hurricane Katrina timeline. Think My Pet Goat extended over several days. Nevertheless, the GOP is rallying around Dubya: "Just 17 percent of Democrats said they approved of the way Bush was handling the Katrina crisis while 74 percent of Republicans said they approved." Update: Out of sight, out of mind? Update 2: The Post's Terry Neal has more. Update 3: The government backs down on the media blackout after threat of a lawsuit by CNN.

"'It's such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11,' said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. 'We are so much less than what we were in 2000,' added another senior FEMA official. 'We've lost a lot of what we were able to do then.'" As Team Dubya scrambles to scapegoat state and local officials, the WP turns an eye to the dismantling of FEMA on Dubya's watch (as noted previously here.)

"''The entire fiscal landscape has been transformed in the last week...The entire Republican agenda of tax cuts, Social Security reform and big spending on pet Republican projects is over. Events do eventually have an impact on Capitol Hill.'" The Congressional GOP confront the realization that they'll likely be forced to postpone their ill-advised tax cut dreams in light of Katrina. Nevertheless, Catkiller Frist is undeterred, and still plans to attempt a repeal of the estate tax when Congress convenes next week...cause, y'know, the nation's millionaires are suffering. Update: Frist backs down (for now.) AP and the NYT has more.

To be honest, I've only had one eye on the news the past few days, as I've been busy relocating back to NYC. But what I have seen...oh my word. While the world looks on with a mix of horror, sympathy, and schadenfreude, New Orleans has fallen into almost-total anarchy. Other bloggers have been keeping up with the madness much better than I, so I'll defer to them: As I noted earlier, Looka and Ed Rants are both doing a particularly good job covering the catastrophe, and Breaching the Web and Medley, among others, have ably drawn attention to both the Dubya administration's culpability for the extent of this crisis and its grotesquely inappropriate and insufficient response. I assumed I couldn't think any less of Dubya and his cronies after four years, but watching their sneering at desperate people, their mealy-mouthed evasiveness, and, most of all, their sheer, blatant incompetence -- while Americans are suffering and dying in their homes -- it's disgusting. They've been exposed before all as pathetic, self-absorbed fuck-ups...at the cost of hundreds to thousands of lives and one great American city. Update: Also, by way of Booknotes, Wesley Clark weighs in on Dubya's failure.

"It is not comforting to realize that, in the wake of Katrina, bloated bodies are floating on those streets today. But to speak of New Orleans's resilience is simply to cite its history -- a demographic and cultural melting pot of German industry and French and Spanish elitism, of Irish gregariousness and Sicilian emotionalism, of African exuberance and American frontier cussedness that embraces death, too, as a part of life." By way of Mystery of the Vampire, an eloquent paean to the Crescent City by long-time resident Ken Ringle.

"In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war." Citing domestic budget cuts and Dubya's disastrous wetlands policies, among other things, Sidney Blumenthal makes a compelling case that the tremendous devastation wrought by Katrina "may not entirely be the result of an act of nature."

As the Gulf drowns in Katrina's wake, Dubya gets his groove on. I may be mistaken, but somehow I can't imagine Clinton stopping to play the saxophone the day after the Oklahoma City bombing. (Then again, this is fully in keeping with Bush's horrifyingly tone-deaf scampering atop the ruins of the Trade Center just after 9/11.) Well, perhaps Dubya presumes he's still on vacation. (Guitar via Medley, 404 via Ed Rants, who's currently offering much quality info and links on Katrina.)

Obviously, the big story right now is the tremendous and nightmarish devastation wrought by Katrina upon the Gulf, particularly in Louisiana and Mississippi. The first reports suggested that the Big Easy had dodged the bullet when Katrina zigged to the right at the last moment, but the broken levees and rising floodwaters have obliterated that silver lining (which was likely little consolation anyway to the people of Biloxi and Gulfport, who felt Katrina's full wrath.) Now, the news out of N'Orleans, one of America's most unique and historic cities, sounds worse with each passing hour. My thoughts are with the people of New Orleans and the region (and their most esteemed bloggers) as they try to pick up the pieces after this continuing catastrophe.