Katrina's POLITICAL aftermath (keep the political discussions HERE)

I have very low expectations because of history. That history is colorfully bipartisan without exception, and it doesn't make me jaded, it just gives me reasonable expectations. I'd love to be more optimistic about the future of this country, but have a hard time knowing where to look. Besides, I've got Entertainment Tonight on Tivo and US Magazine to read anyway.

don't change the subject - I was not a Clinton supporter. Nice attempt at misdirection there tho. you seem fond of that tactic.

I CARE ABOUT BLACK KETTLES AND POTS.

blount - I'm disagreeing with don's position that those are the only things worth being concerned about or shocked by. I thought this was fairly obvious. I'm not particularly disagreeing with his assessment of what gets the American public's attention.

Don, can we agree that Melissa Rivers should be the first American on Mars? (one way ticket, of course.)

Bush more or less apologized for the government's dismal performance. Yes, this came after he fellated Brownie, of course, but he did pretend to be contrite when pressed. Finally. Kinda rang hollow to me, too. I'm not really sure that I buy Clinton's apology much--hell, there's no way to really spin your way out of genocide in two different countries on two different continents when you're in charge. Political apologies are just that.

As for your question, Rwanda would have been a clusterfuck of the Mongolian order. Were it me, I wouldn't have sent troops in. Which make apologizing for Rwanda all the more hollow--Clinton's decision was probably the right one.

First, advance word of an upcoming Congressional report unsurprisingly trashes everyone in the general chain of command. What is perhaps a touch surprising, or at least intriguing, is that it's a GOP-controlled committee trashing certain chunks of the administration -- Chertoff, 'White House aides' -- as well as the usual on-site targets.

Meanwhile, over in NRO world Deroy Murdock, who to his credit actually has visited the city at least a couple of times since Katrina, has been posting columns every so often noting how poorly the reconstruction effort is going, and is not sparing BushCo -- in fact it seems they're now a particular target of his calmly-stated but still fierce opprobrium. This one I've linked details a plan for recovery that, because it actually involves government intervention, is being opposed by the likes of Cato and, apparently, the White House itself -- and Murdock ain't happy.

But the report says FEMA found that 900,000 of the 2.5 million applications for all forms of individual assistance were "potential duplicates."

"Even when FEMA's automated computer system picked out what might be fraudulent applications, payments sometimes were still sent, says the advance testimony of Gregory Kutz, the managing director of the GAO's forensic audits unit.

The controls were so lax that auditors were able to secure a $2,000 relief check by using "falsified identifies, bogus addresses and fabricated disaster stories," and then simply waiting for the money to arrive in the mail, says the report for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times."

why is this surprising? their whole strategy has been to transfer the blame.

I wish that I could find some aerial shots of this, but the Hope Airport in southwest Arkansas is currently home to 10,000 empty, unused trailer homes that were bought by FEMA for Katrina victims. FEMA says that they're working with private property owners and municipalities and whatnot and blah blah blah. Meanwhile, FEMA began kicking Katrina evacuees out of hotels this month.

Back to life, back to reality...

apparently this is a widespread sentiment in birmingham.

please tell me the rest of the country isn't being this ignorant and selfish just because we prefer an honest black mayor to a dishonest white one.

It seriously feels like it's been 5-7 years ago.

I'm getting ill thinking that Katrina isn't going to get anniversary coverage at all on the major networks, but 9/11 will again, thanks to a certain Oliver stone movie.. (again, not to underplay 9/11, but the outrage from 9 months ago should be just as remembered as the outrage from 9/11.)

Have I mentioned that I STILL have a friend unaccounted for from Katrina? He's a young dude i met when I first moved to Seattle in 2001. He and a bunch of friends moved to NOLA in early 2002, so it was brief, but we kept in touch online.

Before Katrina hit, every one of my friends contacted everybody on their myspace list saying "We're OK.. except one person."... I didn't want to bring it up, because I didn't want to lapse into permanent panic attack mode. We knew that he didn't have a car, he was really down and in a bad way (became a junkie) and only mentioned that he'd find "his own way out.".. not the best way to phrase it, to be honest.

If he surivived, dude, I hope you're happy having erased your identity completely and the carings of the people who loved you and are happy right now.

If not, I hope it was quick.

My friends tried to contact being at the NYT for pictures, and they responded saying they didn't know at the time if their friend was caught in one of the pics... so who knows.

Sorry, "My friends tried to contact photographers at the NYT for pictures"

For the record, since the infamous vandalism of the W stickered car in Redmond, I have seen only one W sticker in greater Seattle since... I've only seen three more W stickers in between: the two days I was in Los Angeles for Xmas 2005.

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/homepage/hp8-23-06b.jpg

At this point, the Feds are so bolluxed up that I believe they could only make things worse. However, there's a lot of justified anger out there because Bush/Rice want to give $770 million to Lebanon but can't be bothered to spend a dime on NOLA.

Help me write a platform for New Orleans

Depressing.

Ray Nagin found guilty of corrupution charges