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

Well, no, it's not... but the question is a big "how?" Gross incompetence, sadly, isn't really an impeachable offence unless he starts naming his horses as secretaries.

The Congressional Elections will maybe chip away at the Republicans' majority (particularly in the House), but the Democrats are lame ducks at this point. No policy focus, no ideas, no unifying rallying cries. they're fucked. we're fucked. the only people that aren't fucked are DubyaCo.

you're an asshole. i mean i dont like him either, but come on.

xpost :D

I love Cafferty; he is really a breath of fresh air for cable news.

-- JD from CDepot (kicksjoydarknes...), September 1st, 2005 1:22 PM.

btw any athenians reading this thread (WHAT UP EMILY) trying to find a gas station in georgia athens that still has gas, bulldog square on baldwin across from blindpig (where i works) still has some. we're rationing though so don't be dragging some emptied out septic think behind you thinking you got a plan. if you drop by don't say hi to me cuz i can't stand to talk to motherfuckers at work, say hi to me at indierock karaoke tomorrow night. also, funny story: today georgia looked like a zombie movie done slapstick - gaslines longer than ANY i can remember and i can remember the carter administration, people panicking like crazy, wild rumours spreading around, shit hitting the fan minus any real tragedy. crowded store, long line of people waiting to prepay for gas, asshole republican asks 'what's the deal with the gas line?' and i say 'there's talk of a gas shortage, and people are freaking out a bit' and asshole lets out this one asshole scoffing chuckle and then says (and note this motherfucker is trying to have a fucking conversation for some fucking reason and holding up the line) 'there aren't going to be any gas shortages, no stores are gonna run out of gas mark my words. gov. perdue won't let it happen. PRESIDENT BUSH (his emphasis) won't let it happen.' and then some dude in line piped up 'that motherfucker better hope he get's impeached before someone assassinates his ass' and EVERYBODY laffed cept ralph reeder dude. and then he FINALLY took his change and left. god bless america.
-- j blount (jamesbloun...), September 1st, 2005 12:27 AM. (papa la bas)

VOODOO

bbbbut what if they increase dem numbers in texas and mississippi?!?

i heard that. i'll forgive him if he meant to say "the crowd is uniformly poor and black to such a great extent" etc instead of saying "wow these black people are really black," which unfortunately is how it sounds.

neither has a Dem Gov or Senator. LA has both, and voted for Clinton twice.

http://www.alternet.org/story/19992/

specifically in new orleans, i mean to say.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2005/08/hurricane-exit-strategy-at-some-point.html

yeah but ms. didn't have gop gov until recently.

It may be hard to speculate about alternate outcomes but there's obviously a huge difference in philosophy between the two. The Bush administration quite clearly doesn't believe that the federal government has any role in preparing for or preventing these types of disasters and judging by Hastert's comments posted on the other thread I don't think they believe the federal government should have much of a role in rebuilding either. Unfortunately I don't think most American's will recognize this difference in philosophy or know about the dismantling of FEMA.

I don't think you can underestimate the importance of appearances either. The response of a real leader both before and after a disaster may not directly save any lives but the impact of a strong leader can be very important. See the comparison to Giuliani mentioned upthread. Saying Kerry would have been "more slick" makes it sound like the appearance of strong leadership is a negative.

Well, a lot of southern states voted for Clinton twice though. That doesn't say much. Having both a dem gov and senator says a lot more.. but from what I recall, the dem/repub split in Louisiana is pretty tight. I hope i'm wrong.

Perhaps he's thinking of making an answer track to Outkast's "So Fresh, So Clean"?

Maybe he was recalling his favorite forgotten rap duo 2 Black 2 Strong, but said it wrong.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

House Speaker: Rebuilding N.O. doesn't make sense
Thursday, 2:55 p.m.

By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert dropped a bombshell on flood-ravaged New Orleans on Thursday by suggesting that it isn’t sensible to rebuild the city.

"It doesn't make sense to me," Hastert told the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago in editions published today. "And it's a question that certainly we should ask."

Hastert's comments came as Congress cut short its summer recess and raced back to Washington to take up an emergency aid package expected to be $10 billion or more. Details of the legislation are still emerging, but it is expected to target critical items such as buses to evacuate the city, reinforcing existing flood protection and providing food and shelter for a growing population of refugees.

The Illinois Republican’s comments drew an immediate rebuke from Louisiana officials.

“That’s like saying we should shut down Los Angeles because it’s built in an earthquake zone,” former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., said. “Or like saying that after the Great Chicago fire of 1871, the U.S. government should have just abandoned the city.”

Hastert said that he supports an emergency bailout, but raised questions about a long-term rebuilding effort. As the most powerful voice in the Republican-controlled House, Hastert is in a position to block any legislation that he opposes.

"We help replace, we help relieve disaster," Hastert said. "But I think federal insurance and everything that goes along with it... we ought to take a second look at that."

The speaker’s comments were in stark contrast to those delivered by President Bush during an appearance this morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“I want the people of New Orleans to know that after rescuing them and stabilizing the situation, there will be plans in place to help this great city get back on its feet,” Bush said. “There is no doubt in my mind that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city.”

Insurance industry executives estimated that claims from the storm could range up to $19 billion. Rebuilding the city, which is more than 80 percent submerged, could cost tens of billions of dollars more, experts projected.

Hastert questioned the wisdom of rebuilding a city below sea level that will continue to be in the path of powerful hurricanes.

"You know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake issures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness," he said.

Hastert wasn't the only one questioning the rebuilding of New Orleans. The Waterbury, Conn., Republican-American newspaper wrote an editorial Wednesday entitled, "Is New Orleans worth reclaiming?"

"Americans' hearts go out to the people in Katrina's path," it said. "But if the people of New Orleans and other low-lying areas insist on living in harm's way, they ought to accept responsibility for what happens to them and their property."

(... and if anyone's busy shooting elected officials....)

Randi Rhodes is on a tear. She just said that the White House should call CNN and MSNBC's producers because clearly they're able to get there, so maybe Bush should ask them how to do it.

CLASS CARDS & DISASTER [Jonah Goldberg]

Several readers complain that it's in fact true that the hurricane will disproportionately affect poor people. I don't really dispute that in the sense most mean it. Yes, the poor will have special hardships. Obviously so. But what I objected to, and still object to, is the reflexive playing of the class card. Is it really true that some middle class retirees who heeded the advice of the government to leave town, only to watch their homes be looted after a lifetime of hardwork for a better life are suffering less than a poor person who lost his rented apartment? What's the metric for measuring this sort of suffering? What about the small businessman who worked his entire life to build something he's proud of? What about the families who lost loved ones, but had the poor taste to make more money than the poverty line?

Whatever happened to the idea that unity in the face of a calamity is an important value? We're all in it together, I guess, except for the poor who are extra-special.

this is something:

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/front2453615.183333333.html

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